A Suitable Boy(606)

‘Why do you want to see him anyway?’ asked Saeeda Bai.

‘I promised his family I would,’ said Maan. ‘And I also want to talk to him about the elections. My father will be fighting from the constituency that includes his village.’

Now Saeeda Bai became cross. ‘Has this entire city lost its senses?’ she exclaimed. ‘Elections! Elections! Is there nothing else in the world other than paper and boxes?’

Indeed, Brahmpur was talking of very little else. Campaigning had begun; most candidates, after filing their nomination papers, had remained in their constituencies and begun canvassing immediately. Mahesh Kapoor had decided to wait a few weeks in Brahmpur. Since he was Revenue Minister again, he had a great deal of work to do.

Maan, by way of apology, said: ‘Saeeda, you know I have to help my father with these elections. My elder brother is not well and, besides, he has his teaching. And I know the constituency. But my exile will be short this time.’

Saeeda Bai clapped her hands and called for Bibbo.

Bibbo came running.

‘Bibbo, are we on the voting list for Pasand Bagh?’ she demanded.

Bibbo did not know, but she thought they were not. ‘Should I try to find out?’ she asked.

‘No. It is not necessary.’

‘Whatever you say, Begum Sahiba.’

‘Where were you this afternoon? I was looking for you everywhere.’

‘I had gone out, Begum Sahiba, to buy some matches.’

‘Does it take an hour to buy matches?’

Saeeda Bai was becoming determinedly annoyed.

Bibbo was silent. She could not very well tell Saeeda Bai, who had been in such a flap about Rasheed, that she had surreptitiously been carrying letters to and fro between Firoz and Tasneem.

Saeeda Bai now turned briskly to Maan: ‘Why are you lingering here?’ she asked him. ‘There are no votes to be had in this house.’

‘Saeeda Begum –’ protested Maan.

Saeeda Bai said sharply to Bibbo: ‘What are you gawking at? Didn’t you hear me tell you to go?’

Bibbo grinned and left. Suddenly Saeeda Bai got up and went into her room. She returned with three of the letters Rasheed had mailed Tasneem.

‘His address is on these,’ she said to Maan as she threw them onto the low table. Maan noted the address down in his unformed Urdu script, noticing, however, that Rasheed’s writing was very much worse than he remembered it.

‘There is something wrong with his head. You will find him a liability in your electoral endeavours,’ said Saeeda Bai.

The rest of the evening was not a success. Public life had entered the boudoir, and together with it all Saeeda Bai’s fears for Tasneem.

After a while she reverted to a kind of dreaminess again.

‘When do you leave?’ she asked Maan indifferently.

‘In three days, Inshallah,’ replied Maan as cheerfully as he could.

‘Inshallah,’ repeated the parakeet, responding to a phrase he recognized. Maan turned towards it and frowned. He was in no mood for the halfwitted bird. A weight had descended on him; Saeeda Bai, it appeared, did not care whether he stayed or left.

‘I am tired,’ said Saeeda Bai.

‘May I visit you on the eve of my departure?’

‘No longer did I desire to wander in the garden,’ murmured Saeeda Bai to herself, quoting Ghalib.

She was referring to Maan and to the fickleness of men in general, but Maan thought she was referring to herself.





17.3


MAAN visited Rasheed’s room the next day. It was located in a seedy and crowded part of the old city with narrow, unrepaired lanes and the stench of poor drainage. Rasheed was living alone. He could not afford to keep his family with him in Brahmpur. He cooked for himself whenever he could, he gave his tuitions, he studied, he was involved in some work for the Socialist Party, and he was trying to write a pamphlet – half popular, half scholarly – on the sanction for and meaning of secularism in Islam. He had run his life for months on will-power rather than on a combination of food and affection. When he saw Maan at his door Rasheed looked astonished and worried. Maan noticed with a shock that even more of his hair had gone white. His face was gaunt, but his eyes still held a sort of fire.

‘Let us go for a walk,’ Rasheed suggested. ‘I have a tuition in an hour. There are too many flies here. Curzon Park is on the way. We can sit there and talk.’

In the mild December sunshine they sat in the park under a large, small-leafed ficus. Every time someone passed them, Rasheed would lower his voice. He looked extremely tired, but talked almost without stopping. Early on in the conversation it became apparent to Maan that Rasheed was not going to help his father in any sense. He was going to support the Socialist Party in the Salimpur-cum-Baitar constituency and he was, he said, going to campaign tirelessly for them and against the Congress throughout the university vacation. He talked endlessly about feudalism and superstition and the oppressive structure of society and especially the Nawab Sahib of Baitar’s role in the system. He said that the leaders of the Congress Party – and presumably Mahesh Kapoor – were hand in glove with the large landlords, which was why landlords would be compensated for the lands that were to be taken over by the state. ‘But the people will not be duped,’ he said. ‘They understand things only too well.’