Cuckold

by Kiran Nagarkar

  Was I to continue with my protestations or speak my mind?

  ‘I believe that the Security Council has decided on a wise course of action for any other response would be so unorthodox as to be unthinkable.’

  ‘Highness, if you don’t think the unthinkable at your age, you certainly won’t at mine. Why else would His Majesty have appointed you to the Council but to be confronted with a point of view that is, occasionally, radically different from his and ours?’

  Did Father really want to hear my half-baked and wild opinions? He had put me in a spot and Lakshman Simhaji had attributed an openness to him which he may not want to live up to. He had no choice now. He would have to sit patiently and listen to his son’s bizarre ideas.

  ‘Mangal told us that Muzaffar Shah of Gujarat is cajoling Mahmud Khalji to go to war with us. It is my guess that this time around, come what may, the Sultan of Gujarat will not contribute anything to the Malwa war efforts beyond encouraging words. Is it possible then to expend our energies on a more gainful enterprise?’

  ‘And what would that be?’ the Pradhanji did not bother to conceal his disdain.

  ‘Zahiru’d-din Muhammad Babur has so far made four sorties into Punjab, each one deeper than the previous one. It would stand to reason that his next stop is Delhi. It could be argued that like his Turki ancestor, Timur and other invaders from the northwest, he may come on a flying raid, sack the city and return. The question is what if he has other ideas on the subject? Kabul is his kingdom but whatever the attractions of that cold mountain principality, it is neither the hub of power nor does it have the wealth of Hindustan. Do we let him take a shot at Delhi or do we ride into Delhi, gain possession of the tottering Lodi empire and take control?’

  I would rather not use that hackneyed phrase ‘stunned silence’ but nothing else will do. It was Father who finally broke the quiet.

  ‘And in the meanwhile we let Mahmud Khalji walk into Chittor?’

  ‘No, Your Majesty. While you assume the crown of Delhi, Medini Rai and I will harass and destroy the Malwa forces with quicksilver attacks.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting one of the first principles of war: never open two fronts simultaneously?’

  ‘I have no intention of doing that, Highness,’ I told Lakshman Simhaji. ‘There will be only one front, one of our choosing against the Delhi Sultan. Our objectives in Malwa will be limited: take a highly trained, mobile force and keep the Malwa armies preoccupied and off-balance. After you’ve taken Delhi, the initiative will have passed on to us and we could enlarge the scope of our tactics in Malwa.’

  ‘Do you believe that taking over Delhi will be such an easy task?’

  ‘No, Your Majesty. Nobody clings to life as persistently as a dying patient. But if we don’t annex Delhi, someone else will. Besides, I do not think our troops will have difficulty defeating Ibrahim Lodi under your leadership.’

  ‘If that last sentiment had come from someone else, I would have told him, “Sycophancy won’t get you anywhere” but I believe you mean business. Let’s think over the Prince’s proposals, shall we?’

  Would Father really think over my proposals?

  * * *

  Kausalya was giving me her variation of a head massage. I think she was happy that my visit was not a token gesture. She sank her hand into my hair, pulled it gently but long and then let go of it. It brought back memories of my childhood when she would put me to sleep by playing with my hair. It was amazing what a relaxing and soporific effect this innocuous scrabbling in the scalp had on me.

  ‘Your Highness, I don’t need to tell you how much I enjoy it when you tell me stories of the affairs at court and especially your comments about people but surely you didn’t come over to tell me about the Portuguese visitor.’

  ‘Why Kausalya,’ I was horrified, ‘are you trying to suggest that I’m a calculating mercenary who never does anything without an ulterior motive? I’m truly offended.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything of the kind, Sire,’ How rare it was to see Kausalya in a light and bantering mood. ‘I believe it would offend you no end if you ever caught yourself in a selfless act or discovered that you were doing something for the sheer pleasure of it.’

  Just as I was leaving I asked her, ‘Tell me about Mahmud Khalji II and Medini Rai.’

  There is no greater living hero among the Rajputs than Medini Rai (I doubt if anyone remembers what his real name is since Medini, the title the Sultan of Malwa gave him, has stuck for good.) Father may be more respected, his word certainly carries far more weight; even raos and rajas will think ten times before they cross him but Medini Rai, despite his precipitous fall from power, is a legend. I remember Kausalya coming back from Mandu where she had gone to visit some cousin telling me when I was fourteen and grieving about three pimples on my left cheek, ‘May you have more of those pustules, Maharaj Kumar. Imagine being perpetually conscious of and handicapped by the kind of good looks that Medini Rai has.’

  After all those years I needed to brush up on Medini Rai. Who was this Rajput who had appeared almost from nowhere, hitched his star to that of Mahmud Khalji when he had been abandoned by everyone else, reversed the fortunes of his king, risen to the pinnacle of power as prime minister of Malwa and then been hounded out of the kingdom by the very man whom he had restored to the throne? What was the cause of the falling out between the king and Medini Rai? And why did Mahmud Khalji see the Rai as a threat despite his downfall? Would Medini Rai seek our help even though the last time he had asked for it we had failed to come to his aid in time?

  ‘Do you want the long-winded version or a quick sketch with highlights?’ Kausalya asked me.

  ‘The shorter one for the time being with some detailing and colour after Medini Rai comes on the scene.’

  This is what Kausalya told me. It’s not verbatim, and it’s got asides from me, but it’s close.

  Mahmud Khalji II’s grandfather was called Ghiyath-ud-din. (I can’t resist telling you that he’s reputed to have had fifteen thousand women in his seraglio, one thousand of whom were his personal guards. I wrote the figures in words because I was sure that you would think that I had slipped up and added a couple of zeroes for effect.)

  Unlike his grandfather, Mahmud Khalji II was a weak and childish man who was incapable of keeping his own counsel or acting decisively. He believed every story, rumour or whiff of gossip floating in the air and was overeager to lend an ear to any amir or nobleman inclined to low or high intrigue.

  Soon Mahmud Khalji was a king without a kingdom. His younger brother captured Mandu and usurped the throne. The Sultan’s followers abandoned him and it seemed he would never regain his crown.

  Enter Rai Chand Purabia, a Rajput from the east whose past is a mystery. Why would any man want to join his fortunes to those of a king whose situation seemed hopeless and beyond repair? Was it faith in his destiny or was it hubris and unbridled arrogance that made the Rai think he could reverse Mahmud Khalji’s run of bad luck and reinstate the king on his throne at Mandu? How many troops did he have? Kausalya didn’t have the answers to those questions. I certainly didn’t and I doubt whether too many people in Mewar or Malwa for that matter had any inkling either. Be that as it may, the cloud over Mahmud lifted almost overnight.

  Rai Chand Purabia was no practitioner of black magic, he did not have the reputation of being the greatest general this side of the Narbada, but he had certainly managed to get the planets of the zodiac in the most auspicious conjunction possible. When the armies of the two rival Sultans of Malwa finally met, Rai Chand routed the usurper.

  Mahmud Khalji was grateful to the man who had rescued him when his fortunes were at their nadir. He appointed him vazir and gave him the title by which he is known all over the country: Medini Rai. Perhaps the Sultan was incapable of having any but hothouse friendships. The vazir could do no wrong. Mahmud Khalji’s admiration and his reliance upon the Rai waxed without let.

  The Rai too, it would appear, had not learnt any
lessons from his predecessors. Perhaps that’s what power does, it makes you blind to the obvious. He could not perceive the portents of his own decline and fall. Did the Rai really believe that Mahmud Khalji would not realize that he had become a mere plaything, especially when there was no dearth of malcontents and disaffected nobles to steer their vacillating sovereign into troubled waters? Events came full circle when some of the Sultan’s favourites under instructions from him made an attempt on the vazir’s life. Medini Rai was badly wounded but survived. The infuriated Rajputs under the Rai’s son attacked the royal palace. The king and his guard stoutly defended his home and put the Rajputs to flight. In the ensuing melee, the Rai’s son was killed. Despite his terrible personal loss, not to mention the injury to his person, Medini Rai wrote to the Sultan: ‘As during my whole life I have never done anything but wish for your welfare, and act faithfully to my salt, I have carried my life in safety from the wounds. If in reality, the affairs of the kingdom can be better regulated by my being put to death, I have no objection to even that.’ It was the kind of petition that most nobles who had offended their liege wrote to gain forgiveness. Did Medini Rai mean what he wrote? (Kausalya said she wouldn’t put it past him.)

  There was a rapprochement between the king and his vazir but it did not take a clairvoyant to see that it was not to last. Medini Rai had saved the king when he was on the run. Now the king was on the run from the same man. He left Mandu one night and sought refuge with Muzaffar Shah of Gujarat.

  When Medini Rai heard that the combined armies of Mahmud Khalji and Muzaffar Shah were marching towards Mandu, he left his capital in the care of his deputy and set out for the Mewar court to seek Father’s help. But before Father and Medini Rai could reach the Malwa capital they got news that the Mandu fort had been reduced and that Muzaffar Shah had ordered a massacre in which twenty thousand soldiers, forty according to some estimates, were killed.

  That was some time ago. Mahmud Khalji no longer had the Gujarat Sultan, Muzaffar Shah, by his side but he reckoned rightly that if he didn’t destroy the Rai, who had gone to Gagrone, soon, it would be too late.

  Chapter

  31

  Identical twins are close. But true enemies are closer.

  One of the first things the Maharaj Kumar did when Mangal, Mamta, the Princess and he got back to Chittor was to plant the parijat sapling in the large courtyard in his wing of the palace. He would have liked to have dug a hole in the dead centre of the plot but that was not possible because that spot belonged to the Tulsi plant which every housewife worships since there is no woman as adamantine in her fidelity to her husband as Tulsi. He chose a corner not too close to the wall so that the parijat would have plenty of room to spread its wings. Every morning, as soon as he had had his bath and said his prayers, he took a watering can (he could hear the eunuchs and the maids giggling and calling him royal mali) and poured water slowly around the branch that he hoped would take root and flower.

  Close to a month passed but instead of the first green shoots showing up, the plant seemed to die on the Prince. He dug it out and turned the soil over. Seven days later he knew there was no hope. Some people, he told himself, have green thumbs, others have the gift of death. He had meant that statement to be facetious but he felt as if someone had struck that dead runt of a branch into his heart.

  The gardener had been watching him for days but had refrained from proffering advice. The Prince was glad to be left alone but resentful that the man had not had the decency to resuscitate the dry stick that meant so much to him.

  ‘Is there any fertilizer,’ the Maharaj Kumar did not want to admit defeat, yet he had no choice but to approach the expert and ask his opinion, ‘that could give this plant a second life? A kind of ambrosia?’

  ‘I’m afraid no ambrosia works on the dead. It can only bestow immortality on the living. But that plant doesn’t need fertilizer. You’ve burnt it with too much watching and attention. Talking to trees is fine but you can’t water a little baby plant three or four times a night, cuddle and pet it and then threaten it with dire consequences if it doesn’t start showing results instantly.’

  The Prince would have liked to throttle the man. The gardener however had not finished with his homily. ‘Learn to leave nature well enough alone with just the occasional nurturing. Perhaps it might take heart and rise from its ashes yet.’

  The Maharaj Kumar expected that the gardener would at least now suggest that he would take over the task of rejuvenating the parijat. No such offer was forthcoming.

  ‘Would you be so kind as to undertake the care of this plant for me?’

  ‘Certainly, Sire, I believe that’s what I’m paid for.’

  If only the parijat would die the next week, the Prince thought, and I could with a clean conscience sack the swine or maybe have him beheaded in public. But within a couple of days the stick had regained colour; within a week it was sporting seven incipient leaves and within seven months the courtyard was littered with parijat flowers. He collected the flowers every morning at dawn and showered the half-asleep Princess with them. Sometimes he wove them into her plait or threaded them into a garland and put it around her neck.

  * * *

  The room was an impenetrable cube of darkness, but he knew that she was not there. He was seized by a raging and unfathomable fear. He fell on his knees, groped with his hands till he had made contact with the bed. She was not lying on it. He slipped under it, lay immobile on his belly and closed his eyes tight. He had an overwhelming urge to throw a tantrum, go out of control and never be reasonable again. He lifted the bed on his back as he rose up. Had Bhootani Mata finally succeeded? Had she done his wife in? He was crawling on all fours, the bed a battering ram that crashed into the walls of the room. Then an even more grisly idea struck him. She had run away with someone else. He dropped the bed and lay still. He would not get up. Now or ever. They would find him in the morning, an unevenly painted blue corpse with ghastly natural flesh-coloured lips. And what about her? Was he going to let her get away with it?

  He saw red phosphorescent footprints; he had been in such a panic that he hadn’t noticed them. He recognized the imprint of those small, delicate feet: the large dot that was the big toe and the four descending ones that were the other toes; the sharply etched ball of the foot extending into a solid land mass that receded into the curving shoreline of the instep and rounded off into the heel.

  As he walked into the courtyard there was a loud bang. He stepped aside swiftly to dodge a likely blow. She had burst a paper bag bulging with air and was doubled over with laughter. Was this the woman they called the Little Saint? She was a child, that’s what she was. The smallest and sometimes the silliest acts gave her pleasure. What was unsettling was that she had this strange gift of transmitting joy, turning others into little children, swinging god-crazed dancers or overearnest, adult devotees.

  She took his hand in hers and placed it inside her choli. ‘Is it possible, is it possible,’ she spoke rapidly as if time and air were running out, ‘to fall in love all over again every day with the same person? Am I not blessed as no other woman is? Play, play, play the flute, O Lord and still my pulse and enlarge my heart for I need room to accommodate my love for you. Make my heart as wide as the cosmos, no, make it a dozen cosmoses. Play, my beloved one.’

  Cosmos? A dozen cosmoses? Beloved? How could she get away with these quaint archaisms, worse, mean every one of them and make one believe in them? He played the Basant Bahar, an urgent call to spring.

  ‘Here,’ she had two dandiyas in her hand.

  ‘What should I do with them?’

  ‘You should ask. You know it better than anyone else.’

  He was about to say, ‘No, please. I don’t know how to dance. And frankly I don’t think a prince of the House of Mewar should indulge in —’ but fortunately realized the absurdity of saying anything of the sort. The eldest prince and would-be Maharaj Kumar had indulged himself enough and more. He had done things that m
ost princes would disown instantly. And besides, his wife was not one to take a ‘no’ once she had decided upon a course of action. He took the two sticks in his hands. They were overlaid with a patina of black lacquer through which gold vines and leaves with red flowers shone in the dark. She slipped her right hand into the patch-pocket on her skirt and brought out another pair of dandiyas. The pattern here was the exact reverse of his: a gold bed on which the black vines interwove and flowered.

  She started singing a traditional song as she raised her hands and struck her dandiyas on the beat. He followed her cue but a little clumsily. She waited for his sticks to make contact with hers but his timing was off and so was his placement.

  ‘Will you stop playing the fool?’ she pulled him up sharply. ‘When I come in from the right, you don’t do the same. You have to move in from the left.’ She saw the bewilderment on his face and her tone softened. ‘How could you have forgotten the dandiya raas? It’s your dance. You invented it.’

  He looked down shamefacedly.

  ‘Let me show you. One two three, raise your dandiyas to the right, knock knock knock. One two three, dandiyas to the left, knock knock knock. One two three, our dandiyas meet, knock knock knock. Now lower the sticks and repeat the same pattern. Let’s try it once. There, you’re getting it. You just pretended you didn’t know. How beautifully you play the dandiya raas. No wonder that vixen Radha and the gopis from Mathura can’t keep their hands off you. But you try anything funny behind my back, my friend, and I’ll break your legs with these very same dandiyas.’

  He tried not to listen to the song. The gopis were, as usual, filling their pots with water on the banks of the Jamuna when the god with a thousand names took out a catapult and one by one broke the pots on their heads and ogled at the drenched ladies. How were they to go home with wet, transparent clothes that revealed all? Madhusudana alias the Flautist, everyone knew was shameless but they were honourable, decent women, some of them with husbands and children, and all of them had spotless reputations. How were they to face their families and pray, what explanation were they to give?