The Dancer and the Raja

by Javier Moro

  The monotonous routine imposed by the heat weighs like a stone on everyone, although sometimes it is interrupted by an unexpected visit; India, with all its extremes, is permanently full of surprises. One morning, the racket being made in the garden attracts Anita’s attention, and she goes out to see what is going on, accompanied by her inseparable Dalima. Practically all the servants in the house have gathered by the side fence of the servants’ entrance, some laughing, others angry, and all of them very excited.

  “Sister, give us your baby so we can bless him and wish him good fortune!”

  The deep voice of the woman who is speaking to Anita over the heads of the group of servants who form a barrier contrasts with her looks. She is wearing cheap necklaces and a bright pink sari, her eyes are painted with khol, and she has an orange marigold in her black hair that is tied back in a plait. Around her there is a striking and very noisy group of women with extravagant makeup, shaking tambourines.

  “Ma’am, don’t take any notice of them. They are hijras,” says the butler.

  “What did you say?”

  The butler’s face reflects his predicament.

  “Neither men nor women … Do you see?”

  Anita has heard about the eunuchs, the secret, mysterious caste, a leftover from the Moghul Empire, whose communities are scattered all over India. They are not transvestites, but castrati.

  “What do they want?”

  “To bless the baby.”

  “Out of the question!”

  “It’s the fifth time they’ve been, you know, the custom …”

  Over the butler’s voice the eunuchs’ chanting can be heard, “Bring us your son, sister, because we want to share your joy!”

  The butler approaches Anita.

  “Ma’am, I’m going to call the raja’s guard to send them away.”

  “No!” Dalima says timidly, embarrassed at having dared to join in the conversation. The butler glares at her, not because of what she said, but simply because she has opened her mouth.

  “You don’t have to tell them to go away …”

  “But they’re threatening us,” replies the butler.

  “Threatening us?” asks Anita, very surprised. “How?”

  “Like they always do …” mumbles the butler, again embarrassed at having to explain something so shameful. “They make their usual threat, and that’s why the staff are so up in arms …”

  “And what is their usual threat?”

  Modesty makes him lower his voice.

  “It’s terrible, ma’am,” the butler goes on. “They threaten to lift up their saris and show their privates … well, what’s left of them. That’s what they always do when they are refused entry to a house or not given a tip. So everyone gives in just to avoid seeing something so dreadful …”

  Anita laughs and can hardly keep back her tears of merriment. Dalima smiles gently and adds, “But they are good, Memsahib, all the children in India are blessed by them.”

  “Are they?”

  “They bring good luck for the children,” Dalima goes on. “They have the power to wash away the sins of their past lives.”

  Anita stands there thinking and then turns to the butler.

  “Have your children been blessed by them too?”

  “Of course, Memsahib. No one wants to cross the hijras.”

  Anita thinks again. What if they are right? For someone as superstitious as she is, the more blessings her son gets, the better. Some of them may work, she says to herself. Deep down she feels everything can help to protect little Ajit. No one can have too much protection in this land, and he even less, the son of a foreigner. Besides, she trusts Dalima, who talks straight from the heart.

  “Let’s bring him here right now,” she says, to the amazed look of the butler.

  With the baby in her arms Anita makes her way through the servants, who look at her in silence; then she gives him to the eunuch dressed in pink. He takes him delicately and suddenly starts dancing and swaying to the tinkling of some little bells that are sewn on his skirts and on the tambourines of the others. “The baby is as strong as Shiva, and we beg the all-powerful god to give us the sins of his previous lives …” they all sing together while the others join in the dance. At the same time, the eunuch dressed in pink takes a little red paste from a small box and with his forefinger marks a dot on the baby’s forehead. With this symbolic gesture, the previous sins of Anita’s baby are absorbed by the eunuchs. And they are happy because they are fulfilling their mission in this way: the mission given them by the India of a thousand castes when it assigned them the role of social outcasts. They end up dancing in honor of the mother, and they throw grains of rice on Anita’s head. The stifling temperature cannot spoil the atmosphere. It is a spontaneous celebration, improvised, gay, and lively. Anita, to whom these people seemed so strange, distant, and frightening barely a few minutes ago, now sees them as if they were her friends. After taking back the baby, the butler approaches her again timidly.

  “Memsahib, the eunuchs usually charge for their services …”

  Anita turns her head toward Dalima, as if for her to confirm the butler’s words. Dalima nods.

  “I’ll give them five rupees,” says Anita.

  “No, Memsahib. They charge a lot and no one dares to bargain with them for fear of falling victim to their curses.”

  Anita goes over to the group of eunuchs, who stare avidly at her. They make comments about the dress she is wearing, her jewels, her makeup, and the beauty of her features. Their wide smiles allow her to glimpse a profusion of gold teeth, which stick out over their lips that are red with betel.

  “How much do you want?” Anita asks the eunuch in the bright pink dress directly.

  “Memsahib, I beg to answer you with another question, and then I will accept willingly whatever you give us after you have thought about your reply. What is it worth to you for us to have washed away the sins of all his past lives?”

  Anita remains pensive, and then she turns to the butler, “Give him a hundred rupees; my son, as his mother’s good son, will probably have sinned a lot.”

  At the beginning of June something happens that seems impossible: the heat becomes even more intense, if that is possible. Everyone searches the sky in the hope of seeing the first monsoon clouds. The sound of the chanting of the peasants, who are praying to the goddess Lakshmi to fertilize the fields, reaches Anita lying on her terrace. She can also hear Lola’s panting, and the frantic fluttering of her fan, like a huge moth around the fire. The best thing is to remain still in order not to sweat so much. The raja has given up his morning rides and takes refuge in reading.

  “How long is this dreadful heat going to go on?” Anita asks Mme Dijon.

  “If all goes well, if the rains come on time, until June tenth, more or less. The problem is that the last days seem to go on forever.”

  There are times when Mme Dijon seems prophetic. On June 10 at about four in the afternoon, a deafening sound is suddenly heard; a whirlwind of burning hot air kicks up clouds of dust and tears the leaves off the trees and even some loose tiles that smash on the ground. It is as though the hurricane-like wind was going to swallow up the whole villa. It still does not rain, but the servants have a happy expression on their faces. The dry storm confirms the imminent arrival of the rains. Dalima, Anita’s young servant girl, weeps with emotion. Her parents are poor peasants who depend on the water for their crops. All Indians share the same panic that the monsoon may not arrive, something that does happen sometimes, causing famines that decimate the population. The last time was in 1898, when the raja ordered the building of the new palace to be halted so that he could use the money to help his people. For this reason those days are crucial in the life of the subcontinent: the failure of the rice crop can mean the loss of a million lives.

  The hours go by and the dry, burning air
dries one’s throat. Eyes sting as if they had dust in them. The garden and the fields are covered in a layer of yellowish dust, which the wind has brought from Tibet and the Himalayas. Thick clouds pile up on the horizon. As the sky becomes covered with a black mantle, the pressure becomes unbearable, but still the rain does not fall. These are dangerous days for children, because the risk of dehydration is very high. Anita is exhausted, with just enough strength to keep her baby moist all the time using a damp cloth. She has the impression she is living in a ship in the midst of a furious sea of dust. The nightmare lasts several days; suddenly, the wind stops and the mercury goes up again four or five degrees, throwing everyone into despair. It is like a kind of torture, wisely administered by the monsoon god, who cannot decide whether or not to drop his ballast.

  And so three days go by on tenterhooks, until Anita hears a clattering on the roof as if someone were throwing stones on the tiles, but the shouts of joy that emerge from the rooms of her mansion, and even from the nearest village that can be made out on the other side of the river, give her back her hope that her time in hell is over. It is the first drops from the sky, so fat that they make a dull sound as they hit the roof. Suddenly, a thunderbolt shakes the villa, brusquely waking the baby, and all the tiles vibrate with a powerful shiver. “The monsoon is here!” she hears people shouting from downstairs. That first rain is of exceptional intensity. The noise of the water on the roof is deafening. After a moment, a tiny breeze comes through the curtain of warm water, bringing a cool caress. Anita and Lola rush into the garden. The raja has also come out and is opposite the fountain at the entrance, with his arms crossed, looking up and letting himself get soaked, his turban oozing water, and laughing up at the emptying sky. Behind the house, the servants also join in celebrating the downpour, jumping up and down and singing like children. It is as though all of a sudden castes did not exist, or the differences between masters and servants, between rich and poor, or between Sikhs and Christians. It is as though, suddenly, the people, so downhearted a few hours before, had come back to life. Even the palm trees seem to quiver with emotion. The explosion of joy runs through all the fields and cities of the Punjab. In the military barracks, the men run out naked to soak it up, dancing in the rain after having been paralyzed for so long by the heat.

  When it stops raining, the steam rises from the ground and stops about thirty centimeters above it, covering some areas of the garden with wisps of white cotton wool. There is so much humidity that Anita witnesses a surprising phenomenon: the gardener puts his spade into one of these banks of steam, and a little white cloud of it can be seen on the spade. He picks it up and takes it to the other side of the garden, where he frees it by shaking the spade. When the sun comes out, Anita and the raja decide to go to the new palace, to check on any damage caused by the storm. On the way they see an extraordinary spectacle: columns of steam rise from the city of Kapurthala, which looks like a gigantic pot boiling. In the streets, the men take off their shirts, the women have a shower fully dressed under the spouts of the roofs, and swarms of naked children follow them shrieking with joy. When they get back, after giving the relevant instructions to the chief builder and having seen that the damage is minimal, they find the lawn at Villa Buona Vista green again as if by magic. Frogs and toads go croaking across the flooded paths. And the screams of Lola once again ring out through the rooms of the mansion, because the rain made all kinds of insects come back to life, including the big brown cockroaches that the girl from Málaga chases out of the corners with a broom.

  24

  After the relief of the rains, Anita realizes that it is still just as hot, although the heat is not dry anymore but damp. It rains every day several times a day, so you have to change your clothes often because they become soaked in sweat. Not even a shower or a bath can stop the sweating. The feeling of having damp hands is constant. A new word makes its appearance with the monsoons: floods. It is on the lips of the servants, who struggle with buckets to catch the water from the leaks, or with cloths to mop up the puddles. When she looks out over the terrace one morning, Anita sees the mansion is surrounded by water. The river has risen during the night and the gardeners move around the garden in the boats that are normally tied up at the jetty on the bank. They move the fawn, the peacocks, the cats and dogs, who look scared when they find themselves in an improvised Noah’s ark. In the city, the downpours have damaged the electric power station, and the flooded roads prevent the traffic of oxcarts. The first consequence of all this is the increase in the price of certain products, like rice or potatoes, because of the difficulty of supplying them. These are days when Anita is witness to the special, intimate link that exists between the raja and his people. During their excursions by car or on elephant back, at the gates of the new palace or at the gate in the fence at the entrance to the villa, his subjects wait for their sovereign and approach him fearlessly saying Dohai, which means “My lord, I beg for your attention.” The peasants complain at the price of onions and about the problems caused by the waters. They speak to him, addressing him as “father” because in him they see the personification of the protective strength and benevolent justice of an ideal father. It is a curious relationship, a mixture of trust, respect, and familiarity. Sometimes a peasant stops him just to ask after his family or to talk to him about his own family. The raja laughs and jokes in Punjabi with him and does the same with the farmers, shopkeepers, or children, in an attitude that is far from the rigid style he adopts with the English, or even in the palace, with his own children, from whom he keeps a certain distance because in India “a raja is a raja, even for his family.”

  The raja’s children are roughly Anita’s age and they are studying in England. The firstborn, and heir, is called Paramjit and he is about to come back to Kapurthala. When he was ten, the raja arranged his marriage to the daughter of a noble Rajput family from the principality of Jubbal. He has his children married just as he was married, mixing the blood of Kapurthala with the noblest and oldest of the Rajputs with a view to improving the caste. He is thinking of holding the wedding as soon as the young man comes back from England, just in case he is contaminated with European ideas and chooses a wife on his own. Because the raja, however open-minded and Westernized he may seem, is a conventional Indian deep down. As he knows that his son Paramjit is a weak character and has a tendency to melancholy, he is fairly sure that he will have no objection to the wife he has chosen for him. At Harrow, the prestigious British college where he is studying with his brothers and the sons of the British elite, he has an Indian classmate who will soon leave his mark on history. His name is Jawaharlal Nehru, and the boy would eventually become the father of the Indian nation. “He has adapted badly; he is always unhappy and is incapable of mixing with his classmates, who make fun of him and the way he is,” he would one day say of the Crown Prince of Kapurthala. In a confidential report, the Political Department of the Punjab does not hold back and describes him as follows: “The Crown Prince is irresponsible, not very interested in affairs of state, not at all concerned for the welfare of the people and obsessed with asking his father for money and spending it.” The raja’s second son, Baljit, is more serious and a better student. The third, Premjit, studies in Oxford and from childhood has shown a strong inclination for a military career. Everyone agrees that the most brilliant of them is the youngest, Kamal, the son of Rani Kanari, who has studied at the prestigious Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris, before he also went to Harrow. He is sociable, extroverted, a good speaker, and interested in everything; and he likes the countryside, horses, and politics. Anita is brimming with desire to meet them all; when all is said and done, they are … her stepsons! She laughs when she thinks about it. But at the same time she is secretly worried because she fears they may be influenced by their respective mothers and may not accept her either. Anita is beginning to see the vacuum to which she seems to be condemned both on the part of the British authorities and on the part of the raja’s family.<
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  In spite of the rigors of the climate, those early months of life in India go by in great happiness. When she recovers physically from the birth and begins enjoying the peace of mind provided by the faithful and affectionate Dalima, she rediscovers the pleasures of physical exercise, riding in particular. While the monsoons last, she goes out with her husband at four in the morning to gallop for hours. They cross paddy-fields and fields planted with beans and barley, and they inhale the inebriating fragrance of the mustard flowers, little yellow dots that stretch as far as the horizon. The long horse rides take Anita to places that she would otherwise never get to know. They visit villages where peacocks greet her with their cries and where the peasants, always solicitous and welcoming, offer them a glass of milk or a banana as they chat about their families or the state of the crops under the branches of a mango tree. When the weather improves and the heat gives way, she spends time on another sport that the raja has made fashionable in his state: tennis. There is a subtle competitiveness between the princes regarding sport: the maharaja of Jaipur is an expert polo player and attracts the best teams in the world to his state. Bhupinder Singh of Patiala has specialized in cricket and is managing to make his team top-class. No doubt influenced by the players he has met in France, Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala has opted for tennis, a sport that he plays in his turban, long trousers, and an Indian shirt that comes down to his thighs. Before beginning the game, he exchanges his kirpan—the Sikh dagger—for a racket, pulls up his shirttails, and ties them round his waist. He is thinking of inviting the tennis champion Jean Borotra to give lessons in Kapurthala, where certain nobles of the court, members of the family, or anyone who likes tennis come to play twice a week. When the game is over, they sit down and have tea in a tent set up for the occasion and, if there is a well-known guest, the raja invites him to sit at his table. Those afternoons of tennis have done a lot to improve the level of the sport in the Punjab, which is producing some players of international standing. They are good for Anita to improve her style and also to meet new people, because the only requirement in order to participate is to be a tennis player. That is how she comes into contact with Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, an excellent sportswoman. Amrit Kaur, “Bibi” to the family, is a distant niece of the raja’s, the daughter of the branch of the family that aspired to the throne of Kapurthala and questioned the legitimacy of the coronation of little Jagatjit; that is, the family that had converted to Christianity thanks to the good offices of some British missionaries and that the English, tired of their pretensions to the throne, had exiled from Kapurthala City and settled in Jalandhar, fifteen kilometers away. The daughter of a raja without a throne, Bibi travels in her own rickshaw pulled by four barefoot men wearing blue turbans and the Kapurthala uniform. She also likes to go alone, on horseback, with her tennis rackets in the saddlebags. She is always elegantly dressed and her hair is nicely done, with big curls over her cheeks, and she is known for her generosity. She has come back from Europe with her trunks full of sumptuous presents for all her nieces and cousins, including French dresses, cut-glass necklaces, fur stoles, and so on. Bibi enjoys enviable freedom in an atmosphere where it is practically impossible to obtain. That is why the women in the zenana look at her in suspicion, although deep down they admire her. She ignores all the rules and permits herself the luxury of doing something scandalous in public, something that has never been seen before, a real provocation: she smokes, using a long black-and-silver cigarette holder. The other women excuse her because she is a Christian. They consider her as half white, as though she came from another galaxy.