The Home Minister was a large man gone to fat. I remember him from the days when I was a child. He was trim and tall and in a perpetual rush. He was one of our best commanders and had been deeply offended when Father placed him in charge of the Home portfolio.
‘Shall I ask our womenfolk to lead the troops if, God forbid, Chittor is besieged when we are out fighting elsewhere?’ Father had asked him. ‘Besides, even when I’m at home, I still need someone I trust to take care of internal security.’
Lakshman Simhaji had grunted and his nostrils had flared. He had huffed and puffed as he was doing now but for very different reasons. He had become so bulky after he was forced to abandon the rigours of a soldier’s life that he needed someone to ease him down on a seat and to lift him up. He spoke fast and that, combined with his breathlessness, made it difficult to follow him.
‘Do you expect me to rest my butt on a seat higher than yours?’ I had got Mangal to pile four mattresses on top of each other to make things easy for him. ‘I may be old and fat and fart ceaselessly but my brains have not been addled to the point where I’ll insult the Maharaj Kumar.’
I was being merely selfish, nothing more. The last time Mangal and I had to raise him, the two of us had almost keeled over.
‘You are like my father, Uncle. It makes no difference if I sit at your feet.’
‘Like, yes. But not an iota beyond that. Hold on to your seat and your dignity, Maharaj Kumar. Only then can the stars and the sun keep their places in the heavens.’
‘I see that the Home Minister is already waxing eloquent,’ Prime Minister Pooranmalji had slipped in without any one of us realizing it. Now here was an enigma. Not sinister but stealthy. Urbane, suave and utterly bereft of emotion. A very advanced instinct for survival. Not just for himself but for Mewar. I think he deliberately promotes the impression that he cannot be trusted. That way he is able to keep his distance and his options open.
‘May you live long, Your Highness and may my life be added to yours.’ I bent my head slightly to accept the Pradhan Mantri’s benediction. We have two prime ministers among us Suryavanshis, the descendants of the Sun-god. Father is a Diwan or prime minister to Eklingji, the five-headed Shiva who is our family-deity and whose kin and representative he is on earth. Pooranmalji who had just entered is PM to the Rana, my father.
‘I will dispense with small talk and come straight to the point. I may have acted in haste in calling this meeting of the Security Council. If it proves to be so, I apologise to you in advance. But I wanted time and secrecy on our side. In the first part of our session, we sit as the court of final resort in Mewar. I myself will take minutes of the proceedings.’
‘Who, who is the plaintiff?’ Lakshman Simhaji interjected. ‘And what, what is the offence?’
‘Call Jai Simha Balech.’
Neither Adinathji nor the Prime Minister betrayed the slightest trace of foreknowledge of the Balech affair. How would they react now that matters were about to come into the open, I wondered. Mangal showed Jai Simha Balech in. The Rawat looked cowed down. He had obviously not expected such a high-powered reception.
‘Rawat Jai Simha Balech,’ for once Uncle Lakshman Simha spoke without stumbling, ‘you stand before the highest court of the land. Speak now or hold your tongue for evermore. If you decide to speak, then speak the truth. For if you fail to do so, you could not only lose your life but the state will also dispossess both you and your children of all estates, land, property and titles.’
The Rawat had the look of a trapped animal. He had not courted trouble. Trouble had been visited upon him. Whatever the outcome, he knew he would be the loser. If he spoke up now, we would resent him for forcing our hand. The Rana who had once been his companion would grow distant. If he held his tongue, he would earn the enmity of the Solanki of Godwar. Worse, he would dishonour his clan and never be able to face his children. When you deal with naked power from an inferior position, perspectives get distorted. He was the aggrieved party and yet he felt guilty and would continue to do so all his life.
He spoke quietly. He did not leave anything out. When he had finished, he looked at no one in particular and said, ‘I want justice done regardless of the rank and position of the accused.’
I knew we had arrived at the trickiest part of the session. I had been waiting for this moment. If I did not wrest the initiative now, Adinathji and Pradhan Pooranmal would leave me holding the bag. Lakshman Simhaji was a decent man but naive in matters of intangible nuances and subtle statecraft and he would, willy-nilly, follow their lead.
‘Thank you, Jai Simhaji. Will you wait in the antechamber while we confer?’ When he left, I briefed the court about my conversation with Vikramaditya.
‘Are you sure that the mare you saw was Kali Bijlee?’ The Pradhan Mantri’s strategy, as I had expected, was to pick holes in the evidence till it became too shaky to prosecute the prince.
‘No, I am not. At the same time he admitted that he had not bought the horse he called Kajal at Chittor. Besides, the horse he claimed to have bought would have cost a king’s ransom.’
‘I’m sure the Rana’s son can afford that, wouldn’t you say so?’ Pooranmalji turned towards the Finance Minister. Adinathji smiled faintly but declined to comment on that rhetorical remark.
‘Adinathji, is it true that my brother has been heavily in debt to your house for some months now?’ It was my turn to pin him down to some concrete information.
‘I wouldn’t say heavily. A little, yes.’
‘Has he applied to you for a loan recently?’
‘No.’
‘Had he done so, would you have lent him the money?’
‘I cannot give an opinion on a conjecture.’
‘Is it not true that when his IOUs came due, you not only refused to extend them but also told him that you would not give him any leeway in the matter of interest payments?’
Adinathji shifted just a little and considered his answer for almost a minute. ‘Yes, that is true.’
‘What, what has all this got to do with the case in hand?’ Lakshman Simha asked impatiently.
‘Almost nothing. I’m just trying to plug all the alleys and byways down which we can spend the rest of the night giving ourselves a way out of not confronting the issue at hand.’ I was treading dangerous ground. Both the Pradhan Mantri and Adinathji were watching me carefully to see when I would overstep myself and move beyond the vigorous prosecution of the case into personal hostilities. ‘And is it true that Prince Vikramaditya has not been able to raise the funds to pay even your interest?’
‘He has not paid it yet. Whether he was unable to find the money, I do not know.’
‘I do not know whether His Majesty, Rana Sanga, will take another month, two months or a year to return. You, as well as I, have been put in charge in his absence with the express purpose of not allowing affairs of the state to come to a standstill. I do not need to stress the seriousness of the charges the Rawat has brought. I would, however, like to point out that if there are other ramifications to this case beyond that of a simple but egregious theft, then the gravity of the offence as well as the responsibility placed upon us may be more substantial than we are, at first glance, willing to grant.’
I had gone to orotund lengths to avoid being precise while hinting at complexities about which I was, like them, clueless. But even if the arrow had been shot at nowhere in particular, it had certainly found its mark.
‘Pooranmalji, what course of action do you and the other elders suggest?’ Lakshman Simhaji burst in where the two foremost advocates of caution in Chittor feared to venture. ‘Is there any option apart from summoning Prince Vikramaditya?’
There was a pause before Pooranmalji spoke. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of sleeping over the problem tonight and then meeting again tomorrow.’
‘That would successfully subvert the purpose of holding this court at night so that we avoid undue publicity. And thereby also lose the great advantage of having ti
me on our side.’ I was putting up a good fight but I knew I was no match for Pooranmalji.
‘And what if,’ Pooranmalji smiled urbanely, ‘what if there is a simple explanation to everything that sounds so full of sinister portent?’
The Home Minister rose to the bait but his hard commonsense did not get caught in the hook. ‘Why sir, that is an outcome and a mercy that all of us are even now praying for.’
‘I think we are all agreed then that the Captain of the Imperial Guard along with a select band of lieutenants should fetch Prince Vikramaditya,’ that was the redoubtable Adinathji at his best. Think. And then think again. If you decide to act, no halfway measures. Act with the full force at your command.
I had hoped that Mangal would interrupt us with some news of Sajjad Hussein. I looked at his face when he entered now and realized that I had either gone on a wild goose chase or Vikramaditya was playing a more devious game than I imagined.
‘Show the Captain of the Guard in.’
‘Doesn’t he have to be sent for?’ Lakshman Simhaji asked a little puzzled.
‘His Highness, the Maharaj Kumar took the precaution of having him on hand in case of just such an exigency.’ Pooranmalji was loath to let me go that easily.
‘Go silently and inconspicuously. Take enough guards to overcome resistance, if any, from His Highness, Prince Vikramaditya or his personal guard. You are to produce him before us. Do not use force unless necessary. Give him this warrant and bring him back.’ The Captain of the Guard didn’t bat an eyelid when I mentioned Vikramaditya. I wondered what kind of a moral dilemma he was trying to resolve in his own mind while keeping a straight, expressionless face. He was the head of the elite guard trained for one purpose and one purpose alone: to safeguard His Majesty and his family. What if Queen Karmavati told him that he would be court-martialled for endangering, instead of protecting, His Majesty’s son who may very likely be the next Rana? ‘Take the Prince,’ I could hear her saying with formidable imperiousness, ‘yes, take him. But be warned, only on pain of death.’
The old men were yawning away by now. Had to keep them going till they got their second wind. Mangal had arranged for refreshments and light drinks. The operative word was light. I didn’t want the food to sit like dead weight in their bellies and put them to sleep. I had not realized how tense I was until the food arrived. I couldn’t bear to look at it. ‘The mind must have the final say and sway over the body and not the other way round,’ I could hear my yoga teacher telling me softly. ‘Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind about who’s the master and who the servant.’ I forced myself to eat. I envied my uncle, Lakshman Simhaji, not because he ate heartily and picked up either his left or right buttock to allow for a smooth passage when he broke wind, but because he alone out of the four of us, was not exercised by the implications of what we were doing. Of course there would be consequences, maybe there would be hell to pay but that is the nature of action and authority and responsibility, and nothing more. Cast a stone in the pond, there were bound to be ripples.
* * *
Vikramaditya strode in. My heart missed a beat when I saw the manacles around his wrists.
‘We had no alternative, Your Highness. His Highness Prince Vikramaditya resisted all our pleas to bring him here.’
Before the captain had finished Vikramaditya had come to the point.
‘You old flatulent dogs, how dare you bring me here under duress? I promise you, you’ll pay, each one of you will pay a price so heavy you’ll rue the day you were born. And as for you, Prince aspiring, with your obsession for the letter of the law, for spirit you have none, I will reserve a special place in my heart for you. Every minute of my waking hours, I will invent a new and more deadly torture for you. Consider your life and career over. The rack will be sheer pleasure compared to what I’ll concoct for you.’
‘If you assure us that you will conduct yourself with decorum and uphold the dignity of this court, I’ll ask the Captain to remove your handcuffs.’ I had no intention of responding to his elaborate threat. ‘If you so much as swear once more or misbehave in any other fashion, we’ll be forced to chain and handcuff you again. What will it be?’
‘What court are you talking about? This sad circus with three superannuated clowns and a spineless prince whose wife is a common nautanki girl? Look after your own affairs, heir-aspirant, instead of pretending to look after the business of the state. I have a suggestion for you. That wife of yours, the whole city knows, dances for free. Why not become her pimp? That way you’ll have something more worthwhile to do with your time and you’ll even earn some money.’
I thought I had scraped the bottom of the barrel when I was in the bath trying to figure out the full spectrum of my brother’s repertory of insults, taunts and jibes. I had, of course, missed the obvious. He could twist an innocent remark, an awkward or embarrassing moment in childhood into a lifelong source of scorn and jeer. He was a master of puns, innuendoes and double meaning and would zero in on friend or foe alike when his guard was down and he least expected it. It didn’t matter that his humour was always of the lowest order or that it mimicked and satirized physical tics, frailties and handicaps. If you were his victim, he drew blood and had you in tears and rubbed salt and chillies into your wounds by pointing out that you had no sense of humour and fun.
I looked at him. What a handsome head my brother had. He had piercing eyes and straight hair that sat in place until he was mad at something or laughing and threw his head back. Then it rose like a fisherman’s black net and fell all over his face till he ran his hand over it and put it back in place. He is tall, a good two inches taller than I am — and I’m not exactly short at six feet and one inch — and even the most dishevelled and disreputable clothes only enhance his casual and offhand charm. When we were children, he was my favourite brother and even today I feel the loss of our friendship.
He had fixed his eyes on Pooranmalji and paused for effect. I’m familiar with my brother’s mannerisms and bag of tricks. He was about to sow consternation and doubt in the mind of the court.
‘Take heed all ye who sit in judgement here,’ he had selected a low, velvet smooth and dark timbre from his wide range of voices, ‘take heed that I do not recognize this court for there is no court in this kingdom nor anywhere upon earth which is fit to try me. I am a Prince, the Rana’s son. Remove my handcuffs and let me go in peace. Because if you do not, you’ll be responsible for the chaos and anarchy that will visit our land.’
There was an unholy silence for a minute and more. Then the Pradhan spoke. ‘Remove his handcuffs.’ Vikramaditya looked triumphant and made ready to go as Mangal unlocked the cuffs. ‘Sit down, Prince. Not a word from you now till you are spoken to. Fetch Rawat Jai Simha Balech.’
Laxman Simhaji read out the charges.
‘How plead you, Prince Vikramaditya?’
‘I refuse to answer that question except to say that one cannot steal from one’s own house. All the Raos and Rawats and Rajas in our kingdom are so by our decree and our pleasure. There is only one authority above us. That is Shri Eklingji whose vice-regents we are on earth. To him alone are we accountable.’
I was in the direct line of descent and would one day, God willing, be absolute monarch because my father was the Diwan of the god Eklingji. But this is the crux and paradox of Eklingji’s legacy. We are his representatives on earth. Were he to appear in person tomorrow and demand the kingdom, we would have to hand it to him because we hold it in trust for him. Whereas the lands that we give to the nobles and loyal citizens are gifts. The only way we can take them back is if they misbehave or are disloyal or rebel against Mewar. Then alone does the law allow us to annex their lands by force. At least that is my reading of the law.
‘Did you steal the horses, Your Highness?’ Pooranmalji asked.
‘I have committed no theft.’
‘Are the ten horses which are missing from Jai Simha Balech’s studfarm in your safekeeping?’
How subt
ly and beautifully the Prime Minister had phrased that question. If I was ever in trouble, I would want Pooranmalji as my defence lawyer. You could see Vikram squirming in the narrow confines of his mind, for it is a very limited mind that can accommodate at best three or four ideas in a lifetime and those, too, not simultaneously. It seemed like such a friendly, well-meaning, innocuous question. Should he answer, should he not? Was there a catch? There must be if it came from Pooranmalji, where the waters ran deep and the undercurrents were always invisible.
‘I will refrain from answering that question.’
‘Could you, through your good offices, arrange to return them either to this court or directly to the Rawat?’
‘It’s too late for that.’ Vikramaditya had slipped up but I knew that nothing would come of it. It was uncanny, how without any prior understanding, we had let the ablest and most experienced lawyer among us take charge of the proceedings.
‘Would you have been able to do it if the court had sat yesterday instead of today?’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘The horses, Your Highness, about whom it would appear, it is too late to do anything now. Have you lost them? Sold them? Or gifted them to anybody?’
‘Don’t try your tricks with me, Pradhanji, I am not about to fall for them. How can I lose, sell or gift what I never had?’
‘How about the horse-breaker, Pathak? Can he be returned to his lawful employer?’
‘No, he may not.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I am not at liberty to say.’
‘Is he in your employ?’
‘He is not.’
‘Have you given him to somebody else?’
‘He is a free man. He can take up a job where he wants.’
There was a soft knock on the door. It was Mangal.
‘Maharaj Kumar,’ Pooranmalji turned to me ‘this investigation is not getting anywhere. Shall we recess and decide on our next step?’
‘That seems like a good idea.’
‘Take the accused to the antechamber. If he gets boisterous, handcuff him. Guard, make the Rawat comfortable in one of the adjoining offices.’
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