We left next morning. By evening we had joined Shafi Khan and the main Mewar army. The Merta, Dungarpur and other forces have gone their separate ways. Rao Viramdev and Rawal Udai Simha have accepted Father’s invitation to visit Chittor before they go home and are accompanying me. There’s not much chance of Muzaffar Shah attacking the Quartermaster-General and his caravans which now include the Gujarati camels, horses, elephants and vast supplies of victuals, not to mention forty-three thousand soldiers, but I have left behind two divisions to guard them. I prefer to err on the side of caution. In the negotiations that will precede the actual payment of war reparations, Father will use the captured Gujarat forces as a major bargaining counter.
We are making good progress but it’s not good enough for me. I would rather be on my own and fly to Chittor. My evidence as a judge of the Small Causes Court which had investigated Sunheria’s husband’s accusations and found them to be false – albeit at that point in time only – may carry some added weight and help free her. If not, the least I can do is to be there when the trial’s over and she’s released, and prove her prediction wrong. But I concealed my impatience. It is not seemly for the commander-in-chief and heir apparent to abandon his army and proceed on his own because of a private engagement.
Rao Viramdev tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Why don’t you go on ahead, Maharaj Kumar? My niece will be happy to see you. She’s not a demonstrative woman but I know how much she loves you. She writes about you with such longing and affection in every letter to me.’
This is the first time the old man has brought up the subject of his niece and my wife. I can’t quite fathom the reason for this sudden sarcasm. I look at his face to gauge his mood and read his mind and am horrified. He is transparently sincere. Surely he is aware of my wife’s antics and what a fine marriage she and I have? What ulterior motive can he have to put on this fine performance? He is puzzled by my silence. Then the simple truth dawns on me. Of course the whole world except him and her close kin knows the truth. Who would dare suggest to this noble and ramrod-straight man that his niece is a common dancing girl and faithless to her husband? I certainly wouldn’t.
I took his hand in mine. ‘Thank you, Your Highness. I will not forget this kindness. But my place is with our army. Absence ...’ I couldn’t bring myself to complete the sentence. Good man that he is, he completed the mendacious platitude for me, ‘makes the heart grow fonder.’
I can see the ramparts of Chittor in the distance. I feel a faintly perceptible but distinct acceleration in the progress of our troops. Without my prodding him, Befikir too has picked up speed. I thank Eklingji for bringing us safely back home. It is fortunate that we rarely think about the future. Who would venture into battle if he knew that he was destined not to return? Somewhere deep within us, we must believe that death happens only to other people.
The sentries at the fort have seen us and are soon joined by other townsfolk. We are galloping now, a little out of control. We have waited patiently for more than a year and a half for this moment. It doesn’t make sense losing our heads when we are almost there. Whether you are returning home from work at your office or from a long campaign, it’s in the last five minutes that most accidents occur. Soon we’ll be at the Gambhiree and if we continue at this crazy pace, there’s going to be one hell of a bottleneck at the bridge. It will be ironic to have economized severely on the death-count in battle, only to die by the hundreds in peacetime and even as we are at the threshold of Chittor.
But we are already at Suraj Pol. This is where for hundreds of years the townspeople of Chittor have gathered and welcomed their triumphant armies with fanfare: flags, flowers and a week of celebrations. There was a deathly silence when we rode in. Neither Father, the cabinet ministers, the nobles, the queens nor the ladies of Chittor were waiting to greet us. We advanced past straggly groups of men with black flags. Black flags hung from the windows of houses. As we turned into Lakshman Pol there was a crowd of over a thousand men waving black flags. They hung back sullenly. Suddenly a man shouted, ‘Down with the butcher and the coward.’ That released the tension in the air. ‘Shame on the Maharaj Kumar,’ someone else cried. ‘Long live the Maharana. Long live Prince Vikramaditya.’
Tej had fallen out of line and made for the man who had broken the silence. The crowd lost its voice again. Tej bent down and pulled the man up by the scruff of his neck. ‘Who are you calling a coward? A thousand of you won’t be a match for His Highness, the Maharaj Kumar.’
‘Sure,’ a small voice piped up from behind. ‘Which fool will not win with deceit, dishonour and guerilla tactics? We are Rajputs here, not cowards.’
Tej had his sword in hand now. Rao Viramdev held Tej’s wrist and drew him away. I caught my breath as I glimpsed a young woman trying to make her way towards us but the crowds wouldn’t let her pass. Something in the way she carried herself or perhaps it was the way she wore her ghagra and choli was vaguely familiar. She had a delicate nose and her eyes were large quartzes that were lit from within. For once the words intelligence and beauty meant one and the same thing. I had seen her so briefly, I was of course making her up. She was not beautiful in a modern or contemporary way. It seemed to be a face I had seen in one of Rana Kumbha’s illustrated books. It turned everything and everyone around out of focus.
Chittor was echoing with a lively ditty. ‘Our Maharaj Kumar is a slimy rat. Hurry, hurry. Get a big fat cat. Bury your head in the quicksands of shame. Let’s wipe out the coward’s and butcher’s name. Hurry, hurry, get a big fat cat. Make a meal of the rancid rat. Look at our Vikram, he is a king of cats. Leave it to him, he’ll wipe out the whole race of rats.’ I searched for the woman as I hummed the words of the song. I couldn’t locate her anywhere.
Shafi had lost his head. ‘Where were you when Zahir-ul-Mulk and the Gujarat forces surrounded us before dawn? But for the Maharaj Kumar, most of your sons, brothers and fathers would not be returning home today.
The mob was shouting down Shafi and closing in around him. A man got hold of his belt from behind and toppled him. It was Sajjad Hussein, my brother Vikramaditya’s companion in conspiracy, whom Mangal had caught with Kali Bijlee and nine other horses outside Chittor in the village of Bagoli. Whoever had planned this reception for us had the demagogue’s unerring instinct for the most vulnerable spot in our army. Rawal Udai Simha’s wooden leg, the Maharaj Kumar’s sudden disappearance from the camp, Tej’s arson and revolt, were all grist for the doggerel mill. But the central theme was cowardice and there were a dozen variations on the subject. The dishonourable and dirty tricks the Maharaj Kumar had played on Malik Ayaz and the Gujarat armies, the murder of Zahir-ul-Mulk, the clandestine and dastardly attacks at night, the loss of manhood of the Rajput forces, even Rao Viramdev was not spared for the only night-sortie he went out on. There was a melee and Sajjad Hussein was stabbing Shafi. Our troops had drawn their swords and Tej’s right toe had connected with Sajjad Hussein’s jaw. A morbid red flower was blooming on Shafi’s shirt front. The clangour of sword, shield and armour sounded strange and macabre within the Chittor walls. Sometime back this was just an ugly incident, soon it would look like a civil war. I watched the madness get out of hand as if it was happening not to my people, but to some alien race from another planet.
‘You’ll stop now,’ a soft low voice spoke up. Slowly, very slowly the crowd froze. My wife, all of five feet two inches parted the people and walked towards me. She had a gold plate in her hands and in it were a lamp, kumkum and camphor. She did an arati, put the plate down and touched my feet. ‘Welcome home, Maharaj Kumar.’ Her voice rang and ricocheted across the ramparts of Chittor. ‘Eklingji be praised. You and our friends and our armies have brought honour and victory to Mewar and its allies.’ She took her gold chunni in her hands and tore it in two. She folded one half several times over and placed it over Shafi’s bleeding wound and tied the other half around his stomach to keep the bandage firmly in place. ‘Take him to our palace and call the Raj Vaidya.’ My men carried Shafi away on a khatiya. She welcomed her uncle, Rao Viramdev, Rawal Udai Simha, Raja Puraji Kika and Tej and held out the plate for the men to pass their hands over the flames of the lamp. Women came out of their homes, garlanded her and fell at her feet. The prospect of this adoration unsettled her. She winced and her toes shrank back. Someone said ‘Long live the saint-princess’ and soon the whole fortress had taken up the refrain. Within a short while a lot of the civilian men and our soldiery were following suit and prostrating themselves before her.
I left my wife to the adulation of the populace and escorted Rao Viramdev, Rao Udai Simha and Raja Puraji Kika to the Atithi Palace. I could not look my wife’s uncle in the eye. I made sure that he was comfortably settled before I spoke. ‘I beg your forgiveness, Your Highness, for this shameful reception. I do not know where Father is. He’ll be appalled at what happened today.’
Where was Father? Why was he not there to receive guests he himself had invited? He may not have known that things would go so completely out of control but wherever he was, I more than suspected that today’s turn of events could not be unknown to him. Why don’t I come right out and say it: granted that my dear brother Vikramaditya’s knack for self-promotion, hired loyalties and genius for crowd scenes was in evidence everywhere but today’s fiasco could not have taken place without Father’s tacit consent. That it was aimed at me was obvious enough. What was just as clear was that he wanted to leave no doubt in the minds of his allies that I had fallen foul of him and to get that message across he was willing to take the risk of humiliating, if not alienating the very friends who had fought alongside Mewar. The moment I had articulated the latter thought to myself, Father’s reasoning was no longer a conundrum. Anybody who was associated with the Gujarat campaign under my command would be wise to disown it and me, and would have to prove his loyalty to Father anew.
‘Maharaj Kumar, speak no more of it and embarrass me further,’ Rao Viramdev halted my train of thought. ‘There’s little or nothing I can do to mitigate your disappointment. If there’s any shame, it belongs to the rabble. Let their humbug not cloud the fact that you conducted an unusual but successful campaign with fewer casualties than we have ever suffered in a major war. The Rana was right to tell us “Don’t go by his years. You are in good hands.” There’s much that my colleagues and I have learnt from you.’ He paused and held my eyes. ‘You’ll find what I am about to tell you particularly ill-timed, even offensive. But if uncalled-for advice was always palatable, it would be useless to give it. Unfortunate as it may be, this reversal, too, will temper the steel in you. A Maharaj Kumar who aspires to the crown after his father’s natural death – may Rana Sanga live long and in good health – needs to cultivate a temperament of tensile steel. Both a cynic and a wise man will distrust praise and good luck. Only the wise man has the sense to distrust obloquy and setbacks too. As Bheem learnt from the amulet on his arm, remember, these times too shall pass.’
Yes, these times too shall pass, I said to myself, but who can tell what new and wondrous calamities will follow them? ‘You give us sound counsel, Rao Viramdev. I hope it restores my sense of perspective.’ I was about to leave when a courier from Father arrived with a note for the Rao. He read it out aloud: ‘His Majesty, Maharana Sanga sends you greetings and profound apologies for not being in Chittor to welcome you. We went to Pushkar to give thanks to Lord Brahma for our victory against Gujarat, a victory which we owe in great measure to your stewardship. On our way back we were suddenly indisposed and against our will, had to break journey at Ajmer for a day. We hope to be with you shortly and will make amends for being remiss in our duties as hosts. We trust that the Rajkumar and his wife, your niece will make you feel at home and look after your every need in our absence.
‘We are, as always, beholden to Merta for your great and staunch friendship with Mewar. We are sure that with the passage of years, the bonds between our two kingdoms will grow stronger and closer.’
You had to hand it to Father. He was impeccable. What better reason for the host to absent himself from home than to thank the illustrious gods for giving him friends like Rao Viramdev? I wondered if the Rao had reservations about Father’s belated apology. He was no man’s fool and yet what choice did he have but to swallow the story whole? But there was more to admire in Father’s letter. How deftly he had underscored my fall and demoted me from heir apparent to a mere prince ... just in case the Rao had missed the point of today’s welcoming ceremony.
My wife and I crossed each other as I left the Atithi Palace. We have been strangers for so long and yet every time I run into her I am awkward, resentful and embarrassed. Her presence unsettles me. As the guilty party, she is naturally on top of the situation and has superb poise. She is self-possessed, lighthearted, and unobtrusively but confidently proud of her husband. Today since she’s meeting her uncle, she is glowing. I’ll take that back. She always is. A lambent flame, that’s how I see her. She bows to me and smiles. My coldness and anger are wasted on her. She doesn’t ignore them. The fact is, she is not aware of them. It is not her nature to react. She sets the tone and the pace. How or whether you react is irrelevant. I doubt it if there is a more good-natured, warm and even-tempered human being in Chittor or the whole of Mewar. Neither is there a more deceitful, double-faced and dangerous person than her. I owe her one now. I have no idea how events would have progressed without her this morning. Did she do it consciously or did she merely walk down to greet her uncle and whoever was accompanying him? Whatever the truth of the matter, she had single-handedly averted one of the most dangerous and shameful crises in the history of Mewar. There is no dearth of patricides, villains and other assorted criminals in our annals. But a clash of the populace, albeit a deliberately engineered one, with the Maharaj Kumar and the army is unheard of. How shall I ever repay her?
Talk about surprises, from nautch girl to saint doesn’t just strain one’s credulity, it reaffirms the axiom that there is no creature more fickle than man. It’s one thing to touch a saint’s feet once a year and quite another to be married to one. Stranger, saint, wife, what difference does it make to me?
I am still not home and my patience is wearing thin. ‘Raja, will you forgive me if I join you later?’ I’m not really asking Puraji Kika his permission and he knows it. He smiled and waved me off. Eighteen months is a long time to be away. I want to compare the Chittor I had so greedily and hastily jotted down in my memory-pad the morning we cremated Rajendra with the current one. Later, later, there would be time enough to investigate both the broad strokes and the nuance. I do not need to goad Befikir. He is in as much of a hurry to reach home as I. ‘Where’s she?’ I looked at Kausalya’s face and knew the answer. ‘The trial’s not over yet? What’s taking them so long?’ Kausalya shook her head slowly. Kausalya’s eyes. You cannot unlock them. They conceal almost as many secrets, suffering and the follies of men as the Gambhiree.
That night I went and bathed in my river. Mother, I screamed silently, unburden me. Her waters neither cleansed me nor proffered me oblivion. I went back and made demented love to Kausalya. I would not stop. I was going to erase the memory of Sunheria. Kausalya held me and bore my assaults in the hope that she could take over some of my anger and bewilderment and stony pain but neither grief nor perhaps any human emotion, can be shared, let alone transferred.
‘It’s a good thing she went seven days ago. If it had happened just twenty-four hours before you came, you would never have forgiven yourself for not having ridden faster or abridged the distance by some magic.’ Kausalya was not one for sugar coatings. Some time later she asked me, ‘Do you know what Sunheria said the day she hanged herself? “The Maharaj Kumar is so ignorant of the world. He thinks the court will condone the murder because my husband physically abused me. Does he really believe that human beings are fair and that the courts can handle anything but the most elementary justice? It’s not I but the Maharaj Kumar who is a misfit. He’s going to learn that there’s no place for a good and just person in this world.”
Was I listening to Kausalya? I couldn’t make sense of her quiet words or voice. Sunheria had once again spoken in ambiguities. Was she the good and just person or was she referring to me? She had both those qualities in ample measure. As to yours truly, the thought strangely enough, had never occurred to me. I couldn’t think of anyone in the changed climate of Chittor barring Kausalya who might even remotely consider me a candidate for fairness and decency. I’m not thinking straight. Kausalya would not back me either, not at all, but for entirely different reasons. She is the true inheritor of the principles of the great Mauryan Prime Minister, Kautilya. The business of a prince, even more so of a Maharaj Kumar, is statecraft. And there’s no room for either goodness or justice in statecraft.
I had a feeling that try as I might, the honorific ‘butcher’ was going to stick to me for life. Did my people really believe that the ethics of civilian life and wartime were the same? War was a Rajput’s dharma. When they disowned me, were they simultaneously disowning war? War is about power and supremacy. It is territorial ambition and greed. You cannot fight a war without killing. I did not invent war. I had merely extended its scope and taken it to its logical extremes.
But all that is besides the point. Till Kausalya told me of Sunheria’s last words, I had believed that if only Sunheria had trusted me, if only she had waited a little longer, everything would have turned out right. I was no longer so sure. I was out of touch, as was so convincingly proven recently and worse, I was more than willing to delude myself. Perhaps despite Sunheria’s unworldliness, she had a far more realistic perception of this world and its two-legged denizens. Maybe the trial would have gone against her and she would have been condemned to hang or spend the rest of her life in prison. Would I have broken the law or taken it in my hands and twisted it to set her free? By ending her life Sunheria had spared me the agony of having to confront my cowardice and convictions about the rule of law. Am I rationalizing after the event? Is there something about life that you know, Sunheria, and I don’t? That you cannot trust anyone, least of all yourself? Come back, laundress, I swore at her, come back. You better explain yourself. I have got eighteen months of clothes to wash. Get to work, woman. I want them cleaned of all the blood on my hands, don’t forget the collar and the cuffs and my conscience. I don’t want to see a single speck of guilt, did you hear me, I won’t have anyone suspect that I wiped off ten thousand men one early morning and followed up with several thousand more as the months progressed, go on, bash my clothes, my brains and body till I am a virgin, just the way you were supposed to be despite our sexual discourses over the years and starch me crisp like thin flat steel plate. I will not have you talking in conundrums which I will spend the rest of my life trying to unravel. Get back here, Sunheria. Now. This minute.
There was no point trying to sleep. I got up and bathed. It was still dark and the raatranis had not withdrawn into themselves yet. It hit me then that I was home. Perhaps it was the fatigue or the bizarre events of the previous day that left me vulnerable. The scent of the flowers made my head reel. It was as if I had had a drink and was feeling just the right degree of intoxication. The woman who had disappeared behind the throngs of people yesterday came back to me. Where had she gone? Who was she?
Kausalya came over as I was buttoning my angarkha. ‘Still can’t get the right button in the right buttonhole? What did you do all these months?’
I was a schoolboy and Kausalya was once again buttoning me up. I held her tightly by the hair. She was my oldest memory and yet she was so unbelievably young.
‘There,’ she smiled, ‘the Maharaj Kumar is ready to face the world.’ It was my turn to smile. Even if I am not ready, I know that I had better be.
I was standing at the top of the flight of steps of the Palace, my hands full with presents for Adinathji’s granddaughter, when I saw yesterday’s woman again, the one who couldn’t get past the crowd at Suraj Pol, outside the high compound wall. She had her odhani over her head and was walking with quick, determined steps. She had a tall package wrapped in brocade that reached almost to her chin. She looked up and saw me craning. I quickly descended a few steps and withdrew into the shadows.
She was standing against the light in the entrance now. There were tiny sweat-beads on her forehead and above her upper lip and I could hear the susurrus of her breath. As she bent down to put the monster package she was carrying on the floor, I got a glimpse of her shadowy features through her sheer odhani. It was my sister Sumitra.
‘Your Highness,’ the woman smiled and leapt towards me. I caught her in my arms as the presents were scattered on the steps and the lawns. I lost my balance and tumbled down the stairs. One of my lumbar vertebrae hit the sharp edge of a step and I had twisted my right ankle, what seemed like a full hundred and eighty degrees. I observed the long lines of pain fan out all the way to my eyes and the tips of my toes. Leelawati seemed bent upon fusing our bodies together. Her arms were a shrinking noose around my neck, her face pressed like a dew-laden flower against mine. If sweat is a response to heat and exertion, why is it cooling to the touch? Leelawati’s young breasts had scooped out two burning hollows in my chest. They would never fill up again, nor would the fire die. How I loved the brightness of her eyes, the small of her waist and the avidity of her mind and yet my arms turned to lead and sank down. The extreme proximity of Leelawati made me awkward and uneasy.
‘I bet you forgot to bring anything for me.’
I looked guilty and crest-fallen.
‘Ohhhhhhhh’ was followed by a guttural ‘uggghhhhh.’
‘Sometimes I wonder if I should marry someone so irresponsible and callous.’
‘Take my advice,’ I sympathized with her, ‘don’t.’
She looked at me disbelievingly, then realized that I was pulling her leg.
‘Nothing can break our marriage now.’ She told me sharply. Then her curiosity got the better of her.
‘What have you got? Show me, show me, show me.’
I knew that Leelawati would never again leap into my arms. I was willing to bet that this was the last time she and I would play this silly game. I was certain that along with hers, my childhood, too, was coming to an end. Within six months or a year at the most, she would be married off.
‘I told you I didn’t get anything for you. But take a look, I may have dropped a couple of the rags I got for the gardener’s children on the lawns.’
She was off. This is the way I would like to remember Leelawati. She wraps the odhani around her head and throws it across her left shoulder to keep it in place, lifts her ghagra and runs out. A flurry of mauve shimmering across a field of green. The morning light is a sculptor’s chisel and hews out a moving form in razor-sharp outline from the air. Leelawati bends down, stretches her arm, picks up a package and flies away. For truly, Leelawati is a winged bird of infinite and unsuspecting grace who can float on sheer willpower till sundown. A cheeky peahen walks up with mincing steps and pecks at one of the parcels. Leelawati shoos her away with some asperity. She removes her odhani, packs the various big and small packets in it, ties it up and flings it over her shoulder in a gesture that is reminiscent of Sunheria throwing a load of unwashed clothes across her back.
When she returned, Leelawati put her makeshift cloth sack on the floor and held my hands. She rose on her toes and kissed my eyes and forehead. Is she a child or woman? There is an earnestness in her that is unnerving. In that moment, I fear for her. Willingly or unwillingly, someone’s going to hurt her grievously.
She opened the cloth purse tucked at her waist and took out four pods of tamarind and a folded paper packet of salt. She passed two tamarinds to me and kept two for herself. The tamarind was a smoky green and though I spiked it with the salt, I would need teeth of stone to withstand its sour impact. I could feel my brains pickling. I wouldn’t be able to bite anything for the next couple of days but who gave a damn. Tamarinds and green mangoes have no tomorrow.
‘Shall we open your presents or mine first?’
‘Yours.’
‘Is that blood?’ She stared a little disbelievingly at the pennant she herself had embroidered and presented to me and the troops.
‘Yes. General Zahir-ul-Mulk’s.’
‘Did you kill him?’
Perhaps it was not such a wise idea returning the colours to Leelawati. I had forgotten that she and her family were Jains.
‘If it upsets you...’
‘It is not out of queasiness that I ask but because I wish to record its history for our children and posterity.’
‘Yes, I killed Zahir-ul-Mulk by deceit, retrieved a situation fraught with defeat for our forces and brought dishonour to Mewar.’ I was appalled at my pettiness and need to wear my heart on my sleeve. What was I looking for, a passionate reassurance from Leelawati that I was brave, unappreciated and much maligned? If she had noticed the change in my mood, she decided to ignore it and moved to the next gift.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a miracle gadget that will give a sense of direction to your floundering life. Any time you are lost, caught in a quagmire of moral dilemmas, it will show you the way out.’
‘Why would I need it? I always know my mind.
I burst out laughing. ‘How you deflate my pomposities, Leelawati. It’s a compass to give you geographical directions on a dark and cloudy night when not a star is visible in the sky.’
‘Really? It works just as the books say?’
‘Yes. Find out for yourself.’
She did, for a full ten minutes. She went out of the pavilion, took various positions in the garden, behind the palace walls, in a dark alcove, under a banyan tree, on the steps where I had stood and watched her. I could almost see the way her mind worked. She was going to surprise the compass and catch it showing west when she was standing squarely north-east.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘From a sailor who has been around the world, all the way to Venice and whose ship had lost its way on many a storm-tossed night.’
‘When shall we go for a picnic in the mountains and jungles? We’ll get lost and I’ll show you the way back.’
‘How about next Thursday?’
‘Done. I’ll be here at seven in the morning.’
She had already slipped the emerald necklace I had got her around her neck and was trying out the odhani of Egyptian cotton that the sailor had sold to me along with the compass.
‘Is that all?’ I couldn’t figure out why she was suddenly distracted and irritable.
‘You are an ingrate, Leelawati,’ I tried to laugh off her ill humour, ‘a shameless and insatiable ingrate.’
‘Better than being a shameless and insatiable show-off like you. There’s never an end to the gifts you keep giving me.’
‘All right, let’s forget your last present.’
‘I don’t want it. I have got only two presents for you.’
‘Do I get my presents or are you planning to keep them for yourself?’
She thought hard but couldn’t make up her mind. I had wanted to make her happy but my selfishness had not allowed me to think of how much she enjoyed giving things.
‘What are you doing with them anyway?’ I tried to rectify matters and grabbed the brocade bundle from her. ‘They are mine.’
There were fire and anger in her eyes but she relented. ‘Take it. What do I care?’ She thrust the package in my hands and turned her back on me. I undid the knot. There was one tall wrapped parcel above a flat one. I opened the flat one. It was a book with a note from Leelawati.
‘Dadaji and I read Kautilya’s Arthashastra together this year. He even made me write a short treatise on it. Father protested this was no reading for a young woman. Dadaji said that if she’s got a mind, he would rather that it was filled with knowledge than with gossip or inanities. I have read the Arthashastra half a dozen times in the process of copying it for you.’
I flipped the pages of the text she had copied out so meticulously. She had not scratched anything out. If she had made mistakes in copying the Sanskrit text, she had rewritten the whole page. I looked up and caught Leelawati sneaking a look at me. She was obviously pleased with what she saw in my face. I was back in favour.
‘Let me have my other present.’
She carefully removed the cloth cover to reveal a bejewelled Veer Vijay turban.
‘When they deprived you of your triumph yesterday, I ran home and sat up till this morning making the victory saafa for you.’
‘Where did you get all this jewellery?’
‘It’s all mine.’
She was right. When I looked closely, I realized that I had seen most of the jewellery on her at one time or another. Even the gold Chanderi cloth was one of her formal odhanis. On its folds, Leelawati had sewn seven pairs of diamond, ruby, emerald, onyx, jade, topaz and moonstone earrings. Three pairs of gold anklets were strung on the sides. In the front, a little off-centre where the folds criss-crossed each other, she had stuck a meenakari lotus pendant of superb workmanship. Above it stood a heavy paisley-shaped nath that the Maratha women from the west coast wear in their noses. It should have been a mishmash but it was done with a fine eye for colour and design and the effect was exuberant without sacrificing dignity and delicacy.
‘What will your family say when they find the jewellery missing?’
‘Dadaji knows.’
‘What are you waiting for?’ For once Leelawati looked blank. ‘Fix it on my head.’
‘Are you going to wear it?’ Leelawati asked in amazement and disbelief.
‘Would you prefer it if I locked it in a trunk and put the trunk away in the loft?’
Her smile broke through then and so did her age.
I bent my head down. She pushed back my hair firmly and held it pressed down for a minute. Then she picked up the turban and placed it carefully on my head. She looked at her work and blurted, ‘You look just like a Maharaj Kumar.’
‘I am. And don’t you let yourself or me forget it. On your way back will you hand over my book to Kausalya?’
She gathered all her presents together along with the book. ‘Next Thursday.’
‘Yes.’ She was on her way when I called out to her. ‘Do you mind keeping me company up to the stables?’
She held my hand as I limped to Befikir’s stall. Mangal was waiting for me impatiently. He tried his best to keep his eyes off my victory turban. I had my say before he could give me his important news.
‘There’s a durbar at eleven today.’
‘How did you know, Sire, that His Majesty was back and had called a special durbar?’
‘He got in with his entourage around midnight. Rao Viramdev is to be awarded our highest honour and title, Mewar Vibhushan, along with twenty villages and three elephants. Raja Puraji Kika will be awarded Mewar Gaurav, ten villages and fifty horses. Rao Udai Simha will receive a Mewar Bhushan, seven villages and thirty horses. Do you want me to go on?’
Mangal frowned. Had his security and intelligence men failed him? Had I given them the slip?
‘Did you go and meet your father last night or this morning, Your Highness?’
‘I didn’t need to, Mangal. Any schoolboy would have guessed as much yesterday itself.’
‘Who’s that?’ Leelawati asked no one in particular about Befikir’s young companion.
‘That’s Nasha.’ I told her offhandedly.
‘Who?’
‘Nasha.’ My voice was suddenly cold and harsh. ‘I would appreciate it if I wasn’t told in the future that you can’t go riding with me because your father won’t allow you to have a horse.’
‘Is he mine?’
‘How many dumb questions do I have to answer in one morning?’
My crimes of misdemeanour, omission and commission in this life and all my past and future lives were forgiven and wiped off the record instantly. A dumb-founded Mangal and I were subjected to monstrous bear hugs.
‘May I ride him home?’
‘Only at a trot and if you’ll permit Sapanlal to hold the reins.’
It may be time for me to take up a second career as seer, soothsayer, oracle and prophet but my clairvoyance is not yet foolproof. It had not taken into account a small twist of fate, or should I say foot. (As you can see I may criticize mediocre word play severely but catch me on a bad day and you’ll find me indulging in the foulest and most revolting of puns.) The durbar was a full house. Father was not treating the occasion lightly. He had, it was obvious, sent a summons to all the dignitaries in the kingdom to be present for the ceremony. He wanted to make sure that everybody knew who was on the honours list and the one person who was not.
As I entered I heard a low but distinct gasp escape from the assembly of august personages. Only His Majesty can crown you with the golden triumphal turban. Had there been a special private ceremony? Or, as is more likely, did the Maharaj Kumar have the temerity to award himself a triumph? It would have been interesting to see if any of the courtiers had the guts to confront me with a direct question but there was no time since the Minister for Protocol announced Father. We all rose and bowed to our liege. Vikramaditya went over and fussed over him in a proprietary way and helped him sit down. Father wasn’t quite sure how to respond to his youngest son’s newly-found solicitude since he had managed pretty well on his own all these years but he was in a mellow mood and smiled indulgently though a little uncertainly.
If you wanted to know what was going on behind the scenes at Chittor, there was no point keeping an eye on Father. The key to the drama lay in watching the other players. Look at Rattan, my younger brother. He has not forgiven his mother, me and the powers that be for being born second. He is not a bad sort really. He is intelligent, attentive and hardworking but the setback in the numbers game makes him susceptible to all kinds of slights and insults which most of the time are not intended or given. We keep our distance but there is no genuine animus between us and it is conceivable that the two of us might have been friends under another set of parents and circumstances. Rattan, poor man, is in a bit of a quandary. He had Father all to himself when he was campaigning in Gujarat with him, while the Council of Ministers and I were packing Vikramaditya to Kumbhalgarh prison for treason. Why couldn’t he have insinuated himself into Father’s good books and become his favourite son? Poor Rattan, he has no idea how to unseat Vikramaditya from Father’s affections. He shouldn’t be so hard on himself. The fact is, it is an unequal race and Vikramaditya is not the competition.
The competition was sitting across in the Queen’s gallery. Rani Karmavati puffed up like a puri deep-frying in hot oil as Father whispered something in Vikramaditya’s ear. From total eclipse to rising sun, Vikramaditya may have come a long way since I last saw him but his mother cannot forget that it was almost entirely her handiwork with some excellent planning and help from her confidant Bruhannada. Next to her sat my mother, the Maharani herself. She was beaming with joy. Simple soul that she is, she was happy for Rani Karmavati and Vikramaditya and was blissfully unaware that her own son and heir was not in the running any more. Rani Karmavati scoured the territory for enemies and spotted Rattan. No cause for concern there. He was but further proof of the fact that she had won against heavy odds. Her eyes fell upon me. She smiled, gloating from ear to ear. I realized for the first time why someone like Father must find her hard to resist. She had a harsh kind of beauty but the source of her attraction was a lascivious obstinacy. Women were supposed to give in or give up. She never did. She would outlast us all. I bowed down deeply to her.
Did I detect a smile on Father’s face as he took in my golden phenta? What had made me wear it in public? Why did I ask Leelawati to put it on my head when she herself had thought of it as nothing but a private matter between the two of us? Did I wish to assert that regardless of whether Father and the whole of Mewar saw me as a butcher and a coward, I was the architect of the victory over Gujarat? Or was I telling the whole lot of them to go to hell? Rao Viramdev was looking at me expectantly. The durbar was becalmed. Even Father seemed to be waiting patiently for me. What now? Was I expected to make a small speech apologizing for our victory and for fulfilling Father’s wishes to set up Rao Raimul on the throne of Idar? Should I go on my knees and thank Father for returning twenty-four hours late and insulting our friends and allies? Should I carry Vikramaditya on my shoulders and tell one and all...
No one, not even Rao Viramdev, could move till I had gone and paid my respects to Father. I may no longer be heir apparent but I was still the eldest and chief of the army that was returning victorious. I hobbled down painfully.
‘Are you all right, Prince?’ There was concern in Father’s voice. ‘Why was I not informed about your being wounded?’
I was about to tell him that I was ashamed to return from such a long campaign without much to show for it and had arranged for a minor mishap to overtake me on my way to the court but Vikramaditya didn’t give me a chance.
‘Nothing of the sort, Your Majesty,’ he smiled deprecatingly and hovered a full ten seconds on the edge of the next word before he unburdened himself of the rest of the sentence. The court waited with baited breath and so did I for Vikramaditya to deliver his punch line. ‘He was gamboling with the fair Leelawati, the great-granddaughter of our illustrious Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the lush lawns of the Atithi Palace where he slipped and fell a little foolishly and happily over her. A small price to pay for such delicious company, wouldn’t you agree, my friends?’ There was a nervous titter from the audience. ‘The Veer Vijay saafa he is wearing is a gift from the same lady.’
For some reason the durbar found this last uproarious. Perhaps humour is a matter of expectation and works on a graduated scale. Once you lay the groundwork, even the mildly funny or indifferent lines spoken with enough verve and a casual, throwaway tone will elicit peals of laughter.
My brother had been, as always, more than willing to make somebody else pay the price for an easy laugh. Adinathji would find it difficult, if not impossible, to get Leelawati married now that my brother had light-heartedly suggested that the Maharaj Kumar and the girl had had a romantic assignation which they had not even taken the trouble to conceal. It was of no consequence that Leelawati would soon be one of the most beautiful women in Mewar. It mattered little that Adinathji could pay a king’s ransom as his great-granddaughter’s dowry. An aspersion, however false or jocular, does not make a girl-woman suspect in Mewar, it proves her guilt beyond any doubt and condemns her. There was not an extra crease in the Chancellor’s expressionless face but his rice-flour complexion had gone a dead grey.
‘I suggest you apologize to the Chancellor of the Exchequer,’ my voice was cold.
My brother looked lost. He had baited me and at the most, expected me to rise to the bait. Instead I had changed the terms of the game itself. Vikramaditya is essentially stupid and tried to make a joke of it even now and sank deeper in his own tasteless mirth.
‘Not on, brother, not on. If you have all the fun, it’s you who must apologize to our venerable Chancellor.’
I took a step forward. My voice was a metallic whisper. ‘You heard me, Prince. You will apologize to Adinathji and his great-granddaughter.’
The Audience Chamber and the people in it had grown eerily quiet and still. I could feel Rani Karmavati’s wrath directed against her foolish son who seemed hell-bent on destroying all the years of effort she had put in on his behalf.
‘Maharaj Kumar,’ it was millenniums since I had heard those two words that had been the compass of all my waking and slumbering hours, ‘don’t be a cad and ruin such a lovely day. I’m sure the Prince was only joking. He’ll apologize to the birds and the bees, the children and adults of Mewar and to this court. How would our beloved Finance Minister like the Prince to apologize?’
Wasn’t that brilliant? The son may be an ass but I was no match for his mother. Rani Karmavati had not just checkmated me, she had skillfully retrieved the situation by putting the Finance Minister on the spot. But my brother didn’t know how to leave well enough alone.
‘Me, apologize? Have you taken leave of your senses, Ma? A Prince of the realm does not apologize to a common moneylender.’
‘You are quite right, Prince. You wouldn’t normally have to apologize to anyone, commoner, minister or royalty,’ Father spoke with a deliberateness that gave added weight to his words. ‘But you have behaved abominably. You have insulted this august assembly and an elder who is our friend, guide and financier of last resort. You’ll not dishonour a child who is as close to us as our own granddaughter. We suggest that you apologize without further delay.’
Vikramaditya pouted sullenly but did not budge. His mother came down and spoke to the Chancellor.
‘If the newly returned Prince had not made such a peevish ado about a little light banter, this happy day would have passed without incident. The people of Mewar have expressed their displeasure with his dastardly exploits and hence he is trying to sow dissension amongst us old friends. I beg you to accept my apologies, Adinathji. Otherwise, we’ll ruin this great occasion when so many of our valued allies have come to honour us.’
‘We asked your son to apologize, Queen, not you,’ Father held his ground but it was clear that the crisis had passed.
‘Your Majesty, let bygones be bygones.’ Adinathji had totted up the accounts and decided it was wiser to close the books. The damage had already been done. To continue to dwell on the matter would only end up doing further harm to Leelawati. ‘With your permission, may I request His Highness, the Maharaj Kumar to complete his interrupted journey (smiles all around) and then call upon the Prime Minister to start reading the honours list?’
I prostrated myself at Father’s feet, all six feet one inch of me plus the two feet of my outstretched hands.
‘May the blessings of Lord Eklingji be upon you.’
I forgot about my injured ankle and would have lost my balance as I rose, but Father bent down and steadied me. My protestations to the contrary, did I still expect Father to renege on yesterday’s events and award me my triumph? Now was the time for Pradhan Pooranmalji to announce my name and hand over the Veer Vijay turban to Father so that he could adorn my head with it. The Prime Minister would then read out the titles, honours, lands and other gifts bestowed upon me by His Majesty. I must have lingered for Pooranmalji felt compelled to call upon Rao Viramdev to come forward. I did not look up and embarrass my wife’s uncle. I could feel the tension and puzzlement in Rao Viramdev’s walk. Was his niece’s future at risk? Had he made the wrong choice by getting her married to a Prince who no longer seemed to be heir apparent? And what was his oldest friend, His Majesty, the Maharana up to? Today’s ceremony was going to be more difficult for him than for me. If memory serves me right, I must be the first general in the history of Mewar not to have rated a Veer Vijay after leading our troops to victory.
The day’s agenda proceeded without a hitch now but my travails for the day were not over yet. As always, Father was meticulous. After each engagement, a commanding officer was expected to send a list of all those whose contribution went beyond the call of duty. It was a tricky and sensitive task since outstanding courage and bravery was the rule rather than the exception and the officer-incharge had to work hard to substantiate why one of several of his men was deserving of special mention. In all, two hundred and twenty-seven officers and soldiers received awards. Tej walked off with three, one for himself, one in absentia for his friend Shafi and a posthumous one for his brother Rajendra. Despite the expression on my face which turned from surprise to disbelief to anger to rage to despair, despite every signal that I could summon to warn off Tej after he had touched Father’s feet, he walked towards me. Did the dear fool not know that at this moment, he could do no greater disservice to me than acknowledge my presence? He walked slowly and with great deliberation. Please, my friend, please, today’s not the occasion to assert your loyalty to me. You were more use to me as an enemy than you are as a friend. Don’t do this Tej, don’t. He lay his head on my feet. He would not rise till I had lifted him.
Would to God that I was not so transparently fair of complexion. All those years of self-discipline were of no use to me. I went red in the face two hundred and twenty-five times, for Tej had set a precedent which the rest followed sedulously like sheep. No amount of practice, choreography and orchestration could have achieved such a damning and devastating effect. It had the look of not just a premeditated snub, it was as if I was serving Father and the country notice of a time-bound revolt together with a list of the officers and the braves who would lead it under my aegis. How could Father ever trust me? How could he feel safe while I was still alive? I have no idea how the court and the queens and the guests reacted to this absurd turn of events. Were they aghast at this show within a show? Did they think that Father and his advisers had misjudged the temper of the armies and overplayed their hand? Did they believe that I had put up the men to this madness? Would they recommend that I was too dangerous to be allowed to walk the streets again? All I knew was that I dared not look at Father but sensed instinctively that he was watching me in his one-eyed way. One is never sure whether he is sneering at you, lost in his own thoughts, trying to get the dead eye to work again or is just plain sleepy. I waited for him to call the guards and take me into custody.
On Thursday, I got up at four as always. Kausalya helped me bathe and dress. My foot was larger than a bloated, oversized pumpkin and I had to keep the pain at bay with generous helpings of opium balls stuck between my left cheek and gum.
Seven. Seven-fifteen. Seven-thirty. Eight. Despite the throbbing in my foot, I paced my room, I went down to the garden, I climbed back to my suite of rooms. I was not going to take a no for an answer. Besides, whatever the reason and however serious, Leelawati never misses an appointment. All I had to do was be patient and wait and she would come
Kausalya had been to the Finance Minister’s house four times since eight o’clock.
‘Where is she?’
‘They don’t know. Or rather they tell me a different story each time I ask. First, I asked at the gate. They said she was asleep. The second time I ran into her uncle. “Children,” he said vaguely, “you know what they are like. I’m sure she’s around playing with her cousins and friends.” The next time I went to the kitchen. The cook shook his head. “You won’t believe how much tamarind that girl can put away. No wonder she’s had the runs for the last two days.” “That’s a cute story, Sajjonath, but if you don’t tell me the truth, you’ll no longer get the special discount on the lentils and the vegetables which you pocket and lend at some criminal interest rate to the other servants in the household.” “I don’t know, Kausalyamai,” he says, “I swear I haven’t seen the young mistress since the day Prince Vikramaditya spoke about her in the court.” I went back to the sentry. “What’s the point of asking me, Mai? Do you think they would let even her cousins or brothers know her whereabouts? Is there a more tightlipped man in Chittor than the Finance Minister? Maybe she is at Abu, Ranakpur or with her relatives at Chanderi. Your guess is as good as mine.”’
‘If they had slipped her out, Mangal would have known. I asked him to watch the city gates from the day of the incident at the court. Call Mangal.’
‘Your Highness, give it time. She’ll surface once things cool down.’
‘How do you know they haven’t done something to her? How do you know she is alive? Tell the servants to call Mangal.’
A full-grown banyan tree of pain burst forth inside my foot and I lost consciousness under the afternoon sun. Kausalya was bending over me applying cold compresses on my head while her son stood beside her. Mother and son were, as always, studiedly cold with each other.
‘The Raj Vaidya’s on his way, Maharaj Kumar.’
‘Have you found out Leelawati’s whereabouts or do you think you and your progeny have been awarded a sinecure in perpetuity?’ Why was I asking these inane questions and venting my impotent anger on Mangal? Would I not have done exactly – whatever that was – as Adinathji had secretly arranged, if Leelawati had been my sister or daughter and a prince of the reigning family had cast aspersions on her virtue? Did I not know the moment my brother had spoken that I would never again set eyes upon Leelawati?
‘Answer me. Where is she?’ There was a thick fog gliding though the stark sunlight in the room but I wasn’t willing to let go of Mangal.
‘I don’t know, Your Highness. My men have kept a record of whoever’s gone into or out of the house. We’ve made enquiries, we’ve oiled palms. Nobody knows where she is.’
‘How convenient, I bet even dear Adinathji is not aware of her whereabouts.’
I knew then that I had lost Leelawati for good.
‘Black or white?’
‘Black.’
She had been sitting next to the bed for seven days, maybe seven years, I’ve lost count, but I had not said a word to her. Now without any intention of having converse with her, the word had slipped out of my mouth. She made her move. Either she was a novice or a deep and devious player. So what’s new, was there ever any doubt about it, of course she was the latter. I had been foolish enough to respond but I could still go into a huff and back out. I did not, however, want to appear childish and had no alternative but to play. Besides, I was curious about her game. But no more dialogue, that was for sure. She wasn’t going to make a fool of me again. It was years since I had exchanged a word with her. I saw no reason to become convivial merely because I was stranded in bed, my foot and ankle in splints and raised nine inches above the rest of my body. She had insisted on bringing my food, filling my glass with water or wine, adjusting the pillow under my head and the bolster under my foot. She had had the gall to suggest, I still can’t get over it, that she undress, soap and dry me and help me put on my clothes and spend the nights nursing me. I had put my foot down, don’t take that too literally. I had successfully turned a simple hairline crack into a serious fracture by being a hero and carrying on with business as usual with the help of progressively larger doses of opium but I wasn’t prepared for the humiliation of facing a wife who would solicitously perform every wifely duty but one. I had, instead, one of my absurd triangular conversations with Kausalya.
‘Kausalya, I trust you are not going to a mujra or mushaira tonight and will make it convenient to be in the range of a few hundred feet just in case I fall out of the bed or need to be breast-fed.’
Kausalya must have discovered the code to the future of our planet in a turkey in the Persian carpet on the floor for she stared fixedly at its plumage while my shameless wife almost rolled over with laughter.
‘How you embarrass Kausalyamai. No one, not even I, could hope to love you as much as she does and take this nonsense from you.’ Greeneyes, as you’ve no doubt made out, did not need an intermediary.
I won the game of chess but she didn’t make a habit of losing. She was an unorthodox player, talk about understatements, she had a bizarre and volatile approach to the game and no qualms about changing her strategy midstream. It was both, a ploy to throw the opponent off his guard and the natural bent of her mind. She took astounding risks, offered an elephant, even the vazir, when there were plenty of other options available, teetered on the edge but was never reckless. She was shrewd, contrary, disciplined in her own perverse fashion and just about the worst loser I have known.
‘You cheated, I don’t know how you did it, it was somewhere between your seventeenth and nineteenth move,’ she flung the chessboard at me. ‘Admit it, you are a Shakuni Mama. You were afraid of losing, so you fixed the game.’
Her tantrum was so unexpected and so genuine, I lost control and laughed idiotically. She picked up whatever pawn, camel, king came to hand and flung it hard at me. Tears were streaming down her face. I crossed my arms and covered my head but she got one direct hit on my forehead with a horse. That didn’t abate her anger. I doubt it had registered in her mind that I had an inch-long cut above my right eye. I should have stopped laughing but her flying hair, her clogged and sniffling nose, the crazy glint in her eyes added to my mirth.
‘You brought the chessboard and the pieces into the room. How could I have fixed them?’
‘So what? They are made in Chittor, you must have bribed the craftsman. I guess you didn’t even have to do that since you are the Maharaj Kumar. I bet they do it routinely. You wait, let me get a set from Merta, I’ll give you such a thrashing, you won’t forget it for the rest of your life.’
‘You are doing that pretty successfully anyway. And what’s to prevent your Merta artisans from loading the pieces in your favour?’ It did not take me any effort to regress to her childish level.
‘Are you suggesting that there are cheats and liars in Merta? I’ll have you know that unlike you, we are an honourable people.’ She was advancing towards me now, her rage indistinguishable from her sobbing. That slight, shy and petite woman leaned over me. I was sure she was going to throw me out of the window but with an ever so light flick of her hands, she pushed me off the bed.
‘Give me back Kumkum Kanwar. What did they kill her for? She was harmless and innocent. She was about to become a bride when they set her on fire. She looked black and crumpled like charred paper. She looked so dead and helpless when it was me they meant to torch. Oh God, I’m so alone and lonely in your house.’
‘I can’t move. Something seems to have happened to my other leg. Will you send someone to get the Vaidya?’
Consider the knee. Without this flexi-joint, we would not be able to sit down, kneel or do a padmasan. There would only be an either/ or, a vertical or horizontal posture. Stand up or lie down. Nothing in between. I have no idea how we would ride horses without knees. Steps, staircases, multistories, frankly even first floors, would be inconceivable without knees. Islam would have to invent some other posture for prayers. Wrestling would be out and so would the prospect of putting one’s knee in the crotch of some bully or brigand who attacked suddenly. One of my favourite childhood pastimes would have been out too. I would go behind a classmate standing erect or with his legs apart and arms akimbo and shove my knee into the fold of his leg. It always worked. The guy lost his balance or semi-sank and I laughed myself silly till someone came and did the same to me.
And what you may well ask, is the occasion for this ode in praise of knees when there is still no trace of Leelawati? Take my word for it, I’m undone. That accursed woman, the wife and witch of my life, has revealed to me that the knee, at least mine, is an explosive trigger, an aphrodisiac of such phenomenal dimensions that I have driven my companion of infinite patience and indulgence, Kausalya, to despair and exhaustion. I am unquenchably randy and demand satisfaction though I am bedridden, on an hourly, nay, on a half-hourly basis. What infernal perversity led my wife to first break my other leg and then place her moist lips on my exposed knee cap, begging me to forgive her? Perhaps it is an idle mind and my supine posture and two broken legs that are responsible for my unfathomable lubricity. Kausalya who has always maintained and defended the decorum of the home, has finally caved in and smuggled in nocturnal and transient company because I cannot make it to Chandra Mahal. I would be happy or at least painfully wearing myself out if I could plough and till a lonely furrow on rented flesh. But there is no peace even in my own home, my own private chambers. That woman when she is finished with her inordinate outpourings and her devilish swirling of skirts and torrid singing, drops in at the oddest hours. I resolve not to speak. I keep my cool and hold firmly to my stone of silence. It is, needless to say, of no use whatsoever.
Will someone please tell me what I am to make of my life? Is my wife Greeneyes real? Is she nothing but a great actress, a phony all the way? Is she one person or two or many more? Does she love someone else and hurt for me? Is she lying? Does any of this, all that is past and the present and whatever’s to come, make sense?
‘Want to bet your gold belt with all its rubies and diamonds that I’ll beat you?’ She had brought back the chess set, the one with the damaged horse.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Afraid of being beaten?’
‘Terribly.’
‘What will you bet?’ She persisted.
‘My box of needles and thread and buttons.’
She stared uncomprehending for a second and then collapsed in waves of laughter. A strange pass, my life had come to. My wife finds my third-rate humour funny.
‘You wait, just you wait. Til clean you out of hearth and home.’ She looked defiantly at me. ‘But I’m a fair person. Go ahead, ask for anything, anything you want, if not I, but you win the game.’
‘Anything?’
‘Anything. I don’t go back on my word.’
There was something I wanted from her, at least I remember I did a long time ago. Something I had craved and yearned and waited for all these years.
I lost the game. Had I won, would I have asked her? Would she have granted me my wish?
She was a compulsive gambler. We played hundreds of games of chess while I lay on my back in bed. She bet many things. Sometimes she lost. But she never bet ‘Anything, ask anything. I don’t go back on my word’ again.
‘Perhaps it may be a good idea to wait a while before you ask His Majesty’s permission for us to leave for Kumbhalgarh.’
What was she talking about? We were in the middle of a game. Was I no longer permitted the privacy of my own thoughts? I had not mentioned Kumbhalgarh to anyone. Our games, the only time we had any sort of transactions, were monologues. Hers. How did she know then?
I had no role to perform in Chittor. I was not even an ordinary member on the Gardens and Parks Committee. The projects I had initiated – sewage management, the escape tunnels and the modernization of military technology – were no longer actively pursued. What hurt most was not that they were shelved but that we were willing to cut off our nose to spite our face. Chittor’s interests were dismissed merely because my name was associated with those projects. How does one deal with this order of shortsightedness?
I had never had an excess of friends even as a child. After my marriage, I had stopped entertaining almost entirely. Barring Raja Puraji Kika and Rao Viramdev, no one came to visit me. (I’m not counting the Queen Mother and Mother.) Now that both of them had gone to their own kingdoms, my only guest – always uninvited – was my wife. Why stay where one was unwanted? I was an outsider at home. Perhaps I could be at home outside Chittor.
‘You feel you’ll no longer be seen as a threat if you remove yourself from Chittor. But that’s just what the people who have been conspiring against you, want. You wish to leave, they’ll say, because you want to foment trouble. Who knows, they’ll hint, all those hotheaded people who bowed to you when the victory awards were announced may join you in Kumbhalgarh and you may decide to march against Chittor.’
I held my silence. Whose side was the Flautist’s mistress on? Having made me the jester of Mewar, must I now take lessons from her? I had to confess though that I had overlooked the first rule of statecraft. In any matter that concerns your relationship with others, put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Get under his skin. View the world and the issues from his point of view. You’ll know exactly where the shoe pinches. Now decide whether you want to cut the blood supply off altogether, ease the pain or watch how the situation develops.
‘It’s not my place to give advice,’ that did not seem to deter her though, ‘but His Majesty is a good man. He was under great pressure to relieve you of your command. But he did not give in. He let you put your unusual ideas to the test. When you tricked Malik Ayaz and trapped the Gujarat armies in the quagmires, there were public demonstrations for your immediate recall. Both of us know who was behind these, but the dismay and disappointment in the populace were genuine. What was His Majesty to do? How was he to educate his people and his allies about the profound changes you were making in warfare when he himself was in the dark about them? Then you disguised yourself as a Gujarati soldier and killed Zahir-ul-Mulk. After that there was no longer a demand for your recall. They wanted you stripped of rank and office.’
‘I am stripped.’
She did not indulge my self-pity.
‘I’m not suggesting that your enemies have not won the day. But it may be wise to wait and watch what happens. Sometimes, only sometimes, not always, time will take matters in hand and resolve them.’
That night Kausalya arranged for a rather unusual treat.
‘I want you. Not hired help. I want you to crush my head between your breasts or thighs till my putrid brain is flushed out. That way perhaps I’ll be finally rid of this obsessive disease.’
She shook her head.
‘Are you tired of me?’
She smiled a little ruefully as if I had said something ludicrous and unworthy. ‘I’m with you, never more than two rooms away. The disease, Your Highness, is time. This is the first time you have had all the time in the world. If it is a healer, time is also a killer. What you need is a change, a change of faces and companions. I’m a reminder of all your troubles. The two girls will make you forget yourself for a few hours.’
‘Two of them?’
‘They are twins. They don’t operate singly. Double the fun, that’s what we do, they told me.’
They couldn’t have been very old. Leelawati’s age or a couple of years older at the most. Nothing special about that. Most of the people in Mewar are married when they are children. The first period and a girl is allowed to sleep with her husband. The royal family and the highly privileged may not always follow these customs and often wait for the princes and princesses to get into their late teens before conjoining them. But Father has odalisques, not to mention a wife who is maybe twelve or thirteen.
These two, however, were rare birds. They looked young and eager and uncertain and yet every now and then I had the feeling that they had seen more of life than the great sages for whom the past and the future are interchangeable. Their names were Raat and Din. They were identical twins. Their parents, pimp or whoever had named them must have had a juvenile turn of irony or a twisted sense of humour. After a while I began to suspect that they were playing some kind of game with me. If I called Raat and held her hand, she smiled shyly and said ‘She’s Raat, I’m Din.’
One of them started to unbutton my shirt while the other got down to undoing my trousers.
‘Shall I play with myself while Raat takes you? Or if you like you can play with Raat while I let my tongue discover parts of you, you didn’t know existed?’
It was like my mother reeling out the names of all the savouries and sweets she could remember as she tried to coax me to eat when I was ill.
‘Lie between us and we’ll give you a nipple massage. You’ve never experienced anything like it in your life.’
I must have looked a trifle unconvinced.
‘I know what you are thinking,’ Din smiled knowingly. ‘That you can feel a nipple only between your fingers or lips and tongue. But you are wrong. Raat and I have invented this special treat. Your skin will become astringent as an alum-rub and your gooseflesh will be the tremor in the grass when the papiha sings and the monsoon showers scurry through it.’
She let her clothes slither down. How many months had she practised this seemingly triggerless undraping of herself in front of the mirror? Raat thrust herself forward.
‘Would you care to undress me, Highness?’
Her hand brushed accidentally against her sister’s breast. It was sheer art, this act of casual premeditation and voluptuous provocation. As I undid her blouse, I watched Din’s fingers between Raat’s legs. Her nipples woke sleepily.
‘Hold my breasts, Maharaj Kumar,’ Raat told me, ‘no, no, don’t clasp them. Just place them on the palms of your hands.’
Her voice was a flickering whisper, an erotic invitation as potently compelling as her palm on her sister’s breasts. ‘They are the apples from the Persian Emperor’s orchards, the mangoes from Konkan in Maharashtra. And the red-black grapes, Your Highness, how will you know where they are from unless you bite them?’
Din throbbed like a slow spasm that contracted and released her as her sister put her tongue in her mouth. My hands fell to my sides. The grapes would neither rouse my tongue nor my member. I was disconcerted and disoriented by the mirror images. There was no room for an outsider between these undulating reflections in which it was impossible to tell where simulation began and spontaneity ended.
‘Shall we do this a little later?’ I asked a shade guiltily.
They looked discouraged but stopped instantly. Their smiles were a little hesitant now, waiting for further instructions.
‘Do you divide all tasks, I mean all your work equally?’
‘Yes. We never plan but if I take the left, she handles the right. If she starts at the top, I’m already busy working my way up from the toes.’
They smiled constantly but were bereft of humour or playfulness. They were tirelessly painstaking, ever-willing to do your bidding, persevering even after they had worn themselves to inert fatigue, compulsively good-humoured, extending themselves to any lengths to please the customer. I could not bear thinking about what would happen to them and their self-esteem if they failed to please. Would they kill the customer or commit suicide? They were creatures of such exquisite delicacy and yet so ersatz, an evening with them could go either way: degenerate into excruciating boredom and emptiness or become a bejewelled, if precious experience in a mirror universe. Is it possible, I asked myself, is it possible for an image in a mirror not to have an original? Was there a world where only reflections had life, that there was only antimatter, that we are a shadow world and the universe and creation are not maya or a figment of the imagination but a possibility or an option that cannot be because God lost interest or is lying dead on the edge of some galaxy?
They are singing now. No, Raat sings and Din dances or the other way round. ‘There is only one taboo, it is sorrow,’ the song tells me. ‘There is only one medicine for both the invalid and the healthy. It is love. Because love is the disease. It is the key and the lock, the incarceration that liberates.’
The paradoxes and the antitheses pile up. The banalities never cease to fascinate our poets and their audiences. And yet every now and then, in that synthetic emotion, a live image or irony grabs you and disturbs the tranquil certitudes of one’s cynicism. The singing and the dancing may not be extraordinary but they are accomplished to say the least. I’m reminded of the night at Rajendra’s and my uncle Lakshman Simhaji’s place. Surely I don’t expect these pixies or expensively made-up waifs to share the magnificent rolling introspection of Sajani Bai. They have fine antennae, these sisters, they catch the ever-so-fleeting lapse in my attention.
‘Our recital does not give you satisfaction, Sire?’
‘Much satisfaction, ladies.’
They did not believe me.
‘Shall we play the games Prince Bahadur played with us?’
It is a long, long time since I’ve thought of the Shehzada. Where is he? Still self-exiled in Delhi or back with his father or taking shelter with the Sultan of Malwa? Time has a strange way of playing with the lighting in memories. Clear and sharp lines and features recede at times, the darker recesses come to the fore or gain definition. Perhaps time is a kaleidoscope and never repeats itself. I think of Bahadur now as one of the few friends I have had. We were bound both by life and death. But there was more than that.
‘Would you like us to take you in turn? We’ll bring you to the brink. It will be unbearable and exquisite and yet we’ll make sure that you don’t come.’
Sometimes I think of him as a kindred spirit. During the campaign, I often caught myself talking to him. He was not just the enemy. He had, unlike most people, a point of view that he had arrived at after thinking things through. He had a vision for the kingship and the state and the present was but an improvisation towards realization of that objective. He could be narrow, bigoted and chauvinistic but he had the potential to grow and be flexible.
‘You could tie us up. We’ve got a whip. No?’
I had little doubt that despite his being out of favour with Sultan Muzaffar Shah, he would one day assume the throne of Gujarat. Would there be peace between us if I was Maharana of Mewar by then? I doubted it. Malwa was across our borders to the south-east and its king Mahmud Khalji II was erratic and weak. Bahadur was sure to annex it. We were in between. Gujarat was a young kingdom compared to ours. He would go to war with us. At least he was an enemy worth fighting. Guerilla tactics would very likely misfire against him. He was like me. He studied his friends and enemies. He was curious and he didn’t forget past defeats and offences.
‘He applied a burning cinder to my thigh and twisted Din’s arm till she fainted.’ The girls had been narrating many a rare pleasure through my reveries. ‘Would that please you?’
I had lost them. I seemed to recall that they had at some point switched to Vikramaditya. Did they like pain or did it come with the job? If only they could have broken my brother’s or Bahadur’s arm or torched their privates. I knew then what was wrong with them. It had never occurred to either of them that someone could and should take the trouble, infinite trouble, to give them pleasure. There was a knock on the door.
‘Forgive me, Your Highness.’
‘Come in.’
Kausalya opened the doors very slightly. I knew she had her back to me.
‘Will you please excuse the young ladies?’
I did not ask what, why, wherefore. Kausalya is not in the habit of intruding on a private party.
‘How much time do they have?’
‘A minute and a half at the most.’
They did not wait for me to ask, request or order them to leave. The customer’s pleasure was the only thing that mattered. Raat, maybe it was Din, tossed her breasts into her blouse and locked them up for the night while the sister tied the strings of her ghagra. They tried to put the musical instruments back in the corner of the room.
‘Leave them be. I apologize to both of you. Perhaps some other time. You’ll be paid in full, of course.’
They bowed out, their backs to the door till Kausalya pulled them aside and took them to her room. Just in time too.
A heavily cowled person walked in with four guards. Father.
For His Majesty to attempt to disguise himself was like an elephant trying to move about incognito. Who could mistake the limp and the drag and authority of the man?
‘Leave us.’
The guards left. Father dragged a seat to my bedside and sat down. I turned on my side to touch his feet. He picked up his bad leg to allow my hand to make contact with it and then put it down.
‘May Shri Eklingji’s blessings be upon you.’ He looked around, then sniffed the air. ‘I see that you’ve had company. I’m relieved that you are not that disabled that you cannot indulge yourself.’ Nothing escapes Father. No wonder he outlasted his brothers. ‘How is the leg?’
‘Improving, thank you.’
‘Do the hands and arms come next? Or are you planning to break your neck first?’ He smiled. He knew I did not associate wit or laughter with him.
‘Your Majesty did not come here to humour me at one in the morning.’
‘I came to enquire after your health. You are my son, the eldest as a matter of fact.’
‘I never for a moment forget that fact.’
His face clouded and he looked uncomfortable. Perhaps he had hoped to come to the subject of his visit after a few preliminary indirections. But I seemed to have scotched all possibility of light banter.
‘It appears nobody else in our kingdom can either. They ask that you be stripped of your rank and titles and imprisoned for life.’
‘You are the regent of none other than Lord Eklingji himself, the Maharana of Mewar by divine ordinance. What other opinion can prevail when you are the paramount power in the kingdom?’
‘That is unquestionably so, my son. But the key to sovereignty lies in never bringing a critical issue to a head. Put it to the test and you may discover that economics, cultural factors, unforeseen circumstances like droughts, floods and famines, the obedient or indifferent masses, not to mention the vassals, nobility, middlemen and traders, priests and the landed gentry, may tip the balance against you, perchance topple you. The idea is to go with the flow. You may generate the undercurrents, occasionally even swim against the tide, so long as you maintain the formal proprieties.’
What finely reasoned words and how politic. His contention that the court and the populace were clamouring for my imprisonment was clearly far-fetched and for ulterior motives. (I may be powerless and prone but Kausalya, Mangal and my newly discovered counsellor, my wife, have their networks which are far more sensitive to public opinion than Father’s inner circle of sycophants, and they would have warned me.) But even if I were to grant the point for the purposes of academic discussion, would Father have the courage and candour to admit that the direction of the tide was generated by Queen Karmavati and her beloved son, my brother Vikramaditya?
‘On what charges would they arraign me?’
‘Conspiracy and treason against the crown. Affronting the dignity of the court. Egregious and criminal defiance of the most revered traditions of Rajput honour and valour. Inciting subordinate officers and the soldiery from our armies to set up a parallel centre of power. The list goes on.’
‘In that case His Majesty must forthwith start proceedings against the accused in the highest court of law in the country.’
‘Do not presume,’ His Majesty did not raise his voice, ‘to advise me about how to conduct the business of the state, Prince.
Why were this man and I at cross-purposes? Even as he snubbed me, I respected his magnificent imperiousness and his sense of the dignity of his office. Openness or the heart-to-heart chat are alien to Father’s nature. They are to me too. On the other hand, I could take a calculated risk, and throw myself at his mercy. But I had no intention of falling into the trap Father was so carefully setting up for me. He works out his strategy before any encounter and would surely have considered the possibility of my trying to throw him off guard. Having told me to shut up, he would have to make the next move. That dead eye of his watched me fixedly. Perhaps he would never again talk to me. Perhaps he would leave. Then I saw him do something he reserves for the rarest occasions. It is one of the most disconcerting and effective ploys in his arsenal. He shoved his index finger thoughtfully into the socket of his dead eye and foraged around inside. I sought to keep an impassive face. I think I didn’t do too badly but I might as well have screamed or ranted. He savoured the effect he was having on me. He understood that I was willing to tear and gouge out my own eyes just so I could stop his exploration
‘I have a document with me. Sign it and there’ll be no more talk of treason, dishonour or whatever from anybody. All your offices will be restored to you. You’ll be back in the War Council and you’ll be guiding all those projects that are important to the welfare and security of the country.’
‘May I see the paper, Father?’
‘Of course. Have I not always told you never to sign anything unless you’ve read it?’
He handed me the paper. It said that I would relinquish the title Maharaj Kumar and all claims to the crown.
‘Trust me, son. It’s a mere formality. People have short memories. In time they’ll forget all the fuss and we can tear up the paper.’
It was odd. I was sorely tempted. He was using all the phony words, the kind that come with ‘Danger’ written all over them. And yet I believed him.
‘Would you have signed it, if Grandfather had asked you to withdraw from the field in favour of your brothers, Uncle Prithviraj and Uncle Jaimal?
‘It’s a temporary measure, a mere sop. You have my word.’
‘Will you sign a document with words to that effect?’
‘Don’t be insolent.’
‘Frankly, even if you did, I would not put my signature on the paper.’
His voice was low but the threat of retribution was in his good eye. ‘This is your last chance, son.’
I thought he would strike me or run his sword through me. He sighed and then rose. He stood with his eyes closed. What a long night it was. Was it also my last night of freedom? His shoulders slumped and he looked old. He walked to the door and opened it. His guards came to attention. He walked back to me. ‘What will be, will be.’ He touched my forehead. ‘Is it true that you were wounded badly seven times on the front and forbade Rao Viramdev from writing to me about it?’
‘Minor nicks and cuts, Your Majesty.’
‘Now you even lie to your father.’
‘When have you ever spoken about your wounds?’
‘You are a prophet who’s come before his time. An early bird waking up people just a little after the hour of midnight.’
