by Anita Desai
But Siddiqui had his reasons for approaching him. Rubbing his hands together he stepped briskly up and exclaimed, ‘How are you, Rai Sahib? Tired by your taking down of the minutes? Tired by all those discussions about the budget? Exhausting subject, finance.’
‘No, no, not exhausting at all, there is not much finance to be discussed,’ returned Mr Rai, uncrossing his legs and bending forwards cordially. He appeared quite relieved to have his solitary reverie interrupted. ‘The Board only informs us of cuts in the budget, not of any grants. That is how it is.’
‘Rai Sahib, that is bad news,’ Siddiqui said, grimacing as exaggeratedly as an actor. ‘Here we are, two lecturers from the language departments, coming to you with an earnest request – and you are threatening us with a cut before you even hear our plea.’
‘I am not threatening you with cuts, Siddiqui Sahib, it is the board that threatens us,’ protested Mr Rai, smiling happily at this bit of flattery.
Deven remained in the background, his hands clasped behind his back, not quite certain why Siddiqui should think it necessary to flatter a minor functionary of the college administration on that day of all days, but feeling he ought to leave the matter to Siddiqui since he had no clue himself as to how one went about making requests for finance. Not being sure either what the status of the Urdu department was, he could not predict how the proposal would be met. He was perfectly aware that funds were being made readily available to the science departments, that the sciences were the rajas of the empire with the humanities pushed to the dustier and more neglected corners where they languished. If any of the humanities departments received any attention, it was usually those of economics and political science. The languages were not considered departments worthy of any attention of the financial kind beyond the meagre funds allocated to the library. Deven did not have much confidence in the status of the Urdu department, seeing how small and precarious it was, there on sufferance merely, and perhaps that was why Siddiqui did not feel he could approach anyone of importance about something that concerned only it, and chose to speak to bored Mr Rai instead. Perhaps, also, he felt it was essential to begin at the bottom of the ladder if he meant to rise to the top. Anyway, anyone watching Siddiqui’s delightful performance and hearing his exquisitely ornate use of the language could not help feeling a small stir of hope.
He was standing there stiffly, fingers locked behind his back, his head respectfully lowered as he listened to the two of them exchange reminiscences of Lucknow – both of them had been students of the university there – and of old stalwarts of the Urdu academic world, when he felt an arm slide around him and he was pulled around to face Jayadev of his own department.
‘Where were you last Sunday, Deven-bhai?’ Jayadev shouted in his ear while pounding him on his back. ‘And the Sunday before that? Eh? Tell us where you go off every spare moment you have? You have been observed, you know –’
‘Shh,’ hissed Deven angrily, but Jayadev would not let go his arm and dragged him away into a knot of junior lecturers and readers who were eating the last of the biscuits and nuts and drinking cold tea rather than leave a crumb or a drop behind. ‘Sharma Sahib,’ they called, ‘come and confess – who is this fair beauty of Delhi who lures you away every Sunday? The whole college is talking about her. You thought you hadn’t been seen slipping away, eh? Come and tell us all –’
When Deven finally tore himself out of their grip, he turned in despair to find the sofa set and the straight-backed chair empty, Siddiqui gone, Mr Rai gone. Instead, his wife stood there, her hands folded before her, waiting, her face heavy with distress and sulkiness: she never liked meeting his colleagues or their wives and had had to be coaxed into coming that morning. Scowling, she asked, ‘Can we go home now? Manu will be hungry. He will be crying.’
Deven was not unacquainted with disappointments and anticlimaxes, with delays and diversions. It did not surprise him at all that the unusual success of his conversation with Siddiqui, passing with such unfamiliar rapidity from doubt to interest and enthusiasm, should have been dashed within minutes upon the stony insensitivity and crudity of his colleagues who had forced them apart and prevented them from pursuing this new association. What did surprise him was the note from Siddiqui brought to his classroom by an Urdu student while he was teaching next day, and the cryptic line scrawled on it to say Mr Rai expected him in his office at twelve o’clock.
Seeing that line waver and break up and come together again upon the sheet of blue paper, Deven felt as if he were seeing all the straight lines and cramped alphabet of his small, tight life wavering and dissolving and making way for a wave of freshness, motion, even kinesis. In openness lay possibilities, the top of the wave of experience surging forward from a very great distance, but lifting and closing in and sounding loudly in his ear. What had happened to the hitherto entirely static and stagnant backwaters of his existence? It was not the small scrawled note, not Siddiqui or Rai or anyone to do with the college who had caused this stir: it was Nur, Nur’s poetry and Nur’s person; Nur who had caused this thrust, this rush that was sweeping up from outside and making him step forward to meet it, asking it to pour over his feet and mount up his legs to his waist and then his chest and finally carry him right away.
It made his step uncertain as he hurried down the corridor to the registrar’s office. Here the wave came to a standstill, dashed against the stained wall and the rusty steel furniture and boiled with frustration, but it would have been too unnatural if there had not been some little obstruction after all. Mr Rai was not in his office at twelve o’clock. After Deven had sat on a chair in the corner for fifteen minutes he rose and asked the doorman if he knew where he was. Of course, was the answer, he was at a meeting in the Principal’s room, there was no telling how long it would go on, Deven could wait if he liked – or go. The doorman shrugged, implying it was all one to him but suggested, by the way he spat out the dead butt of a leaf cigarette, that he would prefer it if Deven went. He waited – he could still see the white crest of the distant wave, not very clearly any more but still – until it was time for his next class, then left, drooping with his familiar despair. Yet, on his way home to a late lunch, he decided suddenly to look in on Mr Rai and found him there.
Rai looked up from his files without a smile but not quite with a frown either, simply the everyday pursing of his lips. ‘Oh Mr Sharma,’ he said, ‘here is the paper Mr Siddiqui asked me to give you – a sanction to buy audio-visual equipment for use in the languages department. Please ask for tenders, they have to be submitted before entering into any agreement. This should have been done at the highest level of course but Mr Siddiqui tells us you are in touch with people in Delhi who can help you to obtain the best equipment. Perhaps it is more readily available in Delhi,’ he admitted, and Deven felt almost shattered by his agreeableness, by Siddiqui’s cleverness, by the success of the whole mad venture in which he himself had scarcely dared to believe. But the piece of pink official paper was in his hand, a barely legible carbon copy of a pencil-written note from the Principal sanctioning what seemed to Deven a more than princely sum for the ‘audio-visual equipment’. True, it was only a piece of paper, not a cheque or a roll of banknotes that would have made it seem more substantial and reliable, but even a note such as this had never come his way before. He had never summoned up the courage even to ask his bank manager for a loan, and he doubted if he himself would actually have found the nerve to make such a fantastic request of the college, had Siddiqui not made it for him. What had made Siddiqui do it?
Nur, of course, the magic name of Nur Shahjehanabadi of course, thought Deven, walking out into the brassy light. It was a name that opened doors, changed expressions, caused dust and cobwebs to disappear, visions to appear, bathed in radiance. It had led him on to avenues that would take him to another land, another element. Yes, these college grounds, these fields of dust, these fences of rusted barbed wire, these groups of hostile and mocking young students at the gate and the bus
-stop, all would be left behind, and he would move on into the world of poetry and art. Then he corrected himself: it was not Nur’s name that was bringing about this transformation, it was his genius, his art. And Deven now had the wherewithal to capture and preserve that art, that verse, for posterity. He had been allotted a role in life.
Crossing the street, Deven murmured a verse of Nur’s:
‘The breeze enters, the blossom on the bough wafts its scent.
The opened window lets in the sweet season, spring.’
Stumbling on a pile of coiled wires, Deven backed into a corner of the small shop, giving Murad more room in which to circle as he examined the radios, television sets, cassette players, speakers and tape recorders for sale or hire. He seemed to be on familiar terms with the shop-keeper and Deven kept a sharp eye on them, determined to catch them out if they tried to strike any private or shady deal that would not be to his advantage, or rather, to that of his college.
‘We must be very careful,’ he had emphasized as he hurried through the Darya Ganj streets after Murad. ‘Only the best equipment, Murad – don’t let them swindle you. Do you know anything about tape recorders? Shouldn’t we ask for advice?’
‘Look,’ said Murad, stopping on the pavement and planting his hands on his hips. ‘I know one thing about tape recorders and that is their price. And I know that what your college has agreed to pay for is only the cheapest and worst model. So how can I let you in for anything worse than that, please tell me?’
Deven was so offended he said nothing more but pushed sullenly on through the Saturday afternoon crowd of shoppers. He was only slightly mollified to find that once they were inside the shop Murad did not behave as though he could afford only the cheapest and the worst. On the contrary, he acted as though he had unlimited funds at his disposal, and the dealer would be wise to pay extra attention to this important customer. The dealer, however, seemed to know Murad too well: his manner was unpleasantly familiar. He even offered them betel leaves with his fingers. Deven shook his head with a frown, refusing, but Murad took two and stuffed them into his mouth and munched appreciatively, releasing the heavy perfume of their ingredients into the already overloaded air.
‘The latest model – show me the latest model,’ he said through his full mouth, swinging around to the shelves and counters again.
‘Sahib, if it is the latest model you are looking for, why come to me? Why not go to Hong Kong, Singapore or Manila? You are a man of means, your father is the King of Kashmiri Carpets, a wealthy man, he can send you. So why not do what everyone else does these days? Go on a luxury cruise to the Far East and come back with the latest models – one for you and one for me, heh?’ His round belly jumped with laughter under the pink bush shirt and snakeskin belt.
‘We are not prepared to pay fancy prices,’ Deven said nervously from his corner.
The dealer threw him a contemptuous look. ‘No fancy price? Then how will you get your fancy goods, hah?’
Murad, too, laughed. He and the dealer exchanged winks as they laughed. Deven frowned.
‘Come, let us go and take a look elsewhere, Murad,’ he said angrily, but instead Murad sat down on a folding chair by the dealer’s desk.
‘Sit down, Deven-bhai,’ he said, with a curt gesture of his betel-stained fingers. ‘I have already talked this over with Jain Sahib. He knows exactly what your needs are. His nephew is bringing us the best model, secondhand, in prime condition, Jain says. Sit down till he comes, why don’t you?’
‘What?’ stuttered Deven, turning cold at the thought of this newest deception of Murad’s. ‘You have already fixed it up with Mr Jain? Where is this model coming from? Why secondhand? I will not buy secondhand goods, it will only break down, it will give trouble –’
‘Sahib, you are saying you want best model. I am getting you best model, at cheap rate. How can it be firsthand also?’ Again the dealer and Murad exchanged looks, not quite winking.
Deven began to walk angrily towards the door. The way was blocked by a young man coming in with a large carton in his arms. He smiled at Deven over the top of it, with great artificiality. ‘Ah-ha!’ cried Mr Jain, ‘see, it has arrived, and Chiku also. Please meet my nephew Chiku, he will be of great help to you.’
Deven could not bring himself to rudely ignore Chiku. He waited till Chiku had set down the carton on top of the desk and shaken hands first with Murad, then with him, while Mr Jain beamed with avuncular pride, and when that was done, the deal seemed as good as signed and there was nothing for it but to resign himself to the consequences.
Beaten, he stood by the desk, leaning on the edge of it and peering into the carton despairingly. The other three appeared not to share his presentiments at all. As Chiku lifted out the machine proudly, the others looked at it quite rapturously, exclaiming when they had verified that it was indeed just what Mr Jain had promised, a Japanese model. Japanese: what could be finer?
‘Japanese goods mean cheap goods – phut – they break in your hands,’ Deven said gloomily.
‘Aré, Sahib, what are you talking about? Pre-war days? Wartime? You haven’t heard about Japan’s progress? They are leaders in industry now, Sahib, leaders. Such clever people. If only we had clever people like that in our country – hai, hai – what progress we would see! We too could be rich, friends of America. But look at us – hai, hai,’ he lamented, but briefly, then went on quickly, ‘Now look at this model. Chiku, show it to them.’
But Deven turned his face away and sank on to a chair, refusing to look and leaving it to Murad to examine what was already their purchase for it seemed that the three of them had discussed the matter and decided the issue between them, without consulting him at any stage. He knew nothing he said would make a difference to them. And then, what could he have said? He knew nothing about electronics, had no contribution to make to the conversation that was going on, and they knew it. Of course Murad did not seem to know anything either. After beaming down at the unpacked machine, he simply dusted his hands as if the job was satisfactorily completed, and shouted, ‘Very good, very good. As good as new, Jain Sahib, and Japanese also. Deven, this is the machine that is going to help you in your project; it is better than a secretary or a typewriter or even both together. Why are you looking so angry? At least come and look at it and listen to Chiku explain –’
‘I know nothing about tape recorders,’ Deven sulked, ‘and don’t know how to use them, so what is the use?’
‘But Chiku is going to help,’ cried Mr Jain, clapping his arm over his nephew’s shoulders. ‘He will be your assistant – technical assistant. Just completed a course in electronics at the Sethi School of Electronics in Con-naught Place. He has been working in my cousin’s repair shop in Ghaziabad and came to Delhi to study only, no, Chiku? They gave him a diploma even, na, Chiku?’ He squeezed the boy as if he were a sponge.
The boy nodded and tossed a lock of oil-slicked hair out of his bright, kohl-rimmed eyes. Murad gave him a speculative look – he did not seem to know Chiku as he knew Mr Jain – and Deven caught it. He turned away in despair. ‘Now what is this, Murad?’ he hissed through clenched teeth.
‘It is all right, Deven, it is what you need – a technical assistant,’ Murad assured him, but with something less than total confidence. ‘I explained to Jain Sahib the whole situation – the purpose of this deal. Such a serious, such an important purpose, I explained to him. You need technical assistance with it, isn’t it? Here is a young man, provided by Jain Sahib himself, to give you that help. You have just to tell him when you are ready to use the machine and he will come. Give him the address where you want it, the time when you want it, and he will be there. Isn’t it, Chiku?’ Chiku nodded, but also more doubtfully. ‘So now you will not need to worry about the technicalities, all those problems. You can concentrate on the interview, on your conversation with the poet, yes? Yes, Deven, it will be all right.’ His voice was a little slow and thoughtful though.
Chapter 7
THE T
IME AND the place: these elementary matters were left to Deven to arrange as being within his capabilities. Time and place, these two concerns of all who are born and all who die: these were considered the two fit subjects for the weak and the incompetent. Deven was to restrict himself to these two matters, time and place. No one appeared to realize that to him these subjects belonged to infinity and were far more awesome than the minutiae of technical arrangements.
Nor did anyone know how much courage it took to slip through that narrow wooden door in the alley again with the intention of hurrying up the stairs to the top of the house and finding Nur there alone. Deven had carefully chosen an hour when he could be expected to have no visitors.
He was therefore taken aback to find the courtyard full of people, and others hurrying up and down the stairs and the verandas that circled the courtyard, all busy and intent, but quiet except for a child crying in the background, petulantly wailing and being quieted by someone shaking a rattle or a tambourine to amuse and distract it and not succeeding but only adding to the atmosphere of discord.
No one stopped him or paid him any attention as he crept up the stairs with his head lowered respectfully – most of the people around were women although there were also some of the young men he had seen on his first visit, more informally dressed in pyjamas and kurtas and lounging around idly as if they were waiting for the hour when they could go up the stairs to Nur. They gave the impression this time of being not visitors but members of the family, of belonging, if only to the fringes. He arrived at Nur’s door, as usual hung with a thin bamboo screen to keep out the summer light. He coughed to announce his presence and was relieved to hear a deep groan from inside which he took to be permission to enter. As usual it took a few seconds for his eyes, so recently seared by the sun outside, to adjust to the heavy gloom in the green-tiled and curtained room. In those seconds he could hear that heavy, laboured breathing that he knew to be the poet’s: it was strange how the lowered shades kept out not only the light but also the din of traffic and even the household sounds. This casting of a spell of silence around him was further proof, Deven thought, of Nur’s magic powers. A moment later he discovered the poet’s disconsolate figure hunched upon the edge of the divan.