A Suitable Boy

  Mahesh Kapoor nodded his head, then said: ‘I will think deeply about what you have said, Masterji. I would not like to deceive you into thinking that I have not considered such matters before. But there is a logic to events, and a method to timing, and I will ask you to leave it at that.’

  The old man nodded his head, got up, and walked away with an expression of undisguised disappointment on his face.

  6.13

  A number of other people, some individually, some in pairs, some in groups, and some in what could only be called throngs, spoke to Mahesh Kapoor during the morning and early afternoon. Cups of tea came from the kitchen and went back empty. Lunchtime came and went, and the Minister Sahib remained energetic though unfed. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor sent word to him through a servant; he waved him impatiently away. She would never have dreamed of eating before her husband did, but her main concern was not that she was hungry but that he needed food and did not know it.

  Mahesh Kapoor gave as patient an audience as he could to the people who were channelled his way. There were ticket-seekers and favour-seekers of all kinds, politicos of various shades of honesty and opinion, advisers, gossipmongers, agents, assistants, lobbyists, MLAs and other colleagues and associates, local businessmen clad in nothing but a dhoti (yet worth lakhs of rupees) who were looking for a contract or information or simply to be able to tell people that they had been received by the Revenue Minister, good people, bad people, happy people, unhappy people (more of the latter), people who had just come to pay their respects because they were in town, people who had come to gape in open-mouthed awe and who took in nothing of what he was saying, people who wanted to pull him to the right, people who wanted to push him further towards the left, Congressmen, socialists, communists, Hindu revivalists, old members of the Muslim League who wanted admission into Congress, the indignant members of a deputation from Rudhia who were complaining about some decision made by the local Sub-Divisional Officer. As a Governor once wrote about his experience of popularly elected provincial governments in the late 1930s: ‘nothing was too petty, too local, too palpably groundless’ not to justify small local leaders appealing to politicians over the head of the district administration.

  Mahesh Kapoor listened, explained, conciliated, tied matters together, disentangled others, wrote notes, issued instructions, spoke loudly, spoke softly, examined copies of sections of the new electoral rolls that were being revised for the coming General Elections, got angry and was extremely sharp with someone, smiled wryly at someone else, yawned at a third, stood up as a renowned lawyer came in, and asked that tea be served to him in more elegant china.

  At nine o’clock he was explaining what he understood about the provisions of the Hindu Code Bill to farmers who were worried and resentful that their sons’ right to their land would be shared by their daughters (and therefore their sons-in-law) under the laws of intestate succession under consideration by Parliament in Delhi.

  At ten o’clock he was saying to an old colleague and lawyer: ‘As for that bastard, do you think that he can get his way with me? He came into my office with a wad of money, trying to get me to soften a provision of the Zamindari Bill, and I was tempted to have him arrested—title or no title. He might have ruled Marh once, but he had better learn that other men rule Purva Pradesh. Of course I know that he and his kind will challenge the bill in court. Do you think we are not going to be ready ourselves? That is why I wanted to consult you.’

  At eleven o’clock he was saying: ‘The basic problem for me personally is not the temple or the mosque. The basic problem is how the two religions will get on with each other in Brahmpur. Maulvi Sahib, you know my views on this. I’ve lived here most of my life. Naturally there is mistrust: the question is how to overcome it. You know how it is. The rank and file of Congress opposes old Muslim Leaguers who wish to join Congress. Well, this is only to be expected. But Congress has had a long tradition of Hindu-Muslim collaboration, and, believe me, it is the obvious party to join. And as far as tickets are concerned, I am giving you my word that there will be fair representation for Muslims. You won’t regret that we have no reserved seats or separate electorates. Yes, the nationalist Muslims, who have been with our party throughout their careers, will receive preference in this matter, but if I have anything to do with it there will be some room for others as well.’

  At noon he was saying: ‘Damodarji, that’s a very handsome ring you have on your finger. How much is it worth? Twelve hundred rupees? No, no, I’m pleased to see you, but as you can see’—he pointed to the papers piled on his desk with one hand and gestured towards the crowds with the other—‘I have much less time to talk to my old friends than I would wish. . . .’

  At one o’clock he was saying: ‘Are you telling me that the lathi charge was necessary? Have you seen how these people live? And you have the gall to tell me that there should be some threat of further punitive action? Go and talk to the Home Minister, you’ll find a more sympathetic audience. I am sorry—you can see how many people are waiting—’

  At two o’clock he was saying: ‘I suppose I have a little influence. I’ll see what I can do. Tell the boy to come around to see me next week. Obviously, a lot will depend upon his exam results. No, no, don’t thank me—and certainly don’t thank me in advance.’

  At three o’clock he was saying quietly: ‘Look, Agarwal has about a hundred MLAs in his hand. I have about eighty. The rest are uncommitted, and will go wherever they sense victory. But I’m not going to think of mounting a challenge to Sharmaji. It’s only if Panditji calls him to join the Central Cabinet in Delhi that the question of the leadership will come up. Still, I agree that there’s no harm in keeping the issue alive—one has to remain in the public eye.’

  At a quarter past three, Mrs Mahesh Kapoor came in, reproved the PAs gently, and pleaded with her husband to come and have lunch and lie down for a while. She herself was clearly still suffering from the residual neem blossoms, and her allergy was causing her to gasp a little. Mahesh Kapoor did not snap at her as he often did. He acquiesced and retired. People drifted away reluctantly and very gradually, and after a while Prem Nivas once more reverted from a political stage, clinic, and fairground to a private home.

  After Mahesh Kapoor had eaten, he lay down for a short nap, and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor finally ate lunch herself.

  6.14

  After lunch, Mahesh Kapoor asked his wife to read him some passages from the Proceedings of the P.P. Legislative Council that dealt with the debate on the Zamindari Bill when it had first gone to the Upper House from the Assembly. Since it was about to go there again with its new encrustation of amendments, he wanted to regain his sense of the possible obstacles it might face in that chamber.

  Mahesh Kapoor himself found it very difficult to read the Purva Pradesh legislative debates of the last few years. Some members took peculiar pride these days in couching their speeches in a heavily Sanskritized Hindi which no one in his right mind could understand. That, however, was not the main problem. The real difficulty was that Mahesh Kapoor was not very familiar with the Hindi—or Devanagari—script. He had been brought up at a time when boys were taught to read and write the Urdu—or Arabic—script. In the 1930s the Proceedings of the Protected Provinces Legislative Assembly were printed speech by speech in English, Urdu, and Hindi—depending on the language that the speaker wrote or spoke. His own speeches were printed in Urdu, for instance, and so were the speeches of a good many others. The English speeches he could of course read without difficulty. But he tended to skip the Hindi ones, as they made him struggle. Now, after Independence, the Proceedings were printed entirely in the official language of the state, which was Hindi; Urdu speeches too were printed in the Hindi script, and English could only be spoken—and that too extremely rarely—with the express permission of the Speaker of the House. This was why Mahesh Kapoor often asked his wife to read the debates out to him. She had been taught—like many women at the time—to read and write under the influence of the Hindu r
evivalist organization, the Arya Samaj, and the script that she had been taught was, naturally enough, the script of the ancient Sanskrit texts—and the modern Hindi language.

  Perhaps there was also an element of vanity or prudence in having his wife, rather than his personal assistants, read him these debates. The Minister did not wish the world at large to know that he could not read Hindi. As it happened, his PAs knew that he could not, but they were fairly discreet, and the word did not get around.

  Mrs Mahesh Kapoor read in a rather monotonous voice, a bit as if she were chanting the scriptures. The pallu of her sari covered her head and a part of her face, and she did not look directly at her husband. Her breath was a little short these days, so she had to pause from time to time, and Mahesh Kapoor would become quite impatient. ‘Yes, yes, go on, go on!’ he would say whenever there was a longish pause, and she, patient woman that she was, would do so without complaint.

  From time to time—usually between one debate and another, or as she reached for a different volume—she would mention something entirely outside the political sphere that had been on her mind. Since her husband was always busy, this was one of the few opportunities she got to talk to him. One such matter was that Mahesh Kapoor had not met his old friend and bridge partner Dr Kishen Chand Seth for some time.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said her husband impatiently. ‘Go on, go on, yes, from page 303.’ Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, having tested the water and found it too warm, was quiet for a while.

  At the second opening she saw, she mentioned that she would like to have the Ramcharitmanas recited in the house some day soon. It would be good for the house and family in general: for Pran’s job and health, for Maan, for Veena and Kedarnath and Bhaskar, for Savita’s forthcoming baby. The ideal time, the nine nights leading up to and including the birthday of Rama, had gone by, and both her samdhins had been disappointed that she had not been able to persuade her husband to allow the recitation. At that time she could understand that he had been preoccupied with a number of things, but surely now—

  She was interrupted abruptly. Mahesh Kapoor, pointing his finger at the volume of debates, exclaimed: ‘Oh, fortunate one—’ (fortunate to have married him, that is) ‘—first recite the scriptures that I’ve asked you to recite.’

  ‘But you promised that—’

  ‘Enough of this. You three mothers-in-law can plot as much as you like, but I can’t allow it in Prem Nivas. I have a secular image—and in a town like this where everyone is beating the drum of religion, I am not going to join in with the shehnai. Anyway, I don’t believe in this chanting and hypocrisy—and all this fasting by saffron-clad heroes who want to ban cow slaughter and revive the Somnath Temple and the Shiva Temple and God knows what else.’

  ‘The President of India himself will be going to Somnath to help inaugurate the new temple there—’

  ‘Let the President of India do what he likes,’ said Mahesh Kapoor sharply. ‘Rajendra Babu does not have to win an election or face the Assembly. I do.’

  Mrs Mahesh Kapoor waited for the next hiatus in the debates before venturing: ‘I know that the nine nights of Ramnavami have gone, but the nine nights of Dussehra are still to come. If you think that in October—’

  In her eagerness to convince her husband, she had begun to gasp a little.

  ‘Calm down, calm down,’ said Mahesh Kapoor, relenting slightly. ‘We’ll see all about that in due course.’

  Even if the door was not exactly ajar, it had not been slammed shut, reflected Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. She retired from this subject with a sense that something, however slight, had been gained. She believed—though she would not have voiced the belief—that her husband was quite wrong-headed in divesting himself of the religious rites and ceremonies that gave meaning to life and donning the drab robes of his new religion of secularism.

  At the next pause Mrs Mahesh Kapoor murmured tentatively: ‘I have had a letter.’

  Mahesh Kapoor clicked his tongue impatiently, dragged once again from his own thoughts down into the trivial vortices of domesticity. ‘All right, all right, what is it that you want to talk about? Who is this letter from? What disaster am I in for?’ He was used to the fact that his wife led these piecemeal conversations step by step and subject by subject from the most innocuous to the most troubling.

  ‘It is from the Banaras people,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor.

  ‘Hmmh!’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

  ‘They send their best wishes to everyone,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes! Get to the point. They realize no doubt that our son is too good for their daughter and want to call the whole thing off.’

  Sometimes wisdom lies in not taking an ironical remark as ironical. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor said: ‘No, quite the opposite. They want to fix the date as quickly as possible—and I don’t know what to reply. If you read between the lines it seems that they even have some idea about—well, about “that”. Why else would they be so concerned?’

  ‘Uff-oh!’ said Mahesh Kapoor impatiently. ‘Do I have to hear about this from everyone? In the Assembly canteen, in my own office, everywhere I hear about Maan and his idiocy! This morning two or three people brought it up. Is there nothing more important in the world to talk about?’

  But Mrs Mahesh Kapoor persevered.

  ‘It is very important for our family,’ she said. ‘How can we hold our heads up in front of people if this goes on? And it is not good for Maan either to spend all his time and money like this. He was supposed to come here on business, and he has done nothing in that line. Please speak to him.’

  ‘You speak to him,’ said Mahesh Kapoor brutally. ‘You have spoilt him all his life.’

  Mrs Mahesh Kapoor was silent, but a tear trickled down her cheek. Then she rallied and said: ‘Is it good for your public image either? A son who does nothing but spend his time with that kind of person? The rest of the time he lies down on his bed and stares up at the fan. He should do something else, something serious. I don’t have the heart to say anything to him. After all, what can a mother say?’

  ‘All right, all right, all right,’ said Mahesh Kapoor, and closed his eyes.

  He reflected that the cloth business in Banaras was, under the care of a competent assistant, doing better in Maan’s absence than it had been doing when he was there. What then was to be done with Maan?

  At about eight o’clock that evening he was about to get into the car to visit Baitar House when he told the driver to wait. Then he sent a servant to see if Maan was in the house. When the servant told him that he was sleeping, Mahesh Kapoor said:

  ‘Wake up the good-for-nothing fellow, and tell him to dress and come down at once. We are going to visit the Nawab Sahib of Baitar.’

  Maan came down looking none too happy. Earlier in the day he had been exercising hard on the wooden horse, and now he was looking forward to visiting Saeeda Bai and exercising his wit, among other things.

  ‘Baoji?’ he said inquiringly.

  ‘Get into the car. We’re going to Baitar House.’

  ‘Do you want me to come along?’ asked Maan.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right, then.’ Maan got into the car. There was, he realized, no way to avoid being kidnapped.

  ‘I am assuming you have nothing better to do,’ said his father.

  ‘No. . . . Not really.’

  ‘Then you should get used to adult company again,’ said his father sternly.

  As it happened, he also enjoyed Maan’s cheerfulness, and thought it would be good to take him along for moral support when he went to apologize to his old friend the Nawab Sahib. But Maan was less than cheerful at the moment. He was thinking of Saeeda Bai. She would be expecting him and he would not even be able to send her a message to say that he could not come.

  6.15

  As they entered the grounds of Baitar House, however, he cheered up a little at the thought that he might meet Firoz. At polo practice Firoz had not mentioned that he would be going out for dinner
.

  They were asked to sit in the lobby for a few minutes. The old servant said that the Nawab Sahib was in the library, and that he would be informed of the Minister’s arrival. After ten minutes or so, Mahesh Kapoor got up from the old leather sofa and started walking up and down. He was tired of twiddling his thumbs and staring at photographs of white men with dead tigers at their feet.

  A few minutes more, and his patience was at an end. He told Maan to come with him, and walked through the high-ceilinged rooms and somewhat ill-lit corridors towards the library. Ghulam Rusool made a few ineffectual attempts at dissuasion, but to no effect. Murtaza Ali, who was hanging around near the library, was brushed aside as well. The Minister of Revenue with his son in tow strode up to the library door and flung it open.

  Brilliant light blinded him for a moment. Not only the mellower reading lights but the great chandelier in the middle of the library had been lit. And at the large round table below—with papers spread out around them and even a couple of buff leather-bound law-books lying open before them—sat three other sets of fathers and sons: The Nawab Sahib of Baitar and Firoz; the Raja and Rajkumar of Marh; and two Bony Bespectacled Bannerji Barristers (as that famous family of lawyers was known in Brahmpur).

  It would be difficult to say who was most embarrassed by this sudden intrusion.

  The crass Marh snarled: ‘Speak of the Devil.’

  Firoz, though he found the situation uncomfortable, was pleased to see Maan and went up to him immediately to shake his hand. Maan put his left arm around his friend’s shoulder and said: ‘Don’t shake my right hand—you’ve crippled it already.’

  The Rajkumar of Marh, who was interested in young men more than in the jargon of the Zamindari Bill, looked at the handsome pair with a little more than approval.

  The elder Bannerji (‘P.N.’) glanced quickly at his son (‘S.N.’) as if to say, I told you we should have had the conference in our chambers.