O heedless one, pay heed to God.
Is this your way to show your love?
You sleep below, he wakes above.
What you have done, that you must bear.
Where is the joy in sin then, where?
When on your head your sins lie deep,
Why do you clutch your head and weep?
Tomorrow’s task, enact today.
Today’s at once; do not delay.
When birds have robbed the standing grain
What use to wring your hands in vain?’
Somewhere in the middle of the second stanza she stopped singing – the others continued – and began crying quietly. She tried to stop but couldn’t. She started to wipe her tears with the pallu of her sari and then simply wiped them away with her hands. Kedarnath, who was sitting in front, took out his handkerchief and threw it into her lap, but she didn’t notice. She slowly looked up, her eyes a little above the crowd, and continued singing. Once or twice she coughed. By the time she was singing the first verse again, her voice was clear; but now it was her irritable father who was in tears.
The song, taken from the hymn-book of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, brought home to him like nothing else had his unrealized loss. Gandhi was dead, and with him his ideals. That preacher of nonviolence whom he had followed and revered had died violently, and now Mahesh Kapoor’s own son – more beloved for the danger he was in – was lying in prison for violence of his own. Firoz, whom he had known from childhood, might die. His friendship with the Nawab Sahib, that had stood so much and so long, had shattered under the sudden power of grief and rumour. The Nawab Sahib was not here today, and he had prevented the two of them from visiting Firoz. That visit would have meant much to the dead woman. The lack of it had enhanced her grief and – who knew the workings of sorrow on the brain? – may have hastened her death.
Too late, and perhaps because of the love that everyone else around him so clearly bore her, he began to realize fully what he had lost, indeed, whom he had lost – and how suddenly. There was so much to do, and no one to help him, to advise him quietly, to check his impatience. His son’s life and his own future both seemed to him to be in hopeless straits. He wanted to give up and let the world take care of itself. But he could not let Maan go; and politics had been his life.
She would not be there, as she had always been, to help. The birds had robbed the standing grain, and here he was wringing his empty hands. What would she have said to him? Nothing direct, but possibly a few words of circuitous comfort, something that might, a few days or a few weeks later, have taken the edge off his despair. Would she have told him to withdraw from the election? What would she have asked him to do about his son? Which of his several duties – or conceptions of duty – would she have expected him to follow or have anticipated that he would follow, and which would she have wished him to? Even if in the weeks ahead it became clear to him, he did not have those weeks, but only days, and, indeed, very few of those.
17.29
WHEN Maan was admitted to jail after the cremation, he was required to wash himself and his clothing, and he was provided with a cup and a plate. He was examined by the medical officer and weighed. A note was made of the condition of his hair and beard. As an unconvicted prisoner with no previous convictions he was supposed to be kept separate from those undertrial prisoners who had previous convictions, but the district jail was crowded, and he was accommodated in a ward which contained a couple of undertrial prisoners who knew about jail life from experience and set out to educate the others about it. Maan they treated as a great curiosity. If he was really a Minister’s son – and the one newspaper they were permitted confirmed that indeed he was – what was he doing there? Why had he not managed to get bail on one pretext or another? If the charge being investigated was nonbailable, why had the police not been told to lessen the charge?
If Maan had been in anything resembling his normal state of mind, he would have made friends with a few of his present colleagues. Now he hardly sensed their existence. He could think of no one except those whom he could not see: his mother, and Firoz, and Saeeda Bai. His life, though not easy, was luxury compared to what it had been in the lock-up. He was allowed to receive food and clothes from Prem Nivas; he was allowed to shave his face and to exercise. The jail was comparatively clean. Since he was a ‘superior class’ prisoner, his cell was equipped with a small table, a bed, and a lamp. They sent him oranges, which he ate in a daze. They sent a quilt of kingfisher blue from Prem Nivas to protect him against the cold. It protected him and it comforted him, while at the same time it reminded him of home – and all that he had destroyed or lost.