I have avoided speaking about the rights of succession as much as the other forbidden subject which tears my guts and paralyses my mind. But Prince Bahadur has touched a particularly raw spot and the least I can do is to gain a degree of relief by talking about it.
I am a self-conscious person. Loners usually are. Often, though not always, I know how my mind works and I have a fairly good idea of the kind of person I am. I am ambitious. Ambitious enough to want to be king today. In matters of policy and state, I have few scruples. If there was gain, solid gain in backing the sons of one of our archrivals, Prince Bahadur Khan for instance, I would gladly do it, however much it hurt me to go against the few principles I have.
But I am the son of Mewar and a Guhilot Sisodia to boot. It’s the only family tree in Rajasthan that can be traced all the way back to the seventh or eighth century and through an unbroken chain of thirty or forty kings. We are a country of bards and minstrels and story-tellers and troubadours. They never tire of telling stories of the heroic exploits of my ancestors. Of Bappa Rawal, Rana Hameer, Choonda and Rana Kumbha. I think we breathe in less air than we inhale these stories. Our anecdotes are all history. The bed-time stories of our children are about these larger-than-life monarchs and warriors from the past. Our arteries and veins are clogged with them. Sometimes I think we have no present, only the past.
They paint a rosy picture, these tellers of tales and very sensibly, don’t dwell too long or too often on the bad guys. That’s not quite true. What they do is far more dangerous. They turn the fratricidal and bloody struggles that always preface the assumption of the throne after a king dies, into a hundred or thousand pretty couplets about heroism and valour. They cannot see death’s head above the crown of each king. And nobody calculates the cost of all this insane and internecine bloodshed to Mewar. We are our enemies’ best friends. For what better chaos and anarchy can they wish upon Mewar than that which we wreak upon ourselves? Only a short-sighted fool will take solace from the fact that the same deadly struggles take place in the kingdoms of our neighbours.
I am the first-born and heir apparent and Maharaj Kumar. It can be said that the reason I’m so interested in primogeniture is because I stand to gain nothing less than the crown, the throne and the kingdom of Mewar. But it’s a little more than that. I am constantly aware of how fraught with uncertainty the future is for Father, me and my siblings. Because I cannot forget how red and sticky our hands are with the blood of our fathers and brothers. We don’t have to go too far back into the past. Take my great-grandfather Maharana Kumbha. Some say he is the greatest king Mewar has seen, greater than even Bappa Rawal and Hameer. This is fruitless speculation. What is of moment is that when Kumbha came to the throne, there was not a single axis from which he did not perceive either present or imminent danger. Our current foes, Delhi, Gujarat and Malwa were forever snapping at the flanks of Mewar, seizing huge chunks of its flesh or going for its throat. But as always amongst us Rajputs, it is not the outsider who is to be feared, it is our own blood and kith and kin who’ll undermine our power far more effectively than any foreign enemy could. The Rajput ruler of Sirohi, the Hadas of Bundi and Jodha of Marwar, not to mention the Rana’s brother, Khem Karan, often joined forces with our enemies and kept Kumbha on a short leash.
Be that as it may, Kumbha was the only Rana in living memory who waged a simultaneous battle with Gujarat and Malwa on two different fronts. It is true that he did not annihilate either of them, but he managed to keep each of his predators at bay, and enlarged the boundaries of Mewar as no other previous king had. He annexed Sarangpur, Gagrone, Narana, Ajmer, Mandaur, Mandalgarh, Khatu, Chatsu, Abu, Ranthambhor and other forts and towns, many of which have, since his death, changed ownership several times. He was forever on the move. And he seems to have had his hands more than full. So it’s difficult to imagine how he found the time to build thirty-two fortresses which are, to this day, bulwarks against the foreign invader. Building must have been his passion. He built temples, palaces and the Tower of Victory. He thought of geography as the timeless architecture of the cosmos. The only way a man could defy time was to leave behind buildings that would not die. He spent a great deal of time with his favourite architects, Jaita and Mandan. He suspected that some enemy would cut his life short but hoped that the work of his town planners would ensure him a place in Chittor’s posterity. His architects did not fail him. When you walk through Chittor today, you are stepping into Rana Kumbha’s vision of it.
He was shrewd, sensible and knew when to leave well enough alone. Forget all his achievements and successes, just the fact that he was around gave the country stability and continuity. They say he was built like Chittor, wide and tall and almost impregnable. He had not been ill since the day he was born. He had been on the throne for thirty-five years and looked good for another thirty or thirty-five. That’s when his son Prince Uda, whose ambition and impatience got out of hand, murdered his own father.
It was a shaky throne the Hatyara acquired and an uneasy crown he wore. Criminal careers prior to royal investiture were not unknown in Rajasthan and yet there was such a wave of revulsion against Uda, he felt threatened by his own people and feudal lords. To curry favour with princes and maharaos and rawals, he began to disband Kumbha’s acquisitions with such celerity and abandon that Mewar soon shrank to the size of a third-rate principality. He gave Abu back to the Deora prince, and bestowed Sambhur, Ajmer and the adjoining districts to the fledgling king of Jodhpur as the price of friendship. They accepted the bribes of entire provinces gladly but didn’t extend either loyalty or support to the self-orphaned king.
You cannot be unnaturally ambitious and soft-hearted at the same time. Uda should have scotched dissent with an iron hand. He had taken a drastic and dastardly step but he didn’t have the gumption to follow it through ruthlessly. Remorse is a powerful hallucinogen. He saw dangers and revolts brewing across his kingdom and was insecure to the extent that he went and prostrated himself before the Emperor of Delhi and even offered him a daughter to obtain the Sultan’s sanction for his acts and authority. It took barely five years of running from pillar to post to prince for Uda’s life to give out.
Which brings me to a brief digression. Being in the right has got nothing to do with courage or exceptional bravery. The forces of evil will fight just as enthusiastically or fiercely as the armies of righteousness. Again, people talk with a sense of wonderment about the incredible bravery of us Rajputs. This is missing the obvious. Whether it’s Father, my brothers, my ancestors, I or my countrymen, we are, it goes without saying, unsurpassedly fearless and valiant. There may be merit in this but little room for wonderment. From childhood, personal courage is taken for granted amongst us. I use the words taken for granted advisedly. No one in Mewar brainwashes children or stresses the importance of courage. It is all in a day’s work. I remember standing at one end of a large circular wooden enclosure when I was fourteen. The gate at the other end was opened and a tiger who had been starved for a week was let in. No, I was not expected to fight him with my bare hands. I was wearing steel armour, my arms were heavily cushioned, and I had a bow and arrow, a sword and shield.
Have you seen a hungry tiger? He is hyperactive, ferocious but unfocussed. I was a week’s lunch, dinner or whatever tigers have and he made straight for me. I aimed, not too carefully, I’m afraid, and shot an arrow. It should have pierced his heart or brains but it lodged in his rump. He turned round to check what had hit him and see if it could be got rid of. My tutor Rawat Jai Simha Balech was about to throw his javelin when Father stopped him with a wave of his hand. I was relieved. I took a second arrow from my quiver; the tiger was incensed with pain, rage and hunger and racing towards me. I rested my weight on one knee and let go of the arrow at an angle of thirty degrees. It went through his right eye and into his brain. He had an epileptic fit, he thrashed his limbs and rose. But the fire had died down and his vision badly impaired. I took the sword and brought it down on his neck. Father jumped over and helped me sever his head.
‘There, you are a real lion now, just like your name says.’
It had not occurred to me till then that the Simha in my name, as well as that in all Rajput names, signified that my people and I were lions.
The options of doubt and fear and retreat are unthinkable because these areas in our minds have been sealed off. In truth, they are no options at all. There is no discrimination or willingness in our valour. It is blind, headlong and unflinching because we don’t know any other way of reacting in a confrontation.
If the story of Uda is a grim comment on unchecked ambition, his brother and successor, Rana Raimul’s three eldest sons did not seem to have learnt any lesson from it. Their abominable impatience to discover who would inherit the throne even while their father was young and in complete control of his senses, is a curse that will blight all future generations of the House of Mewar.
My grandfather Rana Raimul had fourteen sons and two daughters from eleven queens. The eldest, Prithviraj and the third, Sangram Simha or Sanga as he came to be known later on, were the children of the Jhali princess, Ratan Kanwar. The second son by another queen was called Jaimal. To this murky cast of characters, add the young princes’ uncle Surajmal, a man of devious gifts and a talent for inflaming passions and one whose aspirations did not preclude the throne of Mewar. Who would be king was a subject that took precedence over all else and preoccupied the minds of the princes, yet none of them had ever dared to voice their innermost thoughts until one day Surajmal said: ‘Who will win the prize for archery, who will grab the tits of the luscious maid-in-waiting, Satya Kanwar and bed her, whose elephant will dash the hopes of the others in tomorrow’s elephant fights, who in God’s name gives a damn about the outcome of any of these? Don’t look so shocked Sangram, there’s only one question and one question alone that is the companion of your waking and dreaming hours.’
The princes looked away till Prithviraj, the impulsive one who could hold neither his tongue on a leash nor his sword in its scabbard, looked defiantly at his uncle and asked, ‘And what question is that?’
‘A simple question, who will be king when your father is no more?’
There, the sacrilegious, forbidden words had been spoken and the earth hadn’t cracked open, their uncle had not been smitten by lightning and the heads of the three princes were still on their shoulders.
‘You have any answers?’ it was still Prithviraj talking, ‘Because by right it’s mine and nobody else’s.’
‘By law, yes. After all, you are the first-born male in the family. But who knows, the plague could kill you, your father may banish you, or you may meet with a fatal accident. Or there’s always the possibility that one of your dear brothers who loves you so inordinately and indiscriminately could arrange to have you murdered.’
‘I asked you if you had any answers, not this prattle about accidents and disease.’
‘It’s a damned shame, isn’t it? Time alone knows and he will not reveal his secret till he thinks the moment is ripe.’
The young princes looked at their uncle in disgust. He was a Naradmuni and nothing more. He named the unnamable, mentioned the unmentionable, and after he had roused your curiosity, left you on tenterhooks.
‘What precious words, the very essence of sagacity. Uncle, spare us your philosophical homilies,’ Jaimal spoke witheringly.
All three of them turned away and were about to leave.
‘There is,’ their uncle’s voice was soft and laggardly, ‘there is one other way.’
‘Good for you. Keep it to yourself.’ Prithviraj said. ‘I’m not interested in your childish games.’
‘Very well then. I’ll go to the priestess of Charani Devi at Nahar Magra with Jaimal and Sangram.’
The audacity of the thought was breathtaking. No, it was a little more than that. It was an awesome idea, one that froze the blood in your veins, gave you cramps in the pit of your stomach and made your tongue so heavy, it was impossible to utter a word. There was terror in the hearts of the princes for you did not take Charani Devi’s name lightly and you did not take it in vain. They were off to Nahar Magra, the tiger’s mount but even the bold Prithviraj would rather be riding back home. What kept them going was the fear that the others would penetrate, at whatever risk to their persons, the mystery at the heart of the future.
There were many legends about the Devi. One of them Kausalya told me when I was a child. Time was suffering from advanced symptoms of megalomania. He was the framework or the boundaries within which everything that happened, happened. The demons, the gods, space and the cosmos were time-bound. Nothing – not even nothingness – existed beyond the limits of time. Little wonder then that Time began to perceive himself as cause and consequence, the begetter and begotten, as the beginning and the end. It was not just that he had delusions of grandeur, it appeared that he was what he claimed to be: omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.
The gods including Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva had seen many crises, they had often been on the verge of defeat or extinction and yet always at the last minute, through imagination, guile, trickery, or the clever use of power, they had pulled back from the edge of chaos and won the day. But Time had been on their side then. Things were a little different now. They sent embassies of goodwill and reconciliation to Time, they held war-councils, they intrigued and thought of double, triple and even quadruple crosses. They had a vast repertory of feints and sleights-of-hand, bribes, betrayals and treachery. Time might take the bait but he could also outlive it. They had to seduce him. They rendered his dreams pornographic and when his passion was aroused, they sent him apsaras and Vishnu in the form of Mohini.
To no avail. The moment of truth for the gods who had survived all manner of travails and calamities, was at hand. Time was about to ingest the three worlds when Charani Devi hurried past. She was gathering together the million and one strands of Time, here, there, up, below, before, yonder, next; she didn’t look to the left or the right, her hands stretched, foreshortened, her fingers picked up the loose ends and the unbroken threads, endless stretches of prehistory, history-to-be and the simultaneous present that is the same second multiplied by all the points in space, she must have put glue on the tips of her fingers for not a straggly piece of raveled warp or woof escaped her, she bundled it up helter skelter, no beginning, no middle, no end, no order, just one monstrously big ball the size of the cosmos. Then the Devi opened her mouth and swallowed all of it in one gulp.
But just as the gods were about to rejoice and celebrate this greatest of victories, they realized that they had circumvented one calamity to fall prey to another that was even more devastating. Time had stopped dead. And so had everything else. Because life, as we all know, can only occur on the axis of time with its three sharp and fluid divisions: the past, the present and the future. With Time sitting confused and muddle-headed in the belly of Charani Devi, life would cease to be
So the gods went into a huddle once again. They could tear open Charani Devi’s stomach – with her consent of course – and let Time out. But that would get them back to square one. Or worse, since Time would know that the gods couldn’t do without him. There was one other solution, an unthinkable one since nobody, not even Brahma had the courage to approach Charani Devi. She had just done the impossible, performed a service that had saved the universe. And now they wanted her to do something even more impossible, something that would deprive her of sleep forever; something that would never, never end; something that would be the loneliest job in the world. When no one else comes forward, Shiva takes up the challenge. He went over to the Devi’s mansion in the heavens. She was larger than any pregnant woman ever would be for she had Time in her belly
‘You know what I’ve come for, don’t you?’ Shiva asked her.
She looked at him with her large, limpid eyes. She had always been one of the liveliest and most restless goddesses in the heavens. But the knowledge of her fate did something strange to her face. It gave her a composure and stillness that wrenched at Shiva’s heart. Shiva gently took her hand in his. She held it tightly as if she would never let go of it.
‘You want me to unravel the tapeworm of Time. You want the present back.’ She spoke after a long time.
‘Will you do it?’ he asked her. It seemed as if she would never answer;
‘It is going to be a long, lonely and loveless vigil,’ she said.
‘Long and lonely, yes.’ Shiva told her, ‘but not loveless. No one will ever part us. You have but to think of me and wherever I am, I shall return to you.’
And he embraced her forever. For that is what the conjoining of the ling and the yoni is, a timeless union. And so Charani Devi sits in the temple and delicately, oh so delicately, coaxes a fraction of a millimetre of the worm from her mouth. She can never close her mouth for if she does, all mankind and devilkind and all godkind would be forever frozen in suspended animation.
No, it certainly wouldn’t do to earn the Devi’s displeasure.
The Devi has an assistant, a priestess who keeps a watch over her. She helps her when the Devi wants to take a bath, change her clothes or put some soothing unguent in her eyes. And because she is so close, because of her sheer physical proximity, she can look into the Devi’s open mouth, all the way back to where her tonsils are and as far into the future where her mouth turns into her gullet. And that is how the priestess has the powers of an oracle and a seer.
Prithviraj and Jaimal entered the dark, cold and underground temple of the Devi first. When they could see a little clearly, they seated themselves on a pallet. Sanga, who followed them, stumbled in the darkness. He didn’t wish to give offence to the Devi and sat down where he was. Surajmal came after him but he waited till he could see better and then surveyed his surroundings. Prithviraj spotted the priestess behind a curtain. She was standing still as a tree and her eyes were closed but he knew that she was watching them. It’s now or never, he told himself. Surajmal chose a spot next to Sangram. He had barely put his knee down when Prithviraj spoke.
‘Priestess, we’ve come to find out who amongst us will be the next king of Mewar.
Prithviraj had sprung the question, as was his wont, impulsively and without waiting to do obeisance to the Devi and without greeting the prophetess or paying his respects. The dread query had been shot like an arrow from a bow. There was no going back now.
Surajmal, with one knee set down and the rest of him in midair waited for the sibyl’s response. How could he have missed the Priestess, he asked himself, despite careful scouting? Was she amused, was there a sardonic line of irony between her lips? Her eyes passed over each of them and then came back to Sangram Simha.
‘Sangram could not see and sat down where he could. He is not even aware that he is sitting on the Devi’s panther hide,’ the Priestess spoke almost inaudibly.
Sangram looked down. He really was sitting on the panther hide. Had he insulted the Devi by presuming to occupy her seat? Was she angry with him? And what form of punishment would she prescribe? Everyone knew that since the day she had saved the cosmos, she had developed a terrible temper and could consign the object of her wrath to a fate worse than death. He hurriedly raised himself, then realized it was too late and sat down again.
‘Strange are the ways of Fate,’ the priestess’ eyes were still closed, ‘it has chosen him to be the next king.’
Who was she talking about? Obviously she was doing things blindly, talking of the strange ways of Fate when it was she, the soothsayer, who was muddling things up. Prithviraj was sure she was making a mistake. He wasn’t going to permit that. He would open her eyes and make her look at all three of them and then foretell the future. Surajmal was, anyway, not in the line of succession and was merely accompanying the young princes.
‘As to the uncle,’ she interrupted Prithviraj’s train of thought, ‘he didn’t lurch around and fall, he waited like a wise man to look before he leapt and then deliberately chose the spot next to Sangrams. But all Sangram had left him of the striped skin was room enough for a limb. The throne will be within your reach, Surajmal, you may even graze against it but your hold on it will always be precarious. Ah Surajmal, if only your destiny had been as bountiful as your aspirations.’
‘What about me?’ Prithviraj had got his sword out of its scabbard. ‘What about me, old woman?’ There was so much rage and disappointment in his eyes, he must have been as blind as she was. ‘I’ll make you change your accursed prophecy even now,’ he was half-crazed as he brandished his sword. But the oracle was no longer there. The curtain fluttered and try as he might, Prithviraj could not part it. ‘I’ll prove you wrong. I was born to be king. No one else will take my throne, least of all this little runt of a brother of mine.’ The sword came down hard. Sangram drew his head away sharply. His left eyeball sat dead on its blade. Dislodged and set free from its mooring in Sangram’s eye socket, the soft egg-white with its black yolk surveyed the scene disinterestedly. Prithviraj brought the blade down again but Surajmal’s sword halted its progress. Blood poured from the hole in Sangram’s head. Prithviraj’s sword caught him above the right shoulder and below his ribs as he ran blindly out of the door of the cave
Surajmal and Prithviraj fought without let. It was evident that they would not stop till one of them was dead. Was there any reason why they were fighting now? This, as time was to prove, was but the first of their confrontations. It became an addiction and an obsession. At least later on there were pretexts – land, kingdoms small and big, territorial imperatives. But the unmentionable truth was simple. They enjoyed it. Mauling each other had become an end in itself; it gave purpose to their lives. It’s curious that they never did manage to kill each other. Or perhaps, not so odd after all. For what would one have done if the other had fallen?
‘While you fight our uncle,’ Jaimal spoke to Prithviraj, ‘the usurper has flown.’
Prithviraj came to his senses. The wounded Surajmal was happy to get a respite. Jaimal asked the villagers the direction in which their brother had fled. They pointed towards Chaturbhuja. Prithviraj and Jaimal mounted their horses and the chase was on.
Rathor Bida Jaimialot and his two sons had come to the village of Sevantri to visit the shrine of Rup Narain. They had prayed there, made their offerings and were about to return home when Sangram rode into the compound of the temple, his clothes bathed in blood
‘Rathor Bidaji, I, Sangram Simha, son of Rana Raimul, beg you for asylum and protection from my brothers Prithviraj and Jaimal who are in hot pursuit of me and wish to kill me.’
Sangram had lost a lot of blood. He fainted. The Rathor and his sons took him inside the temple, washed his wounds and bandaged them. They revived him with water and strong medicinal herbs. They were about to ask him the why and the wherefore of his feud with his brothers when they heard the sound of galloping horses
‘Have you seen our brother?’ Prithviraj asked Bida who was saddling his horse. ‘He rode in five minutes ahead of us.’
‘No,’ replied the Rathor, ‘no one’s been here. My sons and I are on our way home after visiting Rup Narainji.’
‘And whose horse may that be, Bidajee? An extra steed you brought along for the journey, just in case one of your other horses tired or had an accident?’
‘Yes, just as a safeguard.’
‘Then why is he foaming at the mouth and sweating so copiously? And why do I keep getting the feeling I have seen him before? Not once but very often?’ Jaimal’s sword was out. ‘Hand over my brother, Sangram Simha. Whatever the cause, the fight is between him and us. It has nothing to do with you. All I ask of you is to give Sangram to us. After that take your sons and go in peace.
‘I am a Rajput like you, Prince Jaimal. I gave my word to Prince Sangram Simha to give him shelter and protect him. The only way you can take him is by killing me and my sons.’
What was a Rajput’s word worth? Not much. It cost Rathor Jaitmalot and his sons their lives. They did brave battle. They stood their ground while Prithviraj and Jaimal slashed and struck them from their horses and Sangram Simha made his escape
Should Rathor Bida not have given his word? Should he have broken it? Where does one draw the line? When my own mother, the Maharani and at least nominally, the first among queens, told me this story and she told it often and when she forgot to, I forced her as a child to tell it again till I had fallen asleep, there were no villains, only heroes. Prithviraj, Jaimal, Surajmul, Bida and his sons, Sangram Simha, all of them. Would it have made a difference if Father had died at the hands of his brothers? Would they have been any the less heroic? It would have been all the same to her and to all the other Rajputs who live to tell the tale. Perhaps it makes no difference to Father either. At least he never shows it. He certainly never mentions the subject. Perhaps I am the only one who gets all hot and bothered with the thought of such wanton blood-letting.
Father waited till the wounds in his eye and the rest of his body had healed. He changed his attire and lived as a cowherd in Marwar. They say he was dismissed from his job because he was thought to be stupid and was pulled up for eating flour cakes when he was supposed to have guarded the animals. He left Marwar and travelled incognito towards Ajmer. On the way, he enrolled in the army of Rao Karam Chand, the Parmar chief of Srinagar, the ancient capital of the Parmars about ten miles from Ajmer. The Parmars were now a spent force, but Rao Karam Chand had still an army of about three thousand Rajputs and Father was just another soldier among them.
Years went by. Rana Raimul banished Prince Prithviraj from Chittor when he heard of the quarrel between the brothers. Prithviraj took off in a dudgeon but in no time at all made a name for himself. Strife was his element. In a race of braves, he outshone everyone with his courageous deeds and spectacular exploits. It appeared that Prince Jaimal, the silent spectator at Charani Devi’s temple would inherit the Rana’s throne. He was circumspect and he bided his time. But he ran out of luck when he affronted the princess he loved, and her father killed him on the spot. Prithviraj was back in favour and recalled. The throne and the crown would now surely be his. He married the woman that Jaimal had desired. The two of them, Prithviraj and Tara, continued their dare-devil exploits, repossessed kingdoms, drove their enemies to despair and built up an entire mythos around their careers, becoming the darlings of mass imagination.
My father remained faceless until one day – take the story anyway you want, with a pinch or a fistful of salt since it’s been told about many a prince in hiding – until one day Jai Simha Balech (yes, the very same one whose hospitality my brother Vikramaditya had so abused) and Janna Sindhal discovered him sleeping in the fields while a snake reared its head over the exile. As if this was not symbolic enough, a bird of omen alighted on the snake’s crested head and chattered away. The omens were duly deciphered and Karam Chand learnt that no less than a prince of the house of Mewar was serving him. Father must have regretted the loss of his anonymity deeply for soon the news had spread and Prithviraj was on his way to settle old scores and wrongs that none other than he himself had initiated
What would have transzired if the two brothers had confronted each other after so many years must remain a matter of conjecture since Prithviraj’s progress was halted by a letter from his sister, Anandabai. She recounted how badly her husband, Rao Jugmal of Sirohi was treating her. She begged her brother to free her and take her back to the paternal roof. Uncle Prithviraj, who I never did meet, was in a rage and swore vengeance on the Rao of Sirohi. A slight change in plans and routing and the Prince was at Sirohi by midnight. He did not knock. He scaled the palace walls and Jugmal woke up with a start to find a dagger at his throat.
My uncle would have slit the offending throat without compunction but his sister, responding to her husband’s appeals for mercy, beseeched him to spare Jugmal’s life. Uncle agreed on condition that Jugmal hold his wife’s shoes over his head, touch her feet and beg her forgiveness. Jugmal complied immediately. All was forgiven and forgotten. The next day Jugmal feted his royal guest at a great party. All the noblemen of Sirohi were present on this occasion of reconciliation. Soon it was time to bid Prince Prithviraj goodbye. Jugmal presented the Prince with three of the confections for which he was so renowned.
Uncle reached the shrine of Mamadevi and was in sight of his beloved Kumbhalgarh, but realized that he would never make it. He sent for his wife who was at the fort but Jugmal’s poison had worked its way to his heart and brain before Tara Bai could bid him farewell. She had no wish to live on without the husband who had been her companion in the great adventure of life. Prince Prithviraj’s pyre was lit. As the flames shot up, Tara Bai embraced him and ascended to the regions of the sun.
The road was clear now. Rana Raimul was ill and it was time to call Prince Sangram Simha from Rao Karam Chand’s estates in Srinagar.
Blood. Will we ever be able to stanch the rivers of blood? How often have I pleaded with Father to issue a royal proclamation, once and for all, that anybody but the heir apparent, who has designs upon the crown will be put instantaneously to death?
Father listens and nods his head in assent. He understands how many lives this will save, how many misfortunes it will avert, and how much our sovereign kingdom will stand to gain. Who can appreciate the implications of my proposal better than he who had suffered so many indignities for so long? And yet he will not put his seal to such a decree because Rani Karmavati stands over his shoulder.
‘You do us a signal honour, Prince, by offering us the hand of friendship. There is nothing more valuable that either His Majesty, the Rana or I would want in our relationship with the kingdom of Gujarat. I think all of us have, in the process of being constantly at war, lost sight of an extraordinary simple truth. That the dividends of peace are greater than all the plunder of victories. But I must beg your indulgence in two matters.’
Did the Shehzada Bahadur know what was coming? He hadn’t once mentioned or asked for Vikramaditya. Butter, as they say, wouldn’t melt in his mouth. His sources, I was sure, had already informed him of Vikramaditya’s imprisonment. He knew that we could not but be aware of the dialogue that my brother and he had started about carving up Mewar and Gujarat among themselves. Something had obviously gone wrong at his end that had made him bring forward his departure, without prior notice to his co-conspirator in Chittor and without the forces which were supposed to owe allegiance to him.
Young though he was, certainly younger than I, he was too steeped in the arts of diplomacy to let on that he had suffered setbacks at home as well as after his arrival in Chittor.
‘It is I who am the suppliant and must beg your indulgence. Pray, what are the two matters?’
‘I need to inform His Majesty, the Rana, of your arrival and of your proposals. He is, as you are aware, the final arbiter of all matters in Mewar.’
‘Yes, of course, that goes without saying. Please tell His Majesty that I send him my greetings and wish him success.’
‘I am certain of his warm reception to both, your presence here and to your very interesting proposition,’ I continued as if he had not interrupted me. I was not about to tell him that I had already dispatched a letter to his father, the Sultan of Gujarat. I too sent him greetings but desisted from wishing him success in his war with Mewar. I said that he must have been not a little anxious about the disappearance of his second son, Prince Bahadur and that I was happy to rid him of this source of worry. Prince Bahadur was with us, he was well and would continue to be our guest for as long as he wished. Yours sincerely, etcetera.
He was bound to hear of his son’s presence in Chittor. Might as well get some benefit from it
‘The business of the troops that you require may pose a slight problem. Your intelligence is precise. We do have about twenty thousand troops in Mewar. But you’ll be the first to agree that it would be unwise to enlist them all in the expedition to Ahmedabad and leave Mewar exposed.
‘But, and let me stress this, the last thing I have in mind is to throw a damper on your scheme. What I suggest is this: as an earnest of our intentions and commitment, I will write to the Rana asking him to spare ten thousand troops from our forces here. While we await his reply, you could spend that time raising another ten thousand troops from your friends among the nobles and vassals of Gujarat and, needless to say, from your loyal forces in Ahmedabad and in the rest of the kingdom. Our combined armies then would make short work of capturing Ahmedabad.’
Was I lying? No, I wasn’t and he knew that. At least I hoped he did. What I was doing was hedging Mewar’s bets. Of course, we could raise more than twenty thousand troops in our kingdom and from our dependencies but that was neither here nor there. It was crucial that if the attack on Ahmedabad took place, it should look like a spontaneous revolt or uprising from within Gujarat itself and not from an established and old foe like Chittor.
He knew that I had him in a bind but as his reply showed, he was also astute enough to realize that I was talking sense. ‘I think you’ve got a point there. Without my own troops and the backing of a section of the nobles, I might just end up alienating the people of Ahmedabad.’
I hoped that I had bought time and had come across as supportive but not over-eager or impulsive.
‘Now that we are through with business, perhaps we can turn our attention to some pressing matters like pleasures. We have had a drought here since His Majesty, the Rana left. You are just the excuse I needed. How would you like to go hunting one of these days? I know that you are an ardent patron of wrestling. I am afraid our wrestlers won’t be able to match the skill and speed of your stalwarts but you could assess our teams and advise us on how to improve them.’
I rose to leave soon after and then deliberately turned around at the door. ‘Oh, I forgot a little something. Whenever you feel like company, just inform Mangal Simha here. He will see to your needs instantly. Perhaps if you are specific about your requirements, he might even guarantee satisfaction.’
