A Suitable Boy(639)

In the morning a stream of visitors came through the house to pay their last respects. Among them were many of Mahesh Kapoor’s colleagues, all of whom, no matter what they thought of him, had had nothing but affection for this decent, kind, and affectionate woman. They had known her as a quiet, bustling wife, untiring and warm in her hospitality, who had compensated with her gentleness for the worst of her husband’s acerbity.

Now she lay on the ground on a sheet, her nostrils and mouth lightly plugged with cotton-wool, a bandage tying her head to her jaw. She was dressed in red, as she had been at her wedding many years ago, and there was sindoor in the parting of her hair. Incense was burning in a bowl at her feet. All the women, including Savita and Lata, were sitting beside her, and some were weeping, Mrs Rupa Mehra as much as anyone.

S.S. Sharma removed his shoes and entered. His head was trembling slightly. He folded his hands, said a few words of comfort, and went away. Priya comforted Veena. Her father, L.N. Agarwal, took Pran aside, and said:

‘When is the cremation?’

‘At eleven o’clock at the ghat.’

‘What about your younger brother?’

Pran shook his head. His eyes filled with tears.

The Home Minister asked to use the phone, and called the Superintendent of Police. On hearing that Maan was due to be moved from police custody to judicial custody that afternoon, he said: ‘Tell them to do it this morning instead, and to take him past the cremation ghat. His brother will go to the police station and join the escort party. There is no danger of the prisoner escaping, so handcuffs will not be necessary. Have the formalities completed by ten o’clock or so.’

The Superintendent said: ‘It will be done, Minister Sahib.’

L.N. Agarwal was about to put down the phone, when he thought of something else. He said: ‘Also, would you tell the station house officer to make a barber available in case it is necessary – but not to break any news to the young man himself. His brother will do that.’

In the event, when Pran went over to the lock-up to see Maan, he did not have to say a word. When Maan saw his brother’s shaven head he knew by some instinct that it was his mother who had died. He burst into horrible, tearless weeping and began to hit his head against the bars of his cell.

The policeman with the keys was bewildered in the face of this display; the Sub-Inspector snatched the keys from him and let Maan out. He fell into Pran’s embrace, and kept making these terrible, animal sounds of grief.

After a while, Pran calmed him down by talking continuously and gently to him. He turned to the police officer and said: ‘I understand you have got a barber here to shave my brother’s head. We should be leaving for the ghat soon.’

The Sub-Inspector was apologetic. A problem had arisen. One of the ticket clerks at the Brahmpur Railway Station was going to be asked to try to pick Maan out at an identification parade in the jail. Under these circumstances, he could not let Maan’s head be shaved.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Pran, looking at the policeman’s moustache and thinking he had a great deal too much hair himself. ‘I heard the Home Minister himself say that –’

‘I spoke to the SP ten minutes ago,’ said the Sub-Inspector. Clearly, for him, the SP was more important than even the PM.

They got to the ghat by eleven. The policemen stood some distance away. The sun was high, the day unseasonably warm. Only the men were there. The cotton-wool was removed from the face, the yellow cloth and the flowers were removed from the bier, the body was moved onto two long logs and covered with others.

Her husband performed all the necessary rites under the guidance of a pandit. What the rationalist in him thought of all the ghee and sandalwood and swahas and the demands of the doms who worked at the pyre was not betrayed by his face. The smoke of the pyre was oppressive, but he did not appear to sense it. No breeze blew from the Ganga to disperse it quickly.

Maan stood next to his brother, who almost had to support him. He saw the flames rise and lap over his mother’s face – and the smoke cover his father’s.

This is my doing, Ammaji, he thought, though no one had said any such thing to him. It is what I did that has led to this. What have I done to Veena and Pran and Baoji? I will never forgive myself and no one in the family will ever forgive me.





17.27


ASH AND BONES, that was all Mrs Mahesh Kapoor was now, ash and bones, warm still, but soon to cool, and be collected, and sunk in the Ganga at Brahmpur. Why not at Hardwar, as she had wished? Because her husband was a practical man. Because what are bones and ash, what even are flesh and blood and tissue when life has gone? Because it made no difference, the water of the Ganga is the same at Gangotri, at Hardwar, at Prayag, at Banaras, at Brahmpur, even at Sagar to which it was bound from the moment it dropped from the sky. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor was dead, and felt nothing, this ash of hers and sandalwood and common wood could be left to the doms at the cremation ghat to sift for the few pieces of jewellery which had melted with her body and were theirs by right. Fat, ligament, muscle, blood, hair, affection, pity, despair, anxiety, illness: all were no more. She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena’s love of music, Pran’s asthma, Maan’s generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small unrung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar’s great-grandchil- dren. Indeed, for all the Minister of Revenue’s impatience with her, she was his regret. And it was right that she should continue to be so, for he should have treated her better while she lived, the poor, ignorant, grieving fool.