The Henna Artist

by Alka Joshi

  She had just extracted a card from the deck and was looking for a place to put it, deciding finally to lay it facedown on the table.

  “You see,” she said, “I’m always looking for the king, but he eludes me.” Her voice was deep and husky.

  A high-pitched whistle made me stand straighter. From an elaborate silver cage behind the sofa, a bright green parakeet turned its head to fix, first, one eye on me, then the other. The door to the cage was open.

  The maharani, who had yet to look directly at me, made a careless gesture at the cage. “Meet,” she said, “Madho Singh.”

  The bird said, “Namaste! Bonjour! Welcome!” and whistled again, rolling a black tongue in his red beak. His neck was ringed iridescent black and bright pink, as if he were wearing a necklace like the maharani. His top feathers were the color of a summer sky.

  I had heard of talking Alexandrine parakeets but never seen one myself. He was beautiful. “Your Highness has named the parakeet after the late maharaja?”

  She fixed her dark eyes on mine for the first time and arched an eyebrow. “Regrettably, the two never met. My husband died thirty-three years ago, and little Madho Singh is only fifteen.” She regarded me coolly, from head to toe. “Please sit.”

  I did so on the adjacent sofa, smoothing my sari over my knees to calm myself.

  Yet another attendant, who must have been standing just inside the door, came forward quietly.

  “Tea,” the maharani said.

  He bowed and left the room. She pulled another card from the deck. “You’ve been to the Elephant Festival?”

  “I’ve not had the pleasure, Your Highness.”

  “Great fun it used to be. Rajputs came from all over to play polo on their gorgeous elephants. Everything was painted: tusks, trunks, feet. They would even paint the nails.” She swept an arm around the room to indicate how vast the decorations had been. “Before Maharani Latika married my stepson, I used to give the prize for the best decorated elephant. One year, as a gesture of appreciation, they presented me with little Madho Singh.”

  The parakeet whistled again and screeched, “Namaste! Bonjour! Welcome!”

  The maharani looked at the doorway. There, peeking around the open door, was Malik. I stiffened. How many times had I told him to wait outside? Hadn’t I made it clear how critical the elder queen was to our future?

  She beckoned him with a hooked forefinger, and he stepped gingerly into the room, looking for the source of the sound. I was thankful that I’d bought the long-sleeved yellow shirt and white pants for him the day Parvati had first mentioned a palace appointment. This morning after he arrived at Mrs. Iyengar’s, I’d washed and oiled his hair and scrubbed his neck and ears until they turned red. Today, he was even wearing sandals that fit.

  The maharani was studying him curiously while he examined the bird, taking no note of her at all. “Would you like to say hello to my precious?”

  Madho Singh flew off his perch and landed on the back of the maharani’s sofa. “Precious,” the parakeet repeated prettily.

  Malik salaamed the bird with his graceful hand. “Good morning,” he said in his best English, not once taking his eyes off the parakeet.

  The bird repeated, “Namaste! Bonjour! Welcome!”

  Malik smiled. “Smart bird.”

  “Smart bird,” repeated Madho Singh.

  The maharani, who’d been watching Malik all the while with interest, asked, “How old are you?”

  He seemed to give the matter some thought. First, he looked up at the ceiling, then back down to the maharani. “I prefer to be eight.”

  The corners of her lipsticked mouth quivered, then gave way to a generous smile. “How perfectly charming.” Her laughter began in her chest and bubbled up to her throat, jangling her bracelets and rustling the folds of her sari. She looked from Malik to me. “Yours?”

  I shook my head.

  She turned to Malik. “Young man, what’s your favorite sweet?”

  The bird mimicked, “What’s your favorite sweet?”

  Malik scrunched up his face and looked again at the ceiling. “Rabri,” he said.

  “Marvelous! We must tell Chef,” the maharani said, “to make you rabri at once.”

  My face grew warm and I lurched forward to the sofa’s edge. “Your Highness. We’ve come to do your bidding, not for you to do ours.” Making rabri was tedious and time-consuming, requiring constant attention while the milk cooked and the water evaporated over a low flame for two hours, leaving only the cream. It was impertinent to ask the palace for it!

  The maharani opened her eyes wider. “But it would give Madho Singh the greatest pleasure. Would it not?”

  The bird blinked. “I love sweets.”

  Malik darted his eyes at me, the slightest smile on his lips, as if asking what game we were playing, and if he might be allowed to join.

  I protested. “Your Highness, rabri takes so long to make—”

  “Precisely.” She turned to the door and another attendant came forward. She instructed him to take Malik to the kitchen and not to return until the boy had had his fill of rabri. “Make sure Chef doesn’t send the boy off to one of the other kitchens. And take Madho Singh with you.” To me, she said, “He loves sweets.”

  Malik’s eyes were huge as he turned to look at me. I lifted one shoulder slightly. Who was I to argue with a maharani? As if he had understood the maharani perfectly, the parakeet flew off of the divan and settled on the white-coated shoulder of the attendant.

  “I love sweets,” Madho Singh repeated as Malik followed bird and attendant out the door.

  I turned back to the elder queen, who was trying, and failing, to suppress a laugh. “Chef is odious,” she said. “He never flavors food the way I like. He was my late husband’s favorite and now resents the fact that he must serve me. It will annoy him to slave over a hot stove to feed yet another mouth.”

  My shoulders relaxed. Like my ladies, the maharanis had devised their own rules of gamesmanship.

  The maharani turned over a six of diamonds and placed it on a seven of clubs. “So...you know Parvati Singh. Her father and my mother were cousins.” She looked at me with a becoming smile. “It’s her husband I find irresistible. Perhaps because Samir sends the most fitting presents. Did you know?”

  Puzzled, I replied, “No, Your Highness.”

  “You should,” she said, her expression cagey. “I believe you’re his supplier.”

  The sachets? Impossible!

  “My hair has never been thicker.” She shook her head; her hair flowed gracefully from side to side. Samir bought a case of my bawchi hair oil every month, but I’d assumed it was for his mistresses.

  I smiled. “It’s beautiful, Your Highness.”

  “So when Samir says you work miracles, I believe him.” She threw a shrewd glance in my direction. “Do you believe you perform miracles?”

  “I have that reputation.”

  “Let me see your head.”

  I hesitated, surprised by her request. But when she gestured with a finger for me to remove the pallu, I uncovered my head. Her dark eyes took in my hair (freshly washed and oiled), the sprig of jasmine at the top of my bun, my naked earlobes. She twirled her finger and I turned my head around so she could see the back of it. When I faced her again, she nodded, once.

  “I like a well-shaped head,” she said.

  A bearer entered with a silver tea service. The porcelain was decorated in a pattern similar to Parvati’s. On a plate rimmed in gold were paper-thin tea biscuits, their centers embedded with slivers of pistachios and spikes of lavender. The bearer poured the tea. With a tap of her manicured fingernail, the maharani indicated that her tea should be placed next to her cards. She did not, however, pick up her cup.

  “My late husband was very fond of tea. I knew him to take five, six cups a day with he
aps of sugar. All that sugar should have made him a sweet man.” She paused. “It didn’t.”

  Her Highness’s bluntness was unexpected, but curiously, I found it agreeable. Perhaps all royals were eccentric, I reasoned, and, for once, allowed my back to rest against the sofa cushion. I took a leisurely sip of tea, which was creamy, sweet and scented with cardamom and cinnamon.

  “He was selfish to the end,” Her Highness continued. “To his concubines he gave sixty-five children because, well, who cares about the illegitimate? To his five wives, myself included, he took great care to give none. Do you know why?” She was holding a card between her forefinger and middle finger in midair the way a man held a cigarette, waiting for a response.

  I inclined my head politely.

  “His astrologer advised him not to trust his blood heirs. So instead of having a legitimate son, he adopted a boy from a Rajput family, who is now our maharaja.” She slapped her card on the table, facedown. “I live in a palace with a maharaja who is not my natural son and a maharani who is my stepdaughter-in-law.”

  It wasn’t the first time I had heard of an Indian palace adopting a crown prince on the advice of an astrologer. In some royal families, it was common practice.

  She palmed her teacup briefly, but left it on the table. “The current maharaja loves his third wife. Latika is beautifully turned out, expensively educated, smart. The son she gave him should have been the crown prince.”

  She covered a queen with the jack she’d taken from the deck.

  “The only problem was that he also heeded the advice of his astrologer, who warned that his natural son would overthrow him. So the maharaja sent his son to England, to boarding school, without telling his wife. He left that to his chief adviser. Maharani Latika hasn’t eaten or slept since her son was taken away. She will not talk. She has not gotten out of bed.”

  Shaking her head, she said, “Her boy is only eight, the same age your assistant prefers to be. But she is not allowed to see him.”

  I understood the trauma mothers suffered when they lost their children to fever or malnutrition. I’d seen it often enough working with my saas. But to have a child taken away without your knowledge must have been another kind of torture.

  Maharani Indira had reached the bottom of her deck. “The citizens of Jaipur may think we maharanis have power, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

  She picked up the pile of rejected cards and began to turn them over one by one.

  “Now we come to you, Lakshmi Shastri. While the young queen is not my natural daughter-in-law, she is my responsibility. Her spirits must be restored so she can resume her royal functions. And she needs to be a fit wife for the maharaja once again.” She lifted an eyebrow. “She has no choice but to accept her fate and that of her son. Que sera, sera.” The Maharani Indira stilled her hands. “At least she has experienced motherhood.”

  The woman sitting in front of me had known grief, too. If it hadn’t been improper, I would have offered her the cashew nut sweet in my carrier, which I’d prepared this morning with cardamom to ease sadness.

  I waited a moment. “How can I be of service, Your Highness?”

  “Make the Maharani Latika whole again. Lift her sorrow, which Samir all but guarantees you can do.”

  Samir’s confidence in me was heartening. But the thought of failing with a noblewoman—such a public figure—sent a shiver through me.

  I wet my lips. “Your Highness, healing takes time. As do my applications. I will need to see the Maharani Latika first to determine how I might help and how long it might take. I’m honored Mr. Singh has such faith in me, but please allow me to assess the situation first.”

  She studied me, her look stern. I met her gaze, waited.

  After a few minutes, she gathered the cards from the table, as if coming to a decision. “Assess away,” she commanded, her voice brisk again. “And come see me when you’re done.”

  I was relieved that my task here was to soothe a troubled woman, as I had done many times before. Success would be sweet, would spread my reputation beyond the city walls. Defeat, however, would be fatal. My business would never recover from such a humiliation. I would need to use every herb from my saas’s repertoire to heal the young queen.

  Despite the rich tea, my mouth was dry. “It will be my pleasure, Your Highness.”

  Satisfied, she nodded once. She looked at the attendant, who came forward. “Take Mrs. Shastri to Her Highness.” Then she touched her teacup again and said to him, “And tell Chef never to serve me cold tea again! How dare he do that to a maharani?”

  I rose from the couch, my legs unsteady, and bent to touch her feet.

  * * *

  When I was a girl and my father was too hungover to teach school, my mother would worry aloud: What will we eat when he loses his job? Books? I sought refuge from her anxieties at old man Munchi’s hut, painting on his peepal leaf skeletons. I could lose myself—drawing the pattern of a milkmaid’s chunni or the tiny feathers of a myna bird. It calmed me. Later, when Hari berated me for not giving him children, I would retreat once again into my art, but I would draw in my mind, imagining the paintbrush in my hand, even as he punched my stomach or kicked my back. Concentrating on details, like the ladybug crawling up my arm or the paisley pattern of my sari, and ignoring everything else, crowded out anxiety, pain and worry.

  Now, as I was led to the rooms of the young maharani, I busied my mind studying the enameled patterns around the doorways, the latticework framing the windows, the mosaics decorating the marble floors and walls, the stories woven into the silk carpets. Centuries ago, the princes of Jaipur had invited the best stone carvers, dyers, jewelers, painters and weavers from foreign lands—Persia, Egypt, Africa, Turkey—to showcase their talents. By the time I arrived at Her Highness Latika’s bedroom, my anxieties had lessened; my mind was calmer.

  To the left of the door, a guru sat cross-legged on a padded mat, rocking back and forth, rolling a strand of beads through his fingers. An orange bindi made from turmeric powder ran from his brow to his hairline. The folds of his white tunic pooled around his substantial stomach. In front of him, smoke from an incense cone curled lazily toward the ceiling.

  The Maharani Latika rested against cream satin pillows on a four-poster bed. She was not a widow, yet she wore a white sari of fine muslin and a white blouse. Three court ladies, dressed in silk saris, attended to her. The one combing the queen’s hair was obviously her dresser. Another lady fanned her, while the third read aloud from a poetry book. I recognized the poem as Tagore’s. Dark? However dark she be, I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes. The court women looked up when I entered the room but continued with their tasks. I folded my hands in namaste and walked up to the bed, touching the air above the maharani’s feet and pulling any jealous energy up to my forehead. But her listless eyes stared straight ahead, as if she hadn’t seen me. I greeted the ladies with my hands, and they cocked their heads in acknowledgment.

  Whether by design or purpose, the room was dark, so I asked the bearer to set my carriers near the window where I could see more clearly. I looked around for a low stool and the bearer brought me an upholstered one. I unpacked the items I would need, then rinsed my hands in the cool jasmine water from one of my containers. After that, I oiled them. Carefully, I lifted the queen’s hand. Her skin was dry and cool. She stirred. From the corner of my eye, I saw her head turn toward me, and although I had avoided looking her in the eye, I did so now. I’d heard about her beauty, which had captivated the maharaja at first sight. Her eyes, round and luminous, with mahogany centers, appeared naked, unable to hide her immense sadness. The tender skin around the lids was darker than the rest of her complexion, as if it had been seared. Her Highness wore no jewelry. The red vermillion powder snaking through the part in her hair was her only ornament. One of her attendants must have put it there.

  Her gaze dropped to her hand,
the one I was holding. She fanned her fingers and examined them as if she’d never seen them before. The tips of her nails were well cared for, having been trimmed into a rounded shape, the cuticles pushed back. She released a long sigh and retreated, again, into her personal reverie. I could go to work now.

  One morning after I had gone to live with Hari and his mother, I saw three purple-pink eggs near where I was washing clothes along the riverbank. I heard a shrill, Kink-a-joo! Kink-a-joo! and saw, under a bush, a red-whiskered bulbul watching me, tilting her head—first this way, then that. She was leaning to one side, dragging a wing on the ground. I ran back home to get my saas, who said the bird must have been hurt before she could fly up to her nest to lay her eggs. At home, my mother-in-law made a poultice to immobilize the wing. Two weeks went by before the wing healed, after which saas told me to let the bird go where I’d found her. When I did, the bulbul looked in vain for her eggs, which had long since disappeared. I hadn’t been able to save her eggs; neither could I bring Maharani Latika’s son home, but, with time, I could help heal her wound.

  I started by gently massaging her hands and feet so she could get used to my touch. I had worked with my ladies a long time, and they trusted me, but the Maharani Latika didn’t know me, hadn’t even acknowledged me, so it was difficult for her to relax the way she could relax in the hands of her dresser. With the mixture I’d created this morning—sesame and coconut oils and extracts from brahmi and thyme leaves—I stroked the area between her thumb and forefinger. I rubbed the pulse point of her wrist. Likewise, I worked on the arch of her feet, pressing the crevice between her middle and big toes to release tension. The noblewoman who was reading from the book of poetry set the pace with her hypnotic rhythm.