by Vikram Seth
‘Nothing, nothing, it will all blow over,’ he said.
‘I heard that twenty Muslims were killed,’ said the old Rai Bahadur philosophically.
‘No, not that many,’ said L.N. Agarwal. ‘A few. Matters are well in hand.’ He paused, ruminating on the fact that he had misjudged the situation. ‘This is a hard town to manage,’ he continued. ‘If it isn’t one thing it’s another. We are an ill-disciplined people. The lathi and the gun are the only things that will teach us discipline.’
‘In British days law and order was not such a problem,’ said the creaky voice.
The Home Minister did not rise to the Rai Bahadur’s bait. In fact, he was not sure that the remark was not delivered innocently.
‘Still, there it is,’ he responded.
‘Mahesh Kapoor’s daughter was here the other day,’ ventured the Rai Bahadur.
Surely this could not be an innocent comment. Or was it? Perhaps the Rai Bahadur was merely following a train of thought.
‘Yes, she is a good girl,’ said L.N. Agarwal. He rubbed his perimeter of hair in a thoughtful way. Then, after a pause, he added calmly: ‘I can handle the town; it is not the tension that disturbs me. Ten Misri Mandis and twenty Chowks are nothing. It is the politics, the politicians—’
The Rai Bahadur allowed himself a smile. This too was somewhat creaky, as if the separate plates of his aged face were gradually reconfiguring themselves with difficulty.
L.N. Agarwal shook his head, then went on. ‘Until two this morning the MLAs were gathering around me like chicks around their mother. They were in a state of panic. The Chief Minister goes out of town for a few days and see what happens in his absence! What will Sharmaji say when he comes back? What capital will Mahesh Kapoor’s faction make out of all this? In Misri Mandi they will emphasize the lot of the jatavs, in Chowk that of the Muslims. What will the effect of all this be on the jatav vote and the Muslim vote? The General Elections are just a few months away. Will these vote banks swing away from the Congress? If so, in what numbers? One or two gentlemen have even asked if there is the danger of further conflagration—though usually this is the least of their concerns.’
‘And what do you tell them when they come running to you?’ asked the Rai Bahadur. His daughter-in-law—the arch-witch in Priya’s demonology—had just brought in the tea. The top of her head was covered with her sari. She poured the tea, gave them a sharp look, exchanged a couple of words, and went out.
The thread of the conversation had been lost, but the Rai Bahadur, perhaps remembering the cross-examinations for which he had been famous in his prime, drew it gently back again.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said L.N. Agarwal quite calmly. ‘I just tell them whatever is necessary to stop them from keeping me awake.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No, nothing much. Just that things will blow over; that what’s done is done; that a little discipline never did a neighbourhood any harm; that the General Elections are still far enough away. That sort of thing.’ L.N. Agarwal sipped his tea before continuing: ‘The fact of the matter is that the country has far more important things to think about. Food is the main one. Bihar is virtually starving. And if we have a bad monsoon, we will be too. Mere Muslims threatening us from inside the country or across the border we can deal with. If Nehru were not so soft-hearted we would have dealt with them properly a few years ago. And now these jatavs, these’—his expression conveyed distaste at the words—‘these scheduled caste people are becoming a problem once again. But let’s see, let’s see. . . .’
Ram Vilas Goyal had sat silent through the whole exchange. Once he frowned slightly, once he nodded.
That is what I like about my son-in-law, reflected L.N. Agarwal. He’s not dumb, but he doesn’t speak. He decided yet again that he had made the right match for his daughter. Priya could provoke, and he would simply not allow himself to be provoked.
5.5
Meanwhile, upstairs, Priya was talking to Veena, who had come to pay her a visit. But it was more than a social visit, it was an emergency. Veena was very distressed. She had come home and found Kedarnath not merely with his eyes closed but with his head in his hands. This was far worse than his general state of optimistic anxiety. He had not wanted to talk about it, but she had eventually discovered that he was in very grave financial trouble. With the pickets and the stationing of the police in Chowk, the wholesale shoe market had finally ground from a slowdown to a complete halt. Every day now his chits were coming due, and he just did not have the cash to pay them. Those who owed him money, particularly two large stores in Bombay, had deferred paying him for past supplies because they thought he could not ensure future supplies. The supplies he got from people like Jagat Ram, who made shoes to order, were not enough. To fulfil the orders that buyers around the country had placed with him, he needed the shoes of the basket-wallahs, and they did not dare come to Misri Mandi these days.
But the immediate problem was how to pay for the chits that were coming due. He had no one to go to; all his associates were themselves short of cash. Going to his father-in-law was for him out of the question. He was at his wits’ end. He would try once more to talk to his creditors—the moneylenders who held his chits and their commission agents who came to him for payment when they were due. He would try to persuade them that it would do no one any good to drive him and others like him to the wall in a credit squeeze. This situation would surely not last long. He was not insolvent, just illiquid. But even as he spoke he knew what their answer would be. He knew that money, unlike labour, owed no allegiance to a particular trade, and could flow out of shoes and into, say, cold storage facilities without retraining or compunction or doubt. It only asked two questions: ‘What interest?’ and ‘What risk?’
Veena had not come to Priya for financial help, but to ask her how best to sell the jewellery she had got from her mother upon her marriage—and to weep on her shoulder. She had brought the jewellery with her. Only a little had remained from the traumatic days after the family’s flight from Lahore. Every piece meant so much to her that she started crying when she thought of losing it. She had only two requests—that her husband not find out until the jewellery had actually been sold; and that for a few weeks at least her father and mother should not know.
They talked quickly, because there was no privacy in the house, and at any moment anyone could walk into Priya’s room.
‘My father’s here,’ Priya said. ‘Downstairs, talking politics.’
‘We will always be friends, no matter what,’ said Veena suddenly, and started crying again.
Priya hugged her friend, told her to have courage, and suggested a brisk walk on the roof.
‘What, in this heat, are you mad?’ asked Veena.
‘Why not? It’s either heatstroke or interruption by my mother-in-law—and I know which I’d prefer.’
‘I’m scared of your monkeys,’ said Veena as a second line of defence. ‘First they fight on the roof of the daal factory, then they leap over on to your roof. Shahi Darvaza should be renamed Hanuman Dwar.’
‘You’re not scared of anything. I don’t believe you,’ said Priya. ‘In fact, I envy you. You can walk over by yourself any time. Look at me. And look at these bars on the balcony. The monkeys can’t come in, and I can’t go out.’
‘Ah,’ said Veena, ‘you shouldn’t envy me.’
They were silent for a while.
‘How is Bhaskar?’ asked Priya.
Veena’s plump face lit up in a smile, rather a sad one. ‘He’s very well—as well as your pair, anyway. He insisted on coming along. At the moment they are all playing cricket in the square downstairs. The pipal tree doesn’t seem to bother them. . . . I wish for your sake, Priya, that you had a brother or sister,’ Veena added suddenly, thinking of her own childhood.
The two friends went to the balcony and looked down through the wrought-iron grille. Their three children, together with two others, were playing cricket in the small square. Priya’s ten-year-
old daughter was by far the best of them. She was a fair bowler and a fine batsman. She usually managed to avoid the pipal tree, which gave the others endless trouble.
‘Why don’t you stay for lunch?’ asked Priya.
‘I can’t,’ said Veena, thinking of Kedarnath and her mother-in-law, who would be expecting her. ‘Tomorrow perhaps.’
‘Tomorrow then.’
Veena left the bag of jewellery with Priya, who locked it up in a steel almirah. As she stood by the cupboard Veena said: ‘You’re putting on weight.’
‘I’ve always been fat,’ said Priya, ‘and because I do nothing but sit here all day like a caged bird, I’ve grown fatter’.
‘You’re not fat and you never have been,’ said her friend. ‘And since when have you stopped pacing on the roof?’
‘I haven’t,’ said Priya, ‘but one day I’m going to throw myself off it.’
‘Now if you talk like that I’m going to leave at once,’ said Veena and made to go.
‘No, don’t go. Seeing you has cheered me up,’ said Priya. ‘I hope you have lots of bad fortune. Then you’ll come running to me all the time. If it hadn’t been for Partition you’d never have come back to Brahmpur.’
Veena laughed.
‘Come on, let’s go to the roof,’ continued Priya. ‘I really can’t talk freely to you here. People are always coming in and listening from the balcony. I hate it here, I’m so unhappy, if I don’t tell you I’ll burst.’ She laughed, and pulled Veena to her feet. ‘I’ll tell Bablu to get us something cold to prevent heatstroke.’
Bablu was the weird fifty-year-old servant who had come to the family as a child and had grown more eccentric with each passing year. Lately he had taken to eating everyone’s medicines.
When they got to the roof, they sat in the shade of the water tank and started laughing like schoolgirls.
‘We should live next to each other,’ said Priya, shaking out her jet black hair, which she had washed and oiled that morning. ‘Then, even if I throw myself off my roof, I’ll fall on to yours.’
‘It would be awful if we lived next to each other,’ said Veena, laughing. ‘The witch and the scarecrow would get together every afternoon and complain about their daughters-in-law. “O, she’s bewitched my son, they play chaupar on the roof all the time, she’ll make him as dark as soot. And she sings on the roof so shamelessly to the whole neighbourhood. And she deliberately prepares rich food so that I fill up with gas. One day I’ll explode and she’ll dance over my bones.”’
Priya giggled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’ll be fine. The two kitchens will face each other, and the vegetables can join us in complaining about our oppression. “O friend Potato, the khatri scarecrow is boiling me. Tell everyone I died miserably. Farewell, farewell, never forget me.” “O friend Pumpkin, the bania witch has spared me for only another two days. I’ll weep for you but I won’t be able to attend your chautha. Forgive me, forgive me.”’
Veena’s laughter bubbled out again. ‘Actually, I feel quite sorry for my scarecrow,’ she said. ‘She had a hard time during Partition. But she was quite horrible to me even in Lahore, even after Bhaskar was born. When she sees I’m not miserable she becomes even more miserable. When we become mothers-in-law, Priya, we’ll feed our daughters-in-law ghee and sugar every day.’
‘I certainly don’t feel sorry for my witch,’ said Priya disgustedly. ‘And I shall certainly bully my daughter-in-law from morning till night until I’ve completely crushed her spirit. Women look much more beautiful when they’re unhappy, don’t you think?’ She shook her thick black hair from side to side and glared at the stairs. ‘This is a vile house,’ she added. ‘I’d much rather be a monkey and fight on the roof of the daal factory than a daughter-in-law in the Rai Bahadur’s house. I’d run to the market and steal bananas. I’d fight the dogs, I’d snap at the bats. I’d go to Tarbuz ka Bazaar and pinch the bottoms of all the pretty prostitutes. I’d . . . do you know what the monkeys did here the other day?’
‘No,’ said Veena. ‘Tell me.’
‘I was just going to. Bablu, who is getting crazier by the minute, placed the Rai Bahadur’s alarm clocks on the ledge. Well, the next thing we saw was three monkeys in the pipal tree, examining them, saying, “Mmmmmmm”, “Mmmmmmmm”, in a high-pitched voice, as if to say, “Well? We have your clocks. What now?” The witch went out. We didn’t have the little packets of wheat which we usually bribe them with, so she took some musammis and bananas and carrots and tried to tempt them down, saying, “Here, here, come, beautiful ones, come, come, I swear by Hanuman I’ll give you lovely things to eat. . . .” And they came down all right, one by one they came down, very cautiously, each with a clock tucked beneath his arm. Then they began to eat the food, first with one hand, like this—then, putting the clocks down, with both hands. Well—no sooner were all three clocks on the ground than the witch took a stick which she had hidden behind her back and threatened their lives with it—using such filthy language that I was forced to admire her. The carrot and the stick, don’t they say in English? So the story has a happy ending. But the monkeys of Shahi Darvaza are very smart. They know what they can hold up to ransom, and what they can’t.’
Bablu had come up the stairs, gripping with four dirty fingers of one hand four glasses of cold nimbu pani filled almost to the brim. ‘Here!’ he said, setting them down. ‘Drink! If you sit in the sun like this, you’ll catch pneumonia.’ Then he disappeared.
‘The same as ever?’ asked Veena.
‘The same, but even more so,’ said Priya. ‘Nothing changes. The only comforting constant here is that Vakil Sahib snores as loudly as ever. Sometimes at night when the bed vibrates, I think he’ll disappear, and all that will be left for me to weep over will be his snore. But I can’t tell you some of the things that go on in this house,’ she added darkly. ‘You’re lucky you don’t have much money. What people will do for money, Veena, I can’t tell you. And what does it go into? Not into education or art or music or literature—no, it all goes into jewellery. And the women of the house have to wear ten tons of it on their necks at every wedding. And you should see them all sizing each other up. Oh, Veena—’ she said, suddenly realizing her insensitivity, ‘I have a habit of blabbering. Tell me to be quiet.’
‘No, no, I’m enjoying it,’ said Veena. ‘But tell me, when the jeweller comes to your house next time will you be able to get an estimate? For the small pieces—and, well, especially for my navratan? Will you be able to get a few minutes with him alone so that your mother-in-law doesn’t come to know? If I had to go to a jeweller myself I’d certainly be cheated. But you know all about these things.’
Priya nodded. ‘I’ll try,’ she said. The navratan was a lovely piece; she had last seen it round Veena’s neck at Pran and Savita’s wedding. It consisted of an arc of nine square gold compartments, each the setting of a different precious stone, with delicate enamel work at the sides and even on the back, where it could not be seen. Topaz, white sapphire, emerald, blue sapphire, ruby, diamond, pearl, cat’s eye and coral: instead of looking cluttered and disordered, the heavy necklace had a wonderful combination of traditional solidity and charm. For Veena it had more than that: of all her mother’s gifts it was the one she loved most.
‘I think our fathers are mad to dislike each other so much,’ said Priya out of the blue. ‘Who cares who the next Chief Minister of Purva Pradesh will be?’
Veena nodded as she sipped her nimbu pani.
‘What news of Maan?’ asked Priya.
They gossiped on: Maan and Saeeda Bai; the Nawab Sahib’s daughter and whether her situation in purdah was worse than Priya’s; Savita’s pregnancy; even, at second-hand, Mrs Rupa Mehra, and how she was trying to corrupt her samdhins by teaching them rummy.
They had forgotten about the world. But suddenly Bablu’s large head and rounded shoulders appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Oh my God,’ said Priya with a start. ‘My duties in the kitchen—since I’ve been talking to you, they’ve gone s
traight out of my head. My mother-in-law must have finished her stupid rigmarole of cooking her own food in a wet dhoti after her bath, and she’s yelling for me. I’ve got to run. She does it for purity, so she says—though she doesn’t mind that we have cockroaches the size of buffaloes running around all over the house, and rats that bite off your hair at night if you don’t wash the oil off. Oh, do stay for lunch, Veena, I never get to see you!’
‘I really can’t,’ said Veena. ‘The Sleeper likes his food just so. And so does the Snorer, I’m sure.’
‘Oh, he’s not so particular,’ said Priya, frowning. ‘He puts up with all my nonsense. But I can’t go out, I can’t go out, I can’t go out anywhere except for weddings and the odd trip to the temple or a religious fair and you know what I think of those. If he wasn’t so good, I would go completely mad. Wife-beating is something of a common sport in our neighbourhood, you aren’t considered much of a man if you don’t slap your wife around a couple of times, but Ram Vilas wouldn’t even beat a drum at Dussehra. And he’s so respectful to the witch it makes me sick, though she’s only his stepmother. They say he’s so nice to witnesses that they tell him the truth—even though they’re in court! Well, if you can’t stay, you must come tomorrow. Promise me again.’
Veena promised, and the two friends went down to the room on the top floor. Priya’s daughter and son were sitting on the bed, and they informed Veena that Bhaskar had gone back home.
‘What? By himself?’ said Veena anxiously.
‘He’s nine years old, and it’s five minutes away,’ said the boy.
‘Shh!’ said Priya. ‘Speak properly to your elders.’
‘I’d better go at once,’ said Veena.
On the way down, Veena met L.N. Agarwal coming up. The stairs were narrow and steep. She pressed herself against the wall and said namaste. He acknowledged the greeting with a ‘Jeeti raho, beti’, and went up.