The Prince and the Nightingale

by Abhishek Bhatt

  There were murmurings about riots in Bombay too. In Bandra, Meera’s Bandra, Abhimanyu thought as he placed a call to his apartment in the slim hope of reaching Penaru and asking him to check on Meera’s family, but the operator informed him that no one was answering the phone. He was surprised at his own desperation to see Meera at once. A woman he had hardly known for a few months was now the first thing on his mind. He had no qualms about coming clean about their secret affair in front of Ranjit Singh in order to convince him to leave for Bombay right away. The pleaded with him to stay put, but Abhimanyu was a man possessed. Ranjit Singh was obliged to make the perilous journey, and off they went. But not before the Gaekwads handed them a gun, just in case.

  They spent most of the journey back to Bombay in petrified silence. The same bends that they enjoyed driving through on their way to Baroda now looked menacing. There were hints of violence as they passed the same villages. A fire burning at a crossroad, rocks strewn across a town square. When they knocked on the door of the circuit house, Abhimanyu was on edge, clutching his cricket bat like a weapon till a friendly face appeared to greet them. But the violence caught up with them when they got closer to Bombay. As they drove off a dirt road to enter a small town on the edges of the city, they encountered a surreal scene of armed families – men, women, children as young as five holding axes, kitchen knives, rags dripping in kerosene, standing on either side of a narrow lane. Eyes filled with anger and anticipation. Fright pierced through the windshield of the car. Like zombies, they stood bewildered at the site of a Maserati driving through their ravaged street. The mob stood still, on the verge of an attack, unable to determine the religion of the passengers, and whether they were carrying any weapons. Whose side were they on? A few in the mob banged on the hood of the car, barking orders at the princes to step out of the vehicle. It would have taken one chant, Abhimanyu would later say in acknowledging how close they were to death on that fateful night – had one person shouted out to attack, the neighbourhood would have devoured them within seconds. Instead, the car dragged through roughly 800 metres of the street and escaped with a few scratches.

  They reached Bombay, but could not enter Bandra on account of a lockdown. Abhimanyu tried reasoning with a sub-inspector and asked for help, but to no avail. Things were too risky, he was told. Dozens had been killed on the street and the riots were ongoing. Abhimanyu asked Ranjit Singh to head home, thanking him for everything – among the few words they exchanged on the whole trip – and stayed put at the police station closest to Bandra. He spent the night in his car at the station parking lot. Penaru turned up the next morning with breakfast and Abhimanyu was relieved to know that he was safe and sound. He declined the breakfast. After much lobbying, an officer agreed to escort the prince to Meera’s address. They drove past Lucky’s restaurant, which looked like an outpost in a war zone. Thankfully, Meera’s neighbourhood looked like it had escaped the madness.

  Abhimanyu got off the police jeep as soon as they reached Meera’s house. He stood at the gate, with one hand still holding onto the vehicle’s grab bar. He couldn’t really go in and check on Meera, could he? Abhimanyu wasn’t sure he could keep his emotions under check. Just then, he heard the faint voice that belonged to the angels. The sound of Meera’s morning riyaz floating out of her room. She was safe; the family was safe.

  The country had descended into chaos, but his lover was safe, at last. He wanted to grab her in his arms and never let go. But a minor technicality about their affair being a secret held him back. What if people came to know about their illicit relationship, he thought. Illicit. How he hated that word. Such practical matters took over his passion as he sat back in the jeep, wallowing in guilt.

  Chapter 6

  “THE SUREST WAY TO A MAN’S HEART”

  Meera stared at the sentence before her, written in bold letters on the piece of paper she had received in the waiting room of a recording studio. There were about six other women there; most of them around her age, one seemed older. What kind of voice did the advertising company want? Uncertainty filled her heart, and she began to regret her decision to answer the call for voice-over artists that she’d seen in the newspaper. But Abhimanyu had convinced her to try new avenues to showcase her voice, so she was going to give this her best shot.

  ‘You’ll be up in fifteen-twenty minutes,’ a Parsi secretary informed her curtly and returned to the audition room. One of the candidates sitting next to Meera began practicing: ‘The suuurest way to a man’s heart.’

  Another girl followed with a rather husky rendition of the line: ‘The shhurrest whaay to a man’s hhheart.’ She was trying to sound sexy, but what if they were selling a biscuit, Meera wondered. She suppressed a giggle and looked around the room. A third girl was testing her vocals – high-pitched aaahs quickly followed by low-pitched ooohs. Meera realized that it was going to be way more competitive than she had imagined. She sat there amid the cacophony of women rehearsing, thinking about how she would bring up her audition with Abhimanyu when she met him next. Until it was her turn.

  The audition room was dark, with glowing multicolour knobs and metallic switches on high-end recording equipment.

  ‘Meera, please get inside the booth,’ a voice said.

  She couldn’t make out who it was. Heck, she couldn’t make out how many people were in the room. She made her way into an even darker recording booth and found herself facing a giant microphone. The booth was sound proof and she could hear herself gulp in the dead silence. A few moments passed before she heard a knock on a small glass panel right in front of the microphone. A shaggy-haired man in a kurta was gesturing with his hands, touching his ears constantly. His lips were moving too, but she couldn’t hear a thing. After a few attempts, the man gave up and came around to the door of her booth.

  ‘Put the headphone on, will you?’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Sure,’ she said, and placed a heavily-padded pair of headphones over her ears.

  ‘State your name, please,’ the male voice in the headphone instructed.

  ‘Meera Apte.’

  ‘Alright, let’s take it from the top.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Say your line, Meera.’

  ‘The surest way to a man’s heart?’

  ‘Why’s that a question? We’re trying to sell. Say it with conviction.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She took a deep breath, but grew more nervous.

  ‘Err, could you tell me what the product is?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, just say the line.’ The voice at the other end was losing patience.

  ‘The ...’ She cleared her throat. ‘The surest man to the way’s heart. Excuse me! Sorry! The surest way to a—’

  Why can’t I remember a simple line!

  ‘It’s okay, take your time, Meera,’ a different voice spoke to her now. It sounded kinder, less curt, and she relaxed a bit.

  ‘A surest way to a man’s heart,’ she finally managed.

  ‘It’s THE. The surest way to a man’s heart,’ the voice corrected her.

  It was then that she realized why it was important for her to rehearse her lines and clear up her vocals, just like the other girls in the waiting room.

  ‘The surest way to a man’s heart.’

  There was a moment of silence that felt too long to be comfortable.

  ‘Go on, keep going. Say it in a few different ways.’

  ‘The surest way to a man’s heart. The surest way to a man’s heart. The surest way to a man’s heart. The surest way to a man’s heart.’

  She went on. It was nerve-wracking as she heard her own voice on the headphones – she thought she sounded terrible. After a dozen attempts, the previous man interrupted her again.

  ‘Okay, okay, let’s try the jingle now. Are you getting this?’

  She could hear a sing-song version of the line being played for her. A perky female voice with exaggerated joy sang ‘A surest way to the man’s heart’ as though she’d found true love. />
  ‘Could you please play that again?’

  The tune was awful and the tone made no sense to her. She could point out a million things wrong in that single line. Thankfully, it stopped playing after a few minutes.

  ‘Okay, let’s go.’

  How can I mimic that, she thought. Her guru would have thrown her out of the gharana if she ever attempted such an atrocity in his presence. So, she gathered all her courage and sang the line as it should have been sung. No one spoke for a while.

  ‘Meera, we want you to deliver it in the same style as the sample track,’ the man with the gentler voice spoke.

  ‘With all due respect, sir, the tempo is wrong. I can’t even place the—’

  ‘It’s not a Dhrupad or whatever, it’s a jingle. Just get on with it, will you?’ The first voice was back and sounding decidedly displeased with her. Something inside her snapped.

  ‘Sorry, but I can’t do this,’ she said definitively. ‘Thank you for your time.’

  Not waiting to hear their response, she took off the headphones and briskly walked out of the audition room.

  The noise of Bombay hit her with full force the moment she stepped out of the studio. A thousand honking vehicles and galloping horse carts were competing with each other in a rush to go home after a busy day. Meera knew that it wasn’t particularly brave of her to refuse to compromise her principles for money. The fact was that she had choked. She could have sung off-key if she tried, but an old, deep-seated fear of performing professionally had taken over her. A familiar fear that had overpowered her a dozen times in the past, resulting in many missed opportunities. A fear whose genesis she wasn’t ready to fully acknowlegde yet, let alone confronting it. Her specatcular performance at the Orient Club was an exception, not the norm. Abhimanyu’s invigorating presence had helped her come through. But now, in his absence, her anxiety got the better of her. She folded the paper with the tag line, tucked it in her pocket and boarded the bus in despair to meet her man at Lucky’s.

  She told him what had happened, and was strangely comforted when he laughed off the incident with her. His words of encouragement, persuading her to not give up and continue looking for such opportunities till she met the right people who shared her principles, alleviated some of her fears. She agreed, saying she finally knew what it felt like to be in a recording booth and hear one’s own voice as a listner. She found Abhimanyu to be in strangely good spirits. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, and started for the exit. They knew the drill by then – Abhimanyu would walk out of the door first, turn around the restaurant and wait for Meera at a deserted alley nearby. Meera would follow and meet him there a few moments later. The two would then say their goodbyes in private and go their separate ways. But that day, Meera found him standing next to his car with the door held ajar. ‘Get in.’ It was an order and a request wrapped into one.

  Meera watched the city whizz by as she sat in the passenger seat, not uttering a word till they reached Alibaug. She didn’t have much to say, but smiled as they sat in a beachside shack, sipping coconut water with their gazes locked and hearts pounding as the setting sun left a salmon and gold sky for them to marvel at. A coy, captivating smile Abhimanyu just couldn’t get enough of.

  ‘Say something,’ Meera pleaded.

  ‘There’s nothing left to say,’ he said with his eyes roving over every inch of her face, taking it all in.

  ‘Abhimanyu.’

  He looked on without answering.

  ‘Abhi…’

  She saw his face turn forlorn a tad bit.

  ‘Find a way to come to Ranakpour alone for a few days,’ he said quietly, reaching out to hold her hand across the table.

  The unrest following Gandhi’s assassination had long subsided, but Abhimanyu had realized that keeping their relationship a secret was no longer an option. The guilt and the strain of not being able to see her in the flesh that fateful morning had stayed with him. Facing up to his family about his love for Meera was far better than carrying on like thieves, he had concluded. The world had changed, and he must convince his father to change with it.

  ‘I want you to meet my mother. Wait, wait, listen to me, hear me out,’ he said, just as Meera began to protest. ‘It’s been on my mind since January, and I’ve arranged for everything. There will be a match at the palace grounds – the first of the quadrangular series I’ve been working on. Gaekwad’s Baroda team has accepted the invitation. I want to introduce you to my mother and ask for her help to convince Daata about us.’

  ‘Why are you doing this, Abhimanyu?’ she asked, confused.

  ‘We’ve been together three months, and yet it feels like an eternity. I can’t keep living like this, Meera. I want to be with you, always’

  ‘Neither can I. But what if they say no?’

  The thought hadn’t even crossed the prince’s mind.

  ‘What if I am able to persuade them to say yes? How will I ever know if I don’t even try?’

  Meera thought Abhimanyu was being too optimistic, naïve even, to think that their relationship would win his family’s approval. All her misgivings about Abhimanyu’s royal family – the same ones she’d had about him in the beginning – were threatening to cloud her mind. But he was right – how would they know if they didn’t even make an attempt to find out?

  After some back and forth on the subject, Meera agreed. She was going to lie to her family about going on a week-long trip to visit a friend in Nashik. Perhaps she trusted Abhimanyu to make it work, or perhaps she wanted this fairytale romance to come to its inevitable end so that she could get on with her life without her proverbial knight in shining armour waiting around the corner for her. Meera, ever the idealist in her approach to her career, was a pragmatist when it came to matters of the heart.

  *

  Ranakpour is straight out of a story book, Meera thought to herself. It was the city girl’s first trip out of Maharashtra; the long train and car ride were a first as well. But only when she entered the grand palace did it dawn upon her that she was in a relationship with a royal. The same unassuming loner who looked completely out of place in Bombay was right at home in this palace with over a hundred rooms.

  She had read about royalty, seen a few depictions of their lives in the movies, but nothing could have prepared her for the actual experience. Little things surprised and amused her – her name engraved on her spoon and fork at dinner; the Ranakpour bow she encountered every single time she’d bump into a member of the royal staff in the gilded corridors; Abhimanyu’s portraits hanging in gold-plated frames. What bemused her the most was how Abhimanyu had to seek a formal appointment to meet his mother and introduce her. Meera and the Gaekwads were on a palace tour as the royal guests. Towards the end of the tour, they reached the queen’s quarters, and Abhimanyu asked the sentry if he could meet with the queen that evening. The sentry went in and came back with a time – 5 p.m. – which Abhimanyu accepted, and also informed the man that Meera Apte from Bombay would be accompanying him. ‘Hujoor,’ said the sentry, and the arrangement was agreed upon. If Meera was already nervous about meeting the queen, this kind of formality made her even more anxious.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon locked up in her room, seriously questioning her wardrobe. The fanciest sari she had brought with her now looked woefully plain. She visualized the queen wearing a crown, seated on a throne as she quizzed her. Meera shook her head. No, that was too absurd to be true. All of this felt like a dream – a middle-class girl born in the suburbs of Bombay in a 900-square-foot home, where even the time to sit under the electric fan had to be rationed, was about to meet the queen of Ranakpour to announce that she was in love with her son.

  *

  ‘Sing for me.’

  Not in her wildest dreams would Meera have thought that the queen would request a song by way of an opening statement. She felt she was in an audition again, albeit in a grander setting.

  Kaushalya Devi was not on a throne, but a couch in her private quar
ters. Meera stood before her, with Abhimanyu at her side. She now turned to get a hint, any hint, as to whether this was a prank, or if she really had to sing. Nothing. He didn’t even blink. Her mind churned with the worst stereotypes of evil queens she had read about. Was this just an elaborate plot to humiliate her so that she would run away, never to return?

  Since there was no way of knowing, Meera did the only thing she could. She began singing.

  ‘Akath kahani prem ki, kuch kahi na jaye …’

  She packed a range of emotions into half a verse. A tremble in her voice right at the beginning gave away her vulnerability. And just as any cold hearts that might have been present in the hall were warming up with empathy towards the singer, her vocals soared, overpowering all her anxieties. The royal setting, the queen and her court, the chasm between their world and Meera’s – nothing was of significance. They could not hurt or alleviate her condition. Meera was in love and that was all that mattered.

  Abhimanyu felt a certain unease, and was about to gently touch Meera to make her stop. It is said that Kaushalya Devi’s eyes welled up when she heard that rendering of Kabir’s famous doha. That she waxed eloquent about Meera’s talent and beauty before agreeing to be an advocate of their relationship before the king.

  Untrue. She simply raised her hand to interrupt Meera, and smiled.

  For your benefit, dear reader, the verse concludes: Goonge keri sarkaara, baithe muskaye.

  ‘I promise to never put you through such a predicament again,’ Abhimanyu said to Meera as he escorted her out of the queen’s quarters. ‘Come to the Fateh Pol in an hour.’