The Weary Generations (26 page)

‘We are going, aren't we?' the boy said angrily.

Niaz Beg talked to Rawal on the way out, admonishing him for one thing or the other. But by the time he came back he had stopped talking. Lugging a large bundle of green fodder on his back, he was boiling with fever. At home, he threw down the heavy fodder and didn't have the energy to untie the bundle or serve it to the animals. He fell on his cot and lost consciousness. His two wives, panicking at the sight of him shivering like a twig in a storm, started massaging his chest with clove-seared ghee, until Naim told them to stop exposing him to the cold and cover him up with quilts. Niaz Beg did not regain consciousness until several hours later, when he briefly came to and called out for his son. He grabbed Naim's arm, felt that it was wood, a mistake he had never made in his full faculties, and shifted his grip to the good arm, holding it tightly to him. He spoke haltingly.

‘I have turned up the earth for vegetables. Sow them inside four days or the soil will become hard. Take Rawal with you and get the seed from Ali's mother. Have you seen the mustard flowers blazing like fire? Phagan is already nearly over; soon it will be cutting time. I have watered the wheat for the last time, no more water there. It's going to be a heavy crop again this year, I can tell you. The gram crop will be ready in thirty days' time, but you don't have to worry about that, I will be up on my feet by that time. Nobody dies of working hard. I am going to go out to look for a woman for you as soon as I am up, don't you worry about that either. A woman is useful for a farmer …' He let go of Naim's arm for a second, then grasped it again, ‘Ali is your brother, look after …' He wanted to go on but couldn't utter the words. He looked at his son with dumb eyes, and tears trickled down his temples. One of his hands shot out and grabbed at his younger wife's crotch under her waist-sheet, holding it tight. Lying thus on his back, Niaz Beg died quickly. The poor woman, her face red as beetroot, struggled to free herself from her husband's death-grip, finally succeeding after furiously pulling herself away, although she lost a small tuft of hair from her genital area that was wedged in the dead man's fist. She uttered a cry, as much of grief as of physical pain, and joined the other woman in wailing over their widowhood.

They kept the body at home during the night while the gravediggers got busy, not in the village graveyard but in a corner of the Mughal's land, for the burial the next day. In the morning the villagers came, those that were neighbours and friends and also those who disliked the deceased for his ill temper, his bragging and his new-found wealth. They sat on durrees spread on the ground in a circle in the courtyard, offering condolences. ‘When
my woman told me,' said Ghulam Hussain, a man well-known for being Niaz Beg's enemy, ‘that chaudri had – had …' His face screwed up to indicate that he was overcome with grief, and just when Naim thought the man was going to break down and cry, he straightened up quickly, regaining his composure, and continued, ‘– had passed away, an arrow pierced my heart, here,' he thumped his chest, ‘right here!' Despite the state of shock that Naim was in, he couldn't help imagining what his father would say at such deceit: ‘Shut your tongue, you old thief, and be off with you!' Another man took up the wail, and then another, in the usual manner of peasants, whose cunning came not from malice but from the way they took life and death, grief and joy, the same as they did, in their proper time, the cycle of the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun each day, and thought little more of the passing of men than the unending change of colour of earth and crops.

A tonga stopped outside and Ayaz Beg stepped down from it. Slowly, he walked towards the house. The mourners sitting in the courtyard looked at this man whom they had last seen when he was a young man and calmly greeted him as they would someone returning from a night away from the village. Not Naim. He saw his uncle enter the house, supporting himself with a cane and, although he had spent the time since the death dry-eyed and numbed, now he leaned on the older man's shoulder and cried like a child.

N
AIM TOOK SOME
while before he could settle down to a routine of living – for the first time – as an independent man in the village. Then came a shift in his circumstances so swift and sweeping that it altered the course of his life.

He had consolidated his father's, his own and almost ten acres of good fertile grace-and-favour land given by Roshan Agha to Ayaz Beg to mark his visit to the village after a long self-exile. Ayaz Beg, after burying his brother, never returned to the village again. Naim had twenty-six acres of land under him, two-thirds of which he gave to the muzaras on a half-share basis and the rest he kept for cultivation under his own supervision, providing the bullocks, the ploughs, the seed and anything else needed for the job, the tillers being his servants who took a share of the crop and whatever little money they needed according to custom. These sharecroppers and farm labourers in general had milch cattle, the produce of which they sold or bartered to supplement their income. Naim had built himself two brick rooms on his land outside the village and in these he now lived, looked after by a servant who fetched his meals, cooked by his mother three times a day. Sometimes he felt deeply his loneliness and the need for a friend, but he found that the ability to form friendships was lost to him, a wall-like curtain having dropped between him and the world. He still mixed with the villagers, often going to sit with them in the panchayat yard, a place for the common folk to come and go, using it for assemblies or just to exchange chat as they pleased. Being the owner of land and men in his own right and a hero on top, aside from having the advantage of an education, Naim was consulted by everyone about their problems, from small everyday matters to big affairs, and asked to give decisions that were accepted by all. He had attained a position in the village that was far higher than that of the munshi, the previous headman, who was only a
servant and owned neither land nor men. Naim also went to his father's house regularly twice a week to sit with his mother and stepmother, to listen, mostly in silence, to their needs for food and clothing and to their woes, happy in the knowledge that the two women had now learned to live peaceably together.

Once a month, he went to visit his uncle Ayaz Beg, who had taken early retirement and lived in the old house in Delhi. It was on one of these occasions, as he sat at the table after the midday meal in his uncle's house, that Ayaz Beg handed him a thick, richly embossed card. The card, an invitation to the walima party of Pervez's marriage – the nikah ceremony of which was to have taken place two days previously at a family function – was addressed to ‘Naim Ahmad Khan'.

‘Will you come?' Ayaz Beg asked.

‘Er – I don't know,' Naim answered.

‘I got the impression that they would be glad to see you.'

‘This is a busy time of the year in the village,' Naim said.

‘I think it would be wise to go,' Ayaz Beg said to him.

‘What do you mean?'

Ayaz Beg paused before answering. ‘There is a chance,' he said, ‘that we will regain possession of the land.'

‘Which land?'

‘The acres that we lost following the –' he stopped for a second, ‘the case.'

‘How is it possible after all these years?'

‘Since your father's death there is a slight chance that we can have the decision reversed. After all, I was also one of the owners, and now you. And neither of us had anything to do with – with what happened.'

Naim thought for a moment. ‘Do you really think it is feasible?'

‘To be frank, it was Roshan Agha who first suggested it to me. I have already sent a petition to the governor. A separate one should go from you. In view of your services to the government, there is a real chance.'

A month later, Naim had his hair cut, put on a suit that he had had made soon after his return from the war but had not once worn, and went to Roshan Mahal with Ayaz Beg.

The house stood just as he remembered it, with only the addition of a garden-house, which, his uncle informed him proudly, was built to Ayaz Beg's own design. The paths and lawns of the house were a lot more crowded on this day than on the day Naim was last here to attend a party. Under the colourful bunting stretched across the garden, their strings tied to the rooftops, people stood, sat, sipped mango and orange juice, talked,
made gentle gestures, moved leisurely about so that the entire assembly of men and women seemed, in a hum of voices, to be slowly floating and churning in space like currents and eddies in a great river. Among them, here and there, Naim could see the old familiar faces of people who had been young boys and girls when he had played with them on the very same ground.

‘Hello, Uncle,' Pervez said, appearing from the side, ‘adaab.'

‘Assalam-o-alaikam, betay.' Ayaz Beg patted him on the head. ‘Congratulations. How are you?'

‘Thank you, Uncle. I am fine. Hello, Naim.'

They shook hands. Pervez held Naim's hand for several minutes, pressing it warmly, smiling, searching for the old acquaintance in Naim's eyes and finding it, no more than a spark but sufficient for a renewal. Suddenly, they found themselves surrounded by several of their group, followed by much shaking of hands and noise of greetings.

‘Where did you go, Naim? For so long – so long,' asked Phoebe Gregson, the police superintendent's daughter, in her typical, too cheerful way.

‘Are you deaf and blind, Phee, can't you see he's back from winning the war?' Arshad said, pointing with exaggerated formality to the entire length of Naim's erect posture.

‘Oh good, good, good,' innocent-faced Talat, the only one who didn't seem to have aged a day since Naim last saw her, enthused, ‘you are a war hero. Great! Are we allowed to worship you now?'

‘We read it in the newspaper,' Shirin said.

‘What?' Naim asked.

‘Of your exploits.'

‘It was nothing like that,' Naim said. ‘It just happened by chance.'

‘Hulloo –' someone from the back of the crowd cried. Sahibzada Waheeduddin proceeded vigorously to shake Naim's hand. ‘Where have you been, old man? Oh, but of course you went off to the war. How wonderful! And you won fame, didn't you? Splendid. Welcome back. Welcome.'

For once Naim felt utter contempt for these young men in comparison to their counterparts in England and elsewhere in Europe who had fought and died in the trenches.

‘Have you met Bilkees?' asked Shirin.

‘Yes, yes,' the sahibzada injected, ‘meet my wife …'

Bilkees Waheeduddin was a pale, slight young woman with fine, upper-class features.

‘Bilkees, you know Naim?' Shirin said. ‘No? Our old friend Naim
Ahmad Khan. Now,' she paused, ‘victor of wars.'

There was good-natured laughter. Naim joined in with a thin smile. He was mildly annoyed and embarrassed. He felt the general gaiety around him was forced and saw how hard everyone was trying to avoid looking at the unmoving arm thrust permanently in his jacket pocket. Someone called out from the side, and the group broke up, going in different directions in pairs, promising to meet up again in a short while.

Walking among the crowd, Naim was introduced some time later to civil service colleagues of Pervez and Sahibzada Waheed, who greeted him with customary politeness. Further on, he came across some minor zamindars, wearing their high starched turbans, standing in a group of four, one of whom stopped Naim.

‘We heard you were in the war, young man,' the man said cheerfully, ‘and you showed great bravery.'

‘Who told you?' Naim asked him roughly.

‘Oh, we all know,' the landowner said, looking pointedly at the sleeve-covered arm. ‘We are proud of you.'

Naim thought the man was going to touch his arm. He abruptly turned and walked away. On the way to the veranda he was halted by Pervez's hand on his shoulder.

‘Naim, meet my wife Naheed.'

Trying hard to lighten his mood, Naim said ‘adaab' to a plumpish, fair-skinned girl, who, unlike any other young woman there, offered her hand to him to shake and spoke to him in English.

‘How do you do?'

Slightly taken aback, Naim took her very soft hand for a second and mumbled a congratulation-cum-greeting. Pervez walked off, leaving the two of them standing there.

‘I have heard so much about you,' she said to him.

‘I am visiting here after many years,' Naim said.

‘Oh, yes? But they talk of you as if you were never away.'

‘Do they?'

A woman of about thirty, wearing a gold-threaded gharara, came up to speak in an urgent manner to Naheed, making her turn summarily to Naim to say, ‘See you later,' and quickly go off with the woman. Naim felt immensely relieved. He ascended the four marble steps and stepped on to the veranda. Turning left, because that side was empty of both guests and servants, he started walking slowly along the long, curved black-and-white tiled veranda, pausing once or twice to look through the thick white columns out at the guests and hosts, mixing, talking, now a bit more
animatedly, standing on the paths, on the grass, and sitting in the sofa chairs laid out on the lawn in the afternoon sun of late autumn. The years had imparted to his features a hint of roughness that sat attractively on his face. Women unknown to him looked from a distance at this good-looking young man walking all by himself behind the columns – his body held straight, arm in his pocket – with affection, and the English among them, these sitting mostly on the sofas, smiled boldly at him. Walking on, he met unexpectedly, one after the other, three people. First was Roshan Agha, emerging from an inner room and coming face to face with him.

‘Adaab,' Naim said, touching his forehead with his hand.

‘Good to see you, Naim,' Roshan Agha said, placing his hand on Naim's back, smiling but not looking him straight in the eye. He asked a string of questions in one breath. ‘How are you? How are matters in the village? I am sorry about Niaz Beg's passing away. Are you faring well on your own?'