The Mountain of Light

by Indu Sundaresan

  Aziz formed the sound of her name with his mouth, exaggerating a little. Rosh-ni. I know who you are.

  She mimed back. So what? And then. Ha-ha.

  He watched the agility of her expressions, the flash in those light blue eyes, the pantomime, and smiled to himself. He could see why the Maharajah was taken with this brilliant child; she was an entertaining minx. With a very apt name. Roshni. Light. Illumination.

  Maharani Jindan Kaur swung around and began walking back to her tent. The Maharajah’s foreign minister flushed, bowed, scuttled out of her way, and followed her through the streets, cursing himself. Until that last sentence, they had spoken Persian, a language she was less than fluent in but something she had taught herself, so it had come out stilted, without finesse. But the Urdu of the camps was something she had grown up with, it slid off her tongue easily, and it was a slap in his face for his surprise that the queen of the Punjab would want to meet her counterpart in the British embassy. See, Fakir Azizuddin, she had seemed to be saying, there’s a reason there are no other queens here at the Sutlej. I might have grown up among soldiers, but I am now your sovereign’s wife, and have your king’s love . . . not to mention his child.

  As they passed, men turned their faces from her, women raised their hands to foreheads in the salaam, the blacksmith stilled the pounding on his anvil, the cries of the bazaar died down. And Jindan, veiled and covered, carried Prince Dalip Singh and showed him to his people. They saw his face, they marveled at his plumpness, the cast of black in his hair, the tiny fingers that curled around the chiffon of his mother’s veil, and they wiped the audacity from their expressions. There were no sneers, no sniggers, just an awe that the bundle in the woman’s arms, finally, and deliberately, made her queen.

  If he had been asked, Fakir Azizuddin would have advised against this ramble through the long camp to stand on the embankment and stare at the British on the other side. At the very least, she ought to have had an entourage around her, a gaggle of veiled ladies, a sprinkling of soldiers, a clearing of the paths, a shouting of discouragement toward anyone who dared to raise their eyes toward the Maharani. Oh, and a maid to hold the child. Why would a queen carry her own son like this? It made no sense to Aziz. There were rumors eddying around that she even nursed the child herself. These were all actions of a low-class woman who had no one to do such things for her; Aziz would have thought that, if anything, she would intentionally be more regal than the other ranis of the Maharajah, to put lie to who she was and where she came from.

  And then, he saw the melting faces of the soldiers and their womenfolk, watched them bow in the taslim or the konish, touch their hearts at the sight of the child, his prince. The diamond shone in the sunlight, like a star plucked out of the night sky, but the infant seemed more brilliant than a rock that could feed the world’s millions. Aziz shook his head in disbelief and in admiration.

  When Jindan had reached the outside of the tents that formed the royal enclosure, she waited. He said, “It shall be as you say, your Majesty.”

  She inclined her head, now she was imperious, and went inside.

  • • •

  Jindan Kaur had asked for, and got, the rooms beside the Maharajah’s, a privilege a few of his wives had had, in his youth, perhaps, but not for a long while now. The tent, spare and white, with no embellishments in gold and silver zari, no beaten gold pillars holding up the awnings, no abundant Persian and Turkish carpets of thick, knotted wool, was, even so, large and contained canvas partitions that divided one space from another. It had high doorways, tall ceilings, windows of a fine white mesh that kept out insects and filtered in the sweet air birthed above the Sutlej’s waters. The floors were covered with crudely woven dhurries in white; the furniture was simple, white cotton divans with cushions and bolsters, a sleek wooden chair in every room for Ranjit Singh.

  The Maharani paused at the entrance to the main sitting room, staying just beyond the doorway, unseen by the occupants of the room. When the Maharajah met with the British delegation, his own person would be modest, as always, but the courtiers would be dressed in their dazzling silks, would glitter with jewels—there would be all of the pomp and the enormous wealth of the Punjab Empire. For show, Jindan, Ranjit Singh had said. I myself need none of it. Jindan smiled, looking around her at all that pristine white. In an empire where dust and mud ruled, where the rains fell sparingly and sometimes not at all, where the green of verdure flourished only around the hearts of rivers and streams, white was a luxury that only a king could command. Not so humble after all.

  Roshni, sticking to her as usual, beckoned Jindan’s head down, and the Maharani felt the child’s warm, moist breath tickle her ear. “Shall I go?”

  “Wait in my room, Roshan.”

  The girl reached on tiptoe and kissed Jindan’s arm, somewhere above the Kohinoor, and then she fled, the sound of her footsteps sucked into the pile of the dhurries on the floor.

  Jindan leaned against the wooden doorframe and listened as the Granthi read out passages from the Guru Granth Sahib to his Maharajah. In the last few years, as he had grown older and two strokes had frozen the left part of his body, Ranjit had asked for a learned man at his court, a different one each time, to sing out hymns from the scripture at all times of the day, whenever he had felt the need for it. She moved slowly until she filled the doorway and watched her husband in his chair, the Granthi seated on a stool next to a wooden table on which the holy book lay. Ranjit’s right hand cupped his face, and when she appeared, he moved that hand so that his face moved also and his bright eye gazed at her. He smiled, a half smile that curved the right part of his mouth, left the other side immobile.

  She felt a painful swelling in her breasts; it was time for another feed, but the baby slept on, his fist tucked under his chin, all crumpled up in his mother’s arms. She tickled him gently on his ribs, and he opened his glittering eyes and screwed up his mouth in a lusty cry.

  Maharani Jindan Kaur held him close, her fingers already undoing the buttons of her choli, as she vanished in a swirl of skirts, the child’s cry loud and then dying into contentment as his mouth found her breast.

  • • •

  In the sitting room, Maharajah Ranjit Singh cleared his throat. The Granthi heard him but finished the verse he was reciting and waited, his head bowed, looking down upon his hands.

  “Enough for now,” Ranjit said.

  “Tomorrow, your Majesty?” the man asked.

  “Maybe not. Fakir Azizuddin will send word. Thank you.”

  When the man had left, after touching his forehead to the ground in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, and gathering the book reverently into his arms, Ranjit called for his servants. They carried his chair out, moving sideways through the doorway, into the main area, and from there they went into the bedroom of the Maharani.

  When the servants had departed, Jindan pulled the veil from over her head and the suckling child, and sat there smiling upon the Maharajah. The golden light from the waning sun slanted in from the windows, caressed her shining hair and that of her child, cast a honeyed warmth upon her bare skin.

  Ranjit Singh sighed. He set his right hand down carefully upon the arm of his chair and moved his head with an effort until it rested against the back. He never tired of looking upon her, this girl he had plucked from the banks of the Ravi River one heated summer afternoon in Lahore, just outside the fort’s walls. And, eventually, brought her into his harem as his wife. His gaze then drifted to Roshni, sitting on the floor near Jindan, her legs crossed in front of her, her head leaning against Jindan’s shoulder. Every now and then, she put out a small hand to caress Dalip’s head.

  “Why do you do that yourself ?” His voice was rasping; speech was still troublesome, and he couldn’t get as many words out as he wanted; his brain was always crammed with questions now that could find no answers.

  But Jindan understood, as she had always seemed to. “This?” she said, glancing down upon the concentrated face of the baby,
eyes now shut, mouth working busily. “I lost one, you know.”

  He nodded, as much as that petrified left part of his neck would allow. There had been a child before this one; at five months along, Jindan had tripped over the wooden horse cart of one of the other children in the harem—not his own, one of the many others of the various women to whom he gave shelter, cousins and friends—and had collapsed sharply upon the ground. It had been such a simple fall; she had not twisted an ankle, or injured a bone, but she had been taken to her bed, and that night the bleeding had started.

  Jindan began to speak and then turned to Roshni. “Roshan, child, leave the room. I want to speak to the Maharajah of matters that are not for your ears.”

  Roshni twisted her nose. “Why, Ma?”

  In his chair, Ranjit tipped forward as much as his shattered body would allow him to. He had hoped that Jindan would form friendships among at least some of the women in his harem; he knew that her life would be miserable if she didn’t. But Jindan had become fond not of one of his other wives, or his cousins, but of this little girl who had come from Sher Singh’s house in Amritsar almost on the same day as Jindan. In his, the Maharajah’s zenana, Roshni was in the place of his child, because he had unofficially adopted her, much as he had adopted her brother Sher Singh and made him one of the heirs to his throne. But Jindan, who at eighteen was only six years older than Roshni, was Ranjit’s wife. And so, Roshni called Jindan Ma.

  “Go,” Jindan said again. This time when Roshni rose, muttering under her breath, she came up to the Maharajah and nestled against his chin and his beard. And then, she ran from the room.

  Jindan smiled. “She’s a good girl, even helpful with Dalip.”

  “What were we speaking of just now?”

  “I prayed that if I were given the chance for another child, I would not leave it to the care of others. Just that, your Majesty.”

  He watched her for a long while with a feeling of peace that he never found elsewhere, not even in the saddle. While the strokes, one after another, had decimated the movement of most of his body, he could still ride a horse, and for that he was grateful. Just as he was grateful for this young woman who had come into his life to be his wife, to share his bed, and to give him another child.

  Jindan Kaur was the daughter of one of the court’s bhistis—the water carriers. These were the men to be found in every town and city in India, hunched under the weight of their goatskin bags. Goats were skinned almost whole for their skins, the inside scoured, polished, and hammered into a smoothness, the outside left with short, brown and white fuzz, and then sewn into a bag with only one seam. Even that one seam had to have stitches that disappeared into the pelt, else water, with its invasive, fluid form would leak out. One end had a small copper mouth with a lid, the other a larger mouth. The bhistis filled their bags through the larger mouths and slung them over their shoulders with the smaller openings downward, near their hips. Jute cords, toughly woven, joined the two ends together and were strapped over their chests. When they sold water, they let open the smaller mouth into whatever container was offered to them, capped it, and then collected the money. Water had a surprising weight, and the bhistis were easily identified as the men who walked around bent down with a permanent stoop, even after they had put their bags away for the night.

  The Maharani put the baby up on her shoulder and tapped on his back until he burped and then, sated, his eyes closed again and his breathing evened.

  “He sleeps a lot,” Maharajah Ranjit Singh said.

  She laughed, rubbing her face against the child’s side. “All babies do.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said, suddenly grave. “I was too busy conquering kingdoms and kings when my other sons were younger.”

  If the initial stroke hadn’t left him immobile in a chair, he would not have seen Jindan, or noticed her. It was during those first long days, when he had chafed at his inability to move his hand, his leg, his mouth, his face, when the words came garbled and nonsensical out of his mouth even though his brain was on fire with what he wanted to say, that he had insisted upon being taken to the Shah Burj tower every afternoon. He refused to take a nap, it seemed too much like defeat, especially since he lay looking up at the night sky, worrying about what had happened to him, and what would happen to his empire with the British clustering over the southern doorstep at the Sutlej. True, he had signed a treaty with them to stay away, but that was many decades ago. A few Afghani spies had also been caught within the Punjab from the north. Ranjit Singh knew that he was the one who held the Empire together. And word of his stroke had already filtered out, so the scouts came snuffling around to find out the truth.

  One afternoon, he had asked to be left at the Shah Burj, leaning from his chair against the marble latticework jali, his forehead resting against the carving, which left its imprint upon his skin because he couldn’t move away easily by himself. Looking over the trees, the fields of rice and wheat, the crows leaving black footprints on the sky, he had seen the girl bend into the river, plunge in a goatskin bag, fill it, cap it, and lift it over her head and shoulders onto her back. The wet bag had sprinkled water into the air around her, each drop creating a tiny rainbow, until she had seemed to be suspended in light. Her clothing was shabby, her ghagara wet up to her knees, frayed at the edges, her choli faded from so many washes that it was a dull shade of gray. He had watched, imprisoned as he was, as she staggered when the weight of the bag first settled on her shoulders.

  She’d righted herself painfully and begun the long, shambling trek back to the fort.

  Ranjit Singh still hadn’t seen her face, but something in that measured determination of a girl who was hardly strong enough to carry a bhisti ’s load had captured his heart. He’d asked Fakir Azizuddin to send for her. She had come to stand in front of him, a little shy, mostly frightened. Carrying water was men’s work. But her father was too ill, and had been in his bed for some days now—money had to be made, and there was only one way she knew how to make it. Her speech was crude, not appealing, and she was prickly with resentment. The Maharajah had offered her some learning, some lessons.

  “What would I do with it?” she had asked, her hand churning in a contemptuous movement.

  “Bah,” he had shouted. “What everyone else does with it. I wouldn’t know; ask Fakir Azizuddin. He was the one who grew up interred in books and the alphabet.” He had turned to his astonished foreign minister. “Tell her. I will pension off your father; you’ll never need to work for a living again. Tell her.”

  Fakir Azizuddin had stammered out something meaningless. He had taken the girl into the harem, asked for her to be bathed and dressed and sent to the tutors.

  A month later, the Maharajah of the Punjab had fallen in love with the child of a bhisti. She had talked to him, sung to him, looked at him with such devotion that he couldn’t bring himself to part with her. And so, he had married her.

  Jindan Kaur laid the sleeping child in his cradle. In that clean, frugal room, the baby’s bed was made of a gleaming gold, embedded with diamonds that twinkled, the sheets were of silk, the canopy had studded on the inside a thousand jewels of every color with silk-tasseled fringes. She had been willing to accede to the Maharajah’s love for white and minimalism, as long as she could put her son in a bed of gold. She then came up to Ranjit Singh, knelt by his chair, and wrapped her arms around him.

  He could hear the thud of her heart, smell the faint aroma of roses from her perfume, feel the caress of her fingers upon his neck. They stayed like that until the sun set, and darkness came tumbling down upon the tent, and the cradle with the child glowed in multicolored points of light, and one luminous fragment of light smoldered from the heart of the Kohinoor on the sleeve of her choli.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Maharajah Ranjit Singh had two other sons who were in line for the throne, Kharak Singh and Sher Singh, grown men both, with children and wives. Dalip Singh was only three months old.

  J
indan knew this, although they had never talked about the succession, for it would mean that Ranjit Singh was dead. She nodded and kissed his mottled cheek.

  He felt a tightness in his stomach at the touch of her lips. How much longer could he live? Which was why he had allowed Lord Auckland to come to the Punjab to meet him.

  “What does he want, this Auckland?” Jindan asked softly.

  “My help in invading Afghanistan.”

  “And will you give it to him?”

  She heard the roll of laughter in the Maharajah’s chest. “Of course not. But with this”—he moved his right hand ineffectually to gesture at his wasted body—“I thought it best to hear him out, pull it along, and then not say no, but not do anything.”

  “He wants to put Shah Shuja on the throne of Afghanistan?”

  “Yes,” Ranjit said, grinning. “How do you know?”

  She moved her shoulders. “Who else is there? Who else would listen to the British? Shuja’s been in Ludhiana as their guest, under their protection, panting for this opportunity.”

  Ranjit Singh stroked her brow, which was creased with worry. She was wondering what this meant for her, for her son, their son.

  She shifted, fretful. “You’re too generous with them, your Majesty. The British embassy is now twenty-five thousand men”—when he raised his right eyebrow, she waved—“Azizuddin told me. Well, I asked. He said that you’re taking care of everything for them—that thousands of hens go for their pots every morning along with flour and rice, spices; that their bazaars only sell what you send and that the shopkeepers have been told to sell anything and take nothing, and all their bills come to you. Is it even necessary?”

  He touched the diamond on her arm, his fingers shutting out the glow for a brief moment, before he let the light seep in again. “My purse is bottomless, Jindan. My treasury is even larger. So, why not? But, there’s always an underlying purpose to this . . . generosity. When I refuse to send my army into Afghanistan, because I consider it to be a futile attempt, the British will not be able to accuse me of a lack of charity.”