The Prince and the Nightingale

by Abhishek Bhatt

  While the man fumbled for a clean cloth to wipe her face, the woman felt the smudge with her fingers, and began to panic. The man asked her if she was alright and that’s when she divulged the truth: she was a ghost. At first, the man laughed it off. ‘Quit playing with me,’ he said. How else could he explain the walnuts scattered on the ground, she asked. When the man still refused to believe her, she closed her eyes for a few seconds.

  ‘Look around now,’ she directed the orchard farmer as she slowly opened her eyes.

  The walnuts had vanished from the ground. All of them to the last piece were hanging back on the trees, as if untouched. Rather than being scared out of his wits, the man had tears in his eyes. ‘It does not matter,’ he announced boldly, ‘I love you all the more.’ The woman was overcome by his magnanimous gesture, but continued to look worried.

  ‘The stain,’ she said tearfully, ‘it’s not a good sign. I’m a ghost and my body is an illusion. But your touch and this smudge tells me that dark days are upon us.’

  The man replied that he didn’t care about illusions or her body as long as her feelings for him were real. They forgot all about the ominous episode and spent the rest of the summer in utter bliss. He would arrive at the orchard with no work besides sitting for hours on end with his lover, chatting and laughing without a care in the world. Until the night of 15 August 1947. As fate would have it, the two lovers fell on either side of the map – the Kashmiri ghost’s village across the mountains belonged to Pakistan, while the orchard worker’s farm belonged to India. The next morning, and the day after that, and in the weeks that followed, the man would go to the orchard and wait. He waited in the rain and snow, but the girl never came. One cold and starless night, he decided he couldn’t go on without her, and trekked through the dark wilderness of the Himalayas to trespass into Pakistan. Exhausted after the night-long trip, he slumped under a tree and slept like a log. As the sun rose, he woke up to a nightmare – to a ghost town that had been burned to the ground. Charred human bodies lay next to charred cattle. He walked all day in the surreal landscape of burned houses and decaying corpses until he turned a corner and threw up at the sight of a dog chewing on the flesh of a man – probably his owner. Night fell again without sight of a single living human, let alone his lover. The sound of artillery in the distance filled the air. He finally came across a fully intact house with a burning lamp. Upon entering it, he saw a figure cowering in a corner against the wall, with her head buried in her lap. ‘Is it you?’ he enquired softly. The girl looked up, and he saw the same cherubic face he had waited to see for so long.

  ‘How could you? How could you leave me out in the cold?’ he beseeched her for an explanation. ‘Why didn’t you come?’

  ‘How could I?’ she said without emotion. ‘You lay across the border, my love.’

  Sarhad ke uss par – a pivotal dialogue that would also eventually become the title of Sahil’s film, albeit briefly.

  ‘What does it matter?’ the man exclaimed incredulously. ‘You are a ghost!’

  An unexpected round of gunfire reverberated in the air and shook the earthen hut to its core. A dark figure hastily ran across the window and disappeared in a ball of smoke, but the orchard farmer didn’t fail to spot the unmistakable shiny barrel of a gun. Everything happened in a flash, and before he knew it, his lover was lying lifeless on the ground with a gunshot wound. He rushed over and held her in his arms, letting out a guttural scream that pierced the dead night as he felt the warm blood run through his fingers. His ghost lover was dead, and yet he had never seen her look as alive as when he saw her bright red blood. He held her face with those bloodied fingers, just like the day he had cupped the same face and asked her to explain the fallen walnuts. Only this time, his hands were stained with blood and not with walnut grease.

  ‘So, was she a ghost or was she not?’ asked Meera once Sahil finished narrating the story to her during their first real sitting about the film.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sahil answered somewhat vaguely, as though he wasn’t the real author of the story.

  ‘You wrote it, Malik saab, it’s a beautiful story. I would love to get your take on it – it’ll help me gain an understanding of the characters.’

  ‘A ghost or the living dead. Does it matter?’

  ‘True,’ said Meera, and fell silent, fighting back tears. The remarkable story reminded her of the chasm between herself and Abhimanyu. So close were they in flesh and blood and yet so far apart. And now, so distant in space and time, but he remained close to heart, no matter how much she tried to move on.

  Sahil sat up straight and looked at her. ‘Now, Meera, forget all that you’ve learned. Your classical leanings, the ragas, the diction – forget everything. Just remember the characters. The drama of the human heart.’

  *

  From the moment he reached Calcutta from Dhaka, Sahil began working his connections. There was never any doubt regarding his maverick credentials – his songs had a lasting impact all over the subcontinent. But for a man who went missing for some years, that too in Pakistan, to just appear out of thin air with a somewhat bizarre script was too much to handle for the Calcutta film fraternity. Ever the hustler, Sahil went on to adapt his story and write a screenplay in verse. Pages of songs with composing notes such that even the sceptics could see the immense potential of the songs, if not the story. Scene after scene was expressed in exquisite verse, waiting to be turned into a befitting song. One could feel the pain of the orchard farmer as he embarked on the perilous journey across the border in the dead of night:

  ‘Bichhadkar kya hue tum sarhad ke uss paar;

  Yarana hawao se humne bhi kar liya is baar.’

  In the end, the work was too good to go unnoticed, and a well-known Bengali producer signed up to produce the film in Hindi. Once the big-name producer was attached to the project, everything else fell in place. The lead actors were signed on, a budget drawn out and the crew was all set to start filming in Himachal Pradesh for the first leg of the shoot. But there was one problem. The crew was supposed to film the songs first, but Sahil had not produced even a single track. Even after auditioning thousands of promising female singers from across India, paying dozens of them to come to Calcutta to sing for a day, he hadn’t found his voice. The producer was getting anxious as he had sunk a fair chunk of his money by holding his crew and recording studios. But what broke down all communication between them boiled down to a single thing – the producer had agreed to finance the film and wanted to name it ‘Sarhad ke uss paar,’ whereas Sahil thought it should simply be named ‘Sarhad’. The producer felt Sahil’s suggestion was too dry, and that his option offered a dramatic sense of longing that was easy to interpret without watching a single second of the film.

  ‘This title goes against everything the story stands for! Can’t you see?!’ Sahil yelled at the producer. To him, the story was about the malleable nature of borders – the ever-changing boundaries between nations, religion in the time of Partition, the fluid understanding of what was dead and what was living itself. The producer tried to explain the commercial aspect of the title, but Sahil wouldn’t budge. Fed up with his stubbornness, as well his never-ending search for the perfect voice, the producer pulled the plug on the project. Sahil moved on, but as he shopped for other producers, the word had spread in the city that the composer was in over his head, chasing his dream to make an expensive film with no commercial upside. So, the grifter composer, lyricist, screenplay writer and director packed his harmonium once again to go to the city of dreams, Bombay. Not only did he go on to find the money to make his film, but he also chanced upon the key ingredient for his film in a discarded scratch tape – Meera’s voice. His dream project had crossed a veritable hurdle, and was close to becoming a reality.

  Chapter 19

  The name Ranakpour went two ways. The city at the edge of the Rann that Raja Fateh Singh of the Suryavanshi clan had conquered from the tribal Bhil people. Pura, meaning city, would always come out
as ‘pour’ when spoken by the Bhil population, and since Fateh Singh was a benevolent king, he named the city Ranakpour as a mark of respect towards the valiant enemy he had defeated. This mark of respect was paid back in full when the Bhils fought alongside him to defeat the marauding Arab tribes as they headed eastwards. Hence, Ranakpour remained unscathed. After the victory, Fateh Singh went much further to cement his newfound kingdom’s longevity by marrying Renouka, the queen of the Bhils. Renuka, the pandits might correct, meaning born of dust. But the strategic yet forbidden marriage was kept a secret, for how could the sun-worshipping Suryavanshi king be associated with the queen of dust! It had to be denied at all costs, even as the queen’s blood flowed through the royal dynasty and her name forever etched in their identity – Ranakpour, the city of dust.

  It didn’t matter that the Singhs and Bhils had been allies and had interbred for centuries when their history was revisited and liberally revised during the elections of 1952. When the Mewad Mahasabha’s opposition party stirred up anti-royal sentiments with made-up charges of suppressing and abusing the backward caste, all Uday Singh could do was offer dry talking points about how the royal family had always tried to do their best for all their subjects, when in fact, he could have pointed to the insignia of Ranakpour that adorned many a flag from across the state – the rising sun in the middle, a sword on the right and a bow on the left. The sword, of course, was the weapon of choice of his ancestors. But a bow? Why couldn’t there be a sword on either side, creating a perfect balance? A Ranakpour king had never ever picked a bow in training, let alone on the battlefield. But Fateh Singh had chosen the bow as a symbolic gesture to signify the family’s intertwined destiny with that of the Bhils, a tribe whose name itself meant bow. The same bow the Bhil ancestors had mastered, a skill traced all the way back to Eklavya. As the Bhils thumbed their noses at royalty and deserted the party in hordes, Uday Singh countered the opposition’s arguments with fiscal facts, since the stories that lurked behind the pages of their collective histories had to stay hidden at all costs.

  They say history repeats itself, but not always. Sometimes, its threads run parallel, and on rare occasions, they collide. Like in this story of the prince and the commoner. The songstress, in whose veins blue blood might flow, was marching forward, while the prince was learning about his Bhil ancestry for the very first time in his life. When Uday Singh revealed to his sons their family history, Ajay Singh mulled over its political ramifications, but Abhimanyu found it hard to comprehend how his life had been upended once again. He thought about all the times he had willingly played the royalty card. His mind raced to the imagined slight by the actress in Bombay who had laid her hand on the prince. He thought about how stupid it was of him to take offense to that.

  And what of his decision to let go of Meera – his self-righteous undertaking to preserve the honour of his family name? Now, it seemed rather inane. He felt sick to his stomach as he watched his father, a man he had always looked up to, falter and bend over backwards to protect the myth of their dynasty. There is nothing more disheartening than to see your idols fall, thought Abhimanyu, while listening to Uday Singh resort to vanity to defend the purity of his blood. Suddenly, the exalted talks of the 600-year rule rang hollow. Winning power for centuries to come became less important than protecting the Suryavanshi lineage. So what if they crashed and burned in the elections? The name should remain untarnished! Abhimanyu was never one to bask in the purity of his blood, but once he knew the truth, he felt strangely robbed. Deep down, it confirmed his own hypocrisy – Abhimanyu discovered that he did like being a prince, but he just wanted to be seen as some one who didn’t care much about his royal status. His perception of himself as one who would come down from his high throne to be one with the people had been busted, and the veneer of humility had come off. He confronted his brother about how he could go on running the campaign of lies. ‘Royalty is a culture, not biology,’ his brother argued. Ajay Singh could not break his belief system in face of the truth, but the shame stayed with Abhimanyu for a long time to come.

  Abhimanyu found himself sitting next to the radio, listening to Nehru speak yet again as India took a democratic leap. The exuberance of 1947’s freedom at midnight had given way to the practical challenges of running the biggest democratic elections the world had ever seen. Nehru spoke about the logistics of bullet-proof ballot boxes and the army of policemen that would guard them. He spoke about the millions of rupees it would cost to execute the free will of the people, and warned, pleaded and pressed the population to participate in the experiment. ‘Let us face this great adventure with good heart and spirit, and try to avoid ill-will even in regard to those who oppose us. Thus, we shall lay the firm foundations of the democratic structure of this great republic.’

  Only this time, Abhimanyu didn’t hear the speech in the comfort of his plush palace quarters. He was standing at old Madhao’s paan shop along with hundreds of other commoners – Bhils, baniyas, brahmins – all tuning in at Radio Chowk.

  When did the royals stopped being royal? Did Avantika cease to be a royal when she entered politics without her family’s approval? Or was it in 1971, when the Indian government officially de-recognized the royal titles and put an end to the privy purses? If royalty was more culture than biology, surely they were to remain royal till eternity as long as they churned out little princes and princesses. Did the royal palaces lose their sheen when they were converted into opulent seven-star hotels? Bodhidharma, the prince of the Pallava dynasty, surely stopped being a royal when he became a Shaolin monk in China. But that was much before 1971 or 1947. The Nizam of Hyderabad remained a royal even as he was being thrown out of his kingdom. Perhaps he lost his title when his wealth – all stashed away in trucks so that the government of India could not lay their hands on it – was infested by termites. Did the royal family of Rajkot lose their status when they opened the US Pizza franchise across Gujarat? Did it matter in the end?

  There was no such debate over Uday Singh’s royal fate. The former king of Ranakpour patiently waited for the election results to come in – an excruciatingly slow procession of pale government envelopes entering the Durbar Hall. He had his men tally the results, district after district, and when the numbers were decidedly against him, he stood up from his chair to make the last official announcement of his life.

  ‘We’re all commoners today.’

  The Ranakpour family had lost the election. Abhimanyu sank in his chair – he had now lost everything. First Meera, then the game he loved, and in that very moment in early 1952, his identity.

  Chapter 20

  After months of preparation, the big day had finally arrived. The buzz in the Bandra recording studio was palpable as the members of the sixty-piece orchestra squeezed onto the main floor. Sahil Malik had spent most of the morning speaking to each and every musician, testing their instruments and tinkering with them if needed. The perfectionist composer had handpicked everyone in the room from all corners of India, and had arranged for their travel and stay in Bombay. The film’s producers had offered many options of local musicians to cut costs, but Sahil wouldn’t budge. Eventually, each hour the band spent in the recording studio or holed up in a hotel, waiting for instructions, was costing a fortune. On the first day of recording, Sahil’s musical army took position and waited for him to give orders. And waited. Some practiced their last-minute melodic notes as the clock grated to a full hour without any sign of the lead singer, Meera.

  Sahil sent out men to bring her to the studio, but they returned with bad news. Heavy rains that lashed the city overnight had cut off most of Danpada. The sea had engulfed the outer limits of her neighbourhood, leaving her stranded on an island of tin huts. ‘It’s a goddamn fisherman village! Why can’t somebody get the damn boats out?’ fumed Sahil to no avail. Eventually, he cancelled the session. With money having gone down the drain and nothing much to do for the rest of the day, he set out for Meera’s place with one of his trusted assistants. Their
taxi went as far as it could without drowning, after which they waded through the muddy waters to reach Meera’s hut. When she opened the door, her eyes widened in surprise and she immediately began to apologise.

  ‘I am so sorry about this, I just couldn’t get out,’ she said, moving things around to make room for her surprise guests.

  ‘You could have gotten out, just the way we got in,’ Sahil said tersely, still standing at the door.

  Meera stopped in her tracks.

  ‘Are you ready for this, Meera?’ Sahil prodded, clearly miffed at her no-show on a day he had been looking forward to.

  ‘Of course I am!’ she said defensively.

  ‘Then a little drizzle sure as hell shouldn’t have stopped you from showing up at the studio!’

  Sahil didn’t mince his words – he reminded her that despite all the chasing he had done, in the end it was her choice to work with him. Once the offer was accepted, he said, there were no excuses. It was now her duty to put her heart and soul into the project. Deep down, Sahil knew Meera wasn’t ready. He could feel that something was holding her back. Meera stood in silence. Outside her hut, in the air that reeked of drying fish, he could hear music play. Unable to go to work in the surging seawater, some fishermen had gathered at the square to while away the hours with drinks and music. The boisterous Koli songs were reverberating through the village walls.

  ‘Come with me,’ Sahil ordered her as he started towards the square. His lieutenant and Meera followed meekly. Before they knew it, he stood dead center in the midst of the singing party, grabbing somebody’s harmonium.