Cuckold

by Kiran Nagarkar

  I think my uncle was genuinely touched and so became even gruffer than normal. ‘You were always obstinate as a mule. No point trying to din some sense into you at this late age.’

  * * *

  Perhaps every crisis needs a saviour. My wife fitted the role perfectly in this time of pestilence. She had begun to have a substantial following. And it was not just women who flocked around her. The survivors in town including patients who had the strength to move, joined her at the Brindabani Temple at seven in the morning and at night for arati. She and I hardly saw each other since she camped out most of the day and sometimes part of the night in front of the Flautist and prayed to him to come to the succour of Chittor.

  Kausalya had requisitioned an old property close to the Brindabani Temple and converted it into a children’s orphanage. She named it Nandanvan. Never one for light talk, she became more and more silent. Sometimes she would come home and bury her head in my shoulder. That was the only way I would know that there had been an unusual number of deaths at the children’s home or that one of the children she had grown attached to or worked round-the-clock to save, had not made it. We made love at times. She never said no. Perhaps it gave her something else to think about as it did for me. The peacocks, I realized, were not alone. We make love regardless of grief, indifference, death, happiness, pain.

  One Thursday evening I took the civil engineer to Nandanvan. Kausalya had told me a few nights before that the roof of the orphanage had sprung many leaks and in some places it was merely a matter of time before the rafters, supports and tiles came crashing down. We were late and riding at a good clip because the roads were almost empty. Who would venture out after seven these days? So I thought. I was wrong. The deserted roads, at least in this one instance, had nothing to do with the epidemic. Everybody in Chittor, dead or alive, young or old, civilian and soldier, whores, pimps, men, women and children, everybody was at the Brindabani Temple. Was it the Flautist’s feast? Had the idols been stolen, was there an accident? There wasn’t room to move. The Temple and the wide Maharana Kumbha Path were filled to overflowing. Some of the people were shivering but being drenched or ill with fever did not bother them. The crowds saw me and took hold of Befikir’s reins. No Joharibai to the rescue this time, not even the intrepid and loyal Mangal to defend me against a mob of thousands. My companion too was made to dismount.

  ‘Leave him alone. Only I’m accountable.’ Nobody paid me any heed. They merely parted to make way for me. I did not know that the cycle of birth and death can take place in the same life. Hell is not some other place and some other life. It is going through the same, terrible experiences again and again. I was at the steps. I had heard that voice years ago, I had heard it today as we turned into the Maharana Kumbha avenue and rode down at a gallop but my mind would not admit its reality. Was it the same song? Frankly, I don’t recall. Yes, you do, every word of it and you know damn well, this one’s different. One step at a time, Maharaj Kumar, one step and one more and you’ll be on top of Mount Kailash. There she was strumming the ektara with her fingers, her eyes closed and her body whirling and rotating in a trance. When she came to the refrain, all those thousands of people picked it up and lifted it heavenwards. They repeated it lustily again and again till at some predetermined signal, she went on to the next verse.

  What is a flower, if it cannot bloom?

  What is air if it cannot fill the lungs?

  What is water if it cannot quench thirst?

  What is the sun if it cannot give the body heat?

  What is a body if it cannot give pleasure?

  (Trust her, trust her to treat the sensual and the spiritual as one and the same.)

  What is a prayer if it cannot rise to heaven?

  What is a saviour if he will not save?

  Oh Lord, save us, save us, save us.

  It took a hundred crimes for you to act against Shishupal.

  We’ve committed a hundred and one. Where are you?

  It took the disrobing of Draupadi for you to show up.

  We were born naked. Where are you, where are you?

  When the wrath of Indra, the king of gods, started the deluge,

  You lifted a little finger and saved Brindaban. Where are you now?

  Oh Lord, save us, save us, save us.

  Save us from cholera, save us from the plague, save us from harm.

  What is a saviour if he will not save?

  She had worked herself to such a pitch and frenzy in the midst of the last ‘save us, save us’ refrain, she collapsed and fell in a heap. No one moved, then one by one they went and touched her feet. There should have been a scramble but they formed a queue. How the times had changed. Nautch girl, slut, the royal whore, the people of Chittor had called her every dirty name in the language. When they ran out of them, they invented new ones. Finally her name itself became synonymous with the faithless wife as mine became interchangeable with cuckold. Now she was called Chhoti Sant Mai. If you are exposed long enough, time will get you inured to anything. The distance between a full stomach and starvation, the normal and the abnormal, the done and the forbidden, affluence and poverty is nothing but habit. I had blushed and raged and kicked the plate of food from her hands when she sang and danced. The last time I was here, the acid in my belly had burned a hole in my head. I had given orders that she be confined to her rooms in the palace. Now when she sings, I don’t get into a rage or even shrug my shoulders. I shut my ears and shut up. Frankly, I’ve ceased to be bothered. She goes her way and I mine.

  She came to. She cringed. She sat up, then stood up. She tried to cover her feet with her ghagra, then with her hands, it was no use. They put a coin in the plate and touched her feet with their hands or their foreheads.

  ‘Not mine, not mine, it’s his feet, the Lord’s feet you must pray at.’

  They smiled and moved on. If her feet were inaccessible, they touched the ground she had stood on. If only, I thought, if only Queen Karmavati and Vikramaditya could have been here. Who, after all, had loved her more and wished her better? The priests alone had not changed. They had thought her conduct shameless that fateful Janmashtami day. They had smirked and sneered at her then. They hated her now. I looked at the head priest of the temple. There was loathing and fear in his eyes.

  The Little Saint as everyone called my wife now, had usurped their temple and their importance. The Chief Mahant raised his hands. The crowds inside, and as the word was passed around, the people outside, fell silent. ‘The priesthood of Chittor has decided to initiate a month-long Sankat-Vighna Yagnya to rid our capital city of the terrible pestilence that has wrought unimaginable havoc,’ the priest’s voice rang out like a challenge, daring any one, especially the Princess to contradict him. ‘The community of priests will take turns round the clock and invoke the gods, appease them and ask for their blessings. We will not rest till they lend a favourable ear to our prayers. The Sankat-Vighna Yagnya is the most powerful antidote available to man against the evil spirits. We give you our word.’

  A small voice from the crowds outside piped up, ‘The Little Saint is our Yagnya. She is the fire that will cleanse this land ... and all of you.’

  It’s a wonder that little wiseacre did not bring the Brindabani Temple crashing down. The people laughed as they hadn’t for months.

  ‘We will vanquish,’ the Chief Mahant’s voice rose above the din, ‘this evil force that is amongst us.’

  Who did he mean? Who was he referring to? The cholera? The little man who had got a laugh out of the public? Or my wife who it would appear did not need the mediation of priests to approach

  God and was on a first-name basis with Him? Few royal couples had the kind and number of enemies that my wife and I had. We could now count the priests of Chittor amongst them.

  ‘Long Live the Little Saint,’ a woman shouted and the cry was taken up by everybody. There was no stopping them.

  * * *

  When the civil engineer and I had examined the orphanage at
length, he said, ‘This is going to cost a lot of money.’

  ‘That’s all right. The children need a roof over their heads not just during the crisis but on a permanent basis. Will you give me an estimate by tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, the building’s in bad shape and needs immediate attention.’

  ‘Kausalya, will you ask the Princess to see Lakshman Simhaji with the estimate? Tell her to suggest that the money could come from the plate at her aratis at the Brindabani Temple.’

  I may not have had a smile on my face as I said that but deep down I had a feeling of poetic justice and gloating, that for once the temple priests would be paying out of their own coffers for something worthwhile. My pleasures, as you can see, come cheap. But what an enormous price Chittor and I would have to pay for that, the small change of satisfaction. Do you have any idea how many thousands of tons of milk, butter, ghee, fruits and food were poured over the gods and into the fires of the Yagnya, how much wood was consumed, how many lambs sacrificed, how much saffron ground, how many coconuts cracked, how many cooks kept busy night and day? Who are we appeasing and why? Tell me the charge first, sirs, prove it and then declare the punishment. Everything is conjecture, speculation and suspicion. Droughts, famines, floods, epidemics, too much and too little, defeat, deprivation, whether it’s personal or universal suffering, the explanation’s always the same: we must have done something wrong, terribly wrong. Nobody knows what the crime is, your guess is as good as mine. If we don’t know the wrong, how can we correct it? What did my sister Sumitra do, what did Sunheria die for, what is Leelawati’s crime?

  The notion that the gods can be bought has always seemed dubious and abhorrent to me. There’s nothing novel about that thought, I’m sure the sages have said it often and far better. But we continue to pacify the divinities regardless.

  The people of Chittor attended the Little Saint’s overwrought prayer sessions. She sang and danced and they could join in and she didn’t ask for a copper tanka and they could follow her words and the songs were simple and striking and sharp with barbs and insights and the turn of phrase was familiar yet surprising in its juxtapositions and sincerity and emotion and the tunes she set them to were on everybody’s lips. But they also went to the Yagnya. They couldn’t understand a word of the Sanskrit and even if they could, most of the priests concatenated three or four lines, sometimes an entire verse of a sutra in one breath, so it came out garbled and rushed, maybe even the gods would have a problem deciphering it but the good people of Chittor attended the Yagnya off and on, dropped some money and felt good. It was a great spectacle, this ritual, and besides, it was best to play it safe.

  All things come to pass. (Give a pregnant and substantial pause here, then move to the next sentence.) In time. A lovely, ambiguous word that: pass. All things come to be? Or is it that all things that are, are ephemeral, they disappear and vanish? Or are both interpretations right?

  In due time the fury of the cholera abated. People were still dying but the numbers were going down. What had broken the back of the epidemic? Do these vile things also have life cycles? Had the Sankat-Vighna Yagnya which went on for a full thirty days as promised by the priests forced the hand of the gods? Or was it my wife’s prayers which did it? The people of Chittor, whoever’s left that is, certainly think it’s the latter. The gods may have recalled the curse and saved us but they did so only because the Little Saint asked them, especially the Flautist, to intervene. Whoever or whatever it was who had put an end to the disease, I was willing to go on my knees and thank the powers that be that the nightmare was over.

  Chapter

  25

  Beware the paramour. In times of need, he’ll abandon you with greater alacrity than your enemies.

  It was almost at the end, in the very last stages of the epidemic that the Maharaj Kumar’s consort caught the infection. She didn’t let on the first few days. Maybe it was her time of the month, Kausalya thought. Or she was exhausted, so were they all, except that she had always been so delicate. Soon it was no longer possible to conceal it and the Raj Vaidya was called to treat her. Frankly, as far as her husband was concerned, that was a mere formality. After all, her lover and her god wasn’t going to allow her to die. He had, if one was to believe the claims made on his behalf, put a halt to the rampant death in Chittor because the Little Saint had asked him to. The days passed and the rotting thin watery smell seeped from her apartment into the Maharaj Kumar’s suite of rooms. He could hear her retching. The sound was almost inaudible now, but there was no cause for worry. Unless they appear at the eleventh hour, the Prince thought, they won’t be taken for gods. If you recall, the Flautist didn’t turn up to rescue Draupadi till the Kauravas were well into disrobing her. The Blue One had been, there’s no question about it, fully cognizant of the disgraceful behaviour of the villains and the silence of all the elders in the assembly hall while they watched the undressing of Draupadi patiently. But if you are to make a lasting impression, the timing of your entry is of the essence. The Flautist would arrive all right ... but only in the very nick of time.

  In the meantime the town was rife with rumours. Actually it was the same rumour with a number of variations. The Little Saint had made a deal with the gods: her life in return for the lives of the people at Chittor. Within a couple of days it was no longer a rumour, it was the absolute, certified truth. Crowds of people stood outside the main palace walls at all hours waiting for half-hourly bulletins about her health. The rains had stopped and the vultures had almost disappeared but when the Prince looked out of the window, he was sure that the birds had congregated outside the palace. The fact was that the Little Saint’s devotees were not really waiting. They knew for certain that his wife would die. Like good carrion-eaters, they wanted to be there in time for the big event.

  That night Kausalya knocked and asked permission to come into his suite. He was impatient with her formality.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your Highness, would you care to come and see her just this once? She has been in a coma for more than twenty-four hours. She’s come to for a minute. I think she would be happy to see you.’

  He would have sniggered mirthlessly but for the fact that Kausalya would not look him in the eye.

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘I doubt it if she’ll make it till morrow.’

  He was about to say don’t exaggerate when Kausalya said, ‘Please.’ There was something in that voice, something in that word that sounded alien on Kausalya’s tongue. He strode past her, perhaps ran, he didn’t recall and was at his wife’s bedside. She looked younger than the day he first saw her. She had lost so much weight, she was, he had no doubt in his mind about it, an apparition. A wraith-like figure that would flicker a few more times and then withdraw into wherever orphaned waifs disappear. She smiled or did he imagine it? Her hand rose a millimetre, he was daydreaming. He went to her bed and knelt down. He picked up her hand and cradled it. Her lips moved. Did it matter that he was hallucinating? He drew close to her till his left ear was almost touching her lips.

  ‘Forgive me, Highness. No man and no god could have borne the pain and suffering I have inflicted upon you. No man and no god has your fortitude or your dignity. You did not deserve someone as cold and ungrateful as I. But that is fate. You did not disown me or your fate. I will not forget your kindness. This may sound like a bad joke but to the very limits of my soul and beyond it, I have loved you. A strange love, but love nevertheless. Thank you.’

  Her voice petered out. Her eyes clouded. He felt her pulse. If he imagined hard enough he could feel it once every fifteen or twenty seconds. He felt nothing. In all those vast spaces in the whorls of his fingers, in the tiny honeycomb holes of his lungs, in the chambers of his heart, and in the cosmos which was too small to fit into a tiny wedge of his head, there was silence and nothingness. And then the first tiny glimmer of a wave rose. It was followed by another and another, till it became a tidal wave. And it was nothing but one
superstructure of anger toppling the one before. How could her lover, the one for whom she had made a cuckold and laughing-stock of him, how could he have abandoned her? Where was his miracle? The time for a theatrical entry was well past. Where was that god, that shameless, cavalier Flautist who had ditched thousands of women and was now, true to form and legend, ditching his wife? What difference did it make to him, one woman less or more?

  All the difference in the world to me, though, the Maharaj Kumar thought. Because whatever your peeve and however great your grievance, you don’t abandon the people who are yours.

  ‘Water, lemon, salt, honey. Three blankets.’ Did he whisper, did he scream? Within minutes the retainers had brought the things he had asked for. He covered her cold body and forced a few teaspoons of fresh lime juice into her mouth.

  ‘The Raj Vaidya has said that she’s not to be fed under any circumstances,’ one of the maids ventured to tell him.

  ‘Leave me. No one will enter these rooms without my orders. Tell Kausalya Mai to make kanji every four hours and a quarter glass of fruit juice every two hours. I want one more bed in the room. Leave two buckets of water here, one with hot water and the other with khas grass, mind you, not the attar of khas. And bring plenty of soft towels.’

  Whenever she was fed, she threw up what seemed like twice the quantity. Every hour or so her bedsheet and mattress were wet with a few drops of faeces. Which is why the school of medicine to which the Raj Vaidya and almost all other doctors belonged, believed that any liquids aggravated the condition and hastened death. The only time a patient was force-fed with liquids was when the medicinal powders had to be given either with water or honey. As to food, semisolid and solid, the patient usually didn’t want it and the doctors advised against it even during a routine fever. The other school, whose followers could be counted on the fingers of one hand, thought that at the best of times, life without fluids and semi-solids was impossible. In a severely debilitated condition, they believed, a zero-diet would be suicidal. The disease seemed to kill either way, but the Maharaj Kumar was inclined to think that if you didn’t give fuel to the body how would it have the wherewithal to fight the disease?