They dismounted, paid the tonga-wallah, and walked hand in hand into a side alley. The Rajkumar then walked up a flight of narrow and steep stairs, pulling a tipsy Maan behind him.
But when they got to the top of the stairs they heard a confused noise, and when they had walked a few steps along the corridor they were faced with a curious scene.
The plump, pretty, dreamy-eyed Tahmina Bai was giggling in delight as an opium-eyed, vacant-faced, red-tongued, barrel-bodied, middle-aged man — an income tax clerk — was beating on the tabla and singing an obscene song in a thin voice. Two scruffy lower division clerks were lounging around, one of them with his head in her lap. They were trying to sing along.
The Rajkumar and Maan were about to beat a retreat, when the madam of the establishment saw them and bustled quickly towards them along the corridor. She knew who the Rajkumar was, and hastened to reassure him that the others would be cleared out in a couple of minutes.
The two loitered around a paan shop for a few minutes, then went back upstairs. Tahmina Bai, alone, and with a beatific smile on her face, was ready to entertain them.
First she sang a thumri, then — realizing that time was getting on — she fell into a sulk.
‘Oh, do sing,’ said the Rajkumar, prodding Maan to placate Tahmina Bai as well.
‘Ye-es—’ said Maan.
‘No, I won’t, you don’t appreciate my voice.’ She looked downwards and pouted.
‘Well,’ said the Rajkumar, ‘at least grace us with some poetry.’
This sent Tahmina Bai into gales of laughter. Her pretty little jowls shook, and she snorted with delight. The Rajkumar was mystified. After another swig from his bottle, he looked at her in wonderment.
‘Oh, it’s too — ah, ah — grace us with some — hah, hah — poetry!’
Tahmina Bai was no longer in a sulk but in an ungovernable fit of laughter. She squealed and squealed and held her sides and gasped, the tears running down her face.
When she was finally capable of speech, she told them a joke.
‘The poet Akbar Allahabadi was in Banaras when he was lured by some friends into a street just like ours. He had drunk quite a lot — just like you — so he leaned against a wall to urinate. And then — what happened? — a courtesan, leaning out from a window above, recognized him from one of his poetry recitals and — and she said—’ Tahmina Bai giggled, then started laughing again, shaking from side to side. ‘She said — Akbar Sahib is gracing us with his poetry!’ Tahmina Bai began to laugh uncontrollably once more, and to Maan’s fuddled amazement he found himself joining in.
But Tahmina Bai had not finished her joke, and went on:
‘So when he heard her, the poet made this remark on the spur of the moment:
“Alas — what poor poetry can Akbar write
When the pen is in his hand and the inkpot upstairs?”’
This was followed by squeals and snorts of laughter. Then Tahmina Bai told Maan that she herself had something to show him in the other room, and led him in, while the Rajkumar took another couple of swigs.
After a few minutes she emerged, with Maan looking bedraggled and disgusted. But Tahmina Bai was pouting sweetly. She said to the Rajkumar: ‘Now, I have something to show you.’
‘No, no,’ said the Rajkumar. ‘I’ve already — no, I’m not in the mood — come, Maan, let’s go.’
Tahmina Bai looked affronted, and said: ‘Both of you are — are — very similar! What do you need me for?’
The Rajkumar had got up. He put an arm around Maan and they struggled towards the door. As they walked into the corridor they heard her say:
‘At least have some biryani before you leave. It will be ready in a few minutes—’
Hearing no response from them, Tahmina Bai let fly:
‘It might give you strength. Neither of you could grace me with your poetry!’
She began to laugh and shake, and her laughter followed them all the way down the stairs into the street.
6.20
Even though he had not done anything as such with her, Maan was feeling so remorseful about having visited such a low singing girl as Tahmina Bai that he wanted to go to Saeeda Bai’s again immediately and beg her forgiveness. The Rajkumar persuaded him to go home instead. He took him to the gate of Prem Nivas and left him there.
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor was awake. When she saw Maan so drunk and unsteady she was very unhappy. Though she did not say anything to him, she was afraid for him. If his father had seen him in his present state he would have had a fit.
Maan, guided to his room, fell on his bed and went off to sleep.
The next day, contrite, he visited Saeeda Bai, and she was glad to see him. They spent the evening together. But she told him that she would be occupied for the next two days, and that he should not take it amiss.
Maan took it greatly amiss. He suffered from acute jealousy and thwarted desire, and wondered what he had done wrong. Even if he could have seen Saeeda Bai every evening, his days would merely have trickled by drop by drop. Now not only the days but the nights as well stretched interminably ahead of him, black and empty.
He practised a bit of polo with Firoz, but Firoz was busy during the days and sometimes even during the evenings with law or other work. Unlike the young Bespectacled Bannerji, Firoz did not treat time spent playing polo or deciding on a proper walking stick as wasted; he considered these activities proper to the son of a Nawab. Compared to Maan, however, Firoz was an addict to his profession.
Maan tried to follow suit — to do a bit of purchasing and to seek a few orders for the cloth business in Banaras — but found it too irksome to pursue. He paid a visit or two to his brother Pran and his sister Veena, but the very domesticity and purposefulness of their lives was a rebuke to his own. Veena told him off roundly, asking him what kind of an example he thought he was setting for young Bhaskar, and old Mrs Tandon looked at him even more suspiciously and disapprovingly than before. Kedarnath, however, patted Maan on the shoulder, as if to compensate for his mother’s coldness.
Having exhausted all his other possibilities, Maan began to hang around the Rajkumar of Marh’s set and (though he did not visit Tarbuz ka Bazaar again) drank and gambled away much of the money that had been reserved for the business. The gambling — usually flush, but sometimes even poker, for which there was a recent craze among the more self-consciously dissolute students in Brahmpur — took place mainly in the students’ rooms, but sometimes in informal gambling dens in private houses here and there in the city. Their drink was invariably Scotch. Maan thought of Saeeda Bai all the time, and declined a visit even to the beautiful Rupvati. For this he was chaffed by all his new companions, who told him that he might lose his abilities permanently for lack of exercise.
One day Maan, separated from his companions, was walking up and down Nabiganj in a lovesick haze when he bumped into an old flame of his. She was now married, but retained a great affection for Maan. Maan too continued to like her a great deal. Her husband — who had the unlikely nickname of Pigeon — asked Maan if he would join them for coffee at the Red Fox. But Maan, who would normally have accepted the invitation with alacrity, looked away unhappily and said that he had to be going.
‘Why is your old admirer behaving so strangely?’ said her husband to her with a smile.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, mystified.
‘Surely he’s not fallen out of love with you.’
‘That’s possible — but unlikely. Maan Kapoor doesn’t fall out of love with anyone as a rule.’
They let it go at that, and went into the Red Fox.