A Suitable Boy(608)

‘I don’t know,’ said Rasheed speculatively. ‘Perhaps it is my looks, or my uprightness, or the fact that I have done so much in life already and will be famous some day. She knows I have helped so many people.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I did not invite any attentions. I have a religious attitude to life.’ He sighed. ‘But I know the meaning of duty. I must do what is necessary for her sanity.’ He bowed his head in sudden exhaustion and leaned forward.

‘I think,’ said Maan after a while, patting him on the back in a puzzled manner, ‘that you should take better care of yourself – or let your family do so. You should go back to the village as soon as the vacations begin, or even before – and let Meher’s mother take care of you. Rest. Sleep. Eat properly. Do not study. And do not exhaust yourself by campaigning for any party.’

Rasheed lifted his head and looked at Maan mockingly. ‘So that is what you would like?’ he said. ‘Then the path will be clear. Then you can farm my field again. Then you can send the police to break my head with a lathi. I may suffer some setbacks, but whatever I put my mind to doing, I do. I understand when things are connected with each other. It is not easy to dupe me, especially if your conscience is uneasy.’

‘You are speaking in riddles,’ said Maan. ‘And I think it is getting late for your tuition. In any case, I don’t want to hear anything more on this subject.’

‘You must confirm or deny it.’

‘What, for God’s sake?’ cried Maan in exasperation.

‘When you visit Saeeda Begum next, tell her that I am willing to spread happiness in her home if she insists on my going ahead with all this, that I will undergo a simple ceremony, but that any children I have in my second marriage cannot usurp the rights of the children I already have. And the marriage with Tasneem must be kept secret, even from the rest of my family. There must be no rumour – she is, after all, the sister of, well – I have my reputation and that of my family. Only those who already know…’

He drifted off.

Maan got up, looking at Rasheed in amazement and shaking his head. He sighed, then leaned against the trunk of the tree, continuing to stare at his former teacher and friend. Then he looked down at the ground and said: ‘I am not going back to Saeeda Begum’s, nor am I plotting against you. I am not interested in breaking anyone’s head. I am leaving for Salimpur tomorrow with my father. You can send your own messages to – to Saeeda Begum, but I beg you not to. I cannot understand a quarter of what you have been saying. But if you wish, Rasheed, I will accompany you to your village – or to your wife’s village – and make sure that you get there safely.’

Rasheed did not move. He pressed his right hand to his forehead.

‘Well, what do you say?’ asked Maan, concerned and angry. He had planned to go to Saeeda Bai’s before leaving. Now he felt obliged to mention to her his meeting with Rasheed and the disturbing turn it had taken. He fervently hoped that nothing harmful would come out of it, and he also hoped that it would not sour the evening of his departure.

‘I will sit here,’ said Rasheed after a while, ‘and think.’

He made the word sound actively ominous.





17.4


MAAN had not been following Rasheed’s activities. He was troubled by his talk of the patwari, though now he did recall faintly that someone – Rasheed’s father or grandfather – had once mentioned something about a patwari to him. He knew that Rasheed had been moved to pity and indignation on behalf of the poorer people in the village: Maan’s mind went back to the old man, destitute and dying, whom Rasheed had gone to visit, and because of whom he had taken up cudgels against the elders outside the mosque. But Rasheed was so rigid, expected so much of others and of himself, reacted so much in anger and pride, hammered away so powerfully in every direction he turned to, that – apart from putting other people’s backs up – he must have worn himself out completely. Had he suffered from any specific shock that had caused him to crack in this way – to behave so sanely – at least at the beginning – and yet so deludedly? He still gave tuitions; did he still make ends meet? He was looking so poorly. And was he still the exacting, careful teacher, with his insistence on perfect, unbending alifs? What did his students and their families think of him?

And what did Rasheed’s own family think? Did they know what had happened to him? If they knew, how could they be indifferent to his pitiable state? When he went to Debaria, Maan decided, he would ask them directly what they knew and tell them what they didn’t. And where were Rasheed’s wife and children?