A horse-drawn carriage awaited Meera at Fateh Pol, the main entrance of the palace.
‘Memsaab,’ a coachman bowed and helped Meera onto the carriage.
The carriage rode through the city, and the tangerine sky turned dark by the time they reached the outer perimeter of Ranakpour, where several towers loomed over them. The carriage pulled over next to one such tower. Outside, Meera spotted Abhimanyu waiting with two horses. He helped Meera up a white stallion and then mounted his favourite brown thoroughbred, and off they went. Meera was apprehensive about riding a horse; she remembered the last time she had. It was when her father was alive, and the entire family had gone to Juhu beach. She recalled sitting atop a malnourished-looking horse. Now, she was riding a royal steed next to a prince. She couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was on borrowed time as her horse trotted at a leisurely pace. Following Abhimanyu’s horse, she rode past the lookout towers beyond a dirt road. The lights of Ranakpour dimmed behind them till there was nothing but the thicket of the primeval Jharer forest. They rode without speaking a word, and yet the silence between them was comfortable.
The dense trees let up after an hour as they reached a pond. It was unofficially named ‘shikara’ because of the black bucks, gazelles and foxes that used it to quench their thirst, making them sitting ducks for generations of Ranakpour’s royal hunters. The hunts included a famed tiger Abhimanyu’s great-great-grandfather had brought down almost a century ago that inexplicably had a rudraksha embedded in the fur right under its neck. Its embalmed head hangs in the local museum to this day.
As they pulled up to the pond, Abhimanyu jumped off his horse effortlessly and helped her disembark. He held her hands in his and walked towards the edge of the pond. As a child, when the palace and his siblings got too much for him, that was where he’d escape to. How ironic that a palace of over a hundred rooms could not offer him the peace that this pond – this little patch of land under the sky – did. Unlike his ancestors, he never came there to hunt; he came there to just be. It was his special place, and never before had he ever felt the need or the desire to share it with anyone. But after listening to Meera sing, after watching his mother’s face mirror his own emotions, there was nobody else he wanted to bring there but her.
Meera couldn’t bear the suspense any longer. She was dying to know what the queen had said to Abhimanyu, and a flurry of questions breathlessly sprang from her mouth.
‘What is this place? Why have we come here? What did the queen, your mother, say? Does she hate me? Did you bring me here to tell me it’s over? Why aren’t you saying anything?’
Abhimanyu smiled at her. He didn’t want to speak at all. He drew her close to him, closer than he had ever dared to before, and lifted her chin. Meera’s eyes widened for a tiny second, and then she understood. The queen was on their side. She sighed with relief and smiled back at him, her smile growing wider as his mouth touched hers, ever so gently. Her first kiss, their first kiss, under a starry sky. Meera’s heart imploded with happiness.
Chapter 7
At first, it was a faint rustling. Must be the wind, thought Abhimanyu. It had been a fairly still night up until then. They were seated at the edge of the moonlit pond, talking about their meeting with the queen. Abhimanyu had asked Meera about why she had chosen that particular couplet.
‘Some things can’t be explained,’ Meera answered, referring back to Kabir’s couplet, smiling and then looking away. They had shared their first kiss, and their second, and many more only a few hours ago. In the past, she had worried that these things would be awkward, that physical intimacy would be a line she would not cross till after marriage – an unlikely outcome of their relationship up until then. The queen’s approval had raised her hopes such that she allowed herself to dream. She couldn’t stop smiling, mystifying Abhimanyu even more.
Was it true, then, Abhimanyu teasingly pressed on, that all she would do was smile when asked to explain her feelings towards him? Is love only to be experienced, and not expressed? Surely there were reams of pages written about the peculiar condition they were experiencing. A man of few words all his life, Abhimanyu was unashamed to admit that he had started relating to the mawkish love poems he used to look down upon – from Shelley, Keats and Drayton to Kabir, Faiz and Ghalib. On that night, sitting by his lover’s side, they all made perfect sense to him.
‘True love is inexpressible, yes,’ Meera said after a moment’s pause.
‘I can express and explain my love for you all night, Meera!’
‘Go on.’
Abhimanyu went on to talk about her quiet confidence and the chutzpah she had showed that day on the field when he first saw her. How he was fascinated by her humility when it came to her incomparable voice and yet her lack of compromise when it came to her singing – how she refused to settle for less. How she gracefully floated between worlds – from a girl who needed to run endless errands to a carefree artist, from a responsible sister to a shy lover, supremely confident at one moment and then so vulnerable the next – that it hurt just to look at her. He told her about how he wanted to possess her, from her head to the ends of her toenails, and yet how he would gladly become her slave just to be with her.
‘I am beginning to suspect you know me more than I know myself,’ she blushed, overwhelmed by Abhimanyu’s passionate declarations.
‘I haven’t even started.’
‘Started what?’
‘Expressing my love for you.’
‘You certainly have a lot to say, Abhimanyu Singh, lekin woh baat hi kya jo aasaani se alfaaz ban jaaye,’ she said. ‘For all you know, this is you justifying why you are here with me, in the middle of nowhere, when you could be anywhere else.’
‘You think? You seem to know a lot about love. So tell me, why are you here with me?’
Why had she travelled from the west coast to the edge of the desert with a man she hardly knew, a former prince, to be paraded in front of a family of entitled royals, who she had imagined ruling over people, at times brutally, with no real justification of their status other than some kind of divine birthright? Why did she love him? He wanted to know.
‘The night you—’
Hooves. Meera fell silent as the sound filled the air around them. The rustle turned into a thunderclap as the ground shook and Abhimanyu raced to his horse to pick up his rifle from the saddle. He took guard, aiming at the direction of the forest, and pulled Meera behind him. He thought it was a wild animal charging at them until he saw the palace guards and horses pounding through the trees. He recognized their uniforms.
‘How dare you follow us!’ he demanded. It was a guttural roar that took Meera by surprise. This was anger that even Abhimanyu didn’t know he was capable of. But he was seething. How could his own men have the audacity to destroy the sanctity of this place, and his moment with Meera?
‘Your Highness, your presence is needed at the palace at once,’ the head guard got off his horse a good fifty feet away and kneeled, head bowed down and eyes firmly on the ground.
‘Answer me first. Who authorized you to come up here?’ Abhimanyu asked, still agitated.
‘Daata requires your presence, hukum, at once,’ the guard repeated, his head still bowed.
There was a grimness in his tone, and Abhimanyu suddenly felt worried. ‘What is this about?’ he asked, his voice quieter.
His guard stayed mum as Abhimanyu looked on incredulously.
‘What is this about? I am asking you a question.’
‘Forgive me, Your Highness, I am not at liberty to say.’
An exasperated Abhimanyu turned to Meera.
‘Let’s get this over and done with.’
He packed his rifle and helped Meera on the horse.
‘The lady comes with us,’ said the guard, almost under his breath, his eyes averted so that he wouldn’t have to look at the couple.
‘You son of a bitch!’ Abhimanyu grunted and charged towards the guard as Meera tried to hold him back.
Abhimanyu felt Meera’s trembling hands on him and decided not to create a scene for her sake. Something in the man’s voice also told him that it was serious, and his thoughts immediately went to his meeting with the queen.
‘I’ll come for you,’ he turned around and looked at Meera, his eyes still blazing with anger, but he felt more in control when she looked back at him and nodded. He got on his horse without saying another word and headed to the palace.
The thoroughbred tore through the forest, and Abhimanyu’s thoughts raced towards a confrontation with his father. He figured that the queen must have told him about Meera. He was determined not to let his father dictate his life. He was ready to go against Uday Singh and his parochial ideas. In case his father didn’t budge, he was prepared to face the consequences – being banished from the family for marrying a commoner. It was better than leading a double life. He was ready to live like the rest of the world. A thousand lifetimes as a prince were no match for a single day in Meera’s arms as an ordinary man.
But it was not a fight with his father that awaited Abhimanyu. He knew it the very instant Ajay Singh received him at the palace door, dressed in white.
‘Ma is no more.’
It took a while for Abhimanyu to process the news. Not minutes, not an hour, but days. Weeks. Years later, he would still revisit the days that followed his mother’s death. He would conjure up a parallel universe where the queen was alive, and he went up against his father, challenging his decision to not accept his relationship with Meera. Abhimanyu replayed the ugliness of that confrontation in his mind, wishing for it to be true, rather than the reality of his mother’s demise. He’d choose his words carefully, spiteful words he’d say to his father in everyone’s presence. As the years went by, his imaginary words would become more malicious and his actions more melodramatic – grand declarations about giving up his place in the family, of vowing never to see his father again, and Uday Singh banishing him from Ranakpour unceremoniously. Abhimanyu wished and wished that this was how the night had ended – a messy tale of a royal family disintegrating because of love instead of the cold truth of the queen’s death.
‘A heart attack,’ continued Ajay Singh as he stood before his brother.
Did it really matter, the cause of death, Abhimanyu wondered. She might as well have died of a sword wound – the result would have been the same. His mother, queen Kaushalya Devi, was no more.
He spent the night in a curious trance, questioning the little arrangements in the theatre of death. Why was a diya placed by her dead body? He wondered the placement of her body – aligned to the north-south direction, with her head facing the North Pole. A last-ditch attempt, as the shastras prescribed, to bring back the dead. He ridiculed the shastras over such wishful thinking. Could the earth’s magnetic fields really spark up her heart again and bring back his beloved mother? Had that ever happened in the history of mankind? Why raise your hopes with such cruel practices? He watched the rudali – three women beating their chests and sobbing aloud and inconsolably, forcing tears to roll down their cheeks as the royal family members watched in stoic silence. Were the tears really fake or had Kaushalya Devi touched the hired mourners’ hearts in some way? Abhimanyu questioned the incredulousness of getting his mother’s body cremated within eight hours of her death. What’s with the urgency? What about her loved ones getting a chance to travel from distant towns to see her one last time. For him to look at her, feel close to her in some way? His objections were overruled by the pandit as the royal procession started at the break of dawn from the palace grounds, and headed to the royal burial grounds to reinforce the finality of death in embers of the pyre.
With the intimate rituals of bathing and wrapping the body carried out behind closed doors, it was time for the pageantry. Abhimanyu’s beloved mother became the queen of all people again. Her subjects lined the streets of Ranakpour to watch the procession and pay their respects. Were they also hired mourners, Abhimanyu wondered, as they stood teary-eyed, swaying to the sombre tone of the royal mourning band. The street urchins, though, were giddy at the sight of the golden funeral chariot, and they bobbed and weaved through the crowd to get a closer, longer look at the spectacle. They were right, Abhimanyu thought, it was a spectacle. No, a travelling circus. A beeline of large, imported open-top cars followed the chariot, each carrying one member of the royal family, each dressed to the nines. Abhimanyu was in a Rolls Royce, third behind the chariot. Behind him was his sister, Avantika, in a white custom-made JW Brooke swan car, with a swan head at the front and water primrose embroidered in gold at the back. Their uncles and other relatives followed Avantika, and behind them were the drab military motor vehicles of state visitors making their presence known through their guttural engines. A spectacle. Abhimanyu detested the show of power and pomp of the royal, even in death.
The procession reached the royal cremation grounds – a city of domes with over 400 spectacular cenotaphs of the kings, queens and warriors of Ranakpour, each a striking reminder of a glorious past that would fill most members of the royal entourage with pride, even at the time of mourning. Decades later, though, the place would be called the ‘city of dead’ – a well-branded excursion for special interest tourists offered at a competitive price.
As the queen’s wrapped body was set upon the ornate funeral pyre, Abhimanyu’s thoughts turned to Meera. Had the queen spoken to Uday Singh about their relationship before dying? Abhimanyu felt a pang as he realized that his mother was no more – those kind, soft hands would never touch his cheek again. And yet, there he was, wondering whether she had kept her promise and lobbied for Meera. He wondered if he had somehow contributed to her heart attack. Maybe she couldn’t take the pain of fighting with her husband over Meera and preferred death. Maybe it was all too much for her gentle heart.
He shook his head; he couldn’t let guilt overwhelm him. But what about Meera? Where was she? He hadn’t seen her since the night before and felt terribly guilty for her having to experience his mother’s death while in Ranakpour.
Meera, for her part, felt like an intruder amid a grieving family. At Abhimanyu’s request, Ranjit Singh did his best to give her company, and she was thankful to have a known face around her in a palace of unknowns. She reflected on her own father’s death, Pandit Jayshankar Apte, who had also succumbed to a heart attack. A healthy man, all of forty-seven, he had just dropped dead one day. As a twelve-year old, she remembered thinking it was normal – that forty-seven was old enough to die. She couldn’t fully comprehend the shock and devastation around her as her family tried coping with the loss. Old, suppressed memories came rushing back in – flashes of his father slumped over his harmonium. ‘At first, I thought he had fallen asleep in the middle of riyaz,’ she remembered Kamladevi repeating the blow-by-blow account of that fateful morning innumerable times for the benefit of visiting mourners. ‘I can never forget the sound, the thud with which his body hit the ground.’
As she waited to hear from Abhimanyu, Meera recalled the melodramatic scenes around her father’s death. Relatives, close and distant, crying their lungs out for days. Her mother fainting on the ground as Jayshankar’s body was carried out of their house. Discussions and arguments over the cause of his death, over symptoms that the family members had failed to recognize. Her mother rued the fact that she did not act on Jayshankar’s complaints about chest pains just days before his death. Her uncles countered that chest pains weren’t symptoms of heart attack, and that it was just a mere coincidence. Even Kamal believed that his father’s love for sweets was his undoing. Lifelong helpings of jalebis dunked in hot milk, which Kamladevi used to serve him almost weekly, had done him no good. The elders agreed and urged everyone in the extended family to swear off fatty foods. Meera had noticed how Kamladevi became defensive about this and
blamed god instead. In fact, Meera’s mother had punished god in her own way, by swearing off temple visits after her husband’s death. Even on Diwali, as the rest of the family made their annual visit to the temple, Kamladevi would sit outside, stony faced and unforgiving. Meera’s aunt would implore Kamladevi to stop the madness and accept god’s decision, pointing out that her rage against the wise one was the reason her husband never visited her in her dreams. Everyone else in the Apte family dreamt of the Pandit regularly, she declared. Meera’s father’s death was questioned, investigated and concluded many times over, with enough blame to go around and fuel conversations for months.
A far cry from a death in the royal family, she now thought, where conversations almost immediately turned to what would come next, and where things seemed to move on a little too easily for Abhimanyu’s comfort.
*
On the tenth morning after the queen’s death, the Ranakpour siblings came together for breakfast. Vihaan was there, too, having flown in from London a couple of days after the queen’s cremation. One look at him and Abhimanyu knew that his youngest brother was leading a life of debauchery that had taken a toll on his body and robbed him of his youthfulness. Some things hadn’t changed, though, and he launched into his diatribe against the Indian government. ‘Patel’s goons will be here soon to make Daata sign the instrument of accession,’ he said with eyes darting at his siblings, as if he were letting out a secret. The ‘Nizam of Hyderabad is in talks with the Brits. He knows Delhi is going to eat him alive if he signs. We need to speak with Daata, now!’
His siblings knew better than to engage with him. Ajay Singh, a steady presence as always, tactfully swayed the conversation to their mother, and Avantika joined in. ‘Ma’s favourite,’ she remarked, talking about the crockery they were being served. She had matured beyond recognition. The few months she’d spent in Delhi had transformed her and she was surer of herself. She asked Abhimanyu about how Bombay was treating him, and chatted with Ajay Singh about the military and politics. She went on about life in Delhi, the leaders she’d met, discussions they’d had about the upcoming elections and how she’d been managing Uday Singh’s affairs in the capital. Abhimanyu hadn’t taken umbrage at Vihaan’s remarks; he knew his younger brother was beyond the pale. But he found Avantika’s demeanor quite unsettling. Something about her was off. He found her too cold – she spoke like a politician on a campaign trail.
The Prince and the Nightingale Page 6