Cuckold

by Kiran Nagarkar

  * * *

  There was no point trying to sleep. I got up and bathed. It was still dark and the raatranis had not withdrawn into themselves yet. It hit me then that I was home. Perhaps it was the fatigue or the bizarre events of the previous day that left me vulnerable. The scent of the flowers made my head reel. It was as if I had had a drink and was feeling just the right degree of intoxication. The woman who had disappeared behind the throngs of people yesterday came back to me. Where had she gone? Who was she?

  Kausalya came over as I was buttoning my angarkha. ‘Still can’t get the right button in the right buttonhole? What did you do all these months?’

  I was a schoolboy and Kausalya was once again buttoning me up. I held her tightly by the hair. She was my oldest memory and yet she was so unbelievably young.

  ‘There,’ she smiled, ‘the Maharaj Kumar is ready to face the world.’ It was my turn to smile. Even if I am not ready, I know that I had better be.

  I was standing at the top of the flight of steps of the Palace, my hands full with presents for Adinathji’s granddaughter, when I saw yesterday’s woman again, the one who couldn’t get past the crowd at Suraj Pol, outside the high compound wall. She had her odhani over her head and was walking with quick, determined steps. She had a tall package wrapped in brocade that reached almost to her chin. She looked up and saw me craning. I quickly descended a few steps and withdrew into the shadows.

  She was standing against the light in the entrance now. There were tiny sweat-beads on her forehead and above her upper lip and I could hear the susurrus of her breath. As she bent down to put the monster package she was carrying on the floor, I got a glimpse of her shadowy features through her sheer odhani. It was my sister Sumitra.

  ‘Your Highness,’ the woman smiled and leapt towards me. I caught her in my arms as the presents were scattered on the steps and the lawns. I lost my balance and tumbled down the stairs. One of my lumbar vertebrae hit the sharp edge of a step and I had twisted my right ankle, what seemed like a full hundred and eighty degrees. I observed the long lines of pain fan out all the way to my eyes and the tips of my toes. Leelawati seemed bent upon fusing our bodies together. Her arms were a shrinking noose around my neck, her face pressed like a dew-laden flower against mine. If sweat is a response to heat and exertion, why is it cooling to the touch? Leelawati’s young breasts had scooped out two burning hollows in my chest. They would never fill up again, nor would the fire die. How I loved the brightness of her eyes, the small of her waist and the avidity of her mind and yet my arms turned to lead and sank down. The extreme proximity of Leelawati made me awkward and uneasy.

  ‘I bet you forgot to bring anything for me.’

  I looked guilty and crest-fallen.

  ‘Ohhhhhhhh’ was followed by a guttural ‘uggghhhhh.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if I should marry someone so irresponsible and callous.’

  ‘Take my advice,’ I sympathized with her, ‘don’t.’

  She looked at me disbelievingly, then realized that I was pulling her leg.

  ‘Nothing can break our marriage now.’ She told me sharply. Then her curiosity got the better of her.

  ‘What have you got? Show me, show me, show me.’

  I knew that Leelawati would never again leap into my arms. I was willing to bet that this was the last time she and I would play this silly game. I was certain that along with hers, my childhood, too, was coming to an end. Within six months or a year at the most, she would be married off.

  ‘I told you I didn’t get anything for you. But take a look, I may have dropped a couple of the rags I got for the gardener’s children on the lawns.’

  She was off. This is the way I would like to remember Leelawati. She wraps the odhani around her head and throws it across her left shoulder to keep it in place, lifts her ghagra and runs out. A flurry of mauve shimmering across a field of green. The morning light is a sculptor’s chisel and hews out a moving form in razor-sharp outline from the air. Leelawati bends down, stretches her arm, picks up a package and flies away. For truly, Leelawati is a winged bird of infinite and unsuspecting grace who can float on sheer willpower till sundown. A cheeky peahen walks up with mincing steps and pecks at one of the parcels. Leelawati shoos her away with some asperity. She removes her odhani, packs the various big and small packets in it, ties it up and flings it over her shoulder in a gesture that is reminiscent of Sunheria throwing a load of unwashed clothes across her back.

  When she returned, Leelawati put her makeshift cloth sack on the floor and held my hands. She rose on her toes and kissed my eyes and forehead. Is she a child or woman? There is an earnestness in her that is unnerving. In that moment, I fear for her. Willingly or unwillingly, someone’s going to hurt her grievously.

  She opened the cloth purse tucked at her waist and took out four pods of tamarind and a folded paper packet of salt. She passed two tamarinds to me and kept two for herself. The tamarind was a smoky green and though I spiked it with the salt, I would need teeth of stone to withstand its sour impact. I could feel my brains pickling. I wouldn’t be able to bite anything for the next couple of days but who gave a damn. Tamarinds and green mangoes have no tomorrow.

  ‘Shall we open your presents or mine first?’

  ‘Yours.’

  ‘Is that blood?’ She stared a little disbelievingly at the pennant she herself had embroidered and presented to me and the troops.

  ‘Yes. General Zahir-ul-Mulk’s.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  Perhaps it was not such a wise idea returning the colours to Leelawati. I had forgotten that she and her family were Jains.

  ‘If it upsets you...’

  ‘It is not out of queasiness that I ask but because I wish to record its history for our children and posterity.’

  ‘Yes, I killed Zahir-ul-Mulk by deceit, retrieved a situation fraught with defeat for our forces and brought dishonour to Mewar.’ I was appalled at my pettiness and need to wear my heart on my sleeve. What was I looking for, a passionate reassurance from Leelawati that I was brave, unappreciated and much maligned? If she had noticed the change in my mood, she decided to ignore it and moved to the next gift.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a miracle gadget that will give a sense of direction to your floundering life. Any time you are lost, caught in a quagmire of moral dilemmas, it will show you the way out.’

  ‘Why would I need it? I always know my mind.’

  I burst out laughing. ‘How you deflate my pomposities, Leelawati. It’s a compass to give you geographical directions on a dark and cloudy night when not a star is visible in the sky.’

  ‘Really? It works just as the books say?’

  ‘Yes. Find out for yourself.’

  She did, for a full ten minutes. She went out of the pavilion, took various positions in the garden, behind the palace walls, in a dark alcove, under a banyan tree, on the steps where I had stood and watched her. I could almost see the way her mind worked. She was going to surprise the compass and catch it showing west when she was standing squarely north-east.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘From a sailor who has been around the world, all the way to Venice and whose ship had lost its way on many a storm-tossed night.’

  ‘When shall we go for a picnic in the mountains and jungles? We’ll get lost and I’ll show you the way back.’

  ‘How about next Thursday?’

  ‘Done. I’ll be here at seven in the morning.’

  She had already slipped the emerald necklace I had got her around her neck and was trying out the odhani of Egyptian cotton that the sailor had sold to me along with the compass.

  ‘Is that all?’ I couldn’t figure out why she was suddenly distracted and irritable.

  ‘You are an ingrate, Leelawati,’ I tried to laugh off her ill humour, ‘a shameless and insatiable ingrate.’

  ‘Better than being a shameless and insatiable show-off like you. There’s never an end to the gifts you k
eep giving me.’

  ‘All right, let’s forget your last present.’

  ‘I don’t want it. I have got only two presents for you.’

  ‘Do I get my presents or are you planning to keep them for yourself?’

  She thought hard but couldn’t make up her mind. I had wanted to make her happy but my selfishness had not allowed me to think of how much she enjoyed giving things.

  ‘What are you doing with them anyway?’ I tried to rectify matters and grabbed the brocade bundle from her. ‘They are mine.’

  There were fire and anger in her eyes but she relented. ‘Take it. What do I care?’ She thrust the package in my hands and turned her back on me. I undid the knot. There was one tall wrapped parcel above a flat one. I opened the flat one. It was a book with a note from Leelawati.

  ‘Dadaji and I read Kautilya’s Arthashastra together this year. He even made me write a short treatise on it. Father protested this was no reading for a young woman. Dadaji said that if she’s got a mind, he would rather that it was filled with knowledge than with gossip or inanities. I have read the Arthashastra half a dozen times in the process of copying it for you.’

  I flipped the pages of the text she had copied out so meticulously. She had not scratched anything out. If she had made mistakes in copying the Sanskrit text, she had rewritten the whole page. I looked up and caught Leelawati sneaking a look at me. She was obviously pleased with what she saw in my face. I was back in favour.

  ‘Let me have my other present.’

  She carefully removed the cloth cover to reveal a bejewelled Veer Vijay turban.

  ‘When they deprived you of your triumph yesterday, I ran home and sat up till this morning making the victory saafa for you.’

  ‘Where did you get all this jewellery?’

  ‘It’s all mine.’

  She was right. When I looked closely, I realized that I had seen most of the jewellery on her at one time or another. Even the gold Chanderi cloth was one of her formal odhanis. On its folds, Leelawati had sewn seven pairs of diamond, ruby, emerald, onyx, jade, topaz and moonstone earrings. Three pairs of gold anklets were strung on the sides. In the front, a little off-centre where the folds criss-crossed each other, she had stuck a meenakari lotus pendant of superb workmanship. Above it stood a heavy paisley-shaped nath that the Maratha women from the west coast wear in their noses. It should have been a mishmash but it was done with a fine eye for colour and design and the effect was exuberant without sacrificing dignity and delicacy.

  ‘What will your family say when they find the jewellery missing?’

  ‘Dadaji knows.’

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ For once Leelawati looked blank. ‘Fix it on my head.’

  ‘Are you going to wear it?’ Leelawati asked in amazement and disbelief.

  ‘Would you prefer it if I locked it in a trunk and put the trunk away in the loft?’

  Her smile broke through then and so did her age.

  I bent my head down. She pushed back my hair firmly and held it pressed down for a minute. Then she picked up the turban and placed it carefully on my head. She looked at her work and blurted, ‘You look just like a Maharaj Kumar.’

  ‘I am. And don’t you let yourself or me forget it. On your way back will you hand over my book to Kausalya?’

  She gathered all her presents together along with the book. ‘Next Thursday.’

  ‘Yes.’ She was on her way when I called out to her. ‘Do you mind keeping me company up to the stables?’

  She held my hand as I limped to Befikir’s stall. Mangal was waiting for me impatiently. He tried his best to keep his eyes off my victory turban. I had my say before he could give me his important news.

  ‘There’s a durbar at eleven today.’

  ‘How did you know, Sire, that His Majesty was back and had called a special durbar?’

  ‘He got in with his entourage around midnight. Rao Viramdev is to be awarded our highest honour and title, Mewar Vibhushan, along with twenty villages and three elephants. Raja Puraji Kika will be awarded Mewar Gaurav, ten villages and fifty horses. Rao Udai Simha will receive a Mewar Bhushan, seven villages and thirty horses. Do you want me to go on?’

  Mangal frowned. Had his security and intelligence men failed him? Had I given them the slip?

  ‘Did you go and meet your father last night or this morning, Your Highness?’

  ‘I didn’t need to, Mangal. Any schoolboy would have guessed as much yesterday itself.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Leelawati asked no one in particular about Befikir’s young companion.

  ‘That’s Nasha.’ I told her offhandedly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nasha.’ My voice was suddenly cold and harsh. ‘I would appreciate it if I wasn’t told in the future that you can’t go riding with me because your father won’t allow you to have a horse.’

  ‘Is he mine?’

  ‘How many dumb questions do I have to answer in one morning?’

  My crimes of misdemeanour, omission and commission in this life and all my past and future lives were forgiven and wiped off the record instantly. A dumb-founded Mangal and I were subjected to monstrous bear hugs.

  ‘May I ride him home?’

  ‘Only at a trot and if you’ll permit Sapanlal to hold the reins.’

  It may be time for me to take up a second career as seer, soothsayer, oracle and prophet but my clairvoyance is not yet foolproof. It had not taken into account a small twist of fate, or should I say foot. (As you can see I may criticize mediocre word play severely but catch me on a bad day and you’ll find me indulging in the foulest and most revolting of puns.) The durbar was a full house. Father was not treating the occasion lightly. He had, it was obvious, sent a summons to all the dignitaries in the kingdom to be present for the ceremony. He wanted to make sure that everybody knew who was on the honours list and the one person who was not.

  As I entered I heard a low but distinct gasp escape from the assembly of august personages. Only His Majesty can crown you with the golden triumphal turban. Had there been a special private ceremony? Or, as is more likely, did the Maharaj Kumar have the temerity to award himself a triumph? It would have been interesting to see if any of the courtiers had the guts to confront me with a direct question but there was no time since the Minister for Protocol announced Father. We all rose and bowed to our liege. Vikramaditya went over and fussed over him in a proprietary way and helped him sit down. Father wasn’t quite sure how to respond to his youngest son’s newly-found solicitude since he had managed pretty well on his own all these years but he was in a mellow mood and smiled indulgently though a little uncertainly.

  If you wanted to know what was going on behind the scenes at Chittor, there was no point keeping an eye on Father. The key to the drama lay in watching the other players. Look at Rattan, my younger brother. He has not forgiven his mother, me and the powers that be for being born second. He is not a bad sort really. He is intelligent, attentive and hardworking but the setback in the numbers game makes him susceptible to all kinds of slights and insults which most of the time are not intended or given. We keep our distance but there is no genuine animus between us and it is conceivable that the two of us might have been friends under another set of parents and circumstances. Rattan, poor man, is in a bit of a quandary. He had Father all to himself when he was campaigning in Gujarat with him, while the Council of Ministers and I were packing Vikramaditya to Kumbhalgarh prison for treason. Why couldn’t he have insinuated himself into Father’s good books and become his favourite son? Poor Rattan, he has no idea how to unseat Vikramaditya from Father’s affections. He shouldn’t be so hard on himself. The fact is, it is an unequal race and Vikramaditya is not the competition.

  The competition was sitting across in the Queen’s gallery. Rani Karmavati puffed up like a puri deep-frying in hot oil as Father whispered something in Vikramaditya’s ear. From total eclipse to rising sun, Vikramaditya may have come a long way since I last saw him but his mother
cannot forget that it was almost entirely her handiwork with some excellent planning and help from her confidant Bruhannada. Next to her sat my mother, the Maharani herself. She was beaming with joy. Simple soul that she is, she was happy for Rani Karmavati and Vikramaditya and was blissfully unaware that her own son and heir was not in the running any more. Rani Karmavati scoured the territory for enemies and spotted Rattan. No cause for concern there. He was but further proof of the fact that she had won against heavy odds. Her eyes fell upon me. She smiled, gloating from ear to ear. I realized for the first time why someone like Father must find her hard to resist. She had a harsh kind of beauty but the source of her attraction was a lascivious obstinacy. Women were supposed to give in or give up. She never did. She would outlast us all. I bowed down deeply to her.

  Did I detect a smile on Father’s face as he took in my golden phenta? What had made me wear it in public? Why did I ask Leelawati to put it on my head when she herself had thought of it as nothing but a private matter between the two of us? Did I wish to assert that regardless of whether Father and the whole of Mewar saw me as a butcher and a coward, I was the architect of the victory over Gujarat? Or was I telling the whole lot of them to go to hell? Rao Viramdev was looking at me expectantly. The durbar was becalmed. Even Father seemed to be waiting patiently for me. What now? Was I expected to make a small speech apologizing for our victory and for fulfilling Father’s wishes to set up Rao Raimul on the throne of Idar? Should I go on my knees and thank Father for returning twenty-four hours late and insulting our friends and allies? Should I carry Vikramaditya on my shoulders and tell one and all...