Cuckold

by Kiran Nagarkar

  ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘You should ask.’

  Was it the Flautist’s birthday? Couldn’t have been, or the whole of Chittor would be celebrating it. He must have looked blank for now she was incensed.

  ‘You have forgotten, you really have.’ She stamped hard on his foot. ‘It’s Holi.’

  Alarms went off in his head like a series of violent firecrackers. How could it have escaped him? Self-preservation alone would have dictated that he keep his eyes glued to the calendar. What was he going to do? He had thought about the spring festival since the first day he had walked into her room when they were in Kumbhalgarh. It was not the coloured powder that he dreaded but the coloured water. He could see the blue of his skin trickle down leaving him naked and exposed as she sprayed him with a brass syringe. Should he take the offensive, rush her and daub her with vermillion, yellow, mauve, green and violet powder, fling some of it in her eyes and make his escape?

  ‘Stand still and put on this blouse.’

  There was no doubt about it. She really had lost her mind. ‘Why would I want to wear a blouse?’

  ‘Because you are a woman today.’

  As simple as that.

  ‘Didn’t you tell Rupa Goswami that there’s only one male in the world and that’s the Blue One, and the rest are women?’

  ‘Men and women have genders. Gods are simultaneous. Which is why like Ardhanareshwar, you are both man and woman. You should know that better than anyone else.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Life is not meant to. Ambivalence is the essence of life. Or rather ambiguity is. Besides you never have problems wearing a woman’s clothes when you are with your favourite milkmaid, Radha. Radha this and Radha that. Even your name gets changed to Radhekrishna.’

  There was no way, absolutely none, that he was going to wear a blouse. He was a Prince, perhaps even heir apparent. Can you imagine the Maharaj Kumar of Mewar as a transvestite? If his bumpy and highly fluctuating fortunes had not already put paid to his ambitions, this new wrinkle would certainly seal his fate.

  He was a fool, he told himself. How come he hadn’t realized all these years that it was a conspiracy? Was his wife, in reality, in league with Vikramaditya and Queen Karmavati? The pieces suddenly began to fall in place. The Princess and the Queen had hatched the plot from the very beginning, from the time she had married the Maharaj Kumar. Queen Karmavati had pretended to hate the Princess while the two of them worked hand in hand. Even as his wife set him up and humiliated him at every stage, made him Mewar’s number one cuckold and brought public obloquy upon the house of the Rana, the Queen howled for her blood and played the role of the Princess’ enemy with a deliberate lack of subtlety, so that it appeared to be in character with her public image, and thus accelerated his descent into ignominy. Now his wife was about to administer the final and fatal blow: expose him as a closet queen. Queen Karmavati would do the rest. This time he would lose the kingship for good.

  She took hold of his right hand and slipped his arm into the blouse and then did the same with the left. ‘Turn around,’ she tied the strings of the backless choli and gave him a once-over. ‘Seems to fit okay, what do you think?’ She didn’t wait for his response. ‘Wait, wait a minute. I’ve got the order of things all wrong.’ She tugged at the knot of the blouse and pulled it off again. She ran out of the room and brought back a razor. What now, did she want to shave his head off? She tested the blade on her left index finger and then in swift firm strokes shaved his arms, armpits, chest and back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he whispered in disbelief.

  She was short with him. ‘How can a woman have hair in the wrong places?’

  Her hand was light and yet he twitched uncontrollably as if she was removing chunks of his flesh.

  ‘What is it? Why are you shivering so?’ She ran her hand over his body gently and soothed him. Now she undid his dhoti. He stood there naked. He had not felt so humiliated, not even when the people of Chittor had booed him when he and his armies had returned from the Gujarat campaign. He wondered whether she intended to parade him through the main avenues of the city. Or was she going to cut his member off to make a full woman of him? She slid the razor over his underbelly, the triangular patch of hair he had just above the buttocks and then over his legs. What was she doing? More to the point, what was he doing? Why didn’t he snatch the razor from her and slice off her hand?

  It was time to dress him. First the black silk skirt with a soft Dhaka cotton lining, then the red and black bandhani blouse and finally a red chunni. He had to admit that she had an eye for colour. She brought out her jewellery box, parted his hair in the middle and pinned a gold chain in the divide so that the minakari pendant hung over his forehead. Now the glass bangles, black, red and gold to match the colours of his clothes. He was certain that she would not be able to get them beyond the knuckles. He was wrong. Like Sunheria, she too pretended that the hand and wrist are boneless and all you had to do was gently massage them and then slip the bangles up almost as an afterthought. The anklets posed even less of a problem. She hooked two of them together, pulled up his skirt and tied them above his feet.

  ‘How lovely you look.’

  He stared at his image in the mirror she had fetched. But for the ghastly uneven blue with the red-pink lips sticking out and the flat breasts, he could easily have passed as a woman.

  She dropped her own clothes in a hurry. What now? She laughed out loud when she saw the bemused look in his eyes.

  With astonishing speed she tied his pitambar around her waist. She was right, he was stupid. If he was Radha (perish the thought, his wife would not hesitate to slit his throat if she thought he was confusing her with her legendary rival), if he was Greeneyes, then she was the Flautist. She stuck the peacock feather into her headband.

  How far would the Little Saint go down this dangerous path? He had vaguely heard of the weird practices of the fringe sects who worshipped the Blue God. Make-believe was the crux of their adoration and they took turns at being the Flautist. Gender was a fuzzy line and they crossed it continually. Surely at some point such sexual indulgence could become an end in itself and lead to some bizarre perversions and decadence?

  The Princess crossed her forearms and held his crossed hands in hers. She began to go round slowly. He didn’t quite know what she had in mind but he followed her. They were face to face and still he had the feeling that they were stalking each other. What game of cat and mouse had she devised this time? Nothing of the sort, he soon realized, all she was doing was playing kikli. Their hands locked into each other, feet barely lifting off the ground as they circled. They gradually accelerated their velocity. The palace walls, the parijat tree, the Victory Tower, the tulsi plant hurtled past and just as swiftly reappeared. Faster and faster they went, each leaning as far back and away from the other as possible. Their chunnis slipped, skirts flared and the sky see-sawed madly. He felt a strange sense of elation, the sweat leapt off their bodies, they had gone to the limits of their energy and then beyond and yet would never stop.

  He envied the simplicity of her universe where everything she did or thought of was an act of devotion. Sex was worship and so was looking after his father and cheating while playing cards and laughter and standing on the swing and tossing the earth back and forth and singing and dancing. Her whole life, the highs and the lows, the tantrums and the pleasures, everything was an offering as much to herself as to her god. She was the essence of the Flautist’s idea of a karmayogi, or rather, yogin for whom the life of action made life worth living. She engaged life as if there was no tomorrow. Perhaps moksha lies in not thinking about the afterlife.

  ‘My Prince,’ Bhootani Mata was standing demurely behind the parijat tree.

  ‘Haven’t seen you for so long, I had begun to fear that you had met with an accident.’ He had still not learnt there was no point being sarcastic with her.

  ‘Did you miss me that much? But you should kn
ow by now that I’m always within hailing distance. Frankly I am, like your beloved, lodged in your heart.’

  ‘I advise you to keep off my wife if you know what’s good for you.’

  ‘May I refresh your memory, Highness, it was I who suggested to you, while you were whining and importuning me on an hourly basis, that you should not just keep off your dear wife but,’ Bhootani Mata smiled reproachfully, ‘forget her altogether. I am pleased to see that there has been a radical change in your wife’s fortunes. The country no longer thinks of her as a whore. Little Saint, isn’t that what they call her these days? The townspeople would be most impressed by the Little Saint’s saintly acts every night.’

  ‘Spare us your sarcasm.’

  ‘Don’t wince, Maharaj Kumar. You will agree that there has been a rapprochement among parties who one would have wagered, would become friends only when heaven and hell change places. You look bored, Prince, and impatient to be rid of me.’

  ‘Can we come to the point? I have other matters to attend to.’

  ‘I do not wish to delay your dalliance. Let me give you the good news. From now on anybody who has had the misfortune to have come in contact with you is under threat. People who are totally unaware of the pact that you made with me will pay the price for your sins and the vagaries of your mind. I hope you rot with guilt and the enormity of the havoc you will unleash on innocents. We’ll get even yet, Highness. I must take your leave now.’

  She turned to leave. He knew she wasn’t finished with him.

  ‘Oh, how could I forget? I say, aren’t you going to ask me about the parijat tree and Kausalya?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t care?’

  ‘Let’s just say that I don’t care to give you credit for whatever’s happened to them.’

  ‘You think, my friend, that the earth opened and swallowed Kausalya just as it did Sita in the story books and your parijat dropped dead out of exhaustion one sunny morning?’

  ‘You are getting to be a megalomaniac, Bhootani Mata. Do you want me to believe that the drought in Vijayanagar this year, Babur’s victory at Panipat, the latest Portuguese ship sinking near Surat, are all your doing? If that’s the case, why don’t you play with your equals, the Flautist, for instance? You are like all the third-rate babas, gurus and saviours of the world. All you can do is play upon the fears of men and women. But I’m through with fear, fear of what you can do to me.’

  His feet had begun to shrink and worse, he no longer minded the bangles on his arms. He had the distinct feeling that he had grown small and delicate. If he had been horrified at the thought of masquerading as a transvestite, why was he not incensed that his step had become light and his torso lissom? Or were the reasons for this quite simple and banal? That at heart he was a woman or perhaps all human beings are really bisexual? What was the source of a person’s sex? Did clothes play a role in it? Could he really get under a woman’s skin merely by wearing a ghagra and choli? All these years he had believed that the only difference between men and women was their bodies. But were their minds made differently too? What does it mean to be a woman? Is it long, flowing hair tied in a plait or knot, is it the fullness in the breasts, is it patience and nurturing as much as strength and intelligence? What is the most complete and sufficient idea that mankind has had? God. And yet if you assign sex to God, then he or she too becomes finite and incomplete.

  Her choli and chunni were wet. She saw him looking at her and the wheeling, careening sky stopped abruptly. She slipped into his arms. He tried to hug her tightly but her liquefying flesh kept slipping away, he went out of his mind with that slithery touch, he wanted to annihilate the separateness of their bodies and become one with her. There was no way they could hold on to each other. She bent down, scrabbled in the ground, stood up and frantically rubbed earth on herself and him. The scent of the wet earth cleared his head.

  Spring was in the air and her flesh broke out imperceptibly into tendrils that grew into vines. They entwined themselves around her arms and breasts and spread out over her thighs and calves and toes. And all the while, tiny green leaves stirred and essayed forth. And shyly, ever so slowly, yellow and red buds crept out and almost soundlessly popped open. He stretched a finger to touch flower and leaf. Before he knew it, the green had leapt over and entwined itself around his hand and drew him to the creeper-woman. Nothing, he knew then, could break them asunder.

  It was then that she called out to him, ‘Krishna Kanhaiyya, Krishna Kanhaiyya.’

  Chapter

  40

  I should have seen it coming but my vaunted prescience was malfunctioning or has it been just a matter of guesswork and some luck posing as clairvoyance all these years? Political considerations alone should have forced me to go back to my second wife but I felt as disinclined as Babur was with his first. His mother, he says in his diaries, cajoled him to visit his bride at least once in forty days. My mother lived in a world of her own and was not overeager to engage with life. She was aware that I had recently remarried but it would not have occurred to her to ask me how things were between me and my second wife. I had a severe case of conscience but try as I might I could not bring myself to visit Sugandha.

  Any new wife in the Palace is treated as an antagonist by the zenana. (Perhaps it’s the same in any royal family.) What she faces is the equivalent of ragging at the military academy. Not a day passes in the first few months when you are not snubbed, humiliated and made a fool of. Sugandha could have easily weathered all the needling and found that, like most underdogs, she too had her champions. But thanks to the example set by the Little Saint, the women of the biggest club in Chittor, the seraglio, cut her dead. Sugandha is naive, spoilt and comes from a family that has made much of her – perhaps because she is the only one who did not inherit the Medini looks – and she went to pieces when she was left alone.

  My second mother stepped into this vacuum of extreme isolation and took Sugandha in hand. She did not fawn or fuss over her. She made her part of her entourage. She was firm and supportive and made her feel wanted by giving her a role in the scheme of the royal firmament. There was an inevitability about what happened next and yet I kept watching as if I were a spectator at a dark comedy of errors. There may have been some truth in the rumour that the Queen had played procuress in this instance but there was no denying that I had driven my wife into Vikramaditya’s arms.

  Vikramaditya had come back from Ranthambhor, to use his own words, because he was fed up with the backwaters and needed to be revitalized at the fount of Chittor. He was never a private person and the thought of keeping a confidence was alien to him. The conquest of my wife, Sugandha, was not exactly a rare victory but it was ample ammunition against me, and he was certainly not about to underplay his victory or my lack of manliness. Chittor had indeed worked wonders on him. He had drunk long at the fount and decided that he could never have enough and had extended his stay indefinitely. He was in great spirits and so was Sugandha. Scandal seemed to suit my second wife. People had suddenly begun to take note of her and it restored her self-esteem. Queen Karmavati knew she was playing a dangerous game but it was clear that it was part of her plan to raise the stakes and underline her independence from His Majesty.

  My own response to discovering that I was a cuckold a second time round was mixed and did not entirely do me credit. Sugandha was young, she was having a good time and I wanted to root for her because she had had the satisfaction of getting back at me. I also felt protective towards her. Our poets never tire of telling us that life is short and I wanted to warn Sugandha that my brother’s fancy for a woman is even shorter. Besides, did she not understand that she was a mere pawn in the devious hands of my second mother. But somewhere I was also relieved. Hem Karan, who had only a few months ago begged me to allow him to stay behind in Chittor and train under me, had become frosty after my marriage to his sister. His sneer was aimed as much at himself as at me. How could he have worshipped me as his saviour when I was not e
ven man enough to do justice to his sister? Now that Sugandha had got even and dishonoured the house of Mewar (carrying on with your brother-in-law was nothing special in the royal household, flaunting the relationship was), Hem Karan did not have the courage to look me in the eye. I could now absolve myself of guilt or at least pretend to. Hem Karan’s discomfiture was balm to my soul. The more egregious and shameless Vikramaditya and Sugandha were, the cleaner my conscience.

  I was seeking martyrdom, nothing less. I wanted my forbearance and quiet dignity to be perceived as heroic and turn the whole of Mewar against my brother and wife. Humiliation was not a new sensation for me. Few people in Chittor have had my experience and expertise in it. And yet, despite the fact that I had crystallized my objectives so clearly, it took hours of coaxing myself in the morning before I could muster the courage to show my face to the members of my extended family, or worse, make a public appearance.

  Let me not, however, downplay the other unfortunate side effects. 1 was growing progressively more ineffectual in my work and in the chain of command as the days passed by. I had proven my worth on the battlefield repeatedly but nobody was in the mood to recognize that. If you are no good in bed, you are no good. End of matter.

  The marital bed is where people think your kingly capabilities are measured and proven. I had been given a second chance and I had failed to make good once again. What use are your administrative or military gifts if you can’t take your pleasure with your wife nor control her?

  About a month ago, I heard an altercation between brother and sister in repressed voices. Or rather the brother was trying to have a whispered conversation while Sugandha made it a point to take the town of Chittor into confidence.

  ‘You are not going on the hunt, if your husband’s not there with you.’

  ‘I’m not? Watch me.’

  ‘Think of the consequences, Sugandha. We are allies, we are related and we are beholden to them for our lives, for our freedom and for Chanderi. If we are ever again in trouble, no Rajput rao or rawat, certainly not the Maharana, will come to our help.’