‘Sometimes, I feel I ought to throw all you fools out of my state, donkeys that you are!’ And he struck another posture. ‘I think I shall go crazy if you people. . . .’ And he wrung his hands and shook his head in a despairing gesture.
‘I think Your Highness should go to sleep,’ I said.
‘Oh, Hari, I am like a rat in a hole,’ he cried abjectly, as he walked round and round. ‘Here I am tied to that Tikyali Rani, who sends petition after petition to the Viceroy full of malicious lies. That dossier must be before Sardar Patel. And she has been to Delhi, contacting the States Department. . . . Now, how can I help it if I don’t love her? She is a shrew, a trollop, a magician with evil influence in her control. . . . I shall lose my mind if I don’t get out of this hole!’ He seized his head in both palms and shook it and then burst out again: ‘She is after me, hounding me from pillar to post, from corner to corner. I tell you I am like a rat in a hole. . . . And she has brought me to this. I would never have gone with this girl if the Tikyali Rani hadn’t been forcing me away from Ganga Dasi. I should have had Gangi with me here if so many petitions had not gone everywhere against me and her! And now. . . . Oh, what will happen to me? Where shall I go? What is your advice? Give it to me now. I need it. Tell me what to do. They will not understand me. No one will understand! . . .’ And he walked about stamping on the floor and then suddenly began to intone a stanza from Shelley in a peculiarly passionate sing-song manner:
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light,
Imagination! . . .
Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
One object, and one form. . . .
‘That is my motto!’ he said, as he finished the recitation. He seemed to have got the verses by heart, very well indeed!
I was fascinated by His Highness’s recitation, because I could see behind the clumsiness of his outward behaviour the reasons for his hopelessly ill-adjusted personality. For his intelligence seemed to have run riot through the large gaps in his education and experience. And this made him pick up many things, with which he was trying to form a single thing but which made him a bundle of ill-assorted fantasies and facts, whose incongruous collection into one personality made him a strange, wild creature. And yet he was not so ill-assorted as his mistress Ganga Dasi, because he was comparatively constant while she was absolute promiscuity. So it was touching to see the clashes between the poetry and prose of his life, the contradictions that arose from his reflection of the feudal, aristocratic idea that all excellence is inheritance, and the sense of direction which dictates integration through the discovery of values in the new society. The spirits of his dead ancestors were pulling him towards the old virtues, prowess, splendour, firmness, dexterity, generosity, heroism in battle and the other duties of the high-caste, superior, Kshatriya prince, while a number of new demons, the fashions of the hour, were pulling him into another direction, on account of the shameless schooling through which his childhood in his father’s zenana, and his boyhood and youth in the hands of the Angrezi Sarkar, had put him. For he had learnt all the filth that his retinue of servants in the palace could teach him, and been spoiled by his doting mother, always anxious to save his life against the homicidal fury of his father’s concubines. And he had been put through his paces at Queen Mary’s School, Lahore, at Bishop Cotton, Simla, and Chief’s College, Lahore; made to adopt all the postures, from that of a boy scout as well as the train-bearer of the Viceroy, of a bad cricketer, and an indifferent polo player, to a little tin god, from an unctuous, slavish speechifier, eulogizing beefy old burra sahibs of the Residency and the Political Department as well as the majestic proclaimer of new firmans and wielder of the power over the life and death of half a million or more of his people. . . . All the old values and the new demons had been increasingly at war with each other in his soul. And there was no knowing where they would take him, since the will through which alone such powers could be harnessed had been sedulously crushed by the Angrezi Sarkar and his own parents a long time ago. He had few resources left after these two heredities had done their work. Except that he had an uncanny gift of perception, an almost convalescent abjectness, which was the opposite of his extraordinary cruelty, and a violent energy for voicing his fads and fancies, whether they took the form of naïve outbursts, mere flippancy, or the more balanced rationalizations of poetry, which was always like someone else’s confirmation of his own complaints. All his scandalous behaviour, therefore, was due to the incongruity of the various strains in him that were trying to unite and become one person, but only made him a kind of montage man, a pathetic creature, a spoilt child.
‘No one will understand me, no one,’ he was repeating as he fingered the plastic gadgets he had bought for his dressing-table lately. ‘No one. . . .’
‘Oh, I understand, Vicky,’ I said, ‘I understand. I think everyone knows you are unhappy. But you seem to have no instinct for self-preservation. And your danger is that you are weak and don’t discriminate between your real friends and enemies. You—’
At that instant, there was a loud growling on the balcony and the rattling of the window-panes under the hammer blows of a hand which was obviously that of Captain Russell.
‘Who is that?’ I said.
‘Come out, you and your Maraja!’ Russell shouted as he forced open the door and burst in.
‘What is it?’ I said, rushing into the drawing-room. ‘His Highness is resting.’
‘There he is, the black bastard! He is not resting!’ Captain Russell said, his colour a light purple with a kind of overall deathly pallor, his pug-dog face hardening, his nose snorting, though his eyes were humid with obvious grief.
‘Go away,’ I said. ‘I shall come and talk to you in a little while.’
Captain Russell brushed me aside and proceeded towards the bedroom, saying:
‘I can see him; he may be a bloody Maraja, but I don’t care!’ And he turned to His Highness, who had walked into the drawing-room by now.
‘What have you done to my girl? Eh, you. . . .’ Captain Russell shouted, his eyes flashing and his face tightening into a knot. ‘What did you do to her? Your Highness! Tell me before I wring your neck!’
‘Get out, get out of here!’ His Highness ordered, trembling but drawing himself to his full height.
And then, without more ado, the Maharaja sprang lithely like a tiger on Captain Russell and, gripping his neck, pushed him over.
Overpowered by the surprise of His Highness’s assault, the Captain retreated a little, but then pushed forward with the sheer weight of his heavy body, driving the Maharaja a few steps back with his clenched hands. But Vicky still gripped his neck with a tigerish grip and did not yield even though Captain Russell was trying to shake him off.
I tried to disengage them, shouting: ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ And I sought to wedge myself between them, but I am a frail person and could do no more than protect the Maharaja with my raised arms.
The noise of the scuffle brought Captain Partap Singh and Munshi Mithan Lal out of the ADC’s room, where they had been exiled by His Highness. The police came crowding towards the door from
the balcony but did not enter. Also, I could hear the voices of Mrs Russell and Bunti on the balcony; for, apparently, they had heard the noise of stamping footsteps above the ceiling of their flat.
‘Please stop it,’ I said again. ‘Captain Russell, have some sense!’
But neither would let go, Russell growling, and Vicky hissing and shouting by turns, as he was overpowered by the burly frame of his opponent, but grim, with his fingers well dug into the Captain’s neck, holding his opponent at bay, tears of triumph and anger in his eyes. The police had now entered the drawing-room and were on the point of intervening.
Captain Partap Singh came and asked the policias to go. They obeyed. Then Partap Singh, seeking to spare Russell a fight, asked him to let go.
As Russell didn’t listen, the ADC pushed the Englishman away with his long, strong arm, even as he dislocated His Highness’s grip on Captain Russell’s neck.
Captain Russell tottered and nearly fell on the dining-table but recovered his balance and rose with the help of his wife, who was all remonstrances, sweet nothings and ‘dear dears’ while her daughter stood by the doorway, weeping.
‘Get out! Get out of here!’ His Highness was shouting, pale and pathetically undignified as his frame was unequal to carrying the pride of his warrior’s soul, except with the help of Captain Partap Singh’s arms.
Munshi Mithan Lal was brushing His Highness’s clothes and calming him with pats on the back.
I felt the misery and shame of this humiliating scene spread into the atmosphere, as the ugly words and looks of the opponents charged the air, for each of the adversaries was fighting now in the void, to impress the peacemakers with the claim that he had won, while the police, headed by the sub-inspector, stood at the door ready to pounce on either or both of the participants in the quarrel if they should assault each other again.
‘Come on, John, come,’ Mrs Russell was saying as she restrained him from charging at His Highness again.
Bunti was weeping shrilly now.
Captain Partap Singh towered over the whole scene like a self-satisfied giant who knew he had found an occasion when his services were badly needed.
‘Get out!’ His Highness shrieked. ‘Get out! . . . Partap Singh, throw them out! . . .’
Upon this Munshi Mithan Lal went towards Captain and Mrs Russell and the police and, like a good shepherd, gently chasing the sheep away, he spread his arms and signed them to leave.
Captain Partap Singh and I followed him into the balcony and asked the sub-inspector whether he had a warrant against any of us. As he answered that he had no formal charge to make, we asked him to leave the lodge with his followers. For a moment, he hesitated, hoping that Captain Russell, who had called him there to search for his daughter, would say something. When Russell walked down the stairs without a word he was persuaded to go.
Inspired by his regal rage, His Highness decided immediately to go and seek the help of the Deputy Commissioner of Simla, who had always been friendly to him, in the matter of Captain Russell’s assault upon him. The rickshaws were ordered and Munshi Mithan Lal and myself were asked to accompany him.
I have often wished that I had dared, at some time during my association with His Highness, to tell him frankly and at length what I felt about him. For instance, I had a hunch that he was wrong in wanting to go and see the Deputy Commissioner. But so all-enveloping was the aura of his presence, built up through the hereditary privileges and prerogatives wrapped up by traditional practice in his person, that he always succeeded in involving everyone around him in the things that affected his outsized ego. This had developed in him the megalomania of a complete egocentric, which, though patent enough to his retinue, was impossible to break, both because certain laws of courtesy and good behaviour prevented us from being so rude as to interrupt his monologue and because we were his paid servants. I know that he had not a leg to stand upon in his complaint against Captain Russell, but I was swept off my feet and transported towards the Ridge through the campaign of denunciation which His Highness kept up uninterruptedly while he was dressing, building up his wrath on the fact that a mere commoner should have dared to lay hands upon the sacred person of a Maharaja.
The Deputy Commissioner refused to see His Highness. And, of course, the chaprasi of the Deputy Commissioner got it in the neck for bringing back the message that the sahib was ‘not at home’. His Highness stormed and raved against the impertinence of the Deputy Commissioner Sardar Sant Singh, ICS, as he paced up and down the waiting-room and declared that he would take up the matter with the States Department at the Centre. Apparently, Sant Singh knew about the nature of His Highness’s complaint and presumed that the Government of India would give no quarter to a prince whose personal peccadilloes and recalcitrance about signing the Instrument of Accession had already created a very unfavourable impression on everyone.
As we drove away from the Deputy Commissioner’s bungalow it impressed itself upon His Highness, in the quiet cool of the evening, that things had gone very wrong, that he would have to do something very drastic to mend the situation into which he had got himself. For he asked his rickshaw coolies to come abreast of the rickshaw in which I was riding and told me, with more pathos than he had brought to his voice before in uttering the same truth, ‘I am a rat in a hole.’
I suggested to His Highness that he should wire Srijut Popatlal J. Shah, the new Prime Minister, who had replaced the Englishman, Mr Horace, at the instance of the States Department in Delhi, to come to Simla for consultation. This seemed to His Highness the best thing to do under the circumstances, and we stopped at the telegraph-office on our way back and sent the wire.
But when we got back home there was a wire from the Prime Minister for His Highness, asking him to return to Sham Pur as soon as possible for urgent consultations. The wires had obviously been humming all the afternoon, because there were many prying eyes from the unusual stream of rickshaws that went up and down the road by the lodge, with much talking in hushed whispers and guffaws of laughter. The scandal of His Highness’s adventure with Bunti Russell had spread, and all the Messrs and Mesdames Hawkesbys of the summer resort wanted their ounce of malicious pleasure out of it.
His Highness’s wrath knew no bounds and he was almost crazy with distress at finding himself in such a tight corner. He went on drinking steadily through the evening, helping himself to the liquor with his own hands in order to make sure that we didn’t cheat him by putting more soda than whisky into his tumbler. And he refused to eat or to go to bed, and it was with the utmost difficulty that I persuaded him to sit back in the armchair and rest. But all my work was undone because Munshi Mithan Lal came fussing over him, and His Highness reacted to this affection by being more cussed than ever in his refusal to calm himself. At length I deceived him into taking a sleeping draught and he went off in the armchair, from where we lifted him on to his bed.
Afterwards, Partap Singh, Mian Mithu and myself partook of the elaborate, highly greasy meal that was usually cooked in the royal kitchen, and that had already given dyspepsia to Munshi Sahib and was also giving me a chronic indigestion: parathas fried in ghee and a rich pilao, with ten different dishes from chicken curry to dry brinjal burtha, papads and pickles of various kinds and halwa—they were all so tasty that I was sure that we were destined ultimately to die of overeating. Only Captain Partap Singh seemed as if he might be proof against such a disaster, for he swept the thalis and the katauris clean and had second portions of almost everything.
Hard upon the telegram which had arrived in the evening came His Highness’s Political Secretary, Mr Bool Chand, our fat, almost pigmy-sized colleague, whom none of us could bear because, among other bad habits, he had a way of snorting every second minute like a horse who gets a piece of straw stuck into his nose and can’t help clearing his snout. He told us in a few words, interrupted by many snorts, that the Prime Minister had sent him specially to fetch His Highness back. He tried to pump us for the reasons which had led the Diw
an to send him on this mission, but we had formed an open conspiracy to tease him and wouldn’t let on. It was always best anyhow in such matters to play for safety and let things come direct to people from His Highness, but particularly in the case of Mr Bool Chand, who was a manoeuvring minion of His Highness. The Political Secretary was the son of a rich bania grocer of Ferozepur, whom His Highness had picked up on a visit to Oxford some years ago, and the man had, in spite of his snorting, which annoyed the Maharaja, ingratiated himself into the favour of the prince in such a way that he was easily the most powerful influence on him and the state until I came to Sham Pur. I knew that he had been sent down by His Highness with a special message for Ganga Dasi. So I asked him what ‘the first lady’, as we called her among ourselves, had said. He evaded my inquiry and we felt that, by not telling him about His Highness’s adventure with Bunti Russell, we were just about even with each other.
It didn’t take long for Mr Bool Chand the next morning to get to know all about His Highness’s difficulties, and it took him much less time to persuade the Maharaja to decide to go back to Sham Pur. Apparently, the message from Ganga Dasi was of a more imperative kind than the telegram from Diwan Popatlal J. Shah.
As we boarded the special train that afternoon en route to Sham Pur, via Kalka, His Highness waited tensely for the salute of thirteen guns to which he was entitled on arrival or departure. The guns started, but after barking seven times, spoke no more.
‘I am like a rat in a hole,’ he said, mortified at the insult implied in the reduction of guns in salutation to him. Coupled with the whispers of the crowd at the railway station, and the howls of the ‘wolves’ of society, which reached his ears through Mr Bool Chand, the reduction of guns came as the greatest shock to his pride.
At the first opportunity I could get to have a word with His Highness, when Mr Bool Chand had gone to arrange for tea at Kasauli station, I suggested to him to try and make a clean breast of the whole position about his affair with Ganga Dasi to the States Department in Delhi so that all the evidence that had accumulated against him, through the petitions of the Tikyali Rani and other complaints, could be sifted and some settlement arrived at about the heir-apparent to the gaddi, and the resulting unsettledness in the life of His Highness could cease. Also, I told him that he must not delay the accession of the state to the Indian Union any longer. In that way I thought he might be allowed to make a fresh start. Inside himself, I was sure he felt that that might be the best way, but he was too panicky, with the suspense of not knowing what would happen to him at the hands of Ganga Dasi after the Bunti Russell affair, to think of other matters seriously.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 54