‘I feel that all this emotional insecurity is a heavy price to pay for brief moments of pleasure.’
‘I must not be unfair to her, Dr Shankar. You see, I can’t tell you of the happiness she gave me when she first came to me. You will laugh at this. But I felt that someone had come into my life, someone who knew the life of a town like Lahore amidst all these yokels, someone to cling to in the midst of all the artificiality of the state where I was a kind of tin god. To have a private life with someone devoted to you after all the ballyhoo of pomp and splendour! And she was a lovely companion and gave me such assurance. I could work ten times harder because I had a satisfactory personal life. She used to bath me with her own hands and fuss after me a good deal in the beginning. And so I surrendered to her more completely than I have ever surrendered to any other woman. She told me all the secrets of her affairs and wished that she had met me first when she was nearly a virgin. . . .’
From what I knew of him, I sensed that there must have been a certain satisfaction in the feeling that she preferred him to any of her previous lovers.
‘Then what went wrong? When did you first begin to suspect her of . . .?’
‘You see, she was by turns gentle, vicious, kind, cruel, loving, angry, generous, but always impatient. And she turns her green eyes on other men as and when she likes. Even while having sex she is thinking of others. . . .’ His eyes lowered and there was a tremor on his lips, as he repeated himself.
‘All women are vain and seek admiration,’ I said. ‘But what exactly happened to rock your faith in her?’
Victor contemplated me with a glare as much as to say ‘Can I trust you?’ And then, breathing a little heavily, he said:
‘If you will keep this strictly confidential, I will tell you. No one must know. You see, Gangi had had an affair with my cousin Chaudhri Raghbir Singh soon after she came to live in Sham Pur. When she met me she was still carrying on with him. And she proposed that I should share her with Raghbir Singh. I accepted this at first, but then I couldn’t bear it and ordered her to drop Raghbir Singh. After a few quarrels she accepted this. And during the next three or four months she spoke more love words to me than any other woman has ever done. Then . . . well, one night when I returned here from the hunting lodge, some hours earlier than I was expected, I saw a light in my bedroom. At once, the thought came to me that Gangi was betraying me. As a matter of fact, I had deliberately returned earlier than I was expected. So I entered the suite from the side door in the veranda and peeped through the chinks in the curtains drawn over the half-open window. I found her standing in a passionate embrace with Raghbir Singh, kissing him and being kissed by him. Five times I saw their mouths come up to each other. . . . And I can never forget this scene, much as I try! You see, I felt it deeply because, sensing that she might do this, I had tried to persuade her the previous day to come to the hunting lodge with me. And she had lied and said that she had important business to talk over with Raghbir Singh. I had tried to win her away from her lover by being extra nice to her before going to the forest. But she had been withdrawn and slightly brusque with me, and I had gone away to hunt, unhappy in my mind. . . . I tiptoed away from the window, but they heard my footsteps and disengaged themselves from each other. Gangi went into the bathroom, while Raghbir Singh retreated into the drawing-room. . . . Well, the storm of hell raged in my heart. My body shook. I entered the bathroom by the outside door, which was unlocked. Gangi shrieked and nearly fell back, pale with fear. I brushed her aside from the wash basin roughly and began to douche my face with water. Then I dried myself and just walked past Raghbir Singh, there, into the hall. I drove back to the hunting lodge unhappy and angry and wept bitterly. . . .’
Victor paused and averted his face from me obviously because tears had come to his eyes again. He was breathing hard and moved his head back to shake off the oppression which had suddenly descended on him. It seemed to me that the image of Gangi in the embrace of his cousin Raghbir Singh had made a shattering impression on him.
‘Didn’t you think of giving her up then?’
‘That night I almost decided to do so.’ Victor blew his nose on his white silk handkerchief. ‘But both Gangi and Raghbir Singh came to the hunting lodge. My face was swollen, as I had been unable to control my misery all night. And I refused to see them. Raghbir Singh came in, however, and began to apologize to me. He said that he had given up Gangi, but she had insisted that he should see her just once to say farewell, and that when he met her she had proposed that he should sleep with her. He had refused to do so and told her never to think of him again, and they had just been saying good-bye when I had seen them. Raghbir Singh warned me that the woman was dangerous and that neither he nor I should have anything to do with her. My inner doubts about Gangi were confirmed and I apologized to my cousin for the situation, and we parted on good terms, though my friendship with him was broken for ever because I can never really trust him now.’
‘I am surprised that you did not accept General Raghbir Singh’s advice.’
‘I refused to see her,’ Victor exploded, ‘but she insisted on seeing me. She came into the bedroom and began to kiss my feet and weep. Naturally, I relented a little. She kissed me and embraced me and craved forgiveness. I fought against myself and brushed her away. She came back, abject and grovelling and broken, and then I could not control myself. I took her in my arms. I rebuked her and scolded her and told her how she had destroyed my confidence in her and in the whole of our life together. . . . I was furious and even hit her for doing this to me. She cried and cried, and I was overcome by tenderness for her and took her in my arms. And then—well, you know how it is. . . .’
‘I know,’ I said with a slight irony in my voice.
‘But, Hari, everyone in Sham Pur knew that I was living with Gangi. To break up the thing would have created a scandal! And, to be fair to her, Gangi did try after this incident to be extra good to me. Perhaps, however, I became more suspicious. And the whole of our life together has been poisoned by my fits of jealousy and Gangi’s inability to suppress the harlot in her.’
‘I must say you are brave.’
‘I will tell you more but you must give me sound advice,’ he began with a fresh frenzy. ‘There were other incidents, small ones—’
When he was just resuming his narrative, there was the sound of footsteps in the bedroom, and his face went a ghastly pallor. He got up angrily and shouted:
‘Who is it?’
I felt that he would lose his temper now if it was Gangi, because he had worked himself up to a rage with the recapitulation of his story.
‘Rupa,’ came the voice from inside. ‘Maharani Sahiba—’
‘What is it?’ he snarled.
‘Maharani Sahiba wants you,’ the maid said.
Victor ground the bitter taste in his mouth. Then his face relaxed and he shrugged his shoulders, saying:
‘That is Gangi all over! Excuse me, I will have to go, otherwise there will be hell to pay.’
I sat silently contemplating his elegant body as he walked into the bedroom on the way to the zenana. For a while, my mind was blank. Then I found myself muttering to myself, ‘That’s that!’ And I began to walk towards my suite.
On the way I felt that, after all was said and done, we were back to His Highness’s dilemma of the last seven years. In spite of the fact that he felt no security in Gangi, he found in her general amiability and charm, consolations such as he could not get from the company of his chaste, rather too proper wife. And while he suffered the agonies of hell from the ups and downs of Gangi’s incalculable temperament, he was fascinated by the challenge of her moods, by the excitement and thrills of those changing colours, of which her vanities, frailties, ficklenesses and cruelties were the secondary hues as against the lush splendour of the primary colours of her lusts and passions. It was really the call of one chameleon to another, for they had both emerged, with similar temperaments, from the orbits of their respective affairs and m
istaken their fatigue for the urgent need of each other. In the aura of the atmosphere that prevailed between them through the long-drawn miseries of days, the nights were relieved by the high-powered love-making and the reaching out to an insouciance where both of them felt calm and assured, having touched the ultimate limits of sex which held them both prisoners of each other. But during the days, away from her, Victor was racked. And, in fact, it seemed to me that His Highness craved for these tensions now, if only because the pleasure of making up and beginning afresh put a new zest into his otherwise banal life, tempered only by the artificial excitements which he was always seeking to create in the political and social relations of the state to feed the vanity of his enormously enlarged ego, even as he was creating these in his personal equations. The complex of his present position was, however, too intricate to admit of any simplification, and in the game of hide-and-seek which he and Gangi played they were approximating towards desires and impulses in themselves and each other which were wild and boundless and inchoate, the urgings of capacities which had been perverted and thwarted by the unreality of their lives, by the substitution in their careers of ‘felt wants’ for ‘real wants’.
There is no rest for the wicked, they say in the trite English phrase. Certainly, being part of the amoral world of Sham Pur State, and being therefore wicked, there was no rest for any of us. For I had hardly awakened from my siesta on the afternoon of our arrival and had my cup of tea when I was recalled to His Highness’s august presence again.
As if the crisis which was reached between Vicky and Gangi on our return from Simla (though I didn’t know how exactly it had been fought out) was not enough, another crisis, a more obvious one, had been forced on him by Srijut Popatlal J. Shah, the Prime Minister, who had been appointed by the States Department at Delhi after His Highness had shown reluctance in acceding to the Indian Union. Srijut Popatlal J. Shah had sent a message through Mr Bool Chand to His Highness to come down from Simla for consultations. Unfortunately, immediately on our arrival, Victor had had a show-down with Gangi and did not even acknowledge the Prime Minister’s message or send him any greetings. What was more awful was the fact that when Srijut Shah, having heard of our return, called at the palace, Victor was in Gangi’s rooms and refused to see him. Upon this, the Prime Minister was incensed and left a caustic note for His Highness with Munshi Mithan Lal. Victor saw this letter when he emerged from the zenana and got into a panic and sent for me.
By the time I got to His Highness’s lounge, Srijut Popatlal J. Shah had also been fetched, Victor having sent both Munshi Mithan Lal and Captain Partap Singh to bring him.
The atmosphere was very strained as I entered the room and Victor tried to ease the situation by flippantly making me the butt of conversation.
‘Diwan Sahib, our English friends call Dr Hari Shankar “Hurry” Shankar, but he is the slowest tortoise that ever lived out of water.’
Srijut Popatlal J. Shah ignored the joke, swept me with a piercing glance from his shrewd brown eyes and sat in the armchair, solid, with his massive set face, a handsome, dark, round visage, with a broad forehead which gave the Gujerati banias the impression that the Diwan had an intellectual distinction not usual among his class. Popatlal had been in the Indian Civil Service, having retired just before the British left and, after serving on the Textile Board, had been suddenly lifted by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to be the Diwan of Sham Pur State, so that he could bring order into the chaos which spread in this little state and persuade the Maharaja to accede to the Indian Union. He was more un-Gujerati still in that he wrote poetry in his spare time and valued literature only second to money, a trait which is not so obvious among the middle-class of Ahmedabad, the textile centre from which he sprang.
Since Victor’s humour did not break the ice, or rather cool the heat of suppressed anger which the Prime Minister’s presence extended, I tried to be amusing.
‘Maharaja Sahib likes tortoises all the same, Mr Shah,’ I said. ‘And the advantage of being a tortoise is the tough outer layer on one’s back on which one can bear all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”.’
I had really wanted to immolate myself. But the salt on my tongue made my words into a kind of unintended repartee. Even this did not excite Srijut Popatlal J. Shah. He was an experienced diplomat, trained in the British Indian steel frame tradition, where an Anglo-Saxon economy of words, combined with the bluff of authority, had been patented specifically for the purpose of breaking down the nerves of the ruled by the application of a power always held in reserve and yet reflected through benign condescension. Against this stern, immoveable and somewhat arrogant deity, the nerves of the heir to the proverbial gallantry of the Rajputs, the stamina of our prince, could not last out.
‘I am very sorry, Diwan Sahib,’ Victor began, ‘that you thought it fit to withdraw the salute of thirteen guns on my arrival here.’
The Maharaja’s lower lip drooped, and there was a significant dwindling of his ancestral pride visible in the lean face, while his big, shining eyes, sentimental like that of a spaniel dog, dimmed with a mist near to tears. I had never realized before how much the pride of being saluted by the thirteen salvoes, every time he left a station, was part of His Highness’s person. For from the intimacy and familiarity of my daily contact with him he had come to seem so informal. But then I recalled that often when important guests came to a meal Munshi Mithan Lal was not allowed to sit at table with His Highness as he was an old-style Private Secretary, and that Captain Partap Singh and myself were only accepted round the main table because of our education and general snob value.
The Prime Minister still did not react, though the colour mounted to his face and made it darker.
And, after a prolonged silence, Vicky began again:
‘I think Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel is angry with me, because I am known to have been an admirer of Netaji Subhash Bose, whom the Sardar always hated. Also, the petitions of Rani Indira have poisoned his mind against me.’
At this insinuation against his chief, Srijut Popatlal J. Shah felt it necessary to say something. Guardedly, he swayed his head to one side to signify negation and murmured:
‘Your Highness, there is no question of personal animosity towards you. The issue is the accession of Sham Pur to the Indian Union.’
‘Well,’ said Victor, hedging as he got up and began to walk about. ‘This question needs some thought. I have to consult my mother. You must remember, Diwan Sahib, that Sham Pur borders on Tibet and touches Jammu and Kashmir. As such, it is, like Nepal and Bhutan, a buffer state. And my forefathers were not even conquered by the Sikhs, except when some of the nobles in Sham Pur betrayed us. Our dynasty dates back to antiquity. And, long before Gandhiji preached the philosophy of Ram Raj, we have been practising it in this state. Besides, I must ask my people. . . .’
At this Srijut Popatlal J. Shah flushed a vivid coffee colour and shuffled in his armchair, till his tussore trousers became crumpled and his bright necktie, with a lovely mango pattern on it, began to choke him. He passed his forefinger through his white collar and eased the mounting pressure of blood in his swelling arteries. Then, adjusting himself rather pompously into a dignified position, he rested back and began politely:
‘Maharaja Sahib, I am here in Sham Pur to fulfil the orders of the Sardar. I am an administrator and I have been sent here on duty. I am willing to send a memorandum, which you may give me, to the States Department. Only, if I may advise you in your best interest, I think you should consider acceding, because most of the princes in India have already done so. After all, these accessions are intended to promote the unity of the country. And, as a patriot, I am sure you will consider it your duty to come into the family. Also, there are some personal advantages for you in taking this step.’
‘Nonsense! What is the personal advantage to me, Mr Shah?’ burst out His Highness impatiently. ‘I lose my independence and my state. Is that the advantage?’
‘Your Highness has no in
dependence to lose,’ interrupted Srijut Popatlal J. Shah brusquely. ‘You were subject to the British paramount power.’ ‘But when the English left. . . .’
‘You are living in a fool’s paradise, sir!’ said the Premier, angry at being engaged in a constitutional discussion by a mere boy, who was obviously using newspaper arguments and ignoring the realities.
‘Sir C.P. Ramaswamy lyer,’ ventured Victor, ‘is a great legal brain. And he . . . well, he also stood for the independence of Travancore.’
‘And where is he now?’
The Diwan’s answer shattered the amateur politician, until Vicky went pale and bit his lips and looked towards Munshi Mithan Lal and me for support.
Munshi Mithan Lal sat with his head bent, breathing like a tired rhinoceros. And I considered discretion the better part of valour in a quarrel so ultimate as this, where I knew the Maharaja would lose hands down. Without attempting to dominate the scene, and with the help of the merest adjustment of his body, Srijut Popatlal J. Shah was master of the situation.
For a while, the wills of the two adversaries were engaged in a silent battle. And the quarrel would have petered out, I knew, by the acceptance, by the weaker of the two personalities, of a provisional truce on the basis of the postponement of the discussion, which was the usual method of His Highness in vital matters because he lacked the ability to decide an issue. But, at this stage, there intruded upon the scene Ganga Dasi, who had been eavesdropping in the dressing-room of the Maharaja Sahib.
‘Who is he?’ she said, turning to Victor, demurely drawing the edge of her dupatta over her face.
Srijut Popatlal J. Shah did not take umbrage at this rudeness, but remained seated calmly in his chair, his face cushioned upon the palm of his left hand.
‘Queen Bee!’ Vicky exclaimed, disapprovingly, calling Ganga by the English nickname he had given her. ‘Mr Popatlal Shah is the new Diwan.’
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 58