The Prince and the Nightingale

by Abhishek Bhatt

  In the following days, Meera would religiously come to Breach Candy during visiting hours, running out of excuses to get out of her home. In the past, she had suspected her family knew that something was brewing between her and the prince, but since neither of them were seen together or mentioned each other in public, her family had thought that the initial spark they’d seen between the two, especially at Pandit Bhairo’s concert, had faded over time.

  One evening, she narrowly missed being spotted by her brother Kamal, who had come to visit their captain along with the other teammates. After a week, the trip from Bandra to Breach Candy had become unmanageable, so she shifted to her friend’s place in Mahalaxmi under the pretext of studying for an examination. Every evening, she would reach the hospital and call Penaru or Ranjit Singh – the only two people who knew about their relationship – to make sure that the coast was clear. She would sit in a corner of the café, away from the public eye, till other visitors had left, and then spend the remaining hours next to Abhimanyu’s bed. She kept talking to him, because she’d read somewhere that talking helped patients to recover faster. She chatted about what was going on in Bombay, with her family, things she’d noticed in the hospital, which nurses she thought had a crush on him. When she ran out of things to say, she’d borrow a newspaper from the hospital’s waiting room and read out every single article, from page one till the very end. At times, she would just look at him while he slept for hours, watching his serene face with the heavily bandaged eye, and wonder how her love could look so majestic even as he was drugged out on a hospital bed. The swelling on his nose had subsided to a normal size, albeit slightly crooked. She would admire his strong jawline as she made it a point to shave him every alternate day, knowing how particular Abhimanyu was about being perfectly groomed at all times. One evening, as she was preparing to leave for the day, a team of nurses along with the head doctor, Dr Shailesh Patel, entered the room.

  ‘Right, so I have been discussing the results of the surgery with our panel, and we need to take a few decisions in consultation with the next of kin. Are you …?’ Dr Patel looked at her and hesitated.

  ‘I am a close friend.’

  ‘Is there anyone from the family?’ the doctor quizzed, making Meera come to a rude realization about the reality of her so-called relationship with Abhimanyu. She tracked down Ranjit Singh, who convinced the doctor that he had full authority to take decisions on behalf of the royal family of Ranakpour.

  ‘Right, so, well. I am going to take you through our findings and lay out the options here. We were able remove the fragments. Here, let me show you,’ he said, placing Abhimanyu’s test results on a table in the room. What followed were long, incomprehensible medical terms and data that boggled Meera. ‘As is the case with rare closed head injuries, there’s a chance the patient might have traumatic neuropathy. This condition is seen in 2.5 per cent of mid-facial injuries and 2.5 per cent of closed-head injuries,’ Dr Patel said, pointing to the milky white areas of a dark X-ray report a nurse had held up against the light.

  Meera tried her best to follow what was being relayed to her in cold medical terms, while Abhimanyu slept, splayed across the bed, still as rock. Dr Patel continued, ‘This could result in subnormal visual acuity – I am not saying this is confirmed – but there’s always a chance. As we said, he suffered a retinal hemorrhage, but the optic disc pallor usually develops, if it at all develops could take weeks.’ And on and on he went. Meera’s quiet panic reached a full-blown meltdown when Dr Patel uttered the only coherent sentence at the end of his soliloquy: ‘So, we suggest that he be flown to Mount Sinai in New York tonight to continue treatment.’

  Meera looked at Ranjit Singh expectantly, who, without batting an eyelid, declared that he will make the necessary arrangements to transfer Abhimanyu at once. He rushed out of the room with the doctor to make a few calls, and, more importantly, get an authorization from Ranakpour.

  This new development had thrown Meera off completely. She was supposed to wrap up for the day and leave for home. Instead, she found herself pacing the halls, waiting for Ranjit Singh to somehow facilitate Abhimanyu’s big move. In a way, she found herself thrown off track from her life in general ever since she had met Abhimanyu. The whirlwind romance that started at the Orient Club and continued miles away in Ranakpour, the queen’s death, the prince’s horrific injury – everything felt unreal to her. She didn’t have a single moment to herself to think things through. But she felt compelled to continue. That was the frame of mind she was in when she ran into Kamal at the hospital, who had come to visit Abhimanyu.

  ‘Meera! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Bhau!’ Meera threw herself into her brother’s arms, and for the first time since she watched Abhimanyu collapse on the field that day, she cried. Every secret in her heart began to reveal itself, and in between her sobs, she told Kamal about her relationship with Abhimanyu – how it began and how they had kept it a secret for so long; that they would have spoken about it after receiving the royal approval, but everything had gone so, so terribly wrong. Kamal stood stunned in the hospital corridor. But before he could say anything, Meera blurted out, ‘I have to go to New York with him. I don’t know how, but I just have to!’

  ‘Meera, calm down. What are you saying?’

  ‘The doctor, he came to the room a few minutes ago and he said so many things. I didn’t understand him. But they’re taking Abhimanyu to New York to a hospital that will save him, and Bhau, I cannot be here and wait and wonder what will happen to him! I have to go, please!’

  Kamal took his sister back home and sat the family down, speaking for Meera, who could barely utter a word without bursting into tears. He had been upset when he found her at the hospital and when she told him her secret, but his initial misgivings were quickly replaced with happiness – his little sister was in love, and was loved back by a man he so admired. While his mother and Veena chided Meera for being naïve and starry-eyed for even imagining that she could have a life with Abhimanyu, Kamal remained instrumental in subduing their protests and made a case for allowing her to travel to New York. He stepped out “look for Ranjit Singh to seek his help in getting Meera a passport and a ticket to fly to America. For all his indiscipline, Kamal, like Meera, was a practical sort, and he knew that these things took time to come through, and given the situation, he understood that there was none to waste.

  When Abhimanyu was informed about how Meera had been honest with her family, and how Kamal, his friend from whom he had kept this relationship a secret, had come through for the lovers, his guilt knew no bounds. Meera’s fiercely independent spirit that he so admired had truly come to the fore, and there he was, unable to speak the truth. He did muster up the courage to ask his family to back off, to stop them from coming to Bombay or to New York. He wanted to be as far away from their judgmental presence as possible, but he just couldn’t tell Meera about his conversation with Uday Singh. That would have to wait yet another day.

  Chapter 12

  ‘FLY WITH ME TO LONDON VIA CAIRO AND GENEVA,’ screamed the full page spread in the Times of India. ‘I LEAVE BOMBAY EVERY TUESDAY IN A BEAUTIFUL CONSTELLATION.’

  Next to the text, Maharaja, the famous Air India mascot, welcomed passengers with a bow. The advertisement, however, had been placed not to sell tickets – all forty passengers of the shiny Lockheed L-749 Constellation had been carefully selected months in advance. The advertisement announced to the world that India had arrived on the international stage. The chairman of Air India, Mr JRD Tata, stood proudly on the tarmac, knowing that he had achieved the impossible – launching an international flight, to Great Britain of all countries, within a year of India’s Independence, beating the sceptics and a host of other countries that were all still struggling to form their state-run airlines.

  The distinguished passengers joined Tata as he ascended the stairs leading to the aircraft. A throng of photographers trained their flashlights on the excited faces. Hamid Sayani of All Ind
ia Radio stood at the nose of the plane, interviewing Captain KR Guzdar about the historic moment. Maharaja Shri Duleep Sinhji and His Highness, the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, Rajpramukh of Saurashtra, Mr Dhunjibhoy Noshir and Mrs Fazel A Fazelbhoy, and Narottam Lalbhai – former kings, industrialists and aviators – sat inside the aircraft, giddy with excitement as the engines revved up. The air hostesses wore form-fitting Western uniforms – not the trademark saris that were later introduced in the 1960s – and took care of the passengers.

  The next day, each and every paper in the country published a glowing account of every detail of that flight.

  What one won’t find in those accounts are the names of two passengers – Abhimanyu Singh of Ranakpour and Meera Apte. It had proven nearly impossible to get on the plane without being recognized, but Ranjit Singh and Kamal made sure that the two lovers made it to the aircraft without being caught in the fanfare. As the air hostesses popped open bottles of champagne before takeoff, Abhimanyu was ushered to the last row with his head propped upwards to contain the slow drip of bloody pus from his barely functional eye, and Meera was right beside him in quiet awe of being on a plane. Yet, she remained focused on her goal – to get Abhimanyu to Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, and to make sure he lived.

  It was the longest journey she had ever been on – from Bombay to London via two countries, followed by a short stopover where they decided that Abhimanyu’s body just could not take another plane journey, and so they boarded a ship to America. It took them three days to cross the Atlantic and reach New York City. The lovers would have surely noticed how majestic the Ocean Liner was if they hadn’t been so preoccupied with their circumstances. Meera barely noticed the electric energy of the Big Apple, the blinding lights of Times Square, the imposing eighteenth-century church spires rubbing shoulders with the twentieth-century skyscrapers. They didn’t see the enterprising street peddlers zipping through the streets, faster than the stalled cars, selling their wares. Some of these pushcarts would later become global behemoths with brands raking millions across the world.

  To Meera, New York was to be contained within the two-mile stretch along Central Park, from the Pierre Hotel, where Ranjit Singh had booked her a room, to Mount Sinai Hospital. To her, New York in the summer of 1948 was about learning the names of a dozen corticosteroids, and the exact times each needed to be administered to Abhimanyu. Or figuring out the heavy New York drawls of the doctors and nurses attending to him, and buttressing the administrators to sneak in an extra hour beyond the allocated visiting time, and then rushing back to her hotel. It was about mastering the right pace in order to get through the busy revolving doors of the Pierre just to catch a few hours of restless sleep before returning to Abhimanyu to make sure she did not miss a single crucial minute with him. ‘It’s not even 6 a.m., Meera, don’t worry about me so much,’ Abhimanyu would chide her mildly. ‘Have you done your riyaz?’ That could wait, she would insist, staying beside him every waking minute, to humour, console and encourage him instead. She was optimistic on the outside and worried to death on the inside, uncertain whether the treatment was working. When the prince slept, Meera would look outside the window to take in the serene view of Central Park. Meditating almost, like Moses on the biblical Mount Sinai, she waited for a word or a sign from god – anything at all – about her lover’s future and her future, their future, together. Outside, life went on, and the lush green park began to change colour as autumn, or fall, as the Americans would say, set in.

  *

  Months of excruciatingly slow progress and setbacks went by and there was still no clear verdict on Abhimanyu’s condition. The surgeons would cut him up with plans to ameliorate his injury, only to find damaged nerve fibers deeper in that had to be attended to first. Meera’s dedication through the first two surgeries only aggravated Abhimanyu – in addition to his injury, he was weighed down by the cruel secret he had kept from her. He imagined telling Meera about Uday Singh’s demand a thousand times over in his mind, and he knew that there was no way to make those words sound better; no way to blunt the edges of his betrayal of the promises he’d made to her. In his drugged up state between surgeries, he would dream about Meera weeping, or flying into a rage, or worse, simply being indifferent when he would tell her that they could not have a future together. Each time he would wake up, he’d wish that Meera would act differently. But how should she have reacted? He had no answer to that question.

  There were days of hope against hope. Maybe his father would come around, he would think. Maybe if he just hunkered down in New York, shutting out his family for months, time would heal everything and cooler heads would prevail? Moments later, he would oscillate back to a rush of despair knowing how wishful his thinking was.

  ‘Why do you love me, Meera?’ he asked her one morning, trying to broach the subject as delicately as he could. It wasn’t an unfair question – after all, Meera was thousands of miles away from her family without knowing exactly what was in store for her, no questions asked.

  ‘That night in Ranakpour, just before the guards marched in,’ he continued, ‘I had asked you the same thing. You were about to say something, but didn’t get a chance. Tell me now. Why are you with me?’

  Meera looked out the window, seemingly transfixed by the familiar site of Central Park. Morning joggers were circling the park’s reservoir, later to be renamed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, and tourists had just begun trickling in.

  ‘My father used to tell a story of a famed painter,’ she said, without turning to look at him, ‘whose paintings used to enthrall the villagers. He didn’t paint things or portraits, just strokes of colours arranged haphazardly, but his canvases never failed to mesmerize people. Soon, the word spread and folks from faraway villages started coming to see his work. Once, a noble man from a big city visited. Intrigued by one of his stunning works, he asked the painter, “Why did you chose green as the dominant colour for this piece?” The painter appraised his own canvas, puzzled. He went home and thought about it all night, all of next day, on and on. He became so absorbed with the question, so anxious to justify his choice, that he never created another painting again.’

  Meera turned to Abhimanyu, smiling. ‘I fell in love with you the moment you held the door for me that night at the club’s verandah. I don’t know why. But I am here, and that’s what matters.’

  ‘Meera … I ...’ Abhimanyu fought back tears. His guilt compounded. He wanted to come clean there and then, but the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth.

  ‘Don’t say a word, my dear prince, revel in the beauty of god’s work,’ Meera said, walking up to Abhimanyu and placing her fingers on his lips.

  Woh dard hi kya jo aankhon se beh jaye, woh khushi hi kya jo hothon par rah jaye.

  Kabhi to samjho meri khamoshi ko, woh baat hi kya jo aasaani se alfaaz ban jaaye.

  *

  For the rest of her life, Meera felt personally insulted whenever she saw a particularly oft-repeated trope in Hindi cinema, wherein a doctor would unroll the white bandages covering a patient’s eyes, building up the audience’s anticipation for as long as possible. Depending on the plot, the patient would then joyously shout, ‘I can see again, praise god!’ or completely break down, crying in horror – ‘I can’t see anything, doctor!’

  Unlike the movies, Abhimanyu and Meera learned about his traumatic optic neuropathy over the course of an agonizing week. And even though that slow burn had prepared them for the worst, when the doctors formally relayed the diagnosis to them, Abhimanyu felt something die inside him. As they explained his subnormal visual acuity in cold, clinical terms, all he deduced was that he would never again be able to play the game he loved. His cricketing dreams were over – his North Star, his crutch after being stripped off his royal identity, was now gone. The prince of Ranakpour – he who glided above the ground and attacked batsmen with such fierce accuracy that he could see the terror in their eyes from twenty-two yards away – was being told that he was lucky to even have
partial sight in his right eye. A single delivery on the field had dealt him the biggest blow of his life.

  Meera, on her part, felt that the past few months of nursing Abhimanyu, of devotedly being by his side and praying for him, had come to naught. The man she loved had changed forever. It was not just his physical appearance that was different, or the fact that he was partially blind, but his very being had changed.

  Much to her surprise, she found that this made her love him even more.

  Chapter 13

  ‘The treaty Daata signed with Patel’s men was a mistake. A mistake that can be easily rectified,’ bellowed Vihaan Singh. It was January of 1949, and the first time someone other than Meera had set foot into Abhimanyu’s hospital room. Abhimanyu found Vihaan’s mere presence a violation of the room’s sanctity. Meera was supposed to be there with him, it was his day of discharge after a lengthy convalescence. She was missing when Vihaan had barged in. Through the course of his stay in New York, Abhimanyu had laid down clear rules of engagement for his family. No one was to visit him. Not even his father, who had made an attempt to get in touch with him through Ranjit Singh. Abhimanyu, rather vindictively, told Ranjit Singh to ‘tell the king of Ranakpour that his son is alive and well, and that his transient relationship with Meera will not come out in public as long as the king stays away till he recuperates.’ Uday Singh, for his part, was ready to bide his time to get his son back into family affairs. Ranjit Singh was also Meera’s conduit to her family. He performed his role admirably to keep her family abreast of the situation, abating any concerns they had about young Meera in a foreign land. The Apte family saw Meera turn from their ‘little one’ into a woman virtually overnight, and stood steadfastly in her support, telling whoever inquired that Meera had simply gone to Pune for musical studies.