A Suitable Boy

by Vikram Seth

  As painful as anything to her had been the fact that she had not been granted permission to visit Firoz and expiate with her affection some of the terrible guilt and sadness she felt towards him and his family.

  Maan no longer looked like her handsome son but a dirty and unkempt man, one whose looks spoke of shame and desperation.

  She hugged him and wept as if her heart would break. Maan wept too.

  17.25

  In the midst of his regret and repentance, Maan still felt he had to see Saeeda Bai. He could not mention this to his father, and he did not know whom to ask to convey a message to her. Only Firoz, he thought, would have understood. When his mother returned to Prem Nivas by car, Pran remained for a few minutes. Maan asked him to get Saeeda Bai to see him somehow. Pran tried to explain that it was impossible: she would be a material witness in the case, and she would not be allowed to visit him.

  Maan seemed hardly to understand his own jeopardy—or the fact that attempted murder or even grievous hurt with a dangerous weapon carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. He seemed to believe that it was inexplicably unjust to keep him away from Saeeda Bai. He asked Pran to convey to her his bitter regret and continuing love. He scrawled out a couple of lines in Urdu to that effect. Pran was very unhappy with his mission, but agreed to perform it, and gave the note to the watchman within the hour.

  When he returned to Prem Nivas in the late afternoon, he saw his mother lying on a sofa on the verandah. She was facing the garden, which was full of early flowers: pansies, calendulas, gerberas, salvias, cosmos, phlox and a few California poppies. The beds, where they met the lawn, were fringed with sweet alyssum. Bees were buzzing around the first few lemon-scented blossoms on the pomelo tree, and a small, glossy, blue-black sunbird flitted in and out of its branches.

  Pran paused for a minute near the pomelo tree and breathed in its scent. It reminded him of his childhood; and he thought sadly of the dramatic changes that had occurred to Veena and himself and Maan since those uncertain but comparatively carefree days. Veena’s husband had since become an impoverished refugee from Pakistan, he himself was a cardiac patient, and Maan was lying in jail awaiting a charge-sheet. Then he thought of Bhaskar’s miraculous escape and of Uma’s birth, of his life with Savita, of his mother’s sustaining goodness, of the continuing peace of this garden; and he was swayed a little towards accepting that some good of some kind had been gained or retained.

  He walked slowly across the lawn to the verandah. His mother was still lying down on the sofa and looking out at the garden.

  ‘Why are you lying down, Ammaji?’ he asked. She would normally have sat up to talk to him. ‘Are you feeling tired?’

  She sat up immediately.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ he asked. He noticed she was trying to say something, but he could not make out what she was saying. Her mouth was open, and had drooped to one side. He understood with difficulty that she wanted tea.

  Worried now, he called out for Veena. A servant said she had gone out somewhere with his father in the car. Pran ordered some tea. When it came he gave it to his mother to drink. She began to splutter as she drank it, and he realized that she had had a stroke of some kind.

  His first thought was to contact Imtiaz at Baitar House. Then he decided to contact Savita’s grandfather. Dr Kishen Chand Seth was not in either. Pran left a message for him saying that his mother was ill, and that Dr Seth should phone Prem Nivas immediately when he returned. He tried a couple of other doctors, but could not get through to anyone. He was about to order a taxi to go to the hospital to find someone when Dr Seth called back. Pran explained what had happened.

  ‘I’ll come over,’ said Dr Kishen Chand Seth. ‘But get Dr Jain—he’s the expert at this sort of thing. His telephone number is 873. Tell him I asked him to come immediately.’

  When he arrived, Dr Seth said that he thought it was a case of facial paralysis, and made Mrs Mahesh Kapoor lie down flat. ‘But this is very far from my speciality,’ he added.

  At about seven o’clock, Veena and her father returned. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s voice was slurred but she was making an effort to communicate.

  ‘Is it about Maan?’ asked her husband.

  She shook her head. In a little while they understood that what she wanted was her dinner.

  She tried to drink her soup. Some went down, but she coughed some of it up. They tried to feed her some rice and daal. She took a little into her mouth, chewed it, and asked Veena to give her some more. But it soon became apparent that she was storing it in her mouth and not swallowing it. Very slowly, with sips of water, she was able to take it down.

  Dr Jain arrived about half an hour later. He examined her thoroughly, and said: ‘This is a serious condition, you see. I am worried that her seventh, tenth and twelfth nerves are affected.’

  ‘Yes, yes—’ said Mr Mahesh Kapoor, at the end of his tether. ‘What does all this mean?’

  ‘Well, you see,’ said Dr Jain, ‘these nerves are connected to the main area of the brain. I am worried that the patient’s ability to swallow might fail. Or there could be a second stroke. That would be the end. I suggest that the patient should be removed to hospital immediately.’

  Mrs Mahesh Kapoor reacted violently to the word ‘hospital’. She refused to go. Her speech was slurred and her senses somewhat dulled, but there was no doubt about her will. She gave them to understand that if she was dying, she wanted to die at home. Veena made out the words ‘Sundar Kanda’. She wanted her favourite part of the Ramayana to be read out to her.

  ‘Dying!’ said her husband, impatiently. ‘There is no question of your dying.’

  But Mrs Mahesh Kapoor for once defied her husband and did die that night.

  17.26

  Veena was sleeping in her mother’s room when she heard her suddenly cry out in pain. She turned on the light. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s face was shockingly distorted, and her whole body appeared to be undergoing a violent spasm. Veena ran to fetch her father. He came. Soon the household was roused. Pran and the doctors were called, and Kedarnath’s neighbours were asked to tell him to come over immediately. Pran had no doubt of the seriousness of the matter. He told Savita, Lata and Mrs Rupa Mehra that he thought his mother was dying. They came over. Savita brought the baby too, in case her grandmother wanted to see her.

  Within half an hour everyone had gathered around. Bhaskar looked on uneasily. He asked his mother if Nani was indeed dying, and she replied tearfully that she thought so, though everything was in God’s hands. The doctor said that there was nothing that could be done. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor too, having asked, with incoherent sounds and gestures to have Bhaskar brought close to her, now indicated that she wished to be lowered from her bed on to the ground. At this, all the women began to weep. Mr Mahesh Kapoor, angry, disappointed, and upset, looked at his wife’s face, which had grown calm, with irked affection—as if she had deliberately failed him. A small mud lamp was lit and placed in the palm of her hand. Old Mrs Tandon took the name of Rama, and Mrs Rupa Mehra recited from the Gita. A short while afterwards Mrs Mahesh Kapoor struggled to say a word which sounded like ‘Maa—’. She could have meant either her mother, who was long dead, or her younger son, whom she could not see among those gathered around her. She closed her eyes. A few tears appeared at the corners of her eyelids, but again her face, so distorted earlier, became calm. A little later, almost at the time she usually woke up, she died.

  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 sh
e 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 on to 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-grandchildren. 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.

  17.28

  The chautha was held in the afternoon three days later under a small canopy on the lawn of Prem Nivas. The men sat on one side of the aisle, the women on the other. The area under the canopy quickly filled up, and then the aisle itself, and finally people spilled out on to the lawn, some of them as far as the flower beds. Mahesh Kapoor, Pran and Kedarnath received them at the entrance to the garden. Mahesh Kapoor was amazed by how many people had come to attend the chautha of his wife, whom he had always thought of as being a silly, superstitious and limited woman. Refugees she had helped during the days of Partition in the relief camps, their families, all those to whom she had given kindness or shelter from day to day, not merely the Rudhia relatives but a large group of ordinary farmers from Rudhia, many politicians who might well have paid only perfunctory or hypocritical homage if he himself had passed away, and scores of people whom neither he nor Pran recognized, all felt that they had to attend this service in her memory. Many of them folded their hands in respect before the photograph of her that stood, garlanded with marigolds, on a table on the long white-sheeted platform at one end of the shamiana. Some of them tried to utter a few words of condolence before being overcome themselves. When Mahesh Kapoor himself sat down, his heart was even more disturbed than it had been these last four days.

  No one from the Nawab Sahib’s family came to the chautha. Firoz had taken a turn for the worse. He was suffering from a low infection, and he was being given stronger doses of penicillin to check and suppress it. Imtiaz—aware both of the possibilities and limitations of this comparatively recent form of treatment—was worried sick; and his father, seeing his son’s illness as punishment for his own sins, pleaded with God more than five times a day to spare Firoz and take away his own life instead.

  Perhaps, too, he could not face the rumours that followed him now wherever he went. Perhaps he could not face the family, friendship with whom had caused him such grief. At any rate, he did not come.

  Nor could Maan be present.

  The pandit was a large man with a full, oblong face, bushy eyebrows, and a strong voice. He began to recite a few shlokas in Sanskrit, especially from the Isha Upanishad and from the Yajurveda, and to interpret them as a guide to life and to righteous action. God was everywhere, he said, in each piece of the universe; there was no permanent dissolution; this should be accepted. He talked about the deceased and how good and godfearing she had been and how her spirit would remain not only in the memories of those who knew her, but in the very world that surrounded them—in this garden, for instance; in this house.

  After a while the pandit told his young assistant to take over.

  The assistant sang two devotional songs. For the first one the audience sat silent, but when he began to sing the slow and stately ‘Twameva M
ata cha Pita twameva’—‘You are both mother and father to us’—almost everyone joined in.

  The pandit asked people to move forward in order to let people at the back squeeze in under the canopy. Then he asked whether the Sikh singers had arrived. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had been very fond of their music, and Veena had convinced her father to ask them to sing at the chautha. When the pandit was told that they were on their way, he smoothed his kurta and began a story, which he had told many times before and which went as follows:

  There was once a villager who was very poor, so poor that he did not have enough money to pay for his daughter’s wedding and had nothing to borrow against. He was in despair. At last someone said: ‘Two villages away there is a moneylender who believes in humanity. He will not need any security or property. Your word will be your bond. He lends to people according to their need, and he knows whom to trust.’

  The man set out in hope, and reached the moneylender’s village by noon. On the outskirts of the village he noticed an old man who was ploughing a field, and a woman, her face covered, who was bringing food out for him, her utensils balanced on her head. He could tell from her gait that she was a young woman and he overheard her say in a young woman’s voice: ‘Baba, here is some food for you. Eat it, and then please come home. Your son is no more.’ The man looked up at the sky and said: ‘As God wills.’ He then sat down to eat the food.

  The villager, puzzled and disturbed by this conversation, tried to make sense of it. He thought to himself: If she were the old man’s daughter, why would she cover her face before him? She must be his daughter-in-law. But then he was worried by the identity of the dead man. Surely, if it had been one of her husband’s brothers who had died, she would have referred to him as ‘jethji’ or ‘devarji’, rather than ‘your son’. So it must have been her husband who had died. The calm manner in which both father and wife had accepted his death was unusual, not to say shocking.