He had been the most eligible bachelor in this part of the world. It took them a long time to find a bride for him. Two or three proposals along with horoscopes arrived every day. They had to appoint a full-time priest to go through the horoscopes and decide which matched his. There was no point in looking at the proposals first and getting excited about a few of them only to discover that Saturn was in the wrong house in one princess’s case and another princess had a malevolent Mars dogging her.
Marriage is a two-way street. The girl’s people make overtures. But the boy’s relatives don’t sit on their behinds and wait for a pari or an apsara to drop out of the heavens. You make your moves too, prepare a list of the houses you would like to be allied with, then find out if there’s a suitable unmarried girl there without a limp or a cleft palate or polio legs. Do you remember the time the Maharaj Kumar’s father, the Rana, got married? The king of Mandasaur had a fine, vivacious daughter with a complexion that would put morning dew to shame. She was there right under everybody’s nose and nobody noticed her. No malice aforethought or any question of ‘let’s teach Mandasaur a lesson, we too can get even with them’ or ‘let’s reserve her for the second son’. Nothing of the sort. They just forgot all about her. When the Rana didn’t marry her, the others drew their own conclusions. They surmised that appearances were deceptive, that there was something fatally wrong with her, why else would such a fine match be passed over. Soon everybody was staying clear of her. She was never rejected because she was never considered. The girl was not bothered the first four or five years. Then she realized that nobody was ever going to ask for her or even look at her. She took it ill. She knew something was terribly wrong with her even though she couldn’t tell what it was. In time something did go wrong with her, something terrible happened to her, in fact. She got a tic in her face, it spread to her hand and then to the knee. She couldn’t sit still, her elbow pulled in one direction and her leg in another and without realizing it she was making faces all the time. She stopped going out. After a while she didn’t come out of her room. Then she tied a rope to a beam and kicked the stool from under her.
It was his grandmother, the Queen Mother herself, who found the girl for the Maharaj Kumar. She was from Merta, a principality under Rao Ganga of Jodhpur. She was born in a village called Kurki and was the only daughter of Rattan Simha, the second son of Rao Duda of Merta. Since she had lost her mother as a child, she grew up at her grandfather Duda’s house. She had skin the colour of light golden honey. Her eyes were green and her manner was quiet. Her father was always away, travelling, fighting wars.
When she was no longer a girl but could yet hardly be called a woman, her grandfather, whose pet she was, looked for a suitable boy for her. Her grandfather, her uncles and aunts, even her father Rattan Simha made enquiries, short-listed four princes and then because their horoscopes were matched in heaven and because he was the heir apparent of the most famous Rajput kingdom of the day, they approached his grandmother. Maharana Sangram Simha or Sanga as he was known to his people, thought it was a worthy match for his eldest son. Even the most impartial and critical observers had only the most glowing things to say about the girl. She was beautiful, devout and obedient. She would make a fine wife and God willing, a fine queen for Chittor, in the fullness of time.
As a token of confirmation of the betrothal, the girl’s uncle, Rao Viramdev was deputed to go to Chittor with the tika presents. A retinue of noblemen and servants on horseback and camels carried three coconuts and eleven betelnuts covered in thick gold leaf; two hundred coconuts, ten pounds of jaggery, ten pounds of betelnuts, ten pounds of dates, ten pounds of sugar, ten pounds of pistachios, fifteen pounds of almonds, seven pounds of lac and seven pounds of betel leaves. There were twenty-one seed pearls to be stuck on the boy’s forehead over the vermillion tilak. For the bridegroom and his relations, there were a hundred and one suits of gold thread, turbans, dhotis, balabandis, goshpechs, and cloths of various designs, with precious stones embedded in them. The last of the gifts was fifteen horses with velvet and jewelled trappings and one hundred thousand tankas in cash.
The Maharaj Kumar sat on a pedestal. He was fidgety, a strand of brocade from his duglo kept chafing the nape of his neck. At the end of a long drawn-out ceremony, the purohit put a tilak on his forehead. The gold coconuts and betelnuts were offered to him and the other presents displayed for everybody to admire. Finally the Rana saw the gifts. The marriage date was fixed and Rao Viramdev returned home with a hundred tankas in cash and several baskets of sweets.
It seemed as if the whole of Chittor was going to Merta for the wedding. Other people’s marriages, your brother’s, sister’s or friend’s marriages are fun. Not your own. Prior to the marriage, Ganapati, the Auspicious One, sat in the palace for seven days. Each day, they fed the groom such rich food, he would soon sport an enormous paunch and become the twin brother of the elephant-headed god himself. The women in the family danced and sang every night, their men watched from the terrace and when a singer, instrumentalist or drummer had outdone herself or himself, they went down and gave a tanka coin to the artist.
There was much drinking, merry-making and badinage. The butt of all the humour was the bridegroom. He smiled, he laughed, he bore it all philosophically.
It took weeks to reach Merta. Rao Dudajee, Rattan Simha, Viramdev, everybody came to receive the Maharaj Kumar and his wedding party at the border of Merta. The baraat went round the village with great fanfare and came to a halt at the Arjun Simha Palace. There was talk of whether everybody would find a bed, forget a room, in the Palace. But they needn’t have worried. Merta was not about to be awed and patronized by Chittor or known as the poor relative who had married rich. The Palace which looked unimpressive from the outside, went on forever once you entered it. New wings had been added and the rooms well-appointed. They relaxed till sunset.
Why can’t they have marriages at a decent hour in this part of the country? The reason is they just don’t. Full stop. End of matter. Huge trunks were opened and everybody wore brand new clothes. Two darzees attended upon the Maharaj Kumar to make last minute adjustments and fittings. A dhoti which came down to the knees and a fine and intricately brocaded emerald green duglo on top. The most ornate and flashy piece of clothing was the turban. It was red in colour with a mighty turra of gold thread. Seven strings of pink pearls, the smallest at the top and the largest ones the size of marbles at the bottom, hung from the Prince’s neck.
It was time to go to the bride’s house and get married.
He was suddenly at the threshold. He had alighted from the elephant. The priest had performed the puja and tied a string around his father’s silk purse to make sure that the Rana didn’t spend even a copper coin while he was a guest of Merta. The drums and the trumpets were still blaring. If he turned round he would see his father, close family and half the clan behind him. But he felt cut off from them. He would have to make it on his own from now. There was no returning to his youth. His carefree days, the occasional wild parties, the absence of responsibilities, he had left them behind. Walk under the lintel and he would step into full-grown manhood. He felt abandoned and alone. Surely two steps in either direction couldn’t make such an irreversible difference. It was absurd but true nevertheless. He thought of his bride whom he had never seen. When she took those two steps out of the house, she would exile herself almost permanently from the people and the house and the trees and the birds and the temples and the town where she had grown up. In one stroke her past would be severed from her and turned to the ashes of memory.
He would stand by her, put his arms around her and protect her. They would make a life of their own. He touched the toran on the lintel of the gate with his sword seven times – why do symbols like the threshold or the toran carry such a burden of meanings – to signify that he had fought and won his bride in battle. He crossed over.
His aunt, his father’s sister who was married to the bride’s uncle Rao Viramdev and had brought her up, made him sit on a low wooden bajot, and put a tilak on his forehead. ‘Open your mouth,’ she said and fed him curds and sweets. Then she took out a gold tanka from the purse at her waist and stuck it over the tilak.
She led the way inside the house to the mandap. He sat down on a carpet. His bride walked in. The chunni which covered her head fell over her face. The marriage ceremony took forever. First his left leg and then the right thigh went to sleep. He had to be helped up and steadied for the saat phere. The girl’s odhani was tied to the siropa cloth in his hand. They walked seven times around the fire. He was in front of her on four of the circumlocutions and she thrice. At the end of five hours they were man and wife.
It must have been two, maybe two thirty when they were locked into their bedroom. He held her hand. She withdrew it. He held it again. ‘Sit,’ he said and gestured towards the bed. There were strings of mogra and marigolds hanging from the frame of the bed. She shook her head. He thought he saw a passing smile on her face. Was she laughing at him? She pointed under the bed. A toe was sticking out. It was one of her cousins lying in wait to surprise them as they became intimate. The cousin laughed and cursed himself for being spotted before the time was right. The crowd outside the door was just as disappointed that they hadn’t got the laughs they had anticipated. They took their own time to open the door and let the intruder out.
She sat on the bed. When he approached her, she shrank within herself. He was surprised to find that she was terrified of him. She was trembling and her teeth had set up a low percussive rhythm.
‘I will not hurt you,’ he said, ‘ever.’
She looked at him gratefully but the fear was still there. He pulled the chunni back from her head. Her hair was parted in the middle. It was tied in a plait that reached below her waist. There was a big red tikka on her forehead. Her nose was long. She had a wide mouth. The lower lip was large but delicate. It was her green eyes which held him. They shone with fear. They had the look of a hunted animal who’s waiting for the final blow and the agony to end. He realized that her fear made him clinical. He saw the pale, exposed flesh of her midriff. He wanted to bend down and kiss it till he had gentled her and her breathing became easy. He put his hand on her back. She shuddered and moved away.
He wanted to take her in his arms as he had promised himself when he was at the threshold. How could he convince her that he would protect her from all harm? He wished there was a lion or a tiger in the room. It wouldn’t matter to him if he was mauled, lost an eye or an arm, so long as he could kill it with his sword and make her understand that he was her shield.
The bell in the palace compound struck five. Most of the strings of flowers had come undone and been crushed on the bed. They were still playing hide-and-seek.
‘Please don’t run away. I am very tired as I am sure you are too.’
She had pulled the pallu back over her head and her face. Nobody had told him this is what husbands and wives do, at least newly-weds. Kausalya, the only one with whom he could talk freely about these matters hadn’t said a word. He felt empty and lost. He sat in the middle of the bed sunk in despair. Another minute and he was going to pass out. He lunged at her. She almost escaped but her plait flew into his hand. He pulled her back. She resisted but he jerked her sharply by her hair. Whimpering in pain, she walked backward till the bed stopped her. She fell on her back, her legs hanging outside the bed.
‘Please,’ she whispered, ‘I’m spoken for.’
What did she mean? Hadn’t they got married today? Wasn’t she his bride and virgin? He pinned her hands back, scooped her legs up from the ground, snapped the string of the ghagra open and half tore it pulling it down. ‘We are man and wife, man and wife,’ he was trying to persuade her as much as himself of the fact of their marriage. She said it again. ‘I’m betrothed to someone else.’
He crashed into her. She was tight and unyielding. He guided his member with his hand and slammed into her. Again and again. And again. She was crying. He had broken the barrier and gone through clean. He drew back and lunged all the way in. He had found his rhythm. Plunge, retract, out. Plunge, retract, out. She was limp, he went on maniacally. He missed the downward stroke by a fraction and hit the flat of her thigh. He withdrew and lunged again.
He was aghast when he saw his penis. It was broken. There was a jet of blood flowing out of it. It burst forth in spurts. Her choli, sari, ghagra, bed, everything was wet and red. She couldn’t take her eyes off his member. He looked at her in terror. He didn’t know how to stanch the flow of blood. There was sweat on his brows, he felt weak and yet the blood kept welling up. He knew he was going to die. He held his member down with his hands but they were so wet, it kept slipping. She pulled her chunni from under her head and wrapped it rapidly around his penis and held it up so that its mouth was pointing towards the ceiling of the room. After a couple of minutes, the spasms of blood subsided but she continued to hold it gently till he fell asleep.
