Cuckold

by Kiran Nagarkar

  Chapter

  22

  We left next morning. By evening we had joined Shafi Khan and the main Mewar army. The Merta, Dungarpur and other forces have gone their separate ways. Rao Viramdev and Rawal Udai Simha have accepted Father’s invitation to visit Chittor before they go home and are accompanying me. There’s not much chance of Muzaffar Shah attacking the Quartermaster-General and his caravans which now include the Gujarati camels, horses, elephants and vast supplies of victuals, not to mention forty-three thousand soldiers, but I have left behind two divisions to guard them. I prefer to err on the side of caution. In the negotiations that will precede the actual payment of war reparations, Father will use the captured Gujarat forces as a major bargaining counter.

  We are making good progress but it’s not good enough for me. I would rather be on my own and fly to Chittor. My evidence as a judge of the Small Causes Court which had investigated Sunheria’s husband’s accusations and found them to be false – albeit at that point in time only – may carry some added weight and help free her. If not, the least I can do is to be there when the trial’s over and she’s released, and prove her prediction wrong. But I concealed my impatience. It is not seemly for the commander-in-chief and heir apparent to abandon his army and proceed on his own because of a private engagement.

  Rao Viramdev tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Why don’t you go on ahead, Maharaj Kumar? My niece will be happy to see you. She’s not a demonstrative woman but I know how much she loves you. She writes about you with such longing and affection in every letter to me.’

  This is the first time the old man has brought up the subject of his niece and my wife. I can’t quite fathom the reason for this sudden sarcasm. I look at his face to gauge his mood and read his mind and am horrified. He is transparently sincere. Surely he is aware of my wife’s antics and what a fine marriage she and I have? What ulterior motive can he have to put on this fine performance? He is puzzled by my silence. Then the simple truth dawns on me. Of course the whole world except him and her close kin knows the truth. Who would dare suggest to this noble and ramrod-straight man that his niece is a common dancing girl and faithless to her husband? I certainly wouldn’t.

  I took his hand in mine. ‘Thank you, Your Highness. I will not forget this kindness. But my place is with our army. Absence ...’ I couldn’t bring myself to complete the sentence. Good man that he is, he completed the mendacious platitude for me, ‘makes the heart grow fonder.’

  I can see the ramparts of Chittor in the distance. I feel a faintly perceptible but distinct acceleration in the progress of our troops. Without my prodding him, Befikir too has picked up speed. I thank Eklingji for bringing us safely back home. It is fortunate that we rarely think about the future. Who would venture into battle if he knew that he was destined not to return? Somewhere deep within us, we must believe that death happens only to other people.

  The sentries at the fort have seen us and are soon joined by other townsfolk. We are galloping now, a little out of control. We have waited patiently for more than a year and a half for this moment. It doesn’t make sense losing our heads when we are almost there. Whether you are returning home from work at your office or from a long campaign, it’s in the last five minutes that most accidents occur. Soon we’ll be at the Gambhiree and if we continue at this crazy pace, there’s going to be one hell of a bottleneck at the bridge. It will be ironic to have economized severely on the death-count in battle, only to die by the hundreds in peacetime and even as we are at the threshold of Chittor.

  But we are already at Suraj Pol. This is where for hundreds of years the townspeople of Chittor have gathered and welcomed their triumphant armies with fanfare: flags, flowers and a week of celebrations. There was a deathly silence when we rode in. Neither Father, the cabinet ministers, the nobles, the queens nor the ladies of Chittor were waiting to greet us. We advanced past straggly groups of men with black flags. Black flags hung from the windows of houses. As we turned into Lakshman Pol there was a crowd of over a thousand men waving black flags. They hung back sullenly. Suddenly a man shouted, ‘Down with the butcher and the coward.’ That released the tension in the air. ‘Shame on the Maharaj Kumar,’ someone else cried. ‘Long live the Maharana. Long live Prince Vikramaditya.’

  Tej had fallen out of line and made for the man who had broken the silence. The crowd lost its voice again. Tej bent down and pulled the man up by the scruff of his neck. ‘Who are you calling a coward? A thousand of you won’t be a match for His Highness, the Maharaj Kumar.’

  ‘Sure,’ a small voice piped up from behind. ‘Which fool will not win with deceit, dishonour and guerilla tactics? We are Rajputs here, not cowards.’

  Tej had his sword in hand now. Rao Viramdev held Tej’s wrist and drew him away. I caught my breath as I glimpsed a young woman trying to make her way towards us but the crowds wouldn’t let her pass. Something in the way she carried herself or perhaps it was the way she wore her ghagra and choli was vaguely familiar. She had a delicate nose and her eyes were large quartzes that were lit from within. For once the words intelligence and beauty meant one and the same thing. I had seen her so briefly, I was of course making her up. She was not beautiful in a modern or contemporary way. It seemed to be a face I had seen in one of Rana Kumbha’s illustrated books. It turned everything and everyone around out of focus.

  Chittor was echoing with a lively ditty. ‘Our Maharaj Kumar is a slimy rat. Hurry, hurry. Get a big fat cat. Bury your head in the quicksands of shame. Let’s wipe out the coward’s and butcher’s name. Hurry, hurry, get a big fat cat. Make a meal of the rancid rat. Look at our Vikram, he is a king of cats. Leave it to him, he’ll wipe out the whole race of rats.’ I searched for the woman as I hummed the words of the song. I couldn’t locate her anywhere.

  Shafi had lost his head. ‘Where were you when Zahir-ul-Mulk and the Gujarat forces surrounded us before dawn? But for the Maharaj Kumar, most of your sons, brothers and fathers would not be returning home today.

  The mob was shouting down Shafi and closing in around him. A man got hold of his belt from behind and toppled him. It was Sajjad Hussein, my brother Vikramaditya’s companion in conspiracy, whom Mangal had caught with Kali Bijlee and nine other horses outside Chittor in the village of Bagoli. Whoever had planned this reception for us had the demagogue’s unerring instinct for the most vulnerable spot in our army. Rawal Udai Simha’s wooden leg, the Maharaj Kumar’s sudden disappearance from the camp, Tej’s arson and revolt, were all grist for the doggerel mill. But the central theme was cowardice and there were a dozen variations on the subject. The dishonourable and dirty tricks the Maharaj Kumar had played on Malik Ayaz and the Gujarat armies, the murder of Zahir-ul-Mulk, the clandestine and dastardly attacks at night, the loss of manhood of the Rajput forces, even Rao Viramdev was not spared for the only night-sortie he went out on. There was a melee and Sajjad Hussein was stabbing Shafi. Our troops had drawn their swords and Tej’s right toe had connected with Sajjad Hussein’s jaw. A morbid red flower was blooming on Shafi’s shirt front. The clangour of sword, shield and armour sounded strange and macabre within the Chittor walls. Sometime back this was just an ugly incident, soon it would look like a civil war. I watched the madness get out of hand as if it was happening not to my people, but to some alien race from another planet.

  ‘You’ll stop now,’ a soft low voice spoke up. Slowly, very slowly the crowd froze. My wife, all of five feet two inches parted the people and walked towards me. She had a gold plate in her hands and in it were a lamp, kumkum and camphor. She did an arati, put the plate down and touched my feet. ‘Welcome home, Maharaj Kumar.’ Her voice rang and ricocheted across the ramparts of Chittor. ‘Eklingji be praised. You and our friends and our armies have brought honour and victory to Mewar and its allies.’ She took her gold chunni in her hands and tore it in two. She folded one half several times over and placed it over Shafi’s bleeding wound and tied the other half around his stomach to keep the bandage firmly in place. ‘Take h
im to our palace and call the Raj Vaidya.’ My men carried Shafi away on a khatiya. She welcomed her uncle, Rao Viramdev, Rawal Udai Simha, Raja Puraji Kika and Tej and held out the plate for the men to pass their hands over the flames of the lamp. Women came out of their homes, garlanded her and fell at her feet. The prospect of this adoration unsettled her. She winced and her toes shrank back. Someone said ‘Long live the saint-princess’ and soon the whole fortress had taken up the refrain. Within a short while a lot of the civilian men and our soldiery were following suit and prostrating themselves before her.

  I left my wife to the adulation of the populace and escorted Rao Viramdev, Rao Udai Simha and Raja Puraji Kika to the Atithi Palace. I could not look my wife’s uncle in the eye. I made sure that he was comfortably settled before I spoke. ‘I beg your forgiveness, Your Highness, for this shameful reception. I do not know where Father is. He’ll be appalled at what happened today.’

  Where was Father? Why was he not there to receive guests he himself had invited? He may not have known that things would go so completely out of control but wherever he was, I more than suspected that today’s turn of events could not be unknown to him. Why don’t I come right out and say it: granted that my dear brother Vikramaditya’s knack for self-promotion, hired loyalties and genius for crowd scenes was in evidence everywhere but today’s fiasco could not have taken place without Father’s tacit consent. That it was aimed at me was obvious enough. What was just as clear was that he wanted to leave no doubt in the minds of his allies that I had fallen foul of him and to get that message across he was willing to take the risk of humiliating, if not alienating the very friends who had fought alongside Mewar. The moment I had articulated the latter thought to myself, Father’s reasoning was no longer a conundrum. Anybody who was associated with the Gujarat campaign under my command would be wise to disown it and me, and would have to prove his loyalty to Father anew.

  ‘Maharaj Kumar, speak no more of it and embarrass me further,’ Rao Viramdev halted my train of thought. ‘There’s little or nothing I can do to mitigate your disappointment. If there’s any shame, it belongs to the rabble. Let their humbug not cloud the fact that you conducted an unusual but successful campaign with fewer casualties than we have ever suffered in a major war. The Rana was right to tell us “Don’t go by his years. You are in good hands.” There’s much that my colleagues and I have learnt from you.’ He paused and held my eyes. ‘You’ll find what I am about to tell you particularly ill-timed, even offensive. But if uncalled-for advice was always palatable, it would be useless to give it. Unfortunate as it may be, this reversal, too, will temper the steel in you. A Maharaj Kumar who aspires to the crown after his father’s natural death – may Rana Sanga live long and in good health – needs to cultivate a temperament of tensile steel. Both a cynic and a wise man will distrust praise and good luck. Only the wise man has the sense to distrust obloquy and setbacks too. As Bheem learnt from the amulet on his arm, remember, these times too shall pass.’

  Yes, these times too shall pass, I said to myself, but who can tell what new and wondrous calamities will follow them? ‘You give us sound counsel, Rao Viramdev. I hope it restores my sense of perspective.’ I was about to leave when a courier from Father arrived with a note for the Rao. He read it out aloud: ‘His Majesty, Maharana Sanga sends you greetings and profound apologies for not being in Chittor to welcome you. We went to Pushkar to give thanks to Lord Brahma for our victory against Gujarat, a victory which we owe in great measure to your stewardship. On our way back we were suddenly indisposed and against our will, had to break journey at Ajmer for a day. We hope to be with you shortly and will make amends for being remiss in our duties as hosts. We trust that the Rajkumar and his wife, your niece will make you feel at home and look after your every need in our absence.

  ‘We are, as always, beholden to Merta for your great and staunch friendship with Mewar. We are sure that with the passage of years, the bonds between our two kingdoms will grow stronger and closer.’

  You had to hand it to Father. He was impeccable. What better reason for the host to absent himself from home than to thank the illustrious gods for giving him friends like Rao Viramdev? I wondered if the Rao had reservations about Father’s belated apology. He was no man’s fool and yet what choice did he have but to swallow the story whole? But there was more to admire in Father’s letter. How deftly he had underscored my fall and demoted me from heir apparent to a mere prince ... just in case the Rao had missed the point of today’s welcoming ceremony.

  My wife and I crossed each other as I left the Atithi Palace. We have been strangers for so long and yet every time I run into her I am awkward, resentful and embarrassed. Her presence unsettles me. As the guilty party, she is naturally on top of the situation and has superb poise. She is self-possessed, lighthearted, and unobtrusively but confidently proud of her husband. Today since she’s meeting her uncle, she is glowing. I’ll take that back. She always is. A lambent flame, that’s how I see her. She bows to me and smiles. My coldness and anger are wasted on her. She doesn’t ignore them. The fact is, she is not aware of them. It is not her nature to react. She sets the tone and the pace. How or whether you react is irrelevant. I doubt it if there is a more good-natured, warm and even-tempered human being in Chittor or the whole of Mewar. Neither is there a more deceitful, double-faced and dangerous person than her. I owe her one now. I have no idea how events would have progressed without her this morning. Did she do it consciously or did she merely walk down to greet her uncle and whoever was accompanying him? Whatever the truth of the matter, she had single-handedly averted one of the most dangerous and shameful crises in the history of Mewar. There is no dearth of patricides, villains and other assorted criminals in our annals. But a clash of the populace, albeit a deliberately engineered one, with the Maharaj Kumar and the army is unheard of. How shall I ever repay her?

  Talk about surprises, from nautch girl to saint doesn’t just strain one’s credulity, it reaffirms the axiom that there is no creature more fickle than man. It’s one thing to touch a saint’s feet once a year and quite another to be married to one. Stranger, saint, wife, what difference does it make to me?

  I am still not home and my patience is wearing thin. ‘Raja, will you forgive me if I join you later?’ I’m not really asking Puraji Kika his permission and he knows it. He smiled and waved me off. Eighteen months is a long time to be away. I want to compare the Chittor I had so greedily and hastily jotted down in my memory-pad the morning we cremated Rajendra with the current one. Later, later, there would be time enough to investigate both the broad strokes and the nuance. I do not need to goad Befikir. He is in as much of a hurry to reach home as I. ‘Where’s she?’ I looked at Kausalya’s face and knew the answer. ‘The trial’s not over yet? What’s taking them so long?’ Kausalya shook her head slowly. Kausalya’s eyes. You cannot unlock them. They conceal almost as many secrets, suffering and the follies of men as the Gambhiree.

  That night I went and bathed in my river. Mother, I screamed silently, unburden me. Her waters neither cleansed me nor proffered me oblivion. I went back and made demented love to Kausalya. I would not stop. I was going to erase the memory of Sunheria. Kausalya held me and bore my assaults in the hope that she could take over some of my anger and bewilderment and stony pain but neither grief nor perhaps any human emotion, can be shared, let alone transferred.

  ‘It’s a good thing she went seven days ago. If it had happened just twenty-four hours before you came, you would never have forgiven yourself for not having ridden faster or abridged the distance by some magic.’ Kausalya was not one for sugar coatings. Some time later she asked me, ‘Do you know what Sunheria said the day she hanged herself? “The Maharaj Kumar is so ignorant of the world. He thinks the court will condone the murder because my husband physically abused me. Does he really believe that human beings are fair and that the courts can handle anything but the most elementary justice? It’s not I but the Maharaj Kumar who is a misfit. He’s
going to learn that there’s no place for a good and just person in this world.”

  Was I listening to Kausalya? I couldn’t make sense of her quiet words or voice. Sunheria had once again spoken in ambiguities. Was she the good and just person or was she referring to me? She had both those qualities in ample measure. As to yours truly, the thought strangely enough, had never occurred to me. I couldn’t think of anyone in the changed climate of Chittor barring Kausalya who might even remotely consider me a candidate for fairness and decency. I’m not thinking straight. Kausalya would not back me either, not at all, but for entirely different reasons. She is the true inheritor of the principles of the great Mauryan Prime Minister, Kautilya. The business of a prince, even more so of a Maharaj Kumar, is statecraft. And there’s no room for either goodness or justice in statecraft.

  I had a feeling that try as I might, the honorific ‘butcher’ was going to stick to me for life. Did my people really believe that the ethics of civilian life and wartime were the same? War was a Rajput’s dharma. When they disowned me, were they simultaneously disowning war? War is about power and supremacy. It is territorial ambition and greed. You cannot fight a war without killing. I did not invent war. I had merely extended its scope and taken it to its logical extremes.

  But all that is besides the point. Till Kausalya told me of Sunheria’s last words, I had believed that if only Sunheria had trusted me, if only she had waited a little longer, everything would have turned out right. I was no longer so sure. I was out of touch, as was so convincingly proven recently and worse, I was more than willing to delude myself. Perhaps despite Sunheria’s unworldliness, she had a far more realistic perception of this world and its two-legged denizens. Maybe the trial would have gone against her and she would have been condemned to hang or spend the rest of her life in prison. Would I have broken the law or taken it in my hands and twisted it to set her free? By ending her life Sunheria had spared me the agony of having to confront my cowardice and convictions about the rule of law. Am I rationalizing after the event? Is there something about life that you know, Sunheria, and I don’t? That you cannot trust anyone, least of all yourself? Come back, laundress, I swore at her, come back. You better explain yourself. I have got eighteen months of clothes to wash. Get to work, woman. I want them cleaned of all the blood on my hands, don’t forget the collar and the cuffs and my conscience. I don’t want to see a single speck of guilt, did you hear me, I won’t have anyone suspect that I wiped off ten thousand men one early morning and followed up with several thousand more as the months progressed, go on, bash my clothes, my brains and body till I am a virgin, just the way you were supposed to be despite our sexual discourses over the years and starch me crisp like thin flat steel plate. I will not have you talking in conundrums which I will spend the rest of my life trying to unravel. Get back here, Sunheria. Now. This minute.