‘And I have been made to believe that I am responsible for all the discontent of the ryots,’ said Victor with a suppressed indignation.
‘I tried to persuade Your Highness to let me carry out a campaign against the Sansis two years ago! But instead you yielded more power in the Government to the old Parduman Singh by making him Revenue Minister!’
‘I did not realize that, being a blood relation of mine, he would still want to oust me from the gaddi,’ said Victor, his face glowing in the dark.
‘They have been trying to oust the dynasty for two generations. And yet it was me against whom you were suspicious.’
Victor hung his head down. Then he turned from the window and said:
‘Forgive me, Raghbir. I let a woman come in between us. She is a whore, anyhow And what if you have had her—I should not have let my love for you be poisoned by her. . . .’ He seemed to be choked by his words and his eyes were liquid with tenderness for his cousin.
‘We must fight them to the last,’ said Raghbir Singh. ‘I can still destroy them!’
‘Only if I can come to a good settlement at Delhi,’ Victor said despairingly. And his lower lip drooped into a childlike pout and the words weakened in his mouth. ‘They have gone to Delhi before me.’
‘It is not easy to see Sardar Patel,’ I said to console him. ‘There may still be a chance if you can come to a settlement.’
‘I want to talk to you about that,’ Victor said to me significantly.
For an army officer, General Raghbir Singh was particularly sensitive and took the hint and made ready to go.
‘I want you to consider yourself the custodian of all my interests,’ Victor said. ‘Don’t let Diwan Popatlal do anything until the negotiations at Delhi are over. I will be back in two days. . . .’ And he came forward, with outstretched arms, and took the more tentative Raghbir Singh into his arms.
The General saluted after he had disengaged himself from Victor, and stalked out.
Victor did not notice the departure of his cousin. He stood aloof, visibly hardening himself. He looked grey and unreal even as his mouth quivered with the need to say something unsayable. Then he shook with tension, like a tree moved by the rumour of a storm.
‘I can’t even trust him,’ he said at last. And he moved away from the window and came and lay down on the sofa, ghastly livid as though something in him had given way as he relaxed. He lay flat with his legs outstretched, and his eyes, strangely iridescent, seemed to wander across the ceiling. He moved his face first to one side and then to the other, looking vague and uncertain as though wrapped in a cloud. And a sigh escaped from his lips, like the last groan of a man who is drowning.
Suddenly, however, he sat up and said:
‘I won’t give up. I will fight till the end.’
‘Has Your Highness given the order for your luggage to be packed?’ I said.
‘No, no.’ And then he shouted, ‘Koi hai?’
The chaprasi Jai Singh appeared. ‘Get Maharaja Sahib’s luggage packed,’ I ordered. ‘We go to Delhi by the 11.30 train.’
‘Some warm clothes, Huzoor?’ the chaprasi asked.
‘Oh, get out and go and pack!’ Victor raved.
There was a stillness between us for a moment, during which Victor seemed to be subduing the storm in his nature Then he stood up and went to the window again and, with his back towards me, said:
‘I must come through this crisis. I will do so. I know that the States Department has won and that I must sign the Instrument of Accession and accept the limitation of my powers. But. . . .’
It had taken an enormous subterranean effort for him to come to this recognition. For, all the pride, the hard core of his dignity, trussed up for generations by the conventions of absolute autocracy and the will to power, had to break down in him before he could admit such a thing. It was so difficult a truth to face that he became dumb as soon as he had uttered it. And he stood weak, helpless, his face averted from me, lest I should see the tears that dimmed his eyes and of which I had already caught a glimpse as he had turned round to address me.
For a while, he stood thus. And I thought that he was beckoning his soul to stand firm, taming all the lions in his nature, curbing his ambitions. But just when I felt that the battle was nearly over he reeled and came and flopped on to the sofa again, and, with a terrific howl of a sob, began to weep like a child, covering his face with both his hands so as not to be seen in this abject state.
I went over to him and sat down by his side, stroking his back, though I knew that any physical or spiritual comfort I could offer would only make him more distressed.
In a moment, he raised himself with effort and wiped his eyes with his handkerchief.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘having acknowledged my defeat at the hands of the States Department, I ought to acknowledge my defeat at the hands of Gangi also. . . . You don’t think she will ever change, do you?’
‘I don’t think she will change easily,’ I said.
‘You don’t know,’ he said, his face twisted by a bitter kind of tenderness, ‘that she came out of the bath at the hunting lodge this morning with her strange eyes pathetic and sad, as if she was asking for forgiveness for what she had done with Kurt. She looked so frail and innocent, so lovely, that I did not know what to do except to take her in my arms. All my anger against her seemed to melt away. And she stood there, offering herself to me in her nakedness, as if she was all there for me and me alone. . . . But this afternoon when we returned here she was petulant and impatient. I slept by her side, but she had gone away from me again, I don’t know where. . . . I don’t know what happens to her suddenly. I look at her but cannot understand her.’
‘She is ill,’ I said consolingly. ‘She does not know what she wants. But she comes in the grip of a whim or a fancy and this possesses her like a jinn, as in one of the old tales, and then she goes ruthlessly for the person she desires. And, having attained her objective, she lapses into the vague, weak person she really is.’
‘The strange thing is that for days, even weeks and months, she used to make me feel that she was a part of me,’ Victor said. ‘And she made me feel strong. She put courage into me!’
‘For my part I would like to help you to be free of her,’ I said, ‘because she will destroy you emotionally, physically, spiritually. She is an untamed jungli. And she will suck your life-blood and then spit you out. Get rid of her! She is a completely unscrupulous woman.’
‘But I don’t know why I still love her!’ Victor answered.
‘I think we had better get ready for the train,’ I said.
His Highness had booked a suite of rooms in the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi, and we would have been comfortable enough, under ordinary circumstances, for the summer heat was waning in early September. But all the elements seemed to have conspired to eke the last ounce of pain out of Victor. And the mounting hysteria, and the tension of weeks, now led to a collapse through which he found that lying down on his back was the most comfortable position in life. The breakdown came gradually, of course, and each major factor accentuated the symptoms, till Victor’s mind and body shrank invisibly under the various strains.
First of all, from the moment of one’s arrival one feels like a ghost, wandering about the long corridors of the Imperial Hotel, or resting in the tall, spacious and empty mausoleum-like grandeur of its drawing-room.
Then we learnt that Thakurs Parduman Singh and Shiv Ram Singh, who, we had previously heard, were staying in Maidens Hotel in Old Delhi, were staying in a wing of the Imperial Hotel, apparently also waiting for an interview with Sardar Patel.
As pride and confidence were an integral part of Victor’s Maharajahood, he believed that Sardar Patel would see him immediately he rang up for an appointment. But he did not reckon on the fact that the States Minister had not only other Maharajas to settle with, but that he had to attend to his duties as Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, and that to get an appointment to see him was
one of the most difficult tasks to perform in New Delhi. After Victor had officially written to the Sardar, Captain Partap Singh rang up the States Department to ask when the interview would be. He was told that the matter was receiving the Honourable Minister’s attention and the time and place of the interview would be communicated to the Maharaja in due course. Victor asked me to ring up the next day, and the same formula was repeated to me. He asked Munshi Mithan Lal to go to the Secretariat and see if the interview could be expedited, specially by greasing the palm of one of the officials there. But he could not see anyone except a clerk of the States Department, named Khosla, who said that the Department would duly communicate with the Maharaja Sahib. When Victor realized after all these rebuffs that he was in no better position than his enemies, the thakurs, in the matter of the interview, he tried to save his dignity by going to the Secretariat himself to solicit a more favourable treatment. But he was seen by the same clerk, Khosla, and told that though he might be given precedence over the two thakurs, since he was a ruling prince, there was no knowing what Sardar Patel had in mind and what he would do. Munshi Mithan Lal quietly slipped a token of a hundred-rupee note into Khosla’s hand and that softened the little bespectacled man, but actually, Victor lost more face by going to curry favours from a clerk than if he had stayed in the hotel and waited patiently.
Of course, it was difficult to wait patiently in his present state of mind, or to be patient at all! For, all the time, like a continual toothache, was the dull pain of the feelings he had about Gangi.
I tried to assure him about her in such a way that he might accept her promiscuity as part of her mental illness. I said that it was strange that when a person was physically ill, the illness was attended to, a doctor called in and treatment taken seriously; but that when anyone suffered from an acute neurosis, this was supposed to be part of the temperament of the person, unalterable and permanent like a bad habit. I tried very discreetly to insinuate that he himself was sick.
Victor was rather irritated by this kind of analysis and said that he was now sure I was a Red. I confessed that perhaps I was. Upon this he gave me a lecture on Revolution.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I believe in Revolution myself. I am true to the words of wisdom put in ancient times by the poet into the mouth of Shri Ram Chander, King of Ayodhya, of the Suraj Bansi clan, from which my family is descended: “There shall be no pain in my heart in having to resign for the sake of pleasing my subjects; every tie of affection, every feeling of compassion, every happiness, even the idol of my heart, my wife. . . .”’
‘Then you should have conceded the reforms demanded by the people of Sham Pur and accepted accession—if you believe in Revolution, you—’
‘I believe not in Revolution perhaps, but in my people,’ he said, shifting his ground. ‘Revolutions are always brought about by the disgruntled well-to-do men.’
‘I suppose you will mention Mirabeau, Chicherin, Robespierre, Marx, Lenin. . . .’
‘Yes, the people love their kings and are too loyal to revolt,’ he said. ‘But the middle-class leaders get their opportunity when the literate have destroyed the traditions of loyalty and good habit and weakened the people’s will. In every land there are many disgruntled people, who are unfit for civilized life! Always ripe for revolt and eager to destroy. They were usually kept in control by the princes. But nowadays when there are wars and famines and newspapers, men like Nehru and Patel break loose and corrupt the minds of the praja, appoint their agents and bring about revolution, with Hitler’s tactics, from within.’
‘What Hitler did so often was not to bring about a Revolution but to enact a coup d’état, which is a quite different thing.’
‘Whatever he did or did not do, I am against revolutionaries like him and Patel. . . .’
‘I am afraid you are mistaking the aspirations of a people for the desperation and energy of demagogues,’ I said non-committally to terminate this argument.
For Victor, always confused and muddled in his political ideas, had now become incensed and crazy and was difficult to talk to.
And I sedulously tried to divert his mind from brooding both on his public and private problems by persuading him to come sight-seeing round Delhi.
We went and picnicked one day at the foot of the giant column of the Qutub Minar, built by the Slave King, Qutub-ud-Din, which overlooks the countryside up to the city of Agra. We visited the old fort built by the ancient Hindu king, Prithvi Raj, as well as the Red Fort built by Shah Jehan. And we toured the various mausoleums from the tombs of the Lodi Kings to Humayun’s grave and Safdar Jang. All this tourism elated him a little, because every monument was some kind of tribute to the strength and sagacity of a king, and his belief in the capacity of princes to do heroic deeds was much strengthened. Unfortunately, however, graves, even though they be ancient and glorious, leave me with a feeling of death and decay, and as most of the old buildings of Delhi are graves, I felt depressed and did not hear, though I listened to, Victor’s constant iteration of the values of power, prowess, splendour, firmness, dexterity, generosity and the like. And I don’t know if the others felt this or not, but certainly I felt that, as I wandered about in Delhi, I was a kind of ghost wandering about in the vast graveyards of the hopes of India.
But if Victor did not feel this, he certainly looked it, a wraith, who flopped about from place to place, when he was not asleep or eating the awful English meals served in the hotel.
During these days I had occasion to reflect on the tragedy that seemed to befall the Indian princes.
There was a time when they could flaunt their wealth and spend their fortunes freely on the turf as well as in the gambling-houses of Nice and Monte Carlo. And in the poverty-stricken countryside there was current the adage, ‘Blessed is he who looks upon the face of his ruler.’ And abroad the foolish shop girls read, with a curiosity made up of escapist romanticism, myths and legends as well as the ‘true’ stories, written by the hacks of the Yellow Press, about the dazzling Rolls-Royces from which this Maharaja shot 150 tigers in his jungle kingdom; and how that Maharaja had the most priceless jewels, pearls, with rosy sheens of supernatural qualities and emeralds and opals as big as hen’s eggs, and how the other Maharaja had his drinking-water fetched from the holy river Ganges all the way to the Savoy Hotel in London and how he gave 20,000 soldiers and £80,000 during the war to the British Government towards the war effort. The cynics among the princes were even then strong enough, for His Highness the Aga Khan had declared that ‘it was no beer and skittles playing at being a god!’ And not all believed that these kings, the sons of the Sun and the Moon, were really as handsome as they were made out to be, or their queens as beautiful. All the same, however, their prestige, bolstered by the British Sarkar, was gradually beginning to wane.
The whirligig of time brings the strangest revenges. A tough, feudal landlord from Gujerat, who fancied himself as Bismarck, was soon to preside over the destinies of the whole lot of maharajas and win them over to the idea of accession, while rewarding them generously with compensation by way of big privy purses and certain important jobs.
Sardar Vallabhbhai (Wishmarck) Patel growled, like a big angry bull, twice or thrice from the rostrum in Delhi. And most of the sons of Suns and Moons fell into line as children of the earth. They had loyally served the British in their day, but they saw the new stars and comets rise above their heads and began to claim descent from these. They saw advantages in the prolongation of the fortunes which were offered them and they fell in with the new array of forces, piously hoping that they would continue to indulge themselves to their hearts’ content as long as the people in their states were kept from shaking them off their perches.
Of course there were some recalcitrants. My Maharaja of Sham Pur was one of them.
In order to while away the tedium of the endless wait for the interview with Sardar Patel, Captain Partap Singh suggested to His Highness that we should go to the bazaar, of an evening, and hear some music.
As the suggestion was made in the presence of Munshi Mithan Lal, even the crude Partap Singh had to put it delicately, but what he really meant was that we should go out on the razzle one night to the house of some courtesan and enjoy ourselves. Curiously, Victor was not so enthusiastic about this as he usually was. For Gangi obsessed him and his spirit was further congealed by the fears and doubts about what would happen to him at the hands of Sardar Patel, though really in his heart he knew that the inevitable Instrument of Accession would have to be signed and he would have to say farewell to the power he had enjoyed in Sham Pur. So, for a few days, he did not listen to Partap Singh’s reiteration of the plea for pleasure. Then, one night, after dinner, when we had had a good deal of drink, Partap Singh told us that he and Munshi Mithan Lal had gone and fixed up for us to hear a mujra and we must go. His Highness suggested that we give the slip to Munshi Mithan Lal in the corridors of the Imperial if, indeed, we had to go. We agreed to do this and escaped to Old Delhi.
‘Are we going to Babban Jan?’ Victor asked Partap Singh.
‘Highness, there are no Muslim courtesans left in Delhi since the Partition riots,’ Partap Singh answered. ‘And Babban has gone to Lahore. But I have discovered a Hindu girl by the name of Lakshami, who is as beautiful as a goddess and sings like a nightingale.’ And he directed the chauffeur through dirty half-deserted bazaars, full of the smoke of fuel fires, the coughings of tired humans, and the barking of stray dogs, till we reached the northern end of Chandni Chowk, beyond the Clock Tower. Alighting by a dark by-lane, we went up some narrow steps to the first floor of a house of ill fame.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 73