A Suitable Boy

by Vikram Seth

  Ishaq held it for a few seconds, then placed it back in the cage. The man shook his head, then said:

  ‘Now for a true fancier, what can I provide that is better than this? Is it a bird from Rudhia District that you want? Or from the foothills in Horshana? They talk better than mynas.’

  Ishaq simply said, ‘Let’s see something worth seeing.’

  The man went to the back of the shop and opened a cage in which three little half-fledged birds sat huddled together. Ishaq looked at them silently, then asked to see one of them.

  He smiled, thinking of parakeets he had known. His aunt was very fond of them, and had one who was still alive at the age of seventeen. ‘This one,’ he said to the man. ‘And you know by now that I will not be fooled about the price either.’

  They haggled for a while. Until the money changed hands the stall-keeper seemed a bit resentful. Then, as Ishaq was about to leave—with his purchase nestled in his handkerchief—the stall-keeper said in an anxious voice, ‘Tell me how he is doing when you come by next time.’

  ‘What do they call you?’ asked Ishaq.

  ‘Muhammad Ismail, Huzoor. And how are you addressed?’

  ‘Ishaq Khan.’

  ‘Then we are brothers!’ beamed the stall-keeper. ‘You must always get your birds from my shop.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Ishaq, and walked hurriedly away. This was a good bird he had got, and would delight the heart of young Tasneem.

  2.15

  Ishaq went home, had lunch, and fed the bird a little flour mixed with water. Later, carrying the parakeet in his handkerchief, he made his way to Saeeda Bai’s house. From time to time he looked at it in appreciation, imagining what an excellent and intelligent bird it potentially was. He was in high spirits. A good Alexandrine parakeet was his favourite kind of parrot. As he walked towards Nabiganj he almost bumped into a hand-cart.

  He arrived at Saeeda Bai’s house at about four and told Tasneem that he had brought something for her. She was to try and guess what it was.

  ‘Don’t tease me, Ishaq Bhai,’ she said, fixing her beautiful large eyes on his face. ‘Please tell me what it is.’

  Ishaq looked at her and thought that ‘gazelle-like’ really did suit Tasneem. Delicate-featured, tall and slender, she did not greatly resemble her elder sister. Her eyes were liquid and her expression tender. She was lively, but always seemed to be on the point of taking flight.

  ‘Why do you insist on calling me Bhai?’ he asked.

  ‘Because you are virtually my brother,’ said Tasneem. ‘I need one, too. And your bringing me this gift proves it. Now please don’t keep me in suspense. Is it something to wear?’

  ‘Oh no—that would be superfluous to your beauty,’ said Ishaq, smiling.

  ‘Please don’t talk that way,’ said Tasneem, frowning. ‘Apa might hear you, and then there will be trouble.’

  ‘Well, here it is. . . .’ And Ishaq took out what looked like a soft ball of fluffy material wrapped in a handkerchief.

  ‘A ball of wool! You want me to knit you a pair of socks. Well, I won’t. I have better things to do.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Ishaq.

  ‘Like . . .’ began Tasneem, then was silent. She glanced uncomfortably at a long mirror on the wall. What did she do? Cut vegetables to help the cook, talk to her sister, read novels, gossip with the maid, think about life. But before she could meditate too deeply on the subject, the ball moved, and her eyes lit up with pleasure.

  ‘So you see—’ said Ishaq, ‘it’s a mouse.’

  ‘It is not—’ said Tasneem with contempt. ‘It’s a bird. I’m not a child, you know.’

  ‘And I’m not exactly your brother, you know,’ said Ishaq. He unwrapped the parakeet and they looked at it together. Then he placed it on a table near a red lacquer vase. The stubbly ball of flesh looked quite disgusting.

  ‘How lovely,’ said Tasneem.

  ‘I selected him this morning,’ said Ishaq. ‘It took me hours, but I wanted to have one that would be just right for you.’

  Tasneem gazed at the bird, then stretched out her hand and touched it. Despite its stubble it was very soft. Its colour was very slightly green, as its feathers had only just begun to emerge.

  ‘A parakeet?’

  ‘Yes, but not a regular one. He’s a hill parakeet. He’ll talk as well as a myna.’

  When Mohsina Bai died, her highly talkative myna had quickly followed her. Tasneem had been even lonelier without the bird, but she was glad that Ishaq had not got her another myna but something quite different. That was doubly considerate of him.

  ‘What is he called?’

  Ishaq laughed. ‘Why do you want to call him anything? Just “tota” will do. He’s not a warhorse that he should be called Ruksh or Bucephalas.’

  Both of them were standing and looking at the baby parakeet. At the same moment each stretched out a hand to touch him. Tasneem swiftly drew her hand back.

  ‘You go ahead,’ said Ishaq. ‘I’ve had him all day.’

  ‘Has he eaten anything?’

  ‘A bit of flour mixed with water,’ said Ishaq.

  ‘How do they get such tiny birds?’ asked Tasneem.

  Their eyes were level, and Ishaq, looking at her head, covered with a yellow scarf, found himself speaking without paying any attention to his words.

  ‘Oh, they’re taken from their nests when they’re very young—if you don’t get them young they don’t learn to speak—and you should get a male one—he’ll develop a lovely rose-and-black ring around his neck—and males are more intelligent. The best talkers come from the foothills, you know. There were three of them in the stall from the same nest, and I had to think quite hard before I decided—’

  ‘You mean, he’s separated from his brothers and sisters?’ Tasneem broke in.

  ‘But of course,’ said Ishaq. ‘He had to be. If you get a pair of them, they don’t learn to imitate anything we say.’

  ‘How cruel,’ said Tasneem. Her eyes grew moist.

  ‘But he had already been taken from his nest when I bought him,’ said Ishaq, upset that he had caused her pain. ‘You can’t put them back or they’ll be rejected by their parents.’ He put his hand on hers—she didn’t draw back at once—and said: ‘Now it’s up to you to give him a good life. Put him in a nest of cloth in the cage in which your mother’s myna used to be kept. And for the first few days feed him a little parched gram flour moistened with water or a little daal soaked overnight. If he doesn’t like that cage, I’ll get him another one.’

  Tasneem withdrew her hand gently from under Ishaq’s. Poor parakeet, loved and unfree! He could change one cage for another. And she would change these four walls for a different four. Her sister, fifteen years her senior, and experienced in the ways of the world, would arrange all that soon enough. And then—

  ‘Sometimes I wish I could fly. . . .’ She stopped, embarrassed.

  Ishaq looked at her seriously. ‘It is a good thing we can’t, Tasneem—or can you imagine the confusion? The police have a hard enough time controlling traffic in Chowk—but if we could fly as well as walk it would be a hundred times worse.’

  Tasneem tried not to smile.

  ‘But it would be worse still if birds, like us, could only walk,’ continued Ishaq. ‘Imagine them strolling up and down Nabiganj with their walking sticks in the evenings.’

  Now she was laughing. Ishaq too started laughing, and the two of them, delighted by the picture they had conjured up, felt the tears rolling down their cheeks. Ishaq wiped his away with his hand, Tasneem hers with her yellow dupatta. Their laughter sounded through the house.

  The baby parakeet sat quite still on the tabletop near the red lacquer vase; his translucent gullet worked up and down.

  Saeeda Bai, roused from her afternoon nap, came into the room, and in a surprised voice, with something of a stern edge, said: ‘Ishaq—what’s all this? Is one not to be permitted to rest even in the afternoon?’ Then her eyes alighted on the baby parakeet, and
she clicked her tongue in irritation.

  ‘No—no more birds in this house. That miserable myna of my mother’s caused me enough trouble.’ She paused, then added: ‘One singer is enough in any establishment. Get rid of it.’

  2.16

  No one spoke. After a while Saeeda Bai broke the silence. ‘Ishaq, you are here early,’ she said.

  Ishaq looked guilty. Tasneem looked down with half a sob. The parakeet made a feeble attempt to move. Saeeda Bai, looking from one to the other, suddenly said:

  ‘Where is your sarangi anyway?’

  Ishaq realized he had not even brought it. He flushed.

  ‘I forgot. I was thinking of the parakeet.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Of course I’ll go and get it immediately.’

  ‘The Raja of Marh has sent word he will be coming this evening.’

  ‘I’m just going,’ said Ishaq. Then he added, looking at Tasneem, ‘Shall I take the parakeet?’

  ‘No, no—’ said Saeeda Bai, ‘why should you want to take it? Just get your sarangi. And don’t be all day about it.’

  Ishaq left hurriedly.

  Tasneem, who had been close to tears, looked gratefully at her sister. Saeeda Bai, however, was far away. The business of the bird had woken her up from a haunting and peculiar dream involving the death of her mother and her own earlier life—and when Ishaq left, its atmosphere of dread and even guilt had surged back over her.

  Tasneem, noticing her sister suddenly sad, held her hand.

  ‘What’s the matter, Apa?’ she asked, using the term of endearment and respect she always used for her elder sister.

  Saeeda Bai began to sob, and hugged Tasneem to her, kissing her forehead and cheeks.

  ‘You are the only thing I care for in the world,’ she said. ‘May God keep you happy. . . .’

  Tasneem hugged her and said, ‘Why, Apa, why are you crying? Why are you so overwrought? Is it Ammi-jaan’s grave you are thinking of?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Saeeda Bai quickly, and turned away. ‘Now go inside, get the cage lying in Ammi-jaan’s old room. Polish it and bring it here. And soak some daal—some chané ki daal—for him to eat later.’

  Tasneem went in towards the kitchen. Saeeda Bai sat down, looking a bit dazed. Then she held the small parakeet in her hands to keep him warm. She was sitting like this when the maidservant came in to announce that someone had arrived from the Nawab Sahib’s place, and was waiting outside.

  Saeeda Bai pulled herself together and dried her eyes. ‘Let him in,’ she said.

  But when Firoz walked in, handsome and smiling, gripping his elegant walking stick lightly in his right hand, she gave a startled gasp.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Firoz. ‘I’ve brought an envelope from my father.’

  ‘You’ve come late. . . . I mean, he usually sends someone in the morning,’ murmured Saeeda Bai, trying to still the confusion in her mind. ‘Please sit down, please sit down.’

  Until now the Nawab Sahib had sent a servant with the monthly envelope. For the last two months, Saeeda Bai remembered it had been just a couple of days after her period. And this month too, of course. . . .

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Firoz, who said: ‘I happened to bump into my father’s private secretary, who was coming—’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Saeeda Bai looked upset. Firoz wondered why his appearance should have distressed her so much. That many years ago there must have been something between the Nawab Sahib and Saeeda Bai’s mother—and that his father continued to send a little something each month to support the family—surely there was nothing in this to cause her such agitation. Then he realized that she must have been upset even before his arrival by something quite different.

  I have come at a bad time, he thought, and decided to go.

  Tasneem walked in with the copper birdcage and, seeing him, suddenly stopped.

  They looked at each other. For Tasneem, Firoz was just another handsome admirer of her sister’s—but startlingly so. She lowered her eyes quickly, then looked at him again.

  She stood there with her yellow dupatta, the birdcage in her right hand, her mouth slightly open in astonishment—perhaps at his astonishment. Firoz was staring at her, transfixed.

  ‘Have we met before?’ he asked gently, his heart beating fast.

  Tasneem was about to reply when Saeeda Bai said, ‘Whenever my sister goes out of the house she goes in purdah. And this is the first time that the Nawabzada has graced my poor lodgings with his presence. So it is not possible that you could have met. Tasneem, put the cage down, and go back to your Arabic exercises. I have not got you a new teacher for nothing.’

  ‘But . . .’ began Tasneem.

  ‘Go back to your room at once. I will take care of the bird. Have you soaked the daal yet?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Go and do so immediately. Do you want the bird to starve?’

  When the bewildered Tasneem had left, Firoz tried to orient his thoughts. His mouth was dry. He felt strangely disturbed. Surely, he felt, even if we have not met on this mortal plane, we have met in some former life. The thought, counter to the religion he nominally adhered to, affected him the more powerfully for all that. The girl with the birdcage had in a few short moments made the most profound and unsettling impression on him.

  After abridged pleasantries with Saeeda Bai, who seemed to be paying as little attention to his words as he to hers, he walked slowly out of the door.

  Saeeda Bai sat perfectly still on the sofa for a few minutes. Her hands still cradled the little parakeet gently. He appeared to have gone off to sleep. She wrapped him up warmly in a piece of cloth and set him down near the red vase again. From outside she heard the call to evening prayer, and she covered her head.

  All over India, all over the world, as the sun or the shadow of darkness moves from east to west, the call to prayer moves with it, and people kneel down in a wave to pray to God. Five waves each day—one for each namaaz—ripple across the globe from longitude to longitude. The component elements change direction, like iron filings near a magnet—towards the house of God in Mecca. Saeeda Bai got up to go to an inner room where she performed the ritual ablution and began her prayers:

  In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

  Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being,

  the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate,

  the Master of the Day of Doom.

  Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succour.

  Guide us in the straight path,

  the path of those whom Thou hast blessed,

  not those against whom Thou art wrathful,

  nor of those who are astray.

  But through this, and through her subsequent kneelings and prostrations, one terrifying line from the Holy Book recurred again and again to her mind:

  And God alone knows what you keep secret

  and what you publish.

  2.17

  Saeeda Bai’s pretty young maidservant, Bibbo, sensing her mistress was distressed, thought she would try to cheer her up by talking of the Raja of Marh, who was to visit that evening. With his tiger hunts and mountain fastnesses, his reputation as temple-builder and tyrant, and his strange tastes in sex, the Raja was not the ideal subject for comic relief. He had come to lay the foundation of the Shiva temple, his latest venture, in the centre of the old town. The temple was to stand cheek by jowl with the grand mosque constructed by order of the Emperor Aurangzeb two and a half centuries ago on the ruins of an earlier temple to Shiva. If the Raja of Marh had had his way, the foundation of his temple would have stood on the rubble of the mosque itself.

  Given this background, it was interesting that the Raja of Marh had once been so utterly besotted with Saeeda Bai that he had some years ago proposed to marry her even though there was no question of her renouncing her beliefs as a Muslim. The thought of being his wife made Saeeda Bai so uneasy that she set impossible conditions upon him. Any possible
heirs of the Raja’s present wife were to be dispossessed, and Saeeda Bai’s eldest son by him—assuming she had any—was to inherit Marh. Saeeda Bai made this demand of the Raja despite the fact that the Rani of Marh and the Dowager Rani of Marh had both treated her with kindness when she had been summoned to the state to perform at the wedding of the Raja’s sister; she liked the Ranis, and knew that there was no possibility of her conditions being accepted. But the Raja thought with his crotch rather than his brain. He accepted these demands, and Saeeda Bai, trapped, had to fall seriously ill and be told by compliant doctors that to move her away from the city to a princely hill state would very likely kill her.

  The Raja, whose looks resembled those of a huge water buffalo, pawed the earth dangerously for a while. He suspected duplicity and fell into a drunken and—literally—bloodshot rage; probably the main factor that prevented his hiring someone to get rid of Saeeda Bai was the knowledge that the British, if they discovered the truth, would probably depose him—as they had other Rajas, and even Maharajas, for similar scandals and killings.

  Not a great deal of this was known to the maidservant Bibbo, who was, however, keyed into the gossip that the Raja had some years previously proposed to her mistress. Saeeda Bai was talking to Tasneem’s bird—rather prematurely, considering how tiny it was, but Saeeda Bai felt that this was how birds learned best—when Bibbo appeared.

  ‘Are any special arrangements to be made for the Raja Sahib?’ she asked.

  ‘Why? No, of course not,’ said Saeeda Bai.

  ‘Perhaps I should get a garland of marigolds—’

  ‘Are you crazy, Bibbo?’

  ‘—for him to eat.’

  Saeeda Bai smiled.

  Bibbo went on: ‘Will we have to move to Marh, Rani Sahiba?’

  ‘Oh do be quiet,’ said Saeeda Bai.

  ‘But to rule a state—’

  ‘No one really rules their states now; Delhi does,’ said Saeeda Bai. ‘And listen, Bibbo, it would not be the crown I would have to marry but the buffalo underneath. Now go—you are ruining the education of this parakeet.’