A Suitable Boy

1.7

‘To the law,’ said Maan, raising his third glass of Scotch to Firoz, who was

sitting on his bed with a glass of his own. Imtiaz was lounging in a stuffed chair

and examining the bottle.

‘Thank you,’said Firoz. ‘But not to new laws, I hope.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, don’t worry, my father’s bill will never pass,’ said Maan.

‘And even if it does, you’ll be much richer than me. Look at me,’ he added,

gloomily. ‘I have to work for a living.’

Since Firoz was a lawyer and his brother a doctor, it was not as if they fitted

the popular mould of the idle sons of aristocracy.

‘And soon,’ went on Maan, ‘if my father has his way, I’ll have to work on

behalf of two people. And later for more. Oh God!’

‘What—your father isn’t getting you married off, is he?’ asked Firoz, halfway

between a smile and a frown.

‘Well, the buffer zone disappeared tonight,’ said Maan disconsolately. ‘Have

another.’

‘No, no thanks, I still have plenty,’ said Firoz. Firoz enjoyed his drink, but

with a slightly guilty feeling; his father would approve even less than Maan’s.

‘So when’s the happy hour?’ he added uncertainly.

‘God knows. It’s at the inquiry stage,’said Maan.

‘At the first reading,’ Imtiaz added.

For some reason, this delighted Maan. ‘At the first reading!’ he repeated.

‘Well, let’s hope it never gets to the third reading! And, even if it does, that the

President withholds his assent!’

He laughed and took a couple of long swigs. ‘And what about your

marriage?’ he demanded of Firoz.

Firoz looked a little evasively around the room. It was as bare and functional

as most of the rooms in Prem Nivas—which looked as if they expected the

imminent arrival of a herd of constituents. ‘My marriage!’ he said with a laugh.

Maan nodded vigorously.

‘Change the subject,’said Firoz.

‘Why, if you were to go into the garden instead of drinking here in seclusion

—’

‘It’s hardly seclusion.’

‘Don’t interrupt,’ said Maan, throwing an arm around him. ‘If you were to go

down into the garden, a good-looking, elegant fellow like you, you would be

surrounded within seconds by eligible young beauties. And ineligible ones too.

They’d cling to you like bees to a lotus. Curly locks, curly locks, will you be

mine?’

Firoz flushed. ‘You’ve got the metaphor slightly wrong,’ he said. ‘Men are

bees, women lotuses.’

Maan quoted a couplet from an Urdu ghazal to the effect that the hunter could

turn into the hunted, and Imtiaz laughed.

‘Shut up, both of you,’said Firoz, attempting to appear more annoyed than he

was; he had had enough of this sort of nonsense. ‘I’m going down. Abba will be

wondering where on earth we’ve got to. And so will your father. And besides,

we ought to find out if your brother is formally married yet—and whether you

really do now have a beautiful sister-in-law to scold you and curb your

excesses.’

‘All right, all right, we’ll all go down,’ said Maan genially. ‘Maybe some of

the bees will cling to us too. And if we get stung to the heart, Doctor Sahib here

can cure us. Can’t you, Imtiaz? All you would have to do would be to apply a

rose petal to the wound, isn’t that so?’

‘As long as there are no contraindications,’said Imtiaz seriously.

‘No contraindications,’ said Maan, laughing as he led the way down the

stairs.

‘You may laugh,’ said Imtiaz. ‘But some people are allergic even to rose

petals. Talking of which, you have one sticking to your cap.’

‘Do I?’ asked Maan. ‘These things float down from nowhere.’

‘So they do,’ said Firoz, who was walking down just behind him. He gently

brushed it away.