‘Oh, well,’ I said sinking back into my pillow and smiling. ‘There is no need to worry. His Highness has probably gone out for a little picnic with Bunti Russell.’
‘Do you realize the seriousness of this, if His Highness has indeed gone out to “eat ashes” with her? Captain Russell has already rung up the police. And there will be a first-class scandal! What with the Praja Mandal people looking out for any excuse to damn His Highness, and this accession business not yet settled. Partap Singh has gone out looking for him in the khud, and the servants are out searching in all directions, towards Annandale, the Lower Bazaar, the Lovers’ Lane. . . . And the rain will not stop!’
‘There are too many lovers’ lanes so far as H.H. is concerned,’ I said. ‘Which one will they go to find him in? But don’t worry,’ I assured him. And I picked up a cigarette from the little plastic box on the bed-table.
‘I am going to give up this thankless job and retire,’ said Munshiji with one of those very rare shows of impatience that I had ever seen him express. ‘That Sergeant, I mean Captain Russell Sahib, is threatening to shoot every one of us!’
There was the helplessness of a rather too self-righteous man about Munshi Mithan Lal, which made him seem even more ridiculous than he ordinarily was, with the pedagogic, parsimonious, religious boor in him, who had persisted in his ‘thankless job’ for years, though he knew that he could not make much of an impression on His Highness’s mind, which was set on other, more pleasant, things than holy men and their wise maxims. To His Highness, Munshiji had been a great figure of fun, the proverbial court fool in disguise, and he had, with characteristic mischievousness, distorted his name and nicknamed him Mian Mithu, an appellation usually given to a parrot, because he was always repeating things parrot-wise from text-books, such as he had learned for his BA degree, and from Emerson, Thoreau, Ruskin, Gandhi and from Bhagwan Krishna as reported in the Gita, all of whom he had read for what he called his ‘extra-mural’ studies. Ever since I had been away from the state, first at Medical College, Lahore, and then in London for my post-graduate studies, I had thought of the difficulties in the way of Munshi Mithan Lal coaching the Maharaja into grace and knowledge; and, especially when I myself entered His Highness’s service as his personal physician, I had begun to appreciate the peculiar and intricate problems facing this good man in tackling his job. The old man had three sons who were being educated: one as an engineer, another as a lawyer, a third as a doctor, all in England, and he had to earn enough money to pay for their studies, even at the cost of those perverse humiliations which His Highness showered on him in the guise of his peculiar sense of humour. The fate of Munshi Mithan Lal at the hands of His Highness frightened me and I felt nervous to be in state employ. But then I had to work off the sum of the scholarship which the state had provided for my three years’ research in England. And, anyhow, there were hundreds of unemployed medical men in the country. So I accepted my position, and even felt my vanity tickled when people complimented me on being lucky enough to be occupying so exalted a rank as that of the personal physician to a maharaja.
‘Acha, brother, get up, put your clothes on and come and help me to find this naughty boy,’ said Mian Mithu. Then his gaze fell on the menacing clouds, which were rolling across the valley beyond the window, and he got up, wringing his hands and repeating under his breath: ‘Hey Ram! Hey Ishwar! Hey Parmatman!’
‘Don’t worry, Munshiji,’ I said as I got out of bed. And, as I began to dress, I repeated the phrase with which he used always to dismiss the Maharaja’s philanderings: ‘After all, it is the sport of children, all this playing about in the zenana. And even Sri Krishan Maharaj had his gopis!’
‘Son, don’t mock at me and insult my religion,’ Munshiji said rather priggishly. ‘Relieve me of my anxiety and tell me if he told you where he was going.’ And, with the strain, he belched and pressed his protuberant belly even as he writhed with a resurgence of his chronic nervous dyspepsia.
‘He didn’t tell me anything,’ I said. ‘But I think he must have taken Bunti down the khud to the waterfalls for the obvious purpose. He has had his eyes on her for some time, and she has been pursuing him, hanging around upstairs, dressed up like a gypsy, with a snake coiled round her arm. . . . She is a nymphomaniac!’
‘What is a nymphomaniac?’ asked Munshiji.
I felt an irresistible impulse to shock Munshiji by analysing the behaviour of a typical nymphomaniac and by spilling the beans about His Highness. I wanted to tell him of how Mrs Russell herself had slept with her ‘Dear Maraja Sahib’ right under Munshiji’s nose. I wanted to describe to him how the romance between His Highness and Bunti Russell had been encouraged by Captain Russell with all his unctuous talk, because the latter hoped in a short while to be able to blackmail the Maharaja and extort some money from him. I felt like telling Munshiji how he had been humbugging himself, talking of guarding His Highness against evil influences when he, Captain Partap Singh, the ADC, Mr Bool Chand, the Political Secretary, and myself indulged every whim and fancy of His Highness, in order to curry favour with him, and shut our eyes to what we did not want to see about His Highness, even while we pretended to be so concerned when anything happened to His Highness. But I abstained from saying all these things out of the respect for age which is so strictly enjoined in our country and which, in spite of my education, I had not yet succeeded in giving up. Why argue with this pompous ass, anyhow? Why prick the bubble of his complacency by telling him that ever since the time when in the Augean stables of these robbers-turned-kings no chariots were harnessed for war, ever since they could not go and conquer each other’s territories because the borders of their kingdoms had been fixed for ever by special treaties with Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Victoria, these princelings had not much to do, after their precocious childhoods in the zenana, their expensive boyhoods in the Chief’s Colleges, and all the flattery and adulation of hangers-on like ourselves, except to set about to achieve the only other conquests left to them, the conquests over women, the easiest victories in our hapless country where the place of women was still governed by Manu Smriti and the Hindu Mitakshra Law.
As we emerged from the annexe on to the gravelled path, which led to the lodge, the rain was still drizzling in that peculiar way in which it drizzles in the Simla Hills. The floating cotton wool of the clouds rose from the sub-valleys and struck the mountains in the middle. The mist became liquid and fell like dew, while the tops of the hills remained dry except for the few high points against which small wisps of clouds rose in spirals, covering and uncovering the mixed English, Swiss and Far-Eastern style chalets and bungalows and huts, where once lived the officials, the potentates and the memsahibs, both English and Indian, of devoted husbands who willingly grilled in the sun-scorched plains of India in the service of the British Sarkar merely to be able to help their wives to retain their school-girl complexions.
‘I am sure even a giant like Captain Partap Singh would get lost in Simla today—what with those overhanging clouds!’ I said this to ease the tension as we proceeded towards the lodge.
Munshi Mithan Lal did not answer, but kept screwing his face even as he belched with dyspepsia. So I nodded playfully to the carnations, the pinks, the sweet peas, the fuchsias, the lilies, the poppies, the dahlias, the pansies, the scarlet geraniums, the gladioli and the forget-me-nots which stood droopingly along the shapely beds laid out by the broad drive to the lodge. The rain seemed to have dulled their lustre and they seemed not to be in the mood for exchanging greetings. So, perforce, I had to hold a colloquy with myself from which I had been escaping all this while through my attempts at flippancy. ‘You went into the service of His Highness,’ I said to myself, ‘knowing exactly what you were doing. You knew that the Maharaja was, like most Indian princes, an eccentric, who may do to you, to others and to himself any of a hundred strange things. But apart from the obligation you owed him, because he lent you 20,000 rupees for your studies in England, you were quite elated at the idea o
f being a favourite, a ‘friend, guide and philosopher’, because you were ambitious and saw prospects of achieving power over him, and through him, in the state. And although you kept your suitcases packed ready to quit within twenty-four hours, that being the time allowed for you to make good your escape from the state, you thought that it was a needless precaution against this maharaja. For, whatever his other faults, he was loyal to his friends. Now, however, you may have to get your suitcases really well packed and ready, because anything may happen after His Highness’s latest escapade. This is really the culmination of that passion for his Brahmin mistress, Ganga Dasi, which, being thwarted by the various petitions to the British Government of his consort, the Tikyali Rani, Indira, as well as by the tantrums of Ganga Dasi herself, has led him to seek consolation for his will to lust and happiness in one desperate and mad sexual adventure after another. And knowing, as only you do, that His Highness is ill and will behave like this again and again, you should, if only because you have learnt to relish the thought of personal freedom and social justice as elementary needs of your mind and body, not be abject like all the other state subjects, but resign before you get involved any further in the tentacles of that courtesy and affection which the Maharaja seeks to weave round you, with his all-absorbing ego that knows no bounds.’ But the other voice answered: ‘If you owe the money and cannot pay it off immediately and have accepted the position which you are in, it is not easy to get out of it, especially because you still believe that you may be able to help the Maharaja to get well and to divert him from the path on which he is travelling. At any rate, it is your duty as a doctor to enable him to regain his confidence in himself, which has been shattered by Ganga Dasi, and to see him adjust himself to some kind of balanced social behaviour.’
Before this colloquy had finished, I saw Bhagirath, the bearer, running up towards us from where the drive turned sharp left towards the veranda of the two-storeyed pagoda-style lodge. As Bhagirath reached us, he leaned his head over his joined palms, made obeisance to us and, in a panic-stricken voice, whispered, ‘Maharaj has come back.’
A sub-inspector of police came chasing after Bhagirath and shouted:
‘Ohe, come here! Don’t you know that no one is allowed to leave this bungalow?’
‘He is a palace servant,’ Mithan Lal said to assure the officer.
I saw that the lodge was surrounded by a posse of policemen, who clustered together in knots and whispered to each other as they stood by the servants, some in the veranda of the ground floor which was occupied by Captain Russell, others on the balcony projecting from the second storey of the house, with its large gables and french windows. The whole atmosphere seemed to be electric with cross-currents between the upper storey and the ground floor of the house, with two sets of people breathing furtively into each other’s ears. And to the oppressive silence of the exalted house, usually only heightened by the impatiences and the rages of His Highness, was added a certain grimness. It was a kind of urgency, as if there lay an unexploded bomb somewhere between the two layers of the building. The bomb was sizzling and would not burst, lest it should outshine the burning refulgence of the Divine Light in the aura of power around the head of His Highness, descended, as he was supposed to be, from the God Indra via the God King Rama, and capable, by his mere presence, of putting into the shade any alloy of magnesium, or other physical or spiritual combustibles, except the Paramount Power.
As I waited for a moment while Munshi Mithan Lal talked to the sub-inspector of police, I caught a glimpse of Mrs Russell in the veranda of her flat, calling shrilly, ‘Bera! Bera!’ I believe she saw me, but she deliberately averted her eyes from me. I nearly thought of going to inquire after Bunti. But the usually unctuous, charming and flirtatious smile on Mrs Russell’s plain face was absent, and her polly-tip-up nose sniffed the air haughtily while a scowl of fury sat upon her hard jaws and forbade any exchange. ‘Bring hot water for Miss Sahib’s ghusal,’ she shouted. And I sensed that Bunti Russell was certainly suffering from exposure, whatever else she might or might not be suffering from, since her escapade with His Highness in some lovers’ lane or other.
‘Ohe hurry, ohe what are you looking at that bahinchod memni for?’ I heard Captain Partap Singh’s raucous Punjabi voice calling me. ‘Leave the stale bitch alone and come and feel His Highness’s pulse!’
I walked up as though in a hypnotic trance. For I had never quite recovered from the first shock of this giant Sikh’s vulgar tongue, and I had always felt a certain fear of the loutish bully in him. He hailed from the Mhaja district of Central Punjab, the scion of an old landlord family. He had failed to take the Bachelor of Arts degree at the Khalsa College, Amritsar, six times, but he had captured all the sports prizes for the high jump, the long jump, the hundred yards, the cross-country run as well as javelin throwing. And, being a remarkable freak of nature, about seven feet tall, and a splendid decorative companion to have in court, in mufti or in uniform, His Highness had been persuaded by the Principal of the Chief’s College (who was a friend of the head of the institution where Partap Singh had failed in all the exams but where he had captured all the sports championships) to engage him as an ADC. Uncouth, lusty, a good boozer, a voracious eater and with nothing in his head except a little white matter under the bun of his long black hair, he had all the qualities which would recommend him to that side of His Highness’s nature which had been trained in the ideals of sportsmanship, inculcated into him at the Bishop Cotton School, Simla, as well as in the Chief’s College, Lahore. Captain Partap Singh’s rough-and-ready methods and manners embarrassed us all; though, I must confess, his hearty laugh, his generosity and the prodigal warmth of his uncivilized nature, were contagious and compensated for a great deal of his boorishness. I knew that he was as stubborn an enemy as he was a loyal friend. So I had decided after a few minor brush-ups with him to give him a long rope to hang himself with, and I generally laughed away his vulgarity.
‘Where had His Highness disappeared?’ I asked him as I ascended the steps to the balcony from the drive.
‘Ohe bewakoof—he took that little bitch to the khuds!’ Partap Singh said this in a loud enough voice for all to hear. And he continued without lowering his tone: ‘Last time I had to rescue him from the hands of that washerman by Annandale, because the dhobi caught him red-handed with his wife. This time matters have reached beyond my arms to the quills of the babus! . . . Perhaps a nimble-witted bania like Bool Chand, or a learned doctor like you, can handle the authorities!’ And he slapped me on the back with that terrific bonhomie of his, which was so back-breaking an abomination that I nearly fell while he guffawed with laughter.
‘“Death to us and you indulge in blandishments.”’ I quoted a Hindustani verse at him.
‘Captain Sahib!’ Munshi Mithan Lal said with a scowl of admonition on his face, while he still stood talking to the sub-inspector of police.
‘Of course, you haven’t heard, have you,’ said Captain Partap Singh, turning to me, ‘that Munshiji’s mother has died?’ And he laughed again his obscene boorish laugh.
I gave him a cautionary look and proceeded towards His Highness’s bedroom. When I crossed the large dining-room into the Prince’s bedroom, His Highness sat up in bed impetuously and, throwing his torso forward, caught hold of my approaching legs like a child. Then he looked at me with the most abject appeal in his eyes. He knew that this worked with everyone because of the extraordinary fascination of his big brown eyes, studded like two moonstones in a face that was otherwise plain enough, with its narrow forehead, its almost sunken cheeks, sharp nose, thick lower lip, weak mouth, pointed chin and rather long ears.
‘Now I suppose you are going to scold me just like Munshiji?’ he said disarmingly.
I kept a non-committal silence, and he was nearly panic-stricken. ‘Tell me,’ he continued, ‘that you are not angry with me. You know I am ill. . . . Don’t look so solemn! . . .’ And then he smiled nervously and said to the ADC: ‘Captain Sahib, l
ook what an ass Dr Hari Shankar becomes when he falls under the influence of that great ass Mian Mithu. I am sure he too is going to exhort me to tread the right path like the rest of them.’
‘I don’t know about the right path, Highness,’ I said, ‘but certainly I am going to ask you not to go down the tortuous tracks of the Simla khuds in the rainy weather: you might slip and fall.’
‘Only asses slip!’ he said.
‘Han, of course, obstinate mules can negotiate their way through the khuds!’ I said ironically.
‘I am not a eunuch of a mule!’ he protested as he recollected himself.
‘All right, Highness, you are a high-mettled horse!’ I said, reaching for the thermometer in the pocket of my sports jacket. ‘Let me take your temperature.’
‘I am afflicted with a disease for which you will have to feel my heart rather than thrust a thermometer into my mouth,’ he said, waxing sentimentally poetical. Then he added with a pout, which seemed rather ridiculous on the lips of a man well past his twenties, though he looked much older because of the pace at which he had been living: ‘I wish you wouldn’t go on “Highnessing” me all the time. That shows you are angry with me and are intriguing with Mian Mithu against me.’
‘All right, Vicky,’ I said, calling him by his nickname. This nickname had been given to him by the wife of his Principal at the Chief’s College. The Maharaja’s full name was Victor Edward George Ashok Kumar: Victor after Queen Victoria; Edward after Edward VII; George after the Emperor George V; Ashok after the ancient Indian Emperor Ashoka. The Principal’s wife, Mrs Berry, abbreviated Victor into Vicky. And all his intimate friends preferred to address him thus informally. As this name had been recently familiarized in Simla by Bunti Russell, it found an echo in His Highness’s mind.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 52