A Suitable Boy

1.8

Because the Nawab Sahib had been looking somewhat lost without his sons,

Mahesh Kapoor’s daughter Veena had drawn him into her family circle. She

asked him about his eldest child, his daughter Zainab, who was a childhood

friend of hers but who, after her marriage, had disappeared into the world of

purdah. The old man talked about her rather guardedly, but about her two

children with transparent delight. His grandchildren were the only two beings in

the world who had the right to interrupt him when he was studying in his library.

But now the great yellow ancestral mansion of Baitar House, just a few minutes’

walk from Prem Nivas, was somewhat run down, and the library too had

suffered. ‘Silverfish, you know,’ said the Nawab Sahib. ‘And I need help with

cataloguing. It’s a gigantic task, and in some ways not very heartening. Some of

the early editions of Ghalib can’t be traced now; and some valuable manuscripts

by our own poet Mast. My brother never made a list of what he took with him to

Pakistan. . . .’

At the word Pakistan, Veena’s mother-in-law, withered old Mrs Tandon,

flinched. Three years ago, her whole family had had to flee the blood and flames

and unforgettable terror of Lahore. They had been wealthy, ‘propertied’ people,

but almost everything they had owned was lost, and they had been lucky to

escape with their lives. Her son Kedarnath, Veena’s husband, still had scars on

his hands from an attack by rioters on his refugee convoy. Several of their

friends had been butchered.

The young, old Mrs Tandon thought bitterly, are very resilient: her grandchild

Bhaskar had of course only been six at the time; but even Veena and Kedarnath

had not let those events embitter their lives. They had returned here to Veena’s

hometown, and Kedarnath had set himself up in a small way in—of all polluting,

carcass-tainted things—the shoe trade. For old Mrs Tandon, the descent from a

decent prosperity could not have been more painful. She had been willing to tolerate talking to the Nawab Sahib though he was a Muslim, but when he

mentioned comings and goings from Pakistan, it was too much for her

imagination. She felt ill. The pleasant chatter of the garden in Brahmpur was

amplified into the cries of the blood-mad mobs on the streets of Lahore, the

lights into fire. Daily, sometimes hourly, in her imagination she returned to what

she still thought of as her city and her home. It had been beautiful before it had

become so suddenly hideous; it had appeared completely secure so shortly

before it was lost forever.

The Nawab Sahib did not notice that anything was the matter, but Veena did,

and quickly changed the subject even at the cost of appearing rude. ‘Where’s

Bhaskar?’she asked her husband.

‘I don’t know. I think I saw him near the food, the little frog,’said Kedarnath.

‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that,’ said Veena. ‘He is your son. It’s not

auspicious. . . .’

‘It’s not my name for him, it’s Maan’s,’ said Kedarnath with a smile. He

enjoyed being mildly henpecked. ‘But I’ll call him whatever you want me to.’

Veena led her mother-in-law away. And to distract the old lady she did in fact

get involved in looking for her son. Finally they found Bhaskar. He was not

eating anything but simply standing under the great multicoloured cloth canopy

that covered the food tables, gazing upwards with pleased and abstract

wonderment at the elaborate geometrical patterns—red rhombuses, green

trapeziums, yellow squares and blue triangles—from which it had been stitched

together.