I went out and joined Mangal. He handed me a letter with Vikramaditya’s seal on it.
‘Sajjad Hussein and seven of his men are in custody in the imperial guard rooms.’
‘What took you so long? If he left the fort, and he must have for you to have intercepted him, it must have been at least four hours ago.’
‘My instructions to my men were to apprehend him only after he had left Bagoli.’
‘Why is that?’ I was willing to strangle Mangal for having countermanded my orders. Getting too big for his boots, he was. I must cut him down to size, the bloody ass, keeping me on tenterhooks while Vikramaditya played cat and mouse with us. ‘I could have you in lock-up too for insubordination.’
‘Sajjad Hussein has a farm at Bagoli.’
‘So what’s it to me? Do you want me to go and sow maize … oh my God, how blind, how unforgivably stupid of me. Did you find Kali Bijlee?’
‘And the other nine horses and the horse-breaker.’
‘You should be in the crime branch, Mangal. You have an instinctive feel for how criminals think and work. I am going to recommend you to the Rana for this year’s honours list.’
Mangal was not listening. If he was, he was not elated. His mind was somewhere else. ‘Don’t you want to find out what’s in the letter?’
I took the royal letter back to the courtroom.
‘How do you suggest we deal with Prince Vikramaditya now? All the circumstantial evidence points to his masterminding the theft but we have no proof.’
I interrupted the Pradhan. ‘We have, Pooranmalji. We have recovered the horses, all ten of them, the horse-breaker and a letter from the Prince to Prince Bahadur Khan of Gujarat. With your permission, I am going to open it.’ I thought the better of it and passed the letter around so they could all see the seal.
“To His Highness, Prince Bahadur Khan,” ’ I read from the letter, ‘ “I trust this missive finds you in good health and in fighting spirits. You are right, we are not first-born and so will have to seize the initiative and then the throne. I think this is the opportune moment for it. Both our fathers are busy fighting each other over Idar. My brother, the putative Maharaj Kumar, is in charge at Chittor. He is weak and unassertive; his wife is a national scandal and while she leads him a song and dance, he broods and vacillates and is, even after so many years of marriage, without issue. That is neither here nor there. I believe that if you ride posthaste to Chittor with a force of two thousand men, my men will throw the gates open to you and I think we can restrict casualties to double figures and no more. The populace of Chittor is solidly behind me. They are tired of the one-eyed, one-armed and one-legged King and will any day opt for a dashing, debonair and daring prince who can laugh heartily and has a hearty appetite for fun, games and pleasure.
‘ “When I am consecrated upon the throne, we’ll proceed forthwith to Idar. Your father’s holed up in Champaner while mine’s fighting against your father’s general Malik Ayaz. Can you imagine the surprise and confusion in both armies when they see us together? We’ll speedily rout them and take my father prisoner. Thence we’ll force-march to Champaner, imprison your father and crown you King of Gujarat.
‘ “I have already set the wheels of disaffection and rebellion in motion here. I urge you to leave as soon as you receive this communication. My trusted lieutenant, Sajjad Hussein, will guide you here safely. As an earnest of our eternal friendship, I am sending you ten of the finest horses of Mewar, the crown and glory of the lot being a mare called Kali Bijlee. She is, I assure you, the finest horse bred in the land. I would not part with her for the world. It is indeed a measure of my regard and affection for you that I gift this black lightning to you.
‘ “The horses are accompanied by the man who bred and broke them. He is by far the finest horse-breaker in the country. He too is yours.
‘ “God speed. I look forward to greeting the King of Gujarat in the coming weeks.
‘ “I am, as always, your true friend,
‘ “Vikramaditya Sisodia.” ’
The court returned the horses and the horse-breaker to Rawat Jai Simha and then confronted Prince Vikramaditya with the evidence of his treason. By rights he should have been put to death. But he was a prince and my brother and while Father lived and was sovereign, it was only right that we should leave it to him to do what he would with his son. Perhaps it was a grievous error not to have made an example of him. Perhaps we should have treated him exactly like other commoners and noblemen who had committed treason and paid for it with their lives. Perhaps the course of history would have been different if the court had acted in concert and forcefully. Perhaps. Instead, all four of us signed the order for his internment and sent him under heavy escort to Kumbhalgarh fort where he was to be imprisoned till Father’s return.
When anybody asked where Vikramaditya was, we told them the truth. Half the truth. He was at Kumbhalgarh. Recovering from a nasty wound inflicted upon him in the course of his favourite sport: hunting.
* * *
I had no wish to go back home. I was exhausted. I tried to count up to ten but couldn’t remember the number that followed three. I did not want to see her face or be subjected to her solicitous care. I didn’t need her to take my shoes off and then my turban and the angarkha. There were servants to help me disrobe. And who wanted to disrobe anyway? All I wanted to do was to get into bed and stay there for the next two hundred years.
I went to Chandra Mahal. My head must truly be badly damaged. I was hallucinating. That dhobi’s wife, I can’t recall her name, was standing by the bed in my room. I ignored her.
Mangal spoke to her. ‘Not today. Some other time. He’s exhausted.’
‘Who are you talking to?’ I asked Mangal irritably.
‘I’ll look after him,’ she said.
‘I asked you who you are talking to? Can’t you answer?’
‘Sunheria, Maharaj Kumar.’
‘What the —,’ I swallowed the obscenity, ‘what is she doing here?’
‘She comes here every night.’
I was half-awake now. ‘What for?’
‘She said you asked her to.’
I couldn’t handle this. The phantoms in the Gambhiree were beckoning me. ‘Go away. Both of you.’ I dropped on the mattress and passed out.
I woke up at five. The Gurukul and its military training had ruined my sleep forever. Whatever time I went to bed, I was up at five. Sunheria was sitting in the corner.
‘Do you always fold dirty clothes too?’
‘Did I make a mistake?’
‘What do you do with your dirty clothes?’
‘I have just two pairs of clothes. I wear one and wash the other.’
‘So whose chunni were you wearing that first day in court?’
She blushed. ‘Her Highness, your wife’s.’
‘You must have more clothes than any other woman in the fort, more than even Queen Karmavati since the entire household seems to send its clothes to you.’
‘I thought I was going to court, so I should dress well. That’s the only time I have borrowed anyone’s clothes.’
‘A likely story.’
She smiled. ‘Well, sometimes I borrow clothes for a while. But I always return them.’
The curtain moved almost imperceptibly. I put a finger on my lips and looked at Sunheria. I got up softly and in three strides was in the next room.
I barely got a glimpse of her back. She was running fast and her long thick plait slapped hard against her bare back. Kausalya.
I came back.
‘Do you realize that you are putting me at grave risk?’
She looked puzzled. ‘How?’
‘If your husband were to name me as co-respondent?’
‘Oh, those are the laws for common people like him and me. You are above all that.’
Vikramaditya would certainly have agreed with her.
‘Weren’t you angry with me the other night? At the palace?’
‘Why would
I be upset?’
‘Because Mangal forced you to come.’
‘Nobody forced me. I came because I wanted to.’
‘Then you must have been all the more angry when I turned my back on you.’
‘How could I be when your wife was so kind to me?’
‘Are you going to stay in that corner all night long?’
She got up shyly and came forward. I untied the strings of her blouse at the back and tried to pull it off but the nine or ten bangles stopped me dead.
‘Are you trying to tell me that every time you take your blouse off, you have to first remove all these ivory bangles?’
She laughed. I got hold of the bangle closest to her wrist and tugged at it. It was the narrowest and effectively held up the others which grew progressively larger. It was no use, I would just end up breaking her wrist and a couple of her fingers. She pressed the index finger and thumb of her left hand around the knuckles of her right and slipped the first ivory band out. The second one took the same kind of coaxing. The rest fell out rapidly, all she had to do was hold the forearm and hand down. When she had repeated the process on her left arm, I gently pulled the choli off. I thought of Pushkar again and the hills of sand that the previous night’s winds leave behind. I passed my hand lightly over them, almost as if I was afraid to change the contours of the dunes. But that slight breeze generated by the lambent hand was enough. The sands shifted, ripples ran through them and the purple pinks which had lain slack and slumbering rose slowly till they came to fine tremulous heads.
I undid the knot of the ghagra and let it fall to her feet. I picked her up in my arms and laid her on the mattress. Her eyes were wide open. There was no trepidation in them. They were watchful, they wanted to know what my next move was going to be. I flicked my tongue between her breasts. She shivered. I took off my clothes and lowered myself down on her, the weight of my body on my elbows. Her body smelled of freshly pressed clothes. My head dipped and the tongue slipped over her right nipple. Another tremor.
I raised my body up all the way to the ankles before plummeting down. And froze.
‘Are you a virgin?’
Chapter
3
Let nobody fool you, most couples are conjoined on earth. The mismatches, now they are a different story. They are made in heaven.
He had been the most eligible bachelor in this part of the world. It took them a long time to find a bride for him. Two or three proposals along with horoscopes arrived every day. They had to appoint a full-time priest to go through the horoscopes and decide which matched his. There was no point in looking at the proposals first and getting excited about a few of them only to discover that Saturn was in the wrong house in one princess’s case and another princess had a malevolent Mars dogging her.
Marriage is a two-way street. The girl’s people make overtures. But the boy’s relatives don’t sit on their behinds and wait for a pari or an apsara to drop out of the heavens. You make your moves too, prepare a list of the houses you would like to be allied with, then find out if there’s a suitable unmarried girl there without a limp or a cleft palate or polio legs. Do you remember the time the Maharaj Kumar’s father, the Rana, got married? The king of Mandasaur had a fine, vivacious daughter with a complexion that would put morning dew to shame. She was there right under everybody’s nose and nobody noticed her. No malice aforethought or any question of ‘let’s teach Mandasaur a lesson, we too can get even with them’ or ‘let’s reserve her for the second son’. Nothing of the sort. They just forgot all about her. When the Rana didn’t marry her, the others drew their own conclusions. They surmised that appearances were deceptive, that there was something fatally wrong with her, why else would such a fine match be passed over. Soon everybody was staying clear of her. She was never rejected because she was never considered. The girl was not bothered the first four or five years. Then she realized that nobody was ever going to ask for her or even look at her. She took it ill. She knew something was terribly wrong with her even though she couldn’t tell what it was. In time something did go wrong with her, something terrible happened to her, in fact. She got a tic in her face, it spread to her hand and then to the knee. She couldn’t sit still, her elbow pulled in one direction and her leg in another and without realizing it she was making faces all the time. She stopped going out. After a while she didn’t come out of her room. Then she tied a rope to a beam and kicked the stool from under her.
It was his grandmother, the Queen Mother herself, who found the girl for the Maharaj Kumar. She was from Merta, a principality under Rao Ganga of Jodhpur. She was born in a village called Kurki and was the only daughter of Rattan Simha, the second son of Rao Duda of Merta. Since she had lost her mother as a child, she grew up at her grandfather Duda’s house. She had skin the colour of light golden honey. Her eyes were green and her manner was quiet. Her father was always away, travelling, fighting wars.
When she was no longer a girl but could yet hardly be called a woman, her grandfather, whose pet she was, looked for a suitable boy for her. Her grandfather, her uncles and aunts, even her father Rattan Simha made enquiries, short-listed four princes and then because their horoscopes were matched in heaven and because he was the heir apparent of the most famous Rajput kingdom of the day, they approached his grandmother. Maharana Sangram Simha or Sanga as he was known to his people, thought it was a worthy match for his eldest son. Even the most impartial and critical observers had only the most glowing things to say about the girl. She was beautiful, devout and obedient. She would make a fine wife and God willing, a fine queen for Chittor, in the fullness of time.
As a token of confirmation of the betrothal, the girl’s uncle, Rao Viramdev was deputed to go to Chittor with the tika presents. A retinue of noblemen and servants on horseback and camels carried three coconuts and eleven betelnuts covered in thick gold leaf; two hundred coconuts, ten pounds of jaggery, ten pounds of betelnuts, ten pounds of dates, ten pounds of sugar, ten pounds of pistachios, fifteen pounds of almonds, seven pounds of lac and seven pounds of betel leaves. There were twenty-one seed pearls to be stuck on the boy’s forehead over the vermillion tilak. For the bridegroom and his relations, there were a hundred and one suits of gold thread, turbans, dhotis, balabandis, goshpechs, and cloths of various designs, with precious stones embedded in them. The last of the gifts was fifteen horses with velvet and jewelled trappings and one hundred thousand tankas in cash.
The Maharaj Kumar sat on a pedestal. He was fidgety, a strand of brocade from his duglo kept chafing the nape of his neck. At the end of a long drawn-out ceremony, the purohit put a tilak on his forehead. The gold coconuts and betelnuts were offered to him and the other presents displayed for everybody to admire. Finally the Rana saw the gifts. The marriage date was fixed and Rao Viramdev returned home with a hundred tankas in cash and several baskets of sweets.
* * *
It seemed as if the whole of Chittor was going to Merta for the wedding. Other people’s marriages, your brother’s, sister’s or friend’s marriages are fun. Not your own. Prior to the marriage, Ganapati, the Auspicious One, sat in the palace for seven days. Each day, they fed the groom such rich food, he would soon sport an enormous paunch and become the twin brother of the elephant-headed god himself. The women in the family danced and sang every night, their men watched from the terrace and when a singer, instrumentalist or drummer had outdone herself or himself, they went down and gave a tanka coin to the artist.
There was much drinking, merry-making and badinage. The butt of all the humour was the bridegroom. He smiled, he laughed, he bore it all philosophically.
It took weeks to reach Merta. Rao Dudajee, Rattan Simha, Viramdev, everybody came to receive the Maharaj Kumar and his wedding party at the border of Merta. The baraat went round the village with great fanfare and came to a halt at the Arjun Simha Palace. There was talk of whether everybody would find a bed, forget a room, in the Palace. But they needn’t have worried. Merta was not about to be awed and patron
ized by Chittor or known as the poor relative who had married rich. The Palace which looked unimpressive from the outside, went on forever once you entered it. New wings had been added and the rooms well-appointed. They relaxed till sunset.
Why can’t they have marriages at a decent hour in this part of the country? The reason is they just don’t. Full stop. End of matter. Huge trunks were opened and everybody wore brand new clothes. Two darzees attended upon the Maharaj Kumar to make last minute adjustments and fittings. A dhoti which came down to the knees and a fine and intricately brocaded emerald green duglo on top. The most ornate and flashy piece of clothing was the turban. It was red in colour with a mighty turra of gold thread. Seven strings of pink pearls, the smallest at the top and the largest ones the size of marbles at the bottom, hung from the Prince’s neck.
It was time to go to the bride’s house and get married.
* * *
He was suddenly at the threshold. He had alighted from the elephant. The priest had performed the puja and tied a string around his father’s silk purse to make sure that the Rana didn’t spend even a copper coin while he was a guest of Merta. The drums and the trumpets were still blaring. If he turned round he would see his father, close family and half the clan behind him. But he felt cut off from them. He would have to make it on his own from now. There was no returning to his youth. His carefree days, the occasional wild parties, the absence of responsibilities, he had left them behind. Walk under the lintel and he would step into full-grown manhood. He felt abandoned and alone. Surely two steps in either direction couldn’t make such an irreversible difference. It was absurd but true nevertheless. He thought of his bride whom he had never seen. When she took those two steps out of the house, she would exile herself almost permanently from the people and the house and the trees and the birds and the temples and the town where she had grown up. In one stroke her past would be severed from her and turned to the ashes of memory.
Cuckold Page 5