The Dancer and the Raja

by Javier Moro

  What her lady companion tells her has a lot of truth in it, thinks Gita. The following day, ready to follow her advice, she tries to break it off with Guy, “but we were too much in love to be strong, and I couldn’t do it. That night, in my pain, I did something I’d never done before. I prayed, but not to the gods of Hinduism, but to the Virgin of the Christians. I had to make a decision right away; that is, either to board the next ship to Bombay or to run away and marry Guy in secret. “

  In the end, with all the heartache she felt, but allowing herself to be guided by the wise counsel of Mlle Meillon, Gita embarks in Marseilles. She does so with a French friend of the raja’s, Mme de Paladine, and her two daughters, who had been invited to the wedding. Two of the raja’s sons, Baljit and Premjit, are also on board.

  Mlle Meillon accompanies Gita to her berth, perhaps to ensure that she does not change her mind at the last moment.

  “A Rajput woman never breaks her promises,” Gita tells her scornfully as she says good-bye. “I am returning to my country to marry a man I don’t even know. A few years ago that seemed normal enough to me, but now it’s like an aberration.”

  “It’s better like this. If you’d married Guy, you’d be a woman with no country, no race, no culture, and all your family would be ashamed of you.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” she replies sadly. “But I can’t stop loving him.”

  It seems odd to her to go back to India. In Bombay she feels like a foreigner. The noises and smells are so different from in France … Her fellow Indians now seem as if they come from another planet. The train journey to Kapurthala seems never-ending because she does not really want to get there ever. The train no longer stops in Jalandhar as it did before. The raja has financed the building of a narrow-gauge line to Kapurthala City itself, in order to be able to get as close as possible to the new palace in his carriage. At the station, a cohort of servants in livery and drivers take Mme Paladine and her daughters to a mansion already prepared for the guests; the raja’s sons go to the new palace, and Gita is led to a closed carriage with curtains over the windows, which will take her to the women’s palace. For the first time in many years she is back in purdah.

  The initial concern for the bride’s health is taken over by irritation and subsequent relief when she finally appears, as skinny as a rake, her face drawn, her skin grayish, and her eyes red from so much crying. As an excuse for the delay, she says she has been ill because of the pressure of her final exams, and when she says it, she is not being entirely untruthful. They were the worst exams of her life. The problem is that perhaps she will never know whether she passed or not. “Who cares about an exam when you’re going to marry the heir to the throne!” says Ratanjit’s mother. Gita would say, “I needed someone to give me a few kind words, to tell me everything would be all right and that, as I was doing my duty, the despair and worry would go away. But there was no one to say that to me.”

  Anita is away when Gita arrives. She has ended up so exhausted with the preparations that she has decided to go to Mussoorie, to Château Kapurthala, to spend a week resting and enjoying the cool of the mountains. She has also fled from the stifling atmosphere in Kapurthala, where everyone’s nerves are on edge because of the delay in the bride’s arrival. When she gets back, the round, white marquees with tops in the shape of Oriental domes are standing in the immense palace park, like a city made of cloth. Anita takes charge of the finishing touches, as the guests start to arrive from all over the world. Nine princes have announced their arrival, among whom the maharaja of Kashmir stands out. He is the prince who welcomed them in Srinagar during their honeymoon. The Aga Khan is the highest-ranking Moslem guest. The rest send their eldest sons to represent them. In the zenana, the women keep Gita busy day and night, in an intense process of “re-Indianization.” Gita later said, “I had to learn my own language again and remember the old customs that the years spent abroad had erased from my mind. I was so busy that I managed to stay in a state in which I felt neither happy nor unhappy.”

  In India, apart from the guests, a celebration of such importance attracts a crowd of hangers-on. Beggars, holy men, healers with infallible prescriptions for fertility, and sellers of miracles pour into Kapurthala by train, on foot, or in carts pulled by oxen. Tradition demands that they are equally as important as the princes who have been invited and they are to be cordially welcomed. The raja, generous and magnanimous, has ordered his cooks to give out food as required, the same food as the palace workers eat. Beyond the white tents, all those roofless people camp out under the stars to enjoy festivities that, as they mark the celebration of the wedding of a Crown Prince, also mark the unchanging order of things.

  Fireworks such as have never been seen before in the Punjab signal the start of the Great Durbar, an enormous public audience in which the raja welcomes the guests, announced by footmen and trumpet calls. The courtiers and top civil servants of the state present their gifts and good wishes in the entrance porch of the palace. Among the guests from Europe is Prince Anthony of Orleans, as well as Prince Amadeo of Broglie. The raja has wanted Anita to be present all the time at his side. Anita acts as the lady of the house with all the honors, and the governor of the Punjab, the highest British authority attending the wedding accompanied by his wife, has no option but to greet her. This is the raja’s little revenge for all the English restrictions. In spite of being secluded in their palace, his other wives hear about everything; as is logical, Anita’s star role fills them with grief. Gita lives with them, making great efforts to reconcile herself to her new life, although she feels like rebelling when she hears the echoes of the party through the walls.

  The dinner for eight hundred guests is served in the park and, after the desserts, the palace cannon fire thirteen salvoes of honor. Then the orchestra, consisting of fifty musicians, begins to play. The raja goes over to the other side of the top table, where the wife of the British governor is sitting next to the maharaja of Kashmir, takes her by the hand, and leads her to the center of the park rotunda, which has been turned into a dance floor. To the sound of a Strauss waltz, the raja and the wife of the representative of the Raj open the ball. Then the other guests and the raja’s sons follow them onto the dance floor, illuminated by the flames of torches held by proud Sikh guards, the moonlight, and the glow of starlight.

  Suddenly some music sounds and Anita sits up. She heard it for the first time on her last trip to Europe, and it gives her gooseflesh. It has something about it that stirs her, captivates her, and touches the deepest part of her being. It is a rhythm that South America launched into the world in 1910 and it stirs the passions: the tango.

  “Will you dance with me?”

  Anita jumps when she hears a warm voice that, in an aristocratic English accent, is asking her to dance. She raises her head to look at the man speaking to her. He is a tall, young Indian, wearing a salmon-pink turban on his head, pinned with an emerald from which an elegant plume of feathers rises. His smile reveals a line of perfect white teeth. His eyes, fixed on Anita’s face, are waiting for her reaction. It is a gaze that is so intense that she avoids it and looks down at the floor.

  “I don’t know how to dance the tango.”

  “Nor do I, but we could learn together.”

  She suddenly finds herself in his arms, following his steps on the dance floor.

  “But you’re doing it perfectly!”

  “I learned in London,” he answers. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Have you?”

  “I’m Kamaljit, the son of Rani Kanari. They call me Kamal.”

  Now she knows. Those shining teeth, the oval-shaped face, the direct gaze, the haughty gait … All those features that she could not place belong to the raja.

  “The one I still hadn’t met! You’ve come at last!”

  Kamal is not much like his brothers. With Anita he acts as if he had known her all his life, with no preju
dices, no taboos, and with a naturalness that surprises her because she is not used to it. She is delighted with the discovery of this affable, affectionate, and amusing stepson. At last a light at the end of the tunnel in the raja’s family! With his silk kurta and his triple necklace of pearls, his beard well trimmed, his almond-shaped, honey-colored eyes, and his princely manners, Kamal looks as though he has been taken out of one of the pictures of the ancestors that adorn the walls in Château Kapurthala in Mussoorie.

  “My mother sends you her best wishes.”

  “I suppose I’ll see her tomorrow, at the Indian party.”

  “She told me to tell you her heart is with you and that she is sorry she cannot have more contact with you. She knows you are not to blame for anything, and she wants you to know that.”

  Poor Rani Kanari, so good, and yet so helpless! Perhaps because she is from a less pure Rajput line than the others, or perhaps because her addiction to drink has made the others lose respect for her, the fact is that her opinion carries less and less weight. It is a pity. Instead of consoling her, her words of solidarity transmitted by means of her son worry Anita because they remind her that she is an outsider. A condition that the raja himself is unable to resolve, because it does not depend on him but on the imperturbable laws of tradition.

  On the day of the Indian celebration, more than two thousand guests arrive; Anita cannot see Rani Kanari because the Indian women celebrate among themselves, observing the rules of purdah, at one end of L’Élysée. But she does see them on the day of the wedding because it is traditional for the women to go to the palace to prepare the groom for the ceremony. Hundreds of them occupy the main courtyard where only the presence of two men is authorized: the groom and the priest. The Crown Prince is wearing a simple dhoti, a piece of cloth wrapped round the waist, going between the legs and fixed at the hips. After the fire ceremony, in which the boy walks round a fire while the priest recites his prayers, the ritual begins during which the women prepare the future husband. The mother, Harbans Kaur, accompanied by two aunts, rubs his body with soaps and perfumed water, covering him with foam. It is a spectacle that the Indian women enjoy a lot, perhaps because it is the only time in their lives when their word is law. When Ratanjit begs for mercy and asks them to stop rubbing him, they burst into laughter. Once they have left him as squeaky clean as a baby, he goes back into the palace to get dressed, and the women remain together while they wait for the bride.

  Gita arrives on the back of an elephant, in a closed howdah so that no one may see her, faithful to the rules of purdah. Her retinue advances slowly amid cries, chanting, and the murmuring of thousands of people. In the entrance porch of L’Élysée, when the elephant kneels and Gita opens the silk curtains, the dazzling sunlight is so blinding that she has to close her eyes for a few seconds. When she opens them, she recognizes her father accompanied by the priest, dressed in spotless white; both of them help her down. It took two years to make her muslin dress embroidered with red silk and threads of pure gold. On her head there is a floating veil also made of silk, and round her neck she is wearing a necklace of two intertwined strings of cream-colored pearls, part of the state treasure of Kapurthala.

  The raja is overjoyed. He is dressed in a suit of gold brocade, and his neck, chest, and wrists glitter with the sparkle of diamonds and pearls; Jagatjit looks majestic at his son’s wedding. Under his turban crowned with a tiara of emeralds, his dark eyes shine with the satisfaction of a sovereign and father who has done his duty by ensuring the continuity of his line. Determined that his son’s wedding shall become part of history, he has hired the services of the only Indian film producer of the moment, who films the celebrations in Kapurthala for posterity with a camera bought directly from the Lumière brothers.

  He also manages to have his son’s wedding pass into the history of India, but for another reason. Once again he decides to break with tradition, which requires the newlyweds to leave the ceremony separately, the bride covered with her veil and in a palanquin closed with curtains. This time the couple parade in a carriage bearing the state coat of arms, escorted by uniformed guards on horseback. They ride through the streets of Kapurthala amid the frenzy of the crowds, waving to the people as they go by, until they come to the women’s palace, where they receive the good wishes of hundreds of Indian lady guests. For Harbans Kaur, this new gesture of disdain for tradition is an outrage. “For my father-in-law, it was an audacious blow against purdah, a blow that generated a considerable number of comments within the state,” Gita would say. “After that he continued to defy the conventions. He never asked me to observe purdah, except when the more orthodox women in the family were present.”

  Gita ends up exhausted at the end of her wedding day. She dreams of retiring to her rooms and getting into a hot bath prepared by her maid. It is the dream of a single woman, which belongs to the past. The reality is somewhat different: she and her husband are led back to the palace, where the servants accompany them to the bedroom door. After attending to their needs, the servants bow and disappear. This is the moment when Gita faces up to the destiny that has been mapped out for her, and which she has accepted in the end. “For the first time I realized we were going to be on our own for the rest of our lives. I felt overcome by the idea that my husband was a complete stranger to me.”

  31

  As soon as the pomp of the Crown Prince of Kapurthala’s wedding is over, an event considered of great importance appears on the horizon: the Great Durbar in Delhi, the ceremony of the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as emperor and empress of India. To commemorate the first visit of British sovereigns to the subcontinent, the English have built a triumphal arch of yellow basalt on the promontory that dominates the Bombay roadstead. Given the name of Gateway to India, its powerful silhouette is the first thing the King and Queen/Emperor and Empress see of India. In its shadow they are welcomed with all the honors on December 2, 1911. It is the first stage of a journey that will take them to Delhi to be the center of the greatest event in the history of the Raj, an event that will mark the high point of the British Empire.

  No one talks of anything else in the palaces of India, where feverish preparations are being made to play a large part in the ceremony for their emperor. The richest of the princes, the nizam of Hyderabad, opens the season for pomp and extravagance by having the goldsmith Fabergé make a replica of the façade of his palace in gold and precious stones to adorn the pavilion of his royal house at the Durbar in Delhi. Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala has Jacques Cartier travel to India to design a great ceremonial necklace for him, which will pass into the history of jewelry, using the gems in the crown treasure, among which is the famous 428-carat De Beers diamond.

  For Kapurthala, the Great Durbar acquires special significance because His Highness will enjoy the double honor of receiving the decoration as grand commander of the Star of India from the hands of the emperor himself, who, at the same time, will grant him the hereditary title of maharaja—great raja. And all this by virtue of his loyalty to the Raj and for contributing to the stability and prosperity of Kapurthala. In spite of the differences he still has with the British authorities, no other piece of news could make him happier.

  But this is not the case with his wives, including Anita. How will protocol treat them? Harbans Kaur is sure that the English, who are the organizers of this great event, will respect her special place as first wife. It will be a new opportunity to impose tradition and, at the same time, to pit herself against that Spanish woman. Anita is afraid they may humiliate her, and she is also rather tired of battles that she does not wish to fight. Although she has won some, thanks to the constant support of her husband, she has serious reasons for fearing that she may lose the war. The Crown Prince’s wedding has not helped to improve relations within the family, quite the opposite. Except for Kamal, who went back to England just after the wedding in order to continue with his studies in agricultural engineering, the
other sons have behaved coldly and in a distant way with her. Kamal and Rani Kanari are her only allies, but they are too weak to impose their views.

  Anita was naive to think that the sons would have any influence over their mothers because they were young and educated in England. Quite the opposite has happened: the mothers have influenced their sons. Now it seems that her stepsons also ignore her. And that hurts, because they live under the same roof. There are wounding little incidents. For example, several times, at lunchtime for the family, there is a plate missing: hers. Anita is forced to ask for one. Other times, at the garden parties, the teas that the English residents in Kapurthala attend, such as the doctor or the civil engineer, along with their wives, the raja’s sons offer drinks to everyone except her. They do not introduce her, and they never address her in conversation. They act as though she did not exist. Anything goes in order to put the outsider in her place.

  And Gita? Her caste and racial prejudices, buried in some part of her mind during the years she spent in France, have flourished again, stronger than ever, like a tree whose branches had been pruned. She no longer sees the world from the point of view of a Western woman. For her, her father-in-law is a lecherous old man who has allowed himself to be seduced by a vulgar “Spanish dancer.” By imposing her on the rest of the family, the raja is contributing to bringing down the category—the caste—of all of them. For that reason she does not want a friendship with Anita, and for the same reason she decides she does not want to live in L’Élysée. “We aren’t children anymore,” she told Ratanjit. “We need our own independence.” It took her some trouble to convince her husband to talk to the maharaja. “Even after the wedding, my father-in-law always treated him like a little boy.” The sovereign has agreed to his request without making any difficulties and has offered to let them live in his love nest of recent years: Villa Buona Vista. “I was very surprised he agreed so readily to our wishes,” Gita would say, “because he was a domineering man who was used to always having his own way. Later I realized that he did it to ingratiate himself with me. He needed all the friends and allies he could get to counteract the negativity caused in his family and environment by his relationship with the Spanish woman.”