Saeeda Bai sighed. ‘It is very difficult to cut down a banyan tree, Dagh Sahib, especially one that has been rooted so long in the soil of this province. But I can hear your father’s impatient axe on the last of its trunks. Soon it will be torn from the earth. The snakes will be driven from its roots and the termites burned with its rotten wood. But what will happen to the birds and monkeys who sang or chattered in its branches? Tell me that, Dagh Sahib. This is how things stand with us today.’ Then, seeing Maan look crestfallen, she added, with another sigh: ‘Come at one o’clock in the morning. I will tell your friend the watchman to make the Shahenshah’s entry a triumphal one.’
Maan felt that she might be laughing at him. But the thought of seeing her tonight cheered him up instantly, even if he knew she was merely sweetening a bitter pill.
‘Of course, I can’t promise anything,’ Saeeda Bai went on. ‘If he tells you I am asleep, you must not make a scene or wake up the neighbourhood.’
It was Maan’s turn to sigh:
‘If Mir so loudly goes on weeping,
How can his neighbour go on sleeping?’
But, as it happened, everything worked out well. Abdur Rasheed agreed to house Maan in his village and to continue to teach him Urdu. Mahesh Kapoor, who had been afraid that Maan might attempt to defy him by staying in Brahmpur, was not altogether displeased that he would not be going to Banaras, for he knew what Maan did not — that the cloth business was doing pretty well without him. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor (though she would miss him) was glad that he would be in the charge of a strict and sober teacher and away from ‘that’. Maan did at least receive the ecstatic sop of a last passionate night with Saeeda Bai. And Saeeda Bai heaved a sigh of relief tinged only slightly with regret when morning came.
A few hours later a glum Maan, fretting and exasperated at being so neatly pincered by his father and his beloved, together with Rasheed, who was conscious for the moment only of the pleasure of getting out of congested Brahmpur into the openness of the countryside, were on board a narrow-gauge train that swung in a painfully slow and halting arc towards Rudhia District and Rasheed’s home village.
6.25
Tasneem did not realize till Rasheed had gone how much she had enjoyed her Arabic lessons. Everything else she did was related to the household, and opened no windows on to a larger world. But her serious young teacher, with his insistence on the importance of grammar and his refusal to compromise with her tendency to take flight when faced with difficulties, had made her aware that she had within herself an ability for application that she had not known. She admired him, too, because he was making his own way in the world without support from his family. And when he refused to answer her sister’s summons because he was explaining a passage from the Quran to her, she had greatly approved of his sense of principle.
All this admiration was silent. Rasheed had never once indicated that he was interested in her in any way other than as a teacher. Their hands had never touched accidentally over a book. That this should not have happened over a span of weeks spoke of deliberateness on his part, for in the ordinary innocent course of things it was bound to have occurred by chance, even if they had instantly drawn back afterwards.
Now he would be out of Brahmpur for a month, and Tasneem found herself feeling sad, far sadder than the loss of Arabic lessons would have accounted for. Ishaq Khan, sensing her mood, and the cause for it as well, tried to cheer her up.
‘Listen, Tasneem.’
‘Yes, Ishaq Bhai?’ Tasneem replied, a little listlessly.
‘Why do you insist on that “Bhai”?’ said Ishaq.
Tasneem was silent.
‘All right, call me brother if you wish — just get out of that tearful mood.’
‘I can’t,’ said Tasneem. ‘I’m feeling sad.’
‘Poor Tasneem. He’ll be back,’ said Ishaq, trying not to sound anything but sympathetic.
‘I wasn’t thinking of him,’ said Tasneem quickly. ‘I was thinking that I’ll have nothing useful to do now except read novels and cut vegetables. Nothing useful to learn—’
‘Well, you could teach, even if not learn,’ said Ishaq Khan, attempting to sound bright.
‘Teach?’
‘Teach Miya Mitthu how to speak. The first few months of life are very important in the education of a parakeet.’
Tasneem brightened up for a second. Then she said: ‘Apa has appropriated my parakeet. The cage is always in her room, seldom in mine.’ She sighed. ‘It seems,’ she added under her breath, ‘that everything of mine becomes hers.’
‘I’ll get it,’ said Ishaq Khan gallantly.
‘Oh, you mustn’t,’ said Tasneem. ‘Your hands—’
‘Oh, I’m not as crippled as all that.’
‘But it must be bad. Whenever I see you practising, I can see how painful it is from your face.’
‘What if it is?’ said Ishaq Khan. ‘I have to play and I have to practise.’
‘Why don’t you show it to a doctor?’
‘It’ll go away.’
‘Still — there’s no harm in having it seen.’
‘All right,’ said Ishaq with a smile. ‘I will, because you’ve asked me to.’
Sometimes when Ishaq accompanied Saeeda Bai these days it was all he could do not to cry out in pain. This trouble in his wrists had grown worse. What was strange was that it now affected both his wrists, despite the fact that his two hands — the right on the bow and the left on the strings — performed very different functions.
Since his livelihood and that of the younger brothers whom he supported depended on his hands, he was extremely anxious. As for the transfer of his brother-in-law: Ishaq had not dared to try to get an interview with the Station Director — who would certainly have heard about what had happened in the canteen and who would have been very unfavourably disposed towards him, especially if the great Ustad himself had made it a point to express his displeasure.
Ishaq Khan remembered his father saying to him, ‘Practise at least four hours every day. Clerks push their pens in offices for longer than that, and you cannot insult your art by offering less.’ Ishaq’s father would sometimes — in the middle of a conversation — take Ishaq’s left hand and look at it carefully; if the string-abraded grooves in the fingernails showed signs of recent wear, he would say, ‘Good.’ Otherwise he would merely continue with the conversation, not visibly but palpably disappointed. Of late, because of the sometimes unbearable pain in the tendons of his wrists, Ishaq Khan had been unable to practise for more than an hour or two a day. But the moment the pain let up he increased the regimen.
Sometimes it was difficult to concentrate on other matters. Lifting a cage, stirring his tea, opening a door, every action reminded him of his hands. He could turn to no one for help. If he told Saeeda Bai how painful it had become to accompany her, especially in fast passages, would he be able to blame her if she looked for someone else?
‘It is not sensible to practise so much. You should rest — and use some balm,’ murmured Tasneem.
‘Do you think I don’t want to rest — do you think it’s easier for me to practise—’
‘But you must use proper medicine: it is very unwise not to,’ said Tasneem.
‘Go and get some for me, then—’ said Ishaq Khan with sudden and uncharacteristic sharpness. ‘Everyone sympathizes, everyone advises, no one helps. Go — go—’
He stopped dead, and covered his eyes with his right hand. He did not want to open them.
He imagined Tasneem’s startled face, her deer-like eyes starting with tears. If pain has made me so selfish, he thought, I will have to rest and restore myself, even if it means risking my work.