The Prince and the Nightingale

by Abhishek Bhatt

  ‘A gift,’ Abhimanyu offered it to the old man, who couldn’t quite fathom the reason behind the gesture. Until months later, that is. Not until his humble nukkad was nicknamed Radio Chowk, as throngs of people would come over for their morning and evening tobacco fix, but more so for their daily news fix. Business remained brisk as men chewed and spewed their way through proclamations of election victories, crushing accounts of wars sprinkled with a healthy dose of Bollywood songs. Decades later, transistors dangled precariously from the metal roofs of every thela of the same nukkad. The prince of Ranakpour had lost authority over his land, but he had unknowingly left behind a legacy, as the name stood the test of time – Radio Chowk.

  That night, Abhimanyu slept better than he had in months. Alas, a sleep so deep and restful that it took his guard off and in sneaked a lucid dream, of Meera.

  Chapter 17

  The largest ant colony ever found was more than 6,000 kilometres wide. Somewhere in Europe, thirty-three Argentine ant populations had merged into one giant super colony, boasting millions of nests and billions of ant workers. A billion ants weigh approximately 2,500 kilograms, roughly equal to forty-two average-sized Indian adults. Considering a single ant can carry fifty times its own bodyweight, a billion ants can haul a locomotive engine with relative ease. Add to that the fact that a trap-jaw ant can close its jaw at 140 mph, a billion ants could chew up each and every person inside a jam-packed third-class compartment of the Indian Railways within seconds if they wished to. And so it was no surprise that a couple of thousand ants nesting on the tin roof of Meera’s wretched little hut in the Danpada fishermen colony, Bombay, polished a jar full of modak overnight, leaving behind an empty steel vessel wiped clean as a whistle. At first, she suspected someone had broken into her rented room and stolen the sweet so lovingly prepared by her elder sister. But then her landlord told her the tale of the wily insects and gave her tips on how to protect her food. ‘Double pack everything edible and then dangle it with a rope from the hinges of the tin roof,’ he said.

  So Meera would come home after a long and gruelling day, pull up the only chair she owned to stand on it and reach for her dinner by untying the food she’d prepared in the morning, hanging from the roof in bags like a chandelier. She would eat in silence, interrupted only by the groaning horns of the ships far out at sea. She’d have a fitful sleep, waking up several times in the night to see if her alarm was working. There was no way she could sleep in peace; not when her mornings began with standing in a queue, waiting for the water tanker to arrive. She would fill two buckets and take the load to a makeshift bathroom outside her hut for a rigorous scrub to get rid of the dead fish stink that engulfed everything and everyone in the colony. She would then walk seven minutes to meet the man primarily responsible for her dreadful plight of being a single woman living in a shanty in the fisherman colony despite her cozy home being only a few kilometers away – the one and only Sahil Malik.

  The composer had shelved the film project when he realized Meera would not relent. But once he found out she was back in Bombay, he was at her door the very next day, adamant to work with her. The Apte family did their best not to mention Abhimanyu, allowing Meera to recuperate from her doomed love affair in her own time. Kamal had stopped playing at the Orient Club – in fact, cricket had taken a backseat as he finally began to settle into a steady job at the Municipal Electricity Board, where he worked long hours and earned a pittance. Veena, the eldest sibling, remained the main provider for the family. Meera never rejoined college, and the little interest she had in her academic education was further squashed by the dire financial situation the family found itself in. Living on the edge of collapse from paycheck to paycheck, a mere feather could’ve tipped the scales. The precarious equilibrium was shattered further when their mother’s health took a turn for the worse and her monthly medical expenses strained the family to a breaking point.

  Meera’s desire to bury her family’s devadasi past and maintain an honourable life completely different from her ancestry, and her fear of being labelled a coquette were always at odds with her craving for being an acclaimed performer. Whether it was the evening she opened for Pandit Bhairo or the day she got a call from Sahil Malik, she was torn between an ambition to showcase her talent in front of the world and the anxiety that becoming a public figure would spur close scrutiny and tabloid gossip about her family history. This was especially true if she entered playback singing for films, which was looked down upon by the artistic and classical community as a downright vulgar and debased version of the art, lacking social and cultural legitimacy. How could a form, all of sixty years of age, even begin to emulate the refined traditions of painting, music and theater that had existed for centuries?

  All of Meera’s trepidations disappeared once it became clear to her that she would have to start earning to support the family. She finally gave in, signing up for Sahil’s film. Working with the eccentric composer was a trial by fire. If Malik had waited that long just to get the singer he wanted, he could by all means wait longer to train that singer to perfection. Meera’s native Marathi accent crept into the Urdu words, as first noticed by Abhimanyu, and this was unacceptable to Sahil. He immediately packed her off to a maulana who trained her till her diction was perfect. Later, Meera would have only Sahil to thank for her ability to sing in over twenty languages throughout her career. Qaasid, Joubanchanchalyo, Paingili – every single word coming out of her mouth had a story to tell, a story Meera mastered in a way that transcended borders. Sahil made her read books by authors she had never heard of. ‘A singer, first and foremost, has to feel. Be present in the stories, feel their pain, their joy, as if you live them. Only then attempt to project it in words. Words, sounds, alfaaz and awaaz are but a medium that will ring hollow if one has no feelings,’ he would repeatedly say to her.

  He decided that Meera should stay close to his recording studio. So, Meera rented a room nearby and would spend nearly eighteen hours a day at the studio, meeting people – musicians, known and unknown actors and actresses, fellow playback singers – and familiarizing herself with the world of cinema and technology that made magic happen on the silver screen. It would take two years before she realized in the dying months of 1951 that she had done everything but actual singing. But at least it was progress, compared to what was transpiring in Ranakpour.

  *

  ‘This more or less guarantees a seat in the new cabinet for Daata,’ Avantika announced in the dimly lit Darbar Hall. Uday Singh and his eldest and middle sons, Ajay and Abhimanyu, looked at her incredulously.

  ‘Is this a joke?’ Ajay Singh did his best, but could not suppress his exasperation. ‘We are months away from the elections.’

  ‘And two years into a campaign where we’ve been brandishing the Congress flag in every district,’ Abhimanyu added.

  ‘Avantika,’ the king uttered in a slow, deliberate manner, ‘You know me well. I do not accept this offer. In fact, you could have rejected it up front in Delhi. There was no need to give this any breathing space.’

  ‘Daata, it’s not an offer,’ said Avantika. She was wearing a white sari, an outfit that would become her trademark in the coming years. Delhi had changed her. Her words lingered, echoing from one majestic wall to another, as though they were going up to each painting of Ranakpour’s previous rulers announcing to them individually that their time was up. The word from the national capital had spelled doom for Ranakpour. True, it was not an offer – far from it. What Avantika had conveyed to them was an order. The Party had wilted under pressure from a key vocal faction of their party – the freedom fighters, men and women who had sacrificed their lives to fight for India’s Independence. While the princely states were happy to sit back and deal with the colonial powers to further their own agendas, the freedom fighters had relentlessly fought them with blood, sweat and tears for a better deal. Through lathi charges, massacres and hunger strikes, they had staged a revolution with nothing to protect them but the khadi on
their backs. Now, it was time for them to take their hard-won place at the table and have a say in the building and character of the new nation. Uday Singh had transferred his ruling powers to the Union of India in a quid-pro-quo agreement with Patel’s men, saying he would be backed by the Congress Party as their candidate from Ranakpour. However, months before the 1952 elections, Avantika got word from the top brass of the party that they would be backing the local freedom fighters instead. The Congress Party had no choice but to accept their demand to run in the elections; else, they risked an uprising that would break up the party before even a single vote was cast. Uday Singh would have to step down and he would be thanked with an administrative role within the party – not a public-facing leadership role, but a bureaucratic one deep in the political apparatus.

  ‘It’s still a good deal,’ protested Avantika. ‘And mind you, we have the privy purses. The party has bent over backwards to cater to our interests.’

  ‘You can’t be serious, Avantika,’ said Ajay Singh, raising his voice at his sister for the first time in his life.

  ‘Brother, with all due respect, I—’ Avantika began to counter him; she couldn’t stand the naiveté of her own family, and was ready to lay out her arguments before being cut off by Uday Singh’s raised hand.

  ‘Akhil Mewad Mahasabha,’ Uday Singh spoke loudly in a way that brooked no interjection. ‘That will be our party. The symbol – a camel. Add a spear.’

  The Ranakpour siblings were stunned into silence.

  ‘A party that will unify the great state of Rajasthan. Apt, isn’t it?’ Uday Singh looked at Avantika.

  ‘Daata,’ Avantika called out to her father. The word had escaped her mouth involuntarily, like the last breath of someone who was dying. It was a request and a warning, with shades of fear, resentment and love, all wrapped into one breath.

  ‘The concept of privy purses is not compatible with free India,’ Uday Singh went on, speaking to his daughter as though he was teaching her the alphabet. ‘They’ll dry up before I breathe my last. You are right, Avantika. We have no privilege over the common man, let alone the freedom fighters. To each their own. Tell them we’ll fight our own election.’

  ‘You,’ said Avantika.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Ajay Singh knew what she meant, but wanted to hear it from her.

  ‘You will fight your election. My loyalties lie elsewhere, Daata. To each their own, just like you said.’

  Through the years, a million palace intrigue stories would fill the gossip columns dedicated to the Queen of Congress, Avantika. She was written out of her father’s will, some would suggest. Other salacious theories about an affair with Nehru did the rounds as well. But Abhimanyu saw things as they were. Avantika’s decision to break away from her family was rather simple – she had had enough of Ranakpour and its men.

  Freedom had achieved what the British could not – breaking up the royal family of Ranakpour. The nation that came together to throw out a foreign empire had broken up into indecipherable pieces in the run-up to the first elections of Independent India. A total of fifty-three parties and 533 independents contested for the 489 seats that were up for grabs. Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the Bolshevik Party of India, the communists, the Marxists, mazdoors, farmers, Schedule Castes, Muslims, Hindus and Anglo-Indians – a thousand geographic, religious and social identities fighting to stake their claim. And joining them was Uday Singh’s and his children’s competing perceptions of self-worth.

  ‘I wish you luck, my child,’ the erstwhile king said, leaving Avantika in tears on her last night ever in Ranakpour.

  *

  The chaos that followed was comical and tragic in equal measure. The cows were re-stamped with the new party name, symbols and slogans. Scripts blaring from the loudspeakers were rewritten on the fly. New alliances were formed in the dead of night and betrayals were made in the cold light of day, all while in full view of the public that was being swayed from one end of the state to the other. Months of campaigning had to be started all over again, and Abhimanyu went on the road again with a new proposition. Old money flowed through the streets of Ranakpour; money that was meant for the development of the state was now being deployed to change something much more intangible – opinions. The people’s party of Congress had no money, of course. The party that rose to prominence through blood, sweat and emotions and slayed the powerful colonial powers struggled to win over the common man. The lack of resources in a free, democratic India meant that the party had to reach out to anyone they could to collect donations – these requests were made with folded hands and, sometimes, a gun. In Ranakpour and elsewhere, parties resorted to getting their funds from unlawful sources, often reluctantly. They thought that they could milk the beast and tame it when the time came. But that time never did come. The same moneyed goons who funded the parties in the first election soon figured that they could run the show all by themselves. Not surprisingly, politics became a free-for-all game. A truly secular form of governance where everyone – the swamis, the revolutionaries, the career politicians, the royals and the gangsters – had a shot.

  One group of organized dacoits from northern Ranakpour, a huge voting bloc of the state, came up with an offer for Abhimanyu. ‘Find a legitimate place for us in the Mewad Mahasabha,’ the thugs said, ‘and we’ll have our people vote for you in hordes.’ It was one of several sinister propositions Abhimanyu had received – schemes he would outright reject in a heartbeat. But weeks before the looming elections, knowing that they didn’t have the votes to win, Abhimanyu travelled back to the palace to confer with this father.

  ‘600 years,’ said Uday Singh while running his hand across the ornate arm of the chair he was sitting on, which by all accounts was less than 200 years old. ‘We’ve been ruling this land for 600 years. Ranakpour, the city of kings. And do you know how we were able to rule for so long? Not by cutting deals that would benefit us tomorrow, but by standing by principles that stood the test of time – principles of honesty and service that we as Suryavanshis live and die by. Ask yourself if this proposal will win us power for the next 600 years.’

  The dacoits were asked to stay out of the Mewad Mahasabha. What remained to be seen was whether the idealism of the princely state of Ranakpour would hold true in the multiple realities of free India.

  Chapter 18

  Although he was trained in Sufiana Kalam, Kashimiri classical music, there was nothing classical about Sahil Malik. For one, his instrument of choice was the harmonium rather than the hundred-stringed santoor. Furthermore, and quite contrary to Sufi mysticism, Sahil was a blatant realist who hustled his way to getting whatever he desired. With not an ounce of fat in his body, he stood ramrod straight at all times, resembling a war-ravaged soldier rather than a musician. When his hometown, Bilari, was co-opted into India, he packed his harmonium and a sack full of his belongings to make his way into Pakistan. He would tell Meera, and whoever else ready to lend an ear, about the untold atrocities he witnessed while crossing the border – morbid and outlandish stories about cannibalism and necrophilia; ugly stories that were in stark contrast to his musical surroundings. No one really believed him. Worse, other musicians would tell Meera that Sahil was, in fact, a secret Pakistani agent sent across the border to subvert Indian art and its soul. These rumours would gain ground when he would command his singers and musicians to alter their art – to ‘think outside the box’ and come up with new sounds and hybrid ragas. But whatever it was that he saw in Pakistan, he did not like, for merely months later, he took another treacherous journey to Dhaka. This time, it was to follow a girl he was madly in love with. The girl ditched him when he reached Dhaka. Disillusioned, he crossed the border again and headed to Calcutta.

  Whether anyone believed his grotesque border stories or not, one thing was certain – he had a story fit for the big screen; one he had written, inspired by his days of living on the edge of mayhem.

  It was a simple story about a man who worked at a walnut orchard in the foothills of
the lofty Himalayas. Each year, in the months leading up to spring, it was his job to make sure the land was properly irrigated. This was followed by the backbreaking task of plucking walnuts from individual branches. From morning till afternoon, he would take a pole and shake thousands of mature walnuts off the trees. After his lunch break, he’d take a quick nap in the shade before returning to pick the walnuts off the ground. One such afternoon, he was awakened from his nap by a tinkling sound. He followed it deep into the orchard, only to come face to face with the most beautiful girl he had ever laid his eyes on – a flawless Kashmiri beauty with eyes as large as, well, walnuts. He asked if she was lost, to which she coyly replied no, but told him that she was in search of water. The man offered her water from his own reserves, and they spent the next hour talking about everything under the sun. She belonged to a village across the mountains, she explained, and loved going for walks alone. The following months were blissful as the man would work in the orchard all day and spend his lunch break with the woman who had enchanted him. She would show up every afternoon like clockwork, and they would pick up their conversation from where they had left off.

  One sunny afternoon, the man was late for his rendezvous, and the woman waited for him anxiously for over an hour. Finally, when he arrived, exhausted from shaking a bunch of stubborn trees, he lay down next to her and fell asleep mid-conversation. Feeling insulted, she rebuffed the orchard worker and prepared to leave early for the day. He apologized profusely, lamenting that the rigours of his work were too much to handle, but the woman still left.

  The next day, the man arrived at the farm, forlorn, ready for another gruelling day of work. To his astonishment, he found every ripe walnut from the orchard neatly lying on the ground, ready to be picked up. The trees had been shaken dry. He looked around and saw the Kashmiri beauty smiling at him. ‘Now will you spend more time with me?’ she asked. The man ran to her and locked her in a passionate embrace. Puzzled by how this delicate-looking woman could achieve the astonishing feat, he pressed her for an explanation. She tried her best to evade the question, but the man insisted he know. He cupped her face and begged her to tell him, but noticed that his walnut-stained hands had left a deep orange smudge on her cheek.