Victor stared at him inanely from the deep sockets of his eyes, angry at the old man’s insensitiveness.
‘That is easier said than done,’ I put in on Victor’s behalf.
‘There are so many women in the world,’ Munshi Mithan Lal continued, ‘and Victor could not marry all of them; so he should think that Ganga Dasi was one of those many women who is not his!’
I felt amused by this naïve logic, and even Victor’s mouth puckered with a smile.
‘You may laugh at me,’ said Munshi Mithan Lal. ‘But what are our little loves and vanities in the face of the sublime truth of God! We all have to die one day. Just imagine that Ganga Dasi is dead.’
Victor found this argument a little more plausible. But the stricken heart cannot admit of transcendental rationalizations. By their very nature, human beings are bound to the flesh, and detachment, or non-attachment, is outside the orbit of the worldly life unless the ascetic withdrawal becomes an ideal and is pursued with the relentless fury of the sadhu. The familiar theosophical gag, that one should practise non-attachment while being attached, is a kind of self deception which prigs sermonize about, but which has hardly ever been practised even by avowed puritans like Tolstoy and Gandhi. Both were honest enough to admit the pull of fleshly desire up to the last; and the Count, being a supreme artist, has left a posthumous story, The Devil, purporting to relate the nature of the physical passion he felt for a handsome peasant girl in the last years of his life and of his fear in the face of this urge.
‘It is the hangover of sex that is troubling you,’ said Munshi Mithan Lal.
That statement seemed to find confirmation in Victor’s soul. He nodded shyly.
‘Then you must forget her,’ Munshi Mithan Lal repeated, ‘and face your loneliness. Once you face the fact that each man is ultimately alone, you will be able to conquer your lower nature and be free.’
‘But you don’t understand!’ said Victor, appreciative of the kindliness of the old man, but impatient with his spirituality. ‘You can’t see how my life was bound with her. She is coiled up in my entrails. . . .’
‘The entrails are the seat of the carnal, animal, lower self, the kamaloka!’ Munshi Mithan Lal philosophized. ‘This carnal ego grows like a cancer at the very roots of life and eats away the soul, destroying the exalted harmony of life, and it causes violent conflicts in the self, which drown all calm and peace with their shrieking and noise.’
The pomposity of Munshiji’s utterance did not obviate a certain profundity which was in his analysis; but he was going outside the terms of reference of the lonely heart. He had so wrapped himself in the cocoon of idealistic complacency that the anguished flutterings of the bird on to the left of Victor’s physiology did not touch him at all. I felt that, apart from his loyalty to the Maharaja and his general concern for the sick man, there had come with his voice the patronizing superciliousness of the God-intoxicated Vedantist, who regards everything as Maya, illusion.
‘If only—if only she would come back,’ Victor said, ‘I would take her to some enchanted land, to Kashmir, to Southern France, and I would lead her to the sea, or to some rock, where no one could see us, and where everything would be enchanted as in a fairyland, and there I would have her under a blue sky. In the magic of that air she would sleep in my arms, clinging to me as she always slept during our seven years together, a little child wanting protection and love and care! Oh, why was I so thoughtless? Why didn’t I give her all that she wanted—houses and land and money and jewellery? . . .’
And he rent himself with agony.
‘I know she is a harlot,’ he would say in lucid moments, ‘and I really ought to take Mian Mithu’s advice and cast her out.’
And, for moments, he seemed to be making desperate efforts to oust her, torturing himself to get away from her.
‘She is like a leopard. She is a bitch, really, a whore!’
But, in spite of his fulminations against her, he could not eject her from his sick soul.
And yet there was no news from her, and he felt the silence of the great wastes of Sham Pur beat him back. And when Captain Partap Singh, and the other emissaries whom he had sent to trace her, came back without any news of her, he felt he must accept defeat and leave her; for, if she had wanted to come back to him, she would have written or actually come.
‘Your Highness, may I say something?’ asked Captain Partap Singh. ‘Something you may not like.’
Victor looked up at him hard. Then, thinking that the ADC was going to give some information to him which he had so far withheld, he melted.
‘Sire,’ said Partap Singh, ‘you must have some pride. You must beckon the pride of your Rajput ancestors. And—how shall I put it, Huzoor, but you must give her up for the sake of your manhood.’
Victor kept silent but nodded assent. Then, after a moment, he said:
‘To be sure, for my soul’s sake, I must give up the thought of her.’
But again, with tears in his eyes, he swung back to self-pity and beggary and sobbing.
‘There are other women in the world,’ said Partap Singh with hearty optimism. ‘Women are two a piece!’
Victor surveyed Partap Singh’s tall frame with obvious affection. In the secret recesses of his mind he must have been playing with the idea of a substitute. There were other women, of course, any number of them. And he could perhaps take one. But he said:
‘Partap Singh, you don’t know, you don’t know. . . . It was perhaps the smell of her which mixes with mine. . . .’
And he was sure that he was bound and imprisoned, and brooded like a superstitious fool over the reasons for Gangi’s hold on him, murmuring to himself:
‘Why is she all in all to me?’
‘To be sure, the hill-women are known to do magic,’ said Munshi Mithan Lal.
‘They can make a man into a goat,’ said Partap Singh.
‘Only in death shall I be able to get rid of her!’ Victor said as he sighed.
‘The bondage is of the mind,’ said Munshi Mithan Lal abstractedly. ‘If your soul is not free of her, then you will never be free. The mind is everything.’
‘The strange thing is that I know only death will release me,’ said Victor. ‘And yet I do not desire death.’
‘You must not be so weak, Highness,’ Partap Singh pleaded shyly. ‘I would rather she died, or her lover, Bool Chand, died than that any harm came to you.’
‘I am weak,’ Victor confessed. And then he looked at Partap Singh almost as though he wanted to see how far he would go in loyalty to him. And I had an uncanny feeling that there was a strange, mad glint in his eyes. ‘I am weak,’ he repeated, staring hard at Partap Singh.
‘If you go on feeling like a worm. . . .’ said Munshi Mithan Lal harshly.
Victor accepted the rebuke and did not answer.
‘Leave the sermons of Mian Mithu alone, Huzoor,’ said Partap Singh. ‘We will go to the Hawa Palace and have some fun.’
‘Who will you fetch for me?’ Victor said, and a gentle, lascivious smile covered his face. He seemed to be pondering over Partap Singh’s formula for an easy escape, feeling perhaps that a woman, any woman, might fill the gap.
‘I will bring you a peach, Huzoor,’ said Partap Singh.
‘You must be free of desire,’ said Mian Mithu. ‘Otherwise you will suffer more.’
‘I can’t be free of everything,’ Victor said, rolling on to his side. ‘I can’t be free of her. Why . . . perhaps Doctor Shankar understands why?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I feel I understand, though it is difficult from the outside. I can sense the frenzy of desire as well as the agony of the frustration to an extent!’
‘But what shall I do?’ Victor asked.
‘I feel you should suffer the misery,’ I said. ‘Like Siva you must drink the poison and become Nilakanta. And like Siva you must let Parvati trample upon your body, until she has destroyed you and left you pulped. Then, having suffered, you will begin to heal and may get some calm, though this c
alm may not be peace.’
‘Of all the advice I have been given,’ said Victor, ‘yours is the most real, Hari. I will have to go through this. The nights are the worst. I rock from side to side. I feel myself slipping, slipping, and my heart thumps at the thought that Bool Chand may be having her. If only she had chosen a worthier lover! . . . Oh, it is a mad, black torture to think of this faithless woman whom I love! Why couldn’t I love Indira? Why did I have to fall in love with a whore?’
There was an awkward silence after he said this.
No sooner had the new set-up in the state been ordained than it began to reveal contradictions among the various forces in Sham Pur life. The course of democracy, when it is merely a convenient disguise for maintaining the powers and privileges of a group, like the course of true love, when it is based only on physical possession, does not run smoothly. It was true that the bulk of power was allotted by Sardar Patel to the Praja Mandal party, which had shown democratic predilections; and the feudal chieftains had only one portfolio given to them; while the Socialists were kept out; and the Communists were beyond the pale. But the potential for the balance of power and, therefore, for mischief, remained in the hands of Srijut Popatlal J. Shah. Not only did Srijut Shah display blatant dictatorial tendencies all round, and announce an anti-Left campaign to keep the Socialists at bay, and to crush the Communists, but he manoeuvred and intrigued with the different groups to split them in order to implement his own stranglehold on Sham Pur. To give legal sanction to all this he got Sardar Patel to name him Political Administrator of the new territory which had acceded to the Indian Union.
Believing in the theory of first things first, he got the Premier to order intensified military action against the Communist guerillas in the Udham Pur and Panna districts. In order to achieve this end, he took into special favour Brigadier-General Chaudhri Raghbir Singh by offering him the bait of a higher rank if his campaign was successful. Raghbir Singh fell in with this plan, partly because it was his duty as Commander-in-Chief of the State Forces, and partly because of the pecuniary advantages that might accrue from the consideration shown to him by the Administrator. But, having been in close collaboration with the Maharaja, he felt a trifle self-conscious, not knowing whether Srijut Popatlal J. Shah really trusted him. And the frequent presence of Mr Bool Chand in the camp of the Administrator made him feel instinctively uneasy, because of his contempt for the treacherous bania who had not only betrayed the Maharaja’s salt but had run off with Ganga Dasi, fit enough, in the General’s opinion, to be the mistress of His Highness or the Commander-in-Chief only, but not of a snorting ass like Bool Chand. Besides, he sensed that Srijut Popatlal J. Shah was in close touch with Raja Parduman Singh, who had no reason to love an erstwhile favourite of the Maharaja. Rent by doubts and misgivings and divided loyalties, Brigadier-General Chaudhri Raghbir Singh supplied the first important contradiction in the body politic of Sham Pur.
The second significant contradiction was between the Administrator and Pandit Gobind Das. Dyarchy is a bad form of government at the best of times. But, in times which were so out of joint as this, the dual orders emanating from the Administrator’s office and from the Premier’s Secretariat set going a fatal discord in which the manoeuvring powers of two highly skilled intriguers were involved.
Another contradiction was supplied by the quarrel of the minor ministers, among whom Srijut Om Prakash Shastri, who had been given the portfolio of Public Works, was demanding the key ministry of Home and Police, which the Premier had kept to himself along with the ministry of Education.
Still another contradiction was the bid that the Socialist leaders, Mr Prakash Chander Verma and Swami Shyam Sunder, were making, as part of the campaign of the Socialists all over India, to oust the Congress Ministries.
And all these contradictions were capped by the armed struggle between the State Forces and Communist guerillas, who abounded in the jungles and the villages.
And the whole atmosphere was full of the fire of controversies, in which the voices of vainglory, gossip and contempt licked the ceiling of the sky, while the smoke of insidious intrigues, corruption, nepotism and black market spread in intricate coils around the houses and offices of Sham Pur, until, in the darkness that was daylight, one could not recognize oneself or anything else.
And yet in this very long-ago-land the sky was torn with the thunder of guns, which the Communist guerillas had seized from the State Forces and were shooting off into the smoke and darkness, burning fires that cast an unearthly glow with which to read the calligraphy of time.
The simplicity and directness of the peasants often cut through all the confusion of the learned. And since in India the old values were reversed, and nothing very new was evolved, and the Inspector of Police came to be more honoured than an Inspector of Schools, and the rich black marketeer justified, with what he could buy with his ill-gotten gains, the validity of money values, a new kind of barbarism emerged and held sway.
The disease of the thinking man in such a set-up as that of Sham Pur is, of course, much deeper. And since I was of my time, and was sick in my soul from breathing the foul air arising from the dying society, I often reflected on the nature of the more dramatic illness of Victor, because his soul was even more sick than mine and because I could see how, like a marionette, his life had been thrust out of the old grooves and pulled by social and human forces, and pushed, not only into minor clashes with the various layers of the feudal and modern life, but confronted with a final challenge by his peoples.
In essence, I suppose, the name of the malady, which affects individuals like Victor in the transition that we see before us today, is rootlessness.
Once upon a time, Victor’s grandfather, the last known ancestor of the dynasty, sat securely upon his throne, a Maharaja surrounded by the love and fear of his praja, nearly a god. In the scroll of fate revealed to him by the Brahmins, he was styled: Maharajadhiraj Shri 108 Nara Narayan Shriman, Mahapundit Mahasurma, Shri Shri Vikram Singhji. The Maharajadhiraj presided over all the state functions, stood at the head of the State Forces, on the occasion of the holy festivals of Dusserah, Shivaratri, Dipavali, and on every Puran Mashi, when the full moon matures. And, on all these occasions, the temple bells rang, the drums were beaten and bands played, and people shouted even as the Maharajadhiraj was taken in a procession through the main streets of the capital. And, in return for all this worship and adoration, the head of the state threw handfuls of coins to the poor, and free food was distributed to the beggars as charity from the palace and in the temples. He was above the law of the land and supposed to live within the bounds of ancient customs, old practices, century-old precedents and, above all, in accordance with the edicts and injunctions laid down in the Hindu shastras for a king.
Even in the reign of Victor’s father, the old order remained secure. George RI sent an expression of his sincere pleasure at the confirmation, by ‘treaty, of the traditional friendly relations between us’, together with his ‘earnest hope that these relations may long continue and may contribute to the prosperity and peace of my Empire and Sham Pur’. And Maharajadhiraj Shri Vikram Singhji sat so securely on his gaddi that he offered his sincerest thanks to His Britannic Majesty for ‘his gracious message’ and took ‘the opportunity to respectfully reciprocate the sentiments contained therein’ and to ‘fervently hope that the ties of friendship thus strengthened may become with God’s blessings as everlasting as the mighty Himalayas’.
And everything in the garden was lovely for a few people, and as it was these few who did the thinking for the many, no one seemed to feel that the world was sitting on a volcano. When the First World War started, some people refused to fight, saying it was a war between rival empires, but, by and large, people took part in the struggle between the ‘evil Kaiser’ and the ‘righteous British’, and they preferred to live on the never-never system, a kind of deferred living, turning in upon themselves and seeking various escapes either in revived religion, or sex, or s
ome other blind alley. And there was confusion all round, except in Russia, where Lenin and the Bolsheviks upturned the Czarist Empire and, wiping out much feudal decay, began an experiment in a new kind of community living in which men were to be united. But those people in Europe and Asia, who had cut themselves off from the traditional life of their forefathers, while retaining the forms and conventions of the old order, felt a certain rootlessness in the void in which they lived. The trouble with liberal democracy is that it takes a long time to mature, and only the most resilient men can evolve an adequate way of life out of the warp and woof of the democratic idea. So that the ‘free’ individual wanders about, suffering from the mal de siècle, unable to discriminate between one thing and another or one value and another, and so he is unable to use his ‘freedom’ and remains guilty, unhappy, tormented, sad, agonized ever.
Apart, then, from the other reasons which were responsible for the disquiet of Victor’s spirit, there was this rootlessness, which made him the ghost of himself, a mere apparition of the feudal monarch dressed up on state occasions in all the dynamic habiliments, having all his needs met by the community—that is to say, claiming his rights as a maharaja but refusing to fulfil his responsibilities in the old structure and refusing to adopt the values of the new life.
Under the influence of Munshi Mithan Lal, he sometimes argued that his isolation was essentially like that of other human beings, who are strangers from each other and separated like islands in the sea of unknowing ever since Brahman split up his Oneness into duality, when desire arose in him; and that, like other people, he, too, was struggling to find unity in God. But when he felt the pangs of separation, these were not so much of separation from God as from Ganga Dasi, and he inclined, with a certain superficial nostalgia, towards the sets of Rajput paintings in his palace, which celebrated the loves of Radha and Krishna, in which the longing of the divine couple for each other, and the ecstasy of their union, plays such an important part.
Only in a new community can man probably find the roots which he has lost.
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 77