The Weary Generations Read Free Page B

will enjoy meeting them. Gokhle sahib is coming. So is Mrs Besant. I know you are a rank theosophist. Ha, ha!’
    Ayaz Beg smiled.
    â€˜You know,’ the nawab continued, ‘I would have liked Niaz Beg to come for this …’ his voice sloped off.
    After a pause, Ayaz Beg said quietly, ‘Yes, yes, of course.’
    Naim was beginning to feel uncomfortable; never before had he heard of his father being talked about like this. When Ayaz Beg changed the subject and the two men began to talk about the political situation in the country, Naim felt relief. He started looking around. The nawab’s glasses seemed embedded deep into the flesh of his nose. In contrast, his hands were delicate, with perfectly tapered fingers, which he moved prettily as he talked. He was a man of ordinary features, yet appeared imposingly attractive because of the manner in which he conducted himself. The room was opulently furnished. Directly behind Naim’s chair stood a mounted tiger, looking alarmingly alive. The floors were covered with the deepest-pile Kashmiri rugs Naim had ever seen. Tall camel-skin floor lamps stood in four corners of the room. As the two older men conversed, a servant had silently entered to switch on the lamps, their soft light falling on the intricate wine-and-fawn patterns of the carpets. The nawab’s eye-glasses glinted. After a little while, the nawab got up and went to the window that opened on to the veranda and the lawn beyond. After having had a look, he turned to tell his guests that the seating outside was nearly in place. Then he excused himself for having to go inside and change for dinner.
    Out on the lawn, all the napkins, now properly done, were placed beside the crockery and cutlery, and bearers in starched white uniforms were moving among the tables making the last arrangements. There was no one else. Ayaz Beg sat down in a chair and started fiddling with his camera, which he had brought along especially to take pictures of the evening’s ceremony. Naim was wandering along the edges of the lawn, looking at rows of flowers, when a group of girls and boys came out of the house and scattered over the lawn in twos and threes. The tall boy, after offering a respectful salaam to Ayaz Beg, approached Naim.
    â€˜My name is Pervez,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘You have come from Calcutta, right?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Naim said in reply. He shook hands with the boy and stood quietly looking at him. During a lonely, unthreatened upbringing it had become his natural manner not to feel the compulsion to say something and yet appear anything but impolite.
    â€˜Let’s go and meet others,’ Pervez said.
    As they approached the first two people, the rest of the youngsters started joining them. They had all changed into formal dress.
    â€˜This – this is Naim,’ Pervez introduced him. ‘He – he has come from Calcutta. This,’ he pointed to the hazel-eyed girl, ‘is my sister Azra,’ then pointing to the rest, ‘and they, I mean, are all members of family or friends.’
    Naim kept silently touching the tassel of his red Turkish cap.
    â€˜Happy to meet you,’ one of them said. ‘Let’s sit down.’
    They sat down in chairs.
    â€˜Do you not speak at all?’ asked Azra, her eyes dancing.
    â€˜No – no. I mean, yes,’ Naim said.
    â€˜Nice name,’ a thin boy spoke in English. ‘I like it.’
    Although their playfulness was gone, Naim discerned a vaguely mocking manner in them, which they used with each other as well. Only Azra kept talking in that frank and fearless way that could be taken as a shade too assertive. She was wearing a white silk sari.
    â€˜Do you know how to fold a napkin?’ she asked.
    â€˜No,’ Naim said.
    â€˜Actually,’ she said, ‘none of us does. We only discovered this today.’
    â€˜Aw, that isn’t fair, Azra,’ the thin boy said.