The Dancer and the Raja

by Javier Moro

  Campos has landed in Patiala after having worked as a chef in the Savoy Hotel in London, a favorite among the maharajas. There he met Bhupinder and accepted the juicy contract he offered him. Married to an Englishwoman with whom he is still very much in love, he would suffer the greatest disappointment of his life when he found out that his wife had run off with an English soldier on the ship that was taking her to India to be with him. Since then Campos lives in the hope that she may turn up one day at his bungalow to ask his forgiveness. But he also suffers the anxiety of waiting for her to do so. As time goes by his character is changing for the worse, and his outbursts of anger sometimes lead to fits of crying that leave everyone dismayed.

  “Princess, tomorrow I’m going to make an Indian paella in your honor …” he tells Anita.

  Meeting Paco makes Anita realize that she is forgetting her mother tongue. She cannot speak Spanish fluently anymore without mixing in French or English words and expressions. To such an extent that the very same night she writes to her parents. She asks them to take a copy of the History of Spain and another of Don Quixote in Spanish to Paris for her, where they are going to meet up quite soon, “since I think that otherwise I’m going to lose the habit of speaking Spanish, as I am not able to practice with anyone here,” she wrote with many spelling mistakes.

  The raja, who has requested an interview with Lord Minto, is told to attend “unaccompanied.” It is a short, formal interview, in which he listens to the new ideas of the viceroy regarding the measures he wishes to adopt to get Indians to participate more actively in government matters. In the end, the raja brings up the matter of his wife’s status. Lord Minto promises him he will do what he can, although he assures him that the law passed by his predecessor, Lord Curzon, which cancels any right of succession of children born to marriages between an Indian prince and a European woman, will remain in force, by order of the King.

  “That law does not concern me, Excellency; in my case, there is no problem with succession, since I already have an older son by my first wife. All I want is to have my marriage to my Spanish wife recognized and the restrictions imposed lifted.”

  The viceroy avoids giving him a straight answer until the raja, irritated, reminds him of the words of the Prince of Wales during his visit in 1906, when he publicly showed his disapproval of the condescending, arrogant attitude of English civil servants toward the Indian princes.

  “Excellency, may I remind you what your future emperor said, that we princes of India should be treated as equals, and not like schoolboys.”

  Having said that, he says good-bye to the new viceroy, who remains there twirling the ends of his gray mustache, surprised at his vehemence. As usual, the raja leaves the interview disappointed and furious. Those English, as cold as steel, are imbued with an increasingly irritating sense of their own superiority. Their arrogance seems to have no limits. How far do they think they can go down this path?

  But his wife, against all the odds, wins unexpected battles. The last of the social events they attend before their journey to Europe is in response to an invitation from the governor of the Punjab in Lahore, who has decided to organize a Durbar for the princes of the region. Conrad Corfield, a young civil servant in the Indian Civil Service, the institution that trains the cream of administrators and top civil servants, receives the job of organizing the meeting in such a way “that the Spanish Rani is kept out of the sight of those members of the government who are present,” as the orders state. “There were some pavilions in the Durbar hall where the ladies were supposed to sit,” Corfield would say later, “so I ordered some enormous pots with palm trees to be placed in the pavilion for Anita, to hide her from the others. But when she arrived and saw the palm trees, she went into another pavilion. When the governor’s wife made her entrance, she was so interested in meeting her, because of how much she had heard about her, that she greeted her in public with a curtsy. Anita was delighted. I got a reprimand for not having been able to keep the situation under control.”

  11 The law of purdah alludes to the custom of wearing a veil, of Moslem origin.

  27

  The raja knows that it has not always been like that. There was a time when the English did not live as a minority shut up in their barracks, their forts, their palaces, and their compounds, horrified at the idea of mixing with others, or others mixing with each other. There was a time when the British viceroys did not put measures into practice that separated Asians from Europeans, like now. There was a time, at the beginning of the period of English colonization, that it was quite the opposite: ideas and people mixed freely. The line between the cultures was not clear-cut.

  The English who first settled in India were not arrogant individuals, imbued with a sense of racial superiority, like these viceroys and governors with a Victorian mentality capable of investing a considerable amount of energy in limiting the movements of a Spanish girl of eighteen married to a raja. They were men who came from a more Puritan society, harsher and tougher than India. They did not arrive in a virgin world peopled by illiterate tribes who had only just come out of the Stone Age; India was not America. They came to a country that had a civilization thousands of years old, the result of an intense mixture of cultures, religions, and ethnic groups. A civilization with a high degree of refinement and tolerant in its customs.

  Those English people adopted habits from the local nobility, such as taking a partner, a bibi, as they were called. Bibis came from the whole social spectrum, from courtesans and women of high society to former slaves and even prostitutes. In such a huge territory full of kingdoms and principalities, there was no shortage of courtesans. Some of them were very sophisticated, like Ab Begum, who in the seventeenth century appeared naked at parties in Delhi, but no one noticed because she was painted from head to toe as though she were wearing pantaloons, and even her bracelets were drawings.

  The raja maintains a love-hate relationship with the English. He admires them and hates them at the same time. He thinks they have lost their memory, that they refuse to remember how coarse and rough they were because they do not want to recognize everything that India has taught them. Starting with hygiene. They learned to wash themselves from the bibis they so despise now, something that no one did in the Europe of the time. They began with ablutions like the Indians, that is to say pouring jugs of water over their bodies, and later they took to taking a daily bath or shower. They have forgotten that the word shampoo comes from Hindi, and means “massage.” They have forgotten how much in love they were with their bibis, who kept their homes for them, kept the servants in order, and looked after them when they were ill. From them they even learned how to make love, thanks to the inexhaustible source of sexual practices in the Kamasutra. Many positions considered normal by the bibis were either unknown by most British people or were considered as depraved or unhealthy in Europe. In India they thought the English did not know how to make love, that they did it in a rough, hurried way, not like young Indians who knew a thousand ways to prolong foreplay and the pleasures of copulation. Did they not compare the British soldiers with “village roosters,” incapable of winning the heart of an Indian woman because of their lack of sexual sophistication? Thanks to Indian women, the English were able to give free rein to their most sophisticated erotic fantasies.

  The English in India have forgotten that in those times their fellow countrymen exchanged their leather boots and steel helmets for fancy silks, learning an Indian language, enjoying zither recitals in the desert, and eating with their fingers. Rice only with the right hand, keeping the left hand for personal hygiene, in Hindu and Moslem style. They stopped chewing cut tobacco and started having a red mouth from the habit of chewing betel nut. From that time comes the expression “to go native.”

  The most extreme case was no doubt that of Thomas Legge, an Irishman who retired from the world and became a fakir when his wife died. He ended up living on alms, like the Hindu holy
men, and sleeping in a tomb in the Rajasthan desert. He used spiritual practices, holding his breath, totally naked and with the trident of Shiva in his hand.

  Another very well-known case was that of George Thomas, the archetypal European adventurer. After serving the rajas in the north of India, he managed to carve out his own kingdom in the western Punjab, becoming the raja of Haryana.12 In England he was called the “raja of Tipperary.” He built himself a palace, coined his own currency, and set up quite a respectable harem. He became so Indianized that he forgot his mother tongue and at the end of his life he spoke only Urdu. His Anglo-Indian son became a famous poet who declaimed verses by Omar Khayyam in the mushairas13 in old Delhi. The funny thing is he was called Jan Thomas.

  The highest representatives of the empire also changed. How the raja would love to remind the viceroy that Sir David Ochterlony, the highest British authority in Delhi in the final years of the Moghul Empire, received guests lying on a sofa, sucking on a hookah, dressed in a silk gown, with a Moghul cap on his head, and being fanned by servants with peacock feathers! Every night, his thirteen women followed him in procession through the city, each mounted on her own elephant, luxuriously decked out. Although he lived like an Oriental prince, he defended the company’s interests to the hilt. In those times, what was good for England was also good for India, and vice versa.

  But there was a time when the English realized that acculturation and the mixing of races would be prejudicial to the security of the empire. Mixing with the locals threatened to create a colonial class of Anglo-Indians able to defy British power, just as happened to them in North America, to their great humiliation. The survival of the Raj meant not accepting that there might be “Indian-style half-breeds.” So people’s mentality gradually changed, and a feeling of moral and individual superiority took hold of British society. Racial awareness, national pride, arrogance, and Puritanism replaced curiosity and tolerance. The atmosphere became more and more stifling for men who showed too much enthusiasm for their Indian wives, their mixed-blood children, and local customs. A range of laws prohibited the children of marriages between Europeans and Indian women from being employed by the East India Company. Later, another law was passed to prohibit any Anglo-Indian from joining the army, except as “musicians, pipers or blacksmiths.” They were also banned from going to study in England. A little later, another law prevented civil servants from going to work dressed in any clothes that were not strictly European: good-bye to the comfortable slippers, pajamas, which finally turned into a garment exclusively for sleeping in, and the wide kurtas that were perfectly suited to the rigors of the Indian climate. The British army published a series of decrees to forbid European officers to join in the Holi festival, the festival of colors, the biggest celebration in the Hindu calendar. A Scottish watchmaker, the founder of the Hindu School of Calcutta, who died of cholera, was refused a Christian burial, since it was alleged he was more Hindu than Christian.

  The number of Indian bibis included in wills began to decline until it disappeared altogether. And the English who had adopted Indian customs began to be ridiculed by the new representatives of the company. Even the habit the white men had of smoking the hookah vanished. Europeans stopped being interested in Indian culture, as though they were convinced that it no longer had anything to offer them. India had become a kind of El Dorado, a land to conquer and not allow oneself to be conquered by it. William Palmer, an English banker married to a begum and who lived like a Moghul prince, had a premonition when he wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century: “Our arrogance and our injustice are going to bring down the vengeance of a united India. There have already been some rebellions …” Fifty years after writing those words, the 1857 mutiny gave the coup de grâce to the mutual trust that had existed between the two peoples, between the two worlds.

  Since then, East and West have continued to move away from each other, and now the raja and Anita are the victims of the rift that has been created. For an Indian to want to live in Europe and wear a suit and tie does not surprise anyone, but for a European woman to marry an Indian, go and live in India, dress like an Oriental princess, and live as she pleases is considered a scandal. For the French to take the Angkor temples to Paris is perfectly acceptable, but for the raja to wish to import French statues for his park is considered an eccentricity. Could Kipling be right when he says “East is East, West is West, and never the two shall meet”? The raja would like to think the opposite. The echo of a more liberal past holds the hope that both worlds may become reconciled. That is the deep vocation he has always felt, since he came back fascinated by his first big trip to Europe and America. And, on a small and modest scale, he intends to dedicate his life to it.

  12 His story served as an inspiration for Kipling’s character in The Man Who Would Be King.

  13 An open-air poetry recital.

  28

  Finally departure day arrives, for the first journey back home, to Europe. Lola, the maid, has been in a state of nerves for days, going back and forth without rhyme or reason; she suddenly gets so excited that it looks as if she’s going to take off, a rather difficult thing owing to her volume and weight. She is going back to Málaga, and she thinks she will never leave it again for the rest of her life, or at least that is what she says. She has forgotten what it is to be a servant in Spain: poorly paid, not much respect, and no future at all. But from a distance she sees it all through rose-tinted spectacles. She hates India, the spiciness of the food, the terrible heat, the isolation, and the animals and insects. Apart from that she lives like a queen. In Spain, maids don’t have servants to prepare their food and wash their clothes for them …! It has been a while now since Anita gave up with Lola; she just wants to be rid of her. Mme Dijon will also travel, as part of the retinue, since she is going back to France until the raja calls for her services again. It will be hard for Anita to let the Frenchwoman go, as she has taught her so much, and her presence, always comforting, has given her self-assurance and confidence. Without her, life in Kapurthala will be much lonelier and infinitely harder.

  The husband of Dalima, the wet nurse, is opposed to his wife accompanying Anita to Europe. The other servants say the wet nurse has problems at home, but that she is so discreet that she does not want to talk about it. Or perhaps she cannot. It seems that her husband has even gone as far as to threaten her with divorce if she goes. But Anita needs her, and so does little Ajit especially, for whom Dalima is a second mother. So the Spanish girl has solved the problem by offering them an amount of money that a poor Hindu family cannot refuse. Since Dalima does not want to be separated from her daughter, the little girl will also be part of the entourage, which will be made up of a total of thirty-five people.

  Two days before they set out on the great journey, Bibi comes to see her to say good-bye. Her disheveled appearance and gloomy mood make Anita suspect that something has happened to her. Her eyes seem to be far away, like someone in a shipwreck.

  “What’s the matter, Bibi?” the Spanish girl asks her, as she organizes the clothes scattered in piles on the furniture in her bedroom. She not only has to organize the trunks for the journey; everything has to be left ready for the move to the new palace. On her return from Europe, they will not go back to Villa Buona Vista to live. They will finally move into L’Élysée.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Bibi is about to reply when, suddenly, a lump forms in her throat and she bursts into tears.

  “Bibi … has something happened to you?” Anita thinks the worst, an illness or a death.

  “I have no right to be sad about something like that …” Bibi answers. “I was sure my parents would send me back to England to go to university, but they’ve just told me they won’t … They don’t want to and that’s that.”

  Bibi weeps bitterly. Anita feels sorry for her, but does not really know how to react. It does not seem right for a girl as strong and full of life as Bibi to burst i
nto tears for something that seems so trivial to Anita.

  “And can’t you study in Lahore?”

  “They don’t accept girls in the colleges, and besides, there aren’t any universities there. My father says a girl has no reason to study at university. They want me to get married and stop being a nuisance …”

  There is a silence that Anita does not dare to interrupt.

  “… But I don’t want that kind of life, Anita. I want to do something for myself. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Well, your father doesn’t want that.”

  “I know.”

  Bibi remains pensive and makes an effort to calm down. Anita gives her a handkerchief.

  “I spent ten years at boarding school in England, Anita. Although I feel Indian, I also belong there. What am I going to do with my life in this hole? I love the Punjab, I have a privileged life, but I’m stifled here.”

  “Do you want me to tell the raja to intervene with your family?”

  “Oh, no! That would be worse and it wouldn’t do any good. There’s nothing to be done. I know my parents and they won’t give way. For them, my education is over. I can play the piano, play tennis, and I speak English with the right accent. With all that, they feel satisfied. But I don’t. They don’t think that what I’ve learned is any good for anything. What is useful for others seems vulgar to them!”