Cuckold

by Kiran Nagarkar

  ‘I will always be suspect. The inference will always be that I am your agent. Unlike you, they cannot separate a job from the employer. They do not understand that one doesn’t owe loyalty to a person but to the job and the institution. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll take my chances with you.’

  He smiled but I was in no mood to reciprocate. We had never in our entire lives had such a long conversation. Even at school, my interests came before his. I was his responsibility. He always kept himself in the background. For the first time I felt guilty for keeping him in tacit bondage. Would Tej, Shafi and all the other fine people who had worked with me share the same fate as Mangal?

  We got going again at a canter. The sky was ebony and the moon was two days short of fullness. There were so many stars playing fireflies that the sky seemed abuzz. Three-quarters of Chittor was already asleep. The silver shikhara of the Eklingji Temple shone like the beam from a lighthouse. The complex of palaces, the city centre, the houses of the shopkeepers and workers looked like faces whose eyes had been scooped out. The pools of water, Chaturang Maurya Talab, Sasbahu Kund, Fateh Lake, were shimmering sheets of mercury which blinded the sight.

  ‘How about a quick dip, Mangal?’

  We raced all the way down to the Gambhiree. The river was cold and speeding. Both of us knew where the dangerous currents were but you could never take the river for granted. If you were foolish enough to swim in her in the monsoons or immediately after, she would teach you a lesson in treachery. Every year at least five or six people, especially youngsters who thought they could outsmart her, lost their lives. We swam from bank to bank and back. It was exhilarating to have to work hard to swim in a straight line and not be towed away. We were shivering when we put on our clothes again.

  ‘What time is departure tomorrow, Sire?’

  ‘Seven. Are you bringing your wife with you?’

  ‘If it’s all right with you, Maharaj Kumar.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  When I opened the door to my bedroom there was only one lamp with a barely visible flame burning. I closed the door and headed for the lamp to turn up the wick. I didn’t make it.

  ‘Maharaj Kumar.’

  I knew the voice but it was from another life and from some other planet. Was this an emissary from Vikramaditya? It was a smart move to send a woman to ambush me. I should have been more careful. I should have known instantly when I entered the room that something was wrong. Whose voice was it? If it was familiar why did it sound so alien? I turned around and froze. The reflexes in my adam’s apple had stopped functioning. I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t move. She was pale the way someone who has been deprived of the life-giving light and warmth of the Sun-god is bleached and sucked of colour. Somehow in the process, the girl-child in her had also been wrung out. She was a full-grown woman of such tortured and aching beauty that I had trouble steadying myself. Leelawati stood still. I took her in my arms. I kissed her hair, her forehead, ears, eyes, cheeks, chin, the sides of her neck, everywhere except on the mouth. It was not an embrace, it was a futile attempt to plug the numb hollow that had been at the pit of my stomach since the day she had disappeared. She did not reciprocate, she would not speak. What has happened to me? I shake my head and try to kill her with my manic hugging, then I shake my head again. Stop it, I tell myself but I continue to look into her dead eyes.

  ‘Don’t move,’ I told her and fetched the lamp. I lit all the other lamps in the room till she was bathed in light. I led her to the bed and made her sit down. She did not resist. Had she become a marionette? Was she dead? There was no point sitting next to her. I would not be able to look at those burnt-out eyes that held me transfixed. I knelt on the floor. She tried to get up, form demands that the Maharaj Kumar sit at a greater height than everybody except the Maharana and the Maharani. I forced her down.

  ‘I looked everywhere for you for days and weeks. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘I would have killed to find you.’ It was not a reproach, merely a matter-of-fact statement of the truth. ‘I nearly did strangle the maid in charge of me. That’s when my great-grandfather had me tied up.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘In Chittor but in some other house. I do not wish to talk about the past year.’

  I looked at her feet and ankles. They had shrunk. You could see the marks of the silk scarves that had bound her to the legs of a chair or bed. I took her hands in mine. Her wrists were swollen and the skin looked livid.

  ‘I could have killed myself but I thought what would happen to you?’

  I could no longer meet her eyes.

  ‘Then I heard that you were being sent to Kumbhalgarh tomorrow.’

  I hugged her legs and buried my head between her knees.

  ‘My great-grandfather Adinathji fixed my wedding for next Thursday the moment he learnt of your impending departure.’

  This was the last time. I would never get to see Leelawati again. I was about to say something as stupid as congratulations. I believe Leelawati would have run out, grabbed a knife and plunged it into me if I had. There was no telling what those dead eyes could do.

  ‘Marry me, Maharaj Kumar.’

  I felt my neck snap sharply as the hangman kicked the plank from under my feet.

  ‘It’s a mere formality. You know we are already married.’

  Why didn’t I give her the knife or pull out my dagger from the scabbard and ask her to kill me?. Anything, anything under the sun to avoid having to answer her.

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Take me with you, Maharaj Kumar.’

  And yet once again I said, ‘No, I can’t.’

  She came and sat in my lap then. This time she put her arms around me and kissed me on the forehead and then on the lips. I did not respond. She took out a small silver box from the pocket in her ghagra and opened it. It had kumkum the colour of blood in it. She took a pinch and put it on my forehead.

  ‘I’m a woman now capable of bearing children.’ She plunged her index finger into the kumkum and put a large tika between her eyes, a little above the bridge of the nose. Now with her thumb and index finger, she limned a bloodline in the parting of her hair. ‘I was and will always be married to you and to you alone. See, it’s public knowledge for the first time.’

  How can the tiniest of earrings or a little stone stuck on the nose highlight the entire face? Why does a thin almost invisible gold chain around the waist spark such a charge of sensuality in a woman? How can a simple and bold red dot make a woman regal and imperious and change the terms of her beauty? Leelawati laid her head on my feet. ‘Bless me Maharaj Kumar.’ And I did not utter a word to this woman who was dearer to me than …. never mind, what comparison can do justice to my twisted and strange love for Leelawati.

  She rose to her full height. ‘Now I too will bless you, my husband and Highness. May you always stay out of harm’s way. May you bring glory to Mewar. And may you return quickly to my arms.’

  There was a smile on her face. She had erased the year of solitary confinement and the tied hands and ankles from her face, if not her mind. Then she left.

  Chapter

  27

  I did not envy Rawat Sumer Simha, the Governor of Kumbhalgarh, the task of looking after me and my party. He had to tread a delicate and ambiguous line. I was in disgrace and the governor had to keep a watch on me and make certain that I was not up to any mischief. The problem was that I was a Prince of the royal family and what was worse, since no official directive had yet been issued to the contrary, still the Maharaj Kumar. I guess one of his major fears must have been that I would interfere with the governance of the province. Within a month, he realized that I had no interest in his affairs, civilian, military, administrative or others. I did not visit his office once or attend any official functions. I did not qualify as a hedonist or voluptuary either in his eyes. He hinted from time to time that he could arrange for me to have some company.

  ‘This may look lik
e a backwater to you city folks but you’ll be amazed at the delights and pleasures Kumbhalgarh has to offer,’ he leered knowingly, ‘to even the most discerning or jaded palate.’

  A musical recital perhaps? The game in the forest was excellent. Would I care to go on a hunt?

  ‘I seem to have run out of ideas. Why don’t you tell me what you would like to do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  He was bemused. Was I suffering from depression? Had I renounced the material life? Or was it an elaborate front to hide some grand evil scheme against the Crown or the country? It was a thesis worth pursuing since he didn’t want to be caught off guard but he must have come up against a dead end. I had no visitors, I had left strict instructions with Tej, Shafi and my other lieutenants that even if they happened to be next door, they were not to visit me. I wrote no letters, I received none except one. It was an invitation to Leelawati’s wedding. It came the night before the event along with a gracious note from Adinathji regretting that the wedding had been fixed at very short notice. He hoped, however, that I would be able to attend it.

  I did not mix with anyone in the fort or outside. If the Governor invited me and my wife for a private dinner, I never refused and made it a point to return the gesture. The rest of the time I wrote, I walked, I rode, I read. Rawat Sumer Simha may have adduced that I was a man who had lost all sense of direction and was fast turning into a vegetable. He was right. I did not wish to attract any attention to myself. I wanted to be left alone and forgotten.

  My great-grandfather, Kumbha, had gone on a binge in his day and dotted the country with thirty-five magnificent citadels. But there was only one Kumbhalgarh and you can see why. It is one of the greatest fortresses built in the last few centuries. Made from black stone, Kumbhalgarh is indomitable and barring treachery, impenetrable. The fortress walls are as high and wide as roads. In the monsoons it makes far better sense to transport supplies over the flat top of the parapet walls than for the horses to get mired in the dirt tracks. The black stone is beautifully cut and precision-laid. It gives no purchase to an attacker’s ropes or to the monkey-men who are trained to dart up the flanks while the main body of soldiers pretends to batter down the main gate. I believe that Kumbhalgarh could withstand a siege for a year or two without any problems of shortages. Its land mass is as big as any middle-sized city. It has huge farming areas and can grow almost everything we need. Which explains why no one has so far laid siege to the fort.

  Rana Kumbha, they say, was a giant of a man. The Charans, in their heroic and panegyric poetry, would have us believe that he was tall as a banyan tree and just as wide. He ate an omelette of thirty-six eggs for breakfast. Lunch was a dozen tandoori chickens, a full deer or boar, six goats, five litres of rabadi, seventy-two makai ki roti, sixty-four jilebis, not to mention seven varieties of vegetables and four kinds of lentils. His duglo, the longer version of which is the Muslim angarkha, required seventeen yards of cloth and the knee-length trousers that were buttoned at the calves had a waist of fourteen yards, ungathered. Everything in Kumbhalgarh seems to have been inspired by his girth and height. The Palace, our rooms in it, the bathing facilities, even the stairs have been designed for larger-than-life men and women. From my rooms you can see the Aravalli mountain ranges which link so much of Mewar but it’s the view of the plains which redefines one’s notion of the horizon. On a clear day, one is apt to believe that you can see forever simply because the concept of a horizon almost breaks down. You can sit at the window in my room and believe that you are in the midst of the greatest desert in the world or in the middle of the ocean. Cross over to the other side of the Palace, and you can keep a watch on the traffic entering and leaving the main gate. That’s exactly what Rana Kumbha did. He kept a watch on the watchmen and made sure that they were securing the fort from the enemy. Beyond, seven or eight hundred yards away is the great Eklingji Temple. This is where my great-grandfather sat and prayed. Every corner in the Palace, every tree, roadside shrine or temple, the river and the lake bear a memory of the man who built the fort. In my room there’s a desk where the Rana sat and wrote his treatises on music. When he wanted to test any of the principles he was enunciating or elucidating, he went over to the veena which sits in a glass case now and played for hours and substantially extended the vocabulary and scope of the instrument. Three-quarters of a mile from the Eklingji Temple is a tamarind tree which according to the Rana was specially blessed. I find this noteworthy because in Hindu tradition it is the banyan or peepul tree under which one gains enlightenment or which is a place of worship and meditation and bestows boons upon you. Rana Kumbha was a great respecter of tradition but he saw it as a river and not as a dead pool of beliefs. Every spring, runnel and rivulet added to the richness and breadth of the river and so when he came across anything which caught his fancy, was beneficial to his people, or medicinal or just plain beautiful to behold, he appropriated it and incorporated it into the Mewar tradition. The tamarind tree is where he meditated. He found it cool and soothing and the leaves of the tree aesthetically pleasing. He would sit for hours here with his legs folded in padmasan, eyes closed and the third eye of the mind open. Before and after the meditation he took a dip in the well nearby and then walked back talking to any stranger and passer-by, asking after their health and crops and what they thought of the new taxes and the state of the country. You can see why he was universally liked for though he was truly one of the most learned kings in the history of Mewar, he was not pedantic and never lost touch with the source of his strength, his own people.

  While the Rana meditated under the tamarind tree, Uda, they say, stabbed him in the heart thrice. Others point to the well next to the tree and describe how the son waited for the Rana to close his eyes as he poured the bucket of water over his head and in that instant pushed his father down the long, long neck of the well and then had it covered because the broken and fractured Rana was too obstreperous. He was a good swimmer and might take forever to die. There are other stories about how Uda tricked and slew his father or had someone else do the job for him. The only thing we know for sure was that the murderer was the Rana’s very own son. Does it matter how he did it?

  Father had sent me to Kumbhalgarh to get my wife and me out of the way but there was no point disregarding the specific task he had set me. It took a full week for Mangal and me to inspect the wall and instruct the stonecutters and builders about the cosmetic repairs. I did one more thing before going into complete retirement. It would be shortsighted and foolhardy to believe that whenever an enemy decided to take a shot at attacking the fort, he would be kind enough to knock on the front door. It would be much easier for a group of just seven to ten smart commandos to infiltrate the fort from a remote corner and open a couple of gates from inside. You have to see the fort with your own eyes to realize how big it is. I drew up a scheme to construct eight tall watchtowers along the wall of the fort. That would cover Kumbhalgarh from every angle and make it a little more safe. The Governor pondered if there was a catch somewhere and stalled. I surmised that it would take about six weeks for Father’s reply to arrive. Within a month, I had got his approval. I supervised the work once a week but did not lift a finger after that bit of effort.

  I have no idea how my wife kept herself busy. Arati was at six in the evening at the Blue One’s temple and if you wanted to meet her without prior appointment, all you had to do was turn up at around five thirty or quarter to six and you would kill two birds with one stone: have a darshan of the Blue One and meet the Little Saint. I was a trifle anxious about the scandal that the Princess might cause but I need not have worried. The Little Saint’s fame had preceded her and crowds of people from within the fort and from the nearby villages used to start gathering from five in the evening. It had finally begun to dawn upon me that Greeneyes was no longer a local personality, very likely she was a Mewar heroine whose fame and songs had begun to spread to other states beyond our frontiers. The people here we
re certainly singing her songs before they had heard her in person. In a few years’ time Father should hand over the command of our troops to my wife. She’ll sing and dance and the people of Gujarat, Malwa, Vijayanagar and Delhi will catch the fever, disown their kings and follow her wherever she goes. It’s a good thing our gods are an egalitarian lot and not jealous and insecure because if one were to measure the shift towards the Flautist since my wife was canonized, he’s currently at least fifty percent more popular than the other big divinities including the presiding deity of Mewar, Shri Eklingji himself. Fortunately, we are a polytheistic people and are given to playing it safe by visiting all the gods once in a while. Even so, at least for the time being the Blue One’s future is hitched directly to my wife’s fate and influence.

  At Kumbhalgarh, it’s taken just three months for the Governor’s family to have turned devotees of the Little Saint. No disrespect meant to the Governor, his large and genuinely friendly wife or any of the other big and small parties involved, but it’s as if they can no longer go to the toilet, have a bath, name a child, tell lies, get amorous, amass wealth, go on a journey or have an affair or an old-fashioned familial quarrel without asking the Little Saint’s permission. I know I’m exaggerating a bit but only a bit. While she is very often blissfully unaware of what’s going on around her, or so she pretends, they touch her feet when she has so often begged them not to. She shrinks from any attention to her person and directs all and sundry to the one who is the recipient of all her attention: the Flautist. And that’s the strangest part, they dote on her, wait hours in the rain and freezing cold for her to turn up and yet they never seem to listen to her. They were all so busy adoring her, who had the time to pay any heed to what she was saying?

  And what about me? I who straddle two stools, worship the earthly icons of the gods and yet feel the profundity of the Upanishadic concepts such as the one that is the corner-stone of my yogic meditation: ‘So’ hum’; I am that. It is a truly staggering and daring thought, this interchangeability or, to be precise, the oneness that the individual living creature shares with the cosmos and the Almighty. Or if you like with the higher consciousness or creative force. And yet if you were to probe further and not be lulled by these lofty platitudes, what is the meaning of the word ‘that’ in ‘I am that’? Who knows, each one of us must negotiate the word on his own and to the best of his or her abilities. I sometimes like to think that if everything is animated by God or a higher consciousness, then the utterly pointless death of a child is as much ‘that’ as a flower which is about to bloom. My wife’s physical and spiritual passion for the Flautist is ‘that’ and so is the hunger of a man who has not eaten for five days or the pain, the insurmountable and unbearable pain of a tumour. Rani Karmavati’s conniving against me or the Little Saint as well as my drowning all the thousands of soldiers in the swamps is ‘that’. ‘That’ is grief as much as it is happiness. If I am ‘that’, then I am all these things and every single object, emotion, experience and memory in the universe. It is a fine thought as large as the mind which is the most capacious thing in the world. But what about good and evil then? If my individual actions can affect and change the complexion of ‘that’, then I bear the responsibility for the state of the cosmos or universal consciousness. All of us starting from me must be extremely careful and selective about what we choose to do. Is that the outer limit of a deluded solipsism and megalomania or is it the highest and noblest concept of dharma and our roles in life?