That is what Abhimanyu had concluded through his days in hell. And when he saw Meera give up her dreams of singing – another ‘lowly’ profession in royal eyes, he was sure – to be with him, he was determined to make Meera walk away from him for her own good.
‘We can’t be together, Meera, I am sorry.’ If only the earth could swallow him alive, he thought.
Meera felt as though she’d been punched in the gut. She felt the air rush out of her lungs. After a moment’s pause that felt like an eternity, she spoke.
‘Why? Is this what you want? Or is this your family’s decision?’ Meera instinctively knew it had to with the family.
‘It is complicated, Meera. I don’t know how to explain it without making this more difficult than it already is.’
‘Don’t try and spare my feelings, Abhi! You’re ending our relationship and I have every right to know why,’ Meera spoke in breaths.
Abhimanyu told her the half-truth about his conversation with his father – how Uday Singh was opposed to him marrying a commoner, not to marry Meera, to keep the family honour.
‘If there is somebody to blame, it is me,’ Abhimanyu said, fighting his tears. ‘I am the culprit for having hidden this from you for so long. God is my witness and will be my judge for what I have done to you. All I know is that you are my life, my dear, and I know it in my bones that I am not right for you.’
Abhimanyu had run the reel of Meera’s reaction a thousand times in his mind. He had so hoped for Meera to not cry. He wanted her to call him names, to reject him outright as opposed to pleading with him to reconsider his decision.
She did neither. Meera walked out of the room in silence. She left New York the next morning.
Chapter 15
Relief was what Abhimanyu felt when he realized that Meera wasn’t coming back. Granted, he had his two biggest dreams shattered in a matter of months – cricket and a life with Meera – but that pain was no match for the anxiety gnawing at his insides. His inability to be honest with Meera for so long had turned him into a shadow of the man he once was. It was as though her departure had freed him up to experience his grief in all its glory. He lay in his bed on those short days and long nights of the harsh New York winter, going into a voluntary hibernation of sorts, fully aided by the cold grey skies of the city. With no sun in sight for weeks, he would dream about the sweltering Bombay summer. Of his shirt sticking to his skin even before a single ball had been bowled in a match. Of the cool sea breeze he felt on his face as he glided towards the batsman, ball in hand, and then hovering above the ground with body wound up in a textbook pace bowler pose before crashing down and releasing the ball well over 135 kmph without straining a single muscle; when his body had rhythm, and movement was as easy as breathing. That same imposing body was now frail, and though he found himself panting from exertion, he felt a certain lightness. So what if he could not hear Meera’s voice anymore? He knew that she was in a better place, far away from him. He was glad to have cut her loose so that she could fulfill her potential.
As the ailing prince relived his dreadful year while checked into a hotel, frozen in time, the world outside had propelled towards a new order of chaos. A coalition of Arab armies descended upon the newly independent Jewish state of Israel, starting the never-ending Arab–Israeli conflict. A bloody war divided Korea in two, and a near bloodless coup turned Czechoslovakia communist. In the Indian subcontinent, the freedom fever continued as Burma and Sri Lanka gained independence, while India experienced the challenges of self-governance.
Knowing that Abhimanyu had been discharged, but still hadn’t made any plans of coming back to India, Abhimanyu’s elder brother, Ajay Singh, too, defied his request to not be bothered, and paid him a visit at the hotel. The army man arrived in the middle of winter to convince him to return home and participate in the family’s affairs.
‘Vihaan has lost his mind,’ said Ajay Singh. ‘You know better than to trust his judgement in such matters, Abhimanyu. The British left us with three choices – join India or Pakistan, or remain independent. But in reality, remaining independent is not a choice at all. Daata knew that well enough when he signed to join India. And going by what’s happening in Hyderabad and Junagadh, I am convinced that he did the right thing.’
‘That’s great, then, for all of you,’ Abhimanyu snapped, ‘I couldn’t care less.’
By then, Abhimanyu wanted nothing to do with his family – it had cost him Meera. ‘The title of Mahamahim Rajadhiraj has ceased to exist,’ Ajay Singh explained, ‘but it was never erased from Daata’s mind. You see, he wants to run for elections and lead not because he wants power, but because leadership is the only way of life he knows, Abhimanyu. It’s not going to be easy. The pendulum of history had swung and royalty is becoming a dirty word with each passing day. That’s the reason I stand here humbly, at the behest of Daata, asking for help.’
Abhimanyu sat in silence, his jaw clenched.
‘It’s time to move on, dear brother,’ concluded the adopted son of Ranakpour family. ‘Daata found it in himself to move on after mother passed away. Now we need you, together, united, to face the future.’
‘Who is to say I made the right decision?’ Abhimanyu would quip later, reminiscing about his deal with his elder brother. ‘Ajay was there with the right offer to get me out of my misery,’ he would confess. ‘I needed something to do in order to keep my mind occupied, or else I would have gone mad.’ Had the two brothers switched their arrival at Mount Sinai – had Vihaan knocked on his door after Meera’s sudden departure, Abhimanyu would have gladly bought into his delirious plans. But what mattered was that for the first time in his life, the prince of Ranakpour had taken a stand. Whether he stood on the right or wrong side of history, only time would tell.
Chapter 16
In 1951, Ranakpour saw a wetter than normal monsoon. It made the usually parched land so green that it was easy to forget, even for the locals, that the state was but an extension of the desert. The village wells were full to the brim, the lush green mountain slopes seemed more like a southern Indian hill station rather than the heart of Rajasthan. A closer look, however, revealed Ranakpour’s arid character. The cacti still lined up most of the village houses, acting like a fence. The sand, the fine brown powder that travelled miles across the state from the dunes of Thar and engulfed each and every surface of Ranakpour life, had turned into a wet, stubborn slick.
These were certainly not ideal conditions for the distressed velvet wingtips Abhimanyu had on while canvassing across the state for his father. Over two years had gone by since he had last seen Meera. To him, the heady days with her in Bombay and New York felt like a different life by then. He missed her of course. Not the lover’s longing kind of missing. He missed Meera with the finality of a sunken shipwreck deep in the ocean. The idea of her was gone forever, buried, never to be brought back whole. What remained was a bittersweet memory. A memory he had been fighting hard to erase by diving head first into a life of purpose. A purpose defined not by some innate sense of reason or objective but simply the act of doing something. He had to fill the vacuum left by Meera by fooling himself whole-heartedly into action. His father’s run for parliament provided him an excuse to get busy.
The game plan for elections in the following year had been charted out months in advance. Uday Singh’s sons, minus Vihaan who had cut off communication from the family and stayed in London after his ignominious failure in bringing about a revolution, were to reach out to the population in a systematic way to make the case for their father as he ran for a Member of Legislative Assembly seat, backed by the All India Congress party. Abhimanyu and Ajay Singh divvied up the territory and went their own separate ways to ask for votes. Avantika stayed in Delhi to co-ordinate with the Congress leadership, the same people who had ended the Ranakpour dynasty.
Gone were the days of passionate freedom fighters boldly marching into a rain of lathis and bullets, screaming their lungs off chanting ‘Inquilab Zindabad’.
The black and white, the good versus bad, the fight for freedom had given way to the gray, muddled world of democratic politics. India was preparing for their first general elections, ready to perform their civic duty of voting, at long last. But there was nothing civic about democracy. A fact that some 172 million eligible voters of free India would soon find out: a whopping eighty-five per cent of who couldn’t read or write. And so, the first order of business for canvassers like Abhimanyu was to educate the naïve population about what was at stake and what needed to be done, complex arguments pertaining to national affairs were broken down into simple jargon and pictorial representations of party symbols. VOTE CONGRESS, a stray cow’s back read, with an image of two bullocks with a plough.
Yoked oxen, imprinted on a skinny cow’s jutted rib cage, standing next to a four-wheeled hand drawn cart carrying a blaring electric megaphone that amplified a sentry’s gruff barking orders of ‘Congress ko mat do’. All the while Abhimanyu waved to the weather-beaten onlookers while glancing down his velvet shoes that had collected several days’ worth of desert slime and cow dung. If the Ranakpour prince was questioning his life choices, he certainly wasn’t showing it.
As with other princely states, Ranakpour was a collection of Thikanas – small districts overseen by Thakurs who were distant relatives of the royal family. Abhimanyu’s job was to connect with the Thakurs and capitalize on their intimate knowledge of the constituency to identify the local thought leaders and convince them to galvanize the crowds to vote for Uday Singh. The local sarpanch, the street-side baniyas, leaders of the ethnic Bhil community, everyone with connections was approached, educated and coaxed to pledge their support. Knocking on doors, waiting at the porticos as the heavy metal lock chains creaked and clanked against the brightly painted blue and red wooden gates, took some getting used to for the prince. Far from Ranakpour city, in the outer fringes of his erstwhile kingdom, where no one recognized the royal scion, Abhimanyu had to shout out his introduction to peering eyes from up above the piazzas before being let in. The irony wasn’t lost on him. With his one good eye, Abhimanyu was seeing the real Ranakpour for the first time in his life.
*
‘Maharaj has all but ruined his shoes walking our humble streets,’ remarked the thakur of the southern town of Dongra as Abhimanyu wound down at his haveli after a gruelling day. The sole of his left shoe had wilted under the weight of the sticky mud and had completely come off. In order to be able to walk, Abhimanyu had tied a kerchief around the front of the shoe to prevent the sole from dragging on the ground.
‘Should have known better than to wear these house slippers,’ Abhimanyu smiled.
The haveli had been decked up in preparation of Abhimanyu’s arrival. Plush new carpets were laid out in the main hall, and the number of lamps were doubled so that each contour of the sculptured walls leaped out to make the residence come alive in honor of the visiting prince. A silver-plated glass of kesar-laced hot milk and a plate of khajoor was laid out for Abhimanyu as the thakur and his men sat at a distance.
‘I’ll arrange for new ones at once. Your room is ready as well.’
‘I would like to visit one more house before we retire for the night,’ said Abhimanyu.
‘Huzoor, you must be tired.’
‘I insist.’
Abhimanyu took out his black diary and leafed through it to find the page carrying the address he had scribbled some years ago at the Ahmedabad railway station. He had ripped it from the spine just before the fateful match he was injured in, but Meera had taped it back when he was at the hospital in New York.
The black town car whizzed by the dead town of Dongra. The dull mechanical whir made way for the howling street mongrels. The driver then cut off the engine and stepped out of the vehicle to rap the door of a humble farmhouse.
‘Saheb! What an honor to have you here! You could have called for me!’ exclaimed Madhao with the familiar bow when Abhimanyu walked in. The old man had shrunk in size since he had last seen him at the railway station.
‘I was around and had your address, so I thought of dropping by,’ Abhimanyu explained. ‘I recall you were based in Ahmedabad?’
‘Please have a seat,’ the old man scampered to get a chair.
‘I am fine here, thank you,’ Abhimanyu chose to stand at the door, not wanting to bother other members of the house.
‘Saheb, I have moved back here. My daughter needs to make regular visits to the hospital, something my wife wasn’t able to handle while taking care of household chores. Started a paan shop here at the nukkad.’
‘How is she doing?’
‘She has seen better days, saheb.’
‘And is the paan shop doing well?’
‘Enough to feed the family. And nothing more,’ he trailed off. ‘Can I get you some water? I am sorry my wife is sleeping as she wakes up early.’
Abhimanyu declined and proceeded to ask about the land ownership issues. Madhao informed him that nothing had changed since the day at the railway station. He had been shuttling from one government office to another without receiving a clear answer from any department. He was hoping for a quick resolution as the medical bills were piling up, and had also taken a loan from the jagirdars to buy some time. Abhimanyu apologized, saying that he hadn’t been able to look into the matter so far due to his own predicament, but assured Madhao that he would take it up soon after the elections. He explained that all he could do was lobby as it was a government issue, and not one that could be solved by the royal family. The old man understood, acknowledging the fact that thousands more like him were facing the same issues with no end in sight, which was the way things were when it came to the blurred rules of ownership disputes.
‘I appreciate your understanding,’ said Abhimanyu. ‘For now, all I can advise you to do is stack up your shop for tomorrow morning. I’ll be addressing the people at the nukkad.’
Abhimanyu’s impromptu plans had the thakur’s men scrambling through the night. Security arrangements were made as they raced against the clock. A shamiana was propped up next to the old man’s shop in the dead of the night. A printing press located two towns away churned out campaign posters and trucks were dispatched at the crack of dawn to bring in as many people as humanly possible to attend the campaign rally. Abhimanyu oversaw all the arrangements minutely through the night, until everything fell in place in the nick of time and he had one hour left to prepare his speech.
Both Uday Singh and Ajay Singh were rather surprised at seeing Abhimanyu so wholesomely involved in the campaign within days from the time he arrived in Ranakpour from New York. He had become the de facto face of Uday Singh’s campaign as Ajay Singh went off trail frequently when army duty called. For well over two years, Abhimanyu spent every waking minute preparing the strategy and execution of his father’s campaign. Through endless nights, through the shooting pain and splitting headaches caused by his barely manageable post-surgery wound, through the awkwardness and occasional shame and humiliation of undignified political wheeling and dealing, Abhimanyu’s fervour only grew with each passing day. The fallen prince had overcome his misfortunes and had found his footing, people contemplated.
To Abhimanyu, each laborious hour was one less hour of loneliness. The election campaign was an opportunity for him to fill his mind with inane tasks – a relentless effort to stave off the demons that lurked in the recesses of his being. The empty hours would bring all his dark thoughts to the surface, and Abhimanyu had to use every ounce of his willpower to push them back inside. He once picked up a newspaper to kill time, but couldn’t bear the thought of coming across an article about cricket. Any description of the game was like a whiff of tobacco smoke for someone who was trying hard to kick the habit. Finding it impossible to read on as he feared that a headline about a local or international match might jump off the pages at any moment, he threw the paper aside and went for a jog. Only to come across street urchins blocking his way with their makeshift pitch and rudimentary bats, a sight that sen
t a chill down his spine and made him turn back, get ready and head to the rally. The speaker arrived before a single soul stood there to listen to him.
Thanks to his growing reputation as a rousing orator, it wasn’t long before the streets filled up. For a man who had spent hours with hundreds of constituents from all walks of life, it wasn’t hard to speak the people’s language. He knew about their hopes and dreams, as well as their difficulties, and could address them honestly. He could talk about their problems and propose solutions. For a man without a clear direction in his own life, Abhimanyu was rather adept at selling a vision – a vision so deftly presented to the people of Ranakpour that they felt it was within their reach as they listened to the towering prince, captivated. It wasn’t Abhimanyu’s best speech, but it was good enough to hold the crowd for over three hours, despite a drizzle. Good enough for the old man’s paan shop to do brisk business throughout the speech.
‘How much did you make, Madhao?’ asked Abhimanyu as he stayed with the old man long after the crowd had dispersed.
‘Better than what I usually make in over a month, saheb,’ he said with hands folded.
Before taking leave, Abhimanyu signalled for his men to bring over a cabinet carrying his radio. It was the same German-made radio that once beamed Nehru’s rousing speech on the eve of Independence.
The Prince and the Nightingale Page 11