The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

‘My father used to worship those things in the puja room,’ he recalls, speaking at a secret location in central Bangalore. ‘Amongst the items there were four odd black lumps. On all auspicious occasions they would be taken down and worshipped with great reverence and devotion. Afterwards they would be hung up on the ceiling again.’

  One generation after the next performed rituals in respect of the solid black lumps.

  ‘Nobody knew exactly what they were,’ continues Vidyaraj with a glint of excitement in his eye, ‘indeed, they didn’t even have any idea what they were made of. All that was known was that the lumps were very special. They were always protected and worshipped as religious and revered objects.’

  The years passed.

  Vidyaraj went off to Bangalore where he began his career as a legal advocate. He moved into a tiny apartment, where he still resides, above a post office in the centre of the city. He married, had four children and, after thirty-two years of practice, retired because of ill health. His life, like that of so many millions of Indians, was very ordinary. In no way had it prepared him for the astonishing events that were to come.

  Vidyaraj had never been a religious man. He had after all left the village in search of an education and a professional career.

  ‘My horizons were opened when I was educated,’ he says, ‘I was the only one in my whole family who had a real education.’

  When at last his parents and his siblings were dead, Vidyaraj inherited the room filled with icons, objects and four black lumps. He remembers how he was far too busy and impatient to perform the pujas, the rites of devotion, necessary to keep the gods at ease.

  Instead he shut the heirlooms up in a cupboard and forgot about them.

  ‘My wife used to nag me for locking the relics away,’ says Vidyaraj recalling her scolding, ‘she has always been much more religious than me. To please her I agreed that we would take the artefacts and four lumps to the great temple of Nanjundeswara at Nanjangud, about a hundred miles from Bangalore. I wanted to donate the whole lot to the temple, as these were venerated religious objects.’

  At the temple, Vidyaraj was met with a blizzard of forms and the bureaucracy.

  ‘Being an advocate,’ he says, ‘I knew how to make an application, and that getting through all the red tape was not worthwhile. I had no intention to get permission from the High Commissioner just to donate some old heirlooms.’

  So Vidyaraj took his family back to Bangalore. On the way his wife pestered again, insisting that the objects should be given to the local temple, as it was certainly sacrilegious not to invoke them at all. But Vidyaraj’s mind had set to work and he had other plans.

  ‘As we made our way home,’ he continues, ‘it struck me that the black lumps were very heavy. Perhaps, I thought they were made of panchaloha, an alloy of five metals that usually contains gold. If one fifth was gold, and was extracted, I would be sure to make some money. My wife was horrified at this thought, fearing retribution from such sacrilege and blasphemy. She pressured me not to melt down the lumps or change their shape in any way.’

  The idea of the gold ready to be removed so easily, nagged at Vidyaraj’s conscience. He tried to forget about it, but was unable to do so. Everything reminded him of the possible ore, the gold, the instant wealth. So one night Vidyaraj sent his wife and daughters off to the cinema and set to work.

  ‘I embarked on an investigation,’ he began softly, speaking in formal English moulded by decades of legal work. ‘There was a thick black crust of soot and grime covering the lumps. I took an old toothbrush and a bar of soap and began to wash. I assumed I was washing metal. The dirt was so hard that only some came away. After a lot of cleaning with the toothbrush, I held the lumps up to the light. In one I could see specks of red, and in another blue specks. It was then that I realized that these were not metal, but minerals, and they might be very valuable indeed.’

  For months Vidyaraj kept his discovery secret. He immersed himself in the study of gemstones from books and articles borrowed from a public library. Worries that word of his fabulous fortune would leak out dogged him.

  He could trust no one with the secret.

  ‘I thought,’ he went on, ‘if I took them to a jeweller that I might be hoodwinked and misguided. Such people might try to work for their own benefit. So I studied the geological sciences for a year or two.’

  Through dedicated and gruelling studies, Vidyaraj learnt the elaborate experiments necessary to identify a precious stone. In the seclusion of his book-lined chamber he performed the vital tests. It was only then that he could pronounce with certainty the minerals’ true identities.

  Three of the stones were rose-coloured double-star rubies, the fourth – a colossal sapphire.

  How did four of the world’s biggest gems end up in Vidyaraj’s cupboard? The most plausible explanation is that they were passed down through generations, from his supposed ancestors – the Vijayanagaran kings. For safe keeping the gems must have been dyed black, then covered in soot and dirt.

  Vidyaraj began to fear more than ever for his safety and that of his family. Constant anxiety, overwork, and his diabetic condition hampered his health. But still he could confide his great secret in no one. So having read a little bit about lapidary, he bought a small hand-driven grinding wheel. In a darkened room at his home, he set to work with the grinder to remove the top portions of the stones himself.

  ‘After some time each began to shine,’ he recalls. ‘Each exhibited star lines, and slowly they took on their individual shapes.’

  For months Vidyaraj maintained his secrecy.

  He would attend to his legal work by day, and study gemology by night. One by one he had the three rubies and the sapphire cut. Then he gave them names. And, over the few months and years, he announced their existence to the world. All the stones were cut in India. Vidyaraj himself admits deep regrets for rushing into having them cut. His knowledge, on how some of the biggest and most priceless gems in the world should be faceted, was very limited indeed.

  The largest ruby in the world at the time, read Vidyaraj in the Guinness Book of Records, was the Rosser Reeves ruby of 138.72 carats, kept at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. The smallest of his own rubies, he named Indumathi after his wife. Weighing two hundred and fifteen carats, it immediately earned an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. Vidyaraj amazed the geological world by producing the Indumathi first.

  But he had far better specimens still to come.

  His second great ruby, named Vidyaraj, after himself, was the next to be shown to the world. It weighed six hundred and fifty carats, having been cut from the original stone of 1,125 carats. He still grieves at the probably unnecessary loss in great weight when cutting. In height the stone measures about three and a half centimetres and, in diameter, more than four centimetres.

  As for the whereabouts of the stones, it’s anyone’s guess where they are. Vidyaraj is keeping his lips tightly sealed, for fear that he’ll be robbed. He says that the huge wealth in his possession has caused everyone he meets – even old friends – to view him with suspicion and greed.

  But the biggest problem is not the way in which others covet his gems, but the fact that no one has the funds with which to purchase them. After all, the value of these gems is put at billions of dollars, a fact that seems to have escaped Vidyaraj himself.

  ‘I am asking anyone with deep pockets to come forward and to make themselves known to me,’ he says, sipping his tea. ‘There are surely plenty of millionaires or billionaires out there who have enough cash. I am certain of it. What about the Arabs for example?’ he asks. ‘We all know how rich they are. They ask if you want cash, cheque or credit card.’

  When asked why he doesn’t simply cut the stones up and sell them off in bits, he screws up his face in alarm.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ he says wearily. ‘No, no, I could never do that.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Because I would lose the Guinness entry of course!’
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  FIFTY-SEVEN

  The Queen of Assamese Hearts

  FOR THE LAST THREE DAYS the remote village of Mirza, in southern Assam, has been buzzing with anticipation.

  The community, which is known for its tea plantations, is hosting Royalty. As the dank evening air fills with giant moths and fireflies, several senior members of the British Royal Family have been spotted parading openly in public.

  Queen Elizabeth, Princess Anne, Prince Charles, as well as courtiers and Coldstream Guards, have caused quite a stir – after all the tiny village of Mirza is generally neglected by State tours. But, to the soft-spoken people of Assam, the Windsors are not the real draw. A far more famous celebrity has eclipsed the presence of even Her Majesty. Dripping with diamonds, and dressed in a shimmering silver wedding gown, a fairy-tale princess has arrived – Diana, Queen of Assamese hearts.

  Take a closer look at the regal guests, and you begin to notice subtle inconsistencies. Her Majesty, Prince Charles and, Diana herself, can’t speak a word of English. Their hair is jet black, their skin dark, and their costumes are not handmade. Few Assamese have met Royalty before, which may explain how the regal charade has gone undetected. But the distinguished visitors are not impostors, rather they’re actors in the latest Assamese theatrical sensation The Life and Death of Lady Diana.

  With an acting tradition stretching back more than four centuries, India’s North-eastern state of Assam boasts some of the greatest travelling theatres in Asia. More than thirty touring companies crisscross the state, continually providing entertainment to villages where television and cinemas are still unknown.

  The plays are celebrated for performing the great Hindu scriptures, along with passing on regional news. Until recently, Assam’s theatre-going public had had very little exposure to Western drama. But all that changed last year when the Koh-i-Noor troupe of players staged an epic, the likes of which Assam had never seen before.

  Hauling a colossal plywood steam ship across the state, they dazzled one village after the next with their own theatrical rendition of Titanic.

  Rival theatres searched high and low for another story, charged with passion and overflowing with grandeur, to match the astonishing success of the Titanic love story. The director of the Abahan travelling theatre, Hem Bhattacharya, considered his options carefully. ‘Titanic changed everything in Assam,’ he says, ‘before that, people were content with the myths we had been enacting for centuries. But now our audiences are far more demanding. They want new epics. I decided that we would put on the greatest tale of love ever known, even greater than Titanic – the story of Lady Diana.’

  Mr. Bhattacharya wanted to capitalize on his people’s inexplicable affection for the former Princess of Wales. For years, local newspapers had recounted the trials and tribulations of Diana’s life in the most minute detail. It’s an obsession that grips the entire Subcontinent, with dozens of original books about her in regional Indian languages.

  Once Mr. Bhattacharya had begun research into the Princess’ life, he dispatched scouts to all corners of Assam. ‘They hunted for a woman to play Diana,’ he explains, ‘an actress with her grace and her inner beauty.’

  Remarkably, the quest took only two months, in which hundreds of hopefuls were auditioned. One morning in May, Mr. Bhattacharya first set eyes on the radiant figure of Jubilee Rajkumari (literally ‘Princess Jubilee’). Against all odds, he says, he’d turned up a woman so similar in looks that she might be regarded as Diana’s long lost twin.

  To our eyes, Jubilee’s resemblance to the Princess may at first be difficult to discern. Aged twenty, she’s a little on the homely side, with a round face, oversized hands, and swarthy complexion. But spend time talking to her, and one quickly realizes how she landed the part – it’s her smile. Even when dispirited, she beams with blinding delight.

  Once he had a Diana, Mr. Bhattacharya sought the other key players in the fateful tale. The Queen, Prince Charles and Earl Spencer, James Hewitt, Dodi Al-Fayed and Camilla Parker-Bowles, were all cast with Assamese clones. As strenuous rehearsals commenced, so was construction of an astonishing array of scenery and props.

  In the travelling theatrical business, the difficulty lies in the fact that everything has to be lugged from village to village every four days. A thirty-foot backdrop of Buckingham Palace, crafted from plywood, looms down as the main symbol of Britannic majesty.

  But the royal residence is just the tip of the iceberg.

  There’s Kensington Palace, too (inside and out), St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Royal Yacht Britannia, three speed boats, a pair of helicopters, a jumbo jet, the infamous Mercedes, the paparazzi motorbike and Paris tunnel and, even the Eiffel Tower.

  The day before the show, a white Indian-made Ambassador car charges through the outlying countryside whipping up enthusiasm. Battered speakers on the roof announce ‘Lady Diana! Lady Diana!’ Giant hoardings of the Assamese Diana in her most stylish apparel are dotted in key positions around Mirza. But the advertising is hardly necessary, as all the tickets were sold long ago. The insatiable demand has created a thriving black market.

  Krishna Das is one of thousands of plantation workers who has staked his family’s savings on a tout’s tickets. He waves the four slips of yellow paper above his head. ‘My wife and daughters are desperate to see the play,’ he says, ‘how could I let them down? This may be the only time my little girls will ever see Lady Diana.’

  Across the street, final touches are being made to the stage, constructed on an area of waste ground at the edge of the village. A complex web of bamboo poles and ropes will keep the Buckingham Palace backdrop upright in the strongest winds. This is just as well, as the latest weather reports suggest that an Orissan cyclone is about to strike. An army of barefoot workers in lungis and string vests hurry about ensuring that the theatre is extra sturdy. Three thousand chairs have been laid out in rows beneath an enormous tent, with standing room for many more.

  Sitting in the second row, Mr. K. Roy, the producer, is making calculations. Since opening in August, the play has been seen by more than two hundred thousand people in sixteen villages. As the one who stands to make the most money, Mr. Roy is keen to pack in as many seats as possible. The play, which cost about £2,000 to put on, is due to end in April. Although he waves away questions of profit, local rumours say Roy will have made as much as millions of rupees before then.

  Backstage the preparations are well underway. Five trunks are unlocked and, with utmost care, the play’s elaborate costumes are taken out. All Assamese theatrical productions are founded on two main components: extensive song and dance routines, and plenty of costume changes.

  Lady Diana is no exception.

  Prince Charles appears in four uniforms and three suits, while Diana sports a series of colourful cocktail dresses, gowns, and the resplendent wedding frock. Only the Queen is more modest, with a single glittering golden robe.

  When all the costumes and Union Jacks have been ironed once and then again, and the miniature shrine’s incense has been lit, the laborious make-up procedures begin. The drawback of using Assamese actors is that all visible skin has to be covered by a thick, blancmange-like grease paint.

  Jubilee Rajkumari sits obediently before a naked lightbulb. A stern-looking make-up artist spatulas the salmon-coloured goo onto her cheeks.

  ‘I felt so miserable when Diana died,’ she declares, ‘the whole of Assam mourned. People adored her. You see, she stood up against the Royal Family, and was a defender of women’s rights.’ Jubilee pauses as a spoonful of the make-up is slopped onto her hand. ‘Lady Diana may have been a princess, but her marriage suffered from common problems, the kind which even ordinary Assamese women are faced with.’ Jubilee breaks off as a voluptuous, fair-skinned young woman enters the tent. Thin as a rake, with high cheek bones and soft pouting lips, she winks at one of the male actors. Jubilee broods with irritation. For the luscious nineteen-year-old is none other than Likuma Sharma, a.k.a Camilla Parker-Bowles.

/>   Until recently, Likuma, who’s regarded as one of the great beauties of her generation, played basketball for Assam. She admits that although she’s never seen a picture of Camilla, she has worked hard at mastering the part. ‘Camilla is so misunderstood,’ Likuma gushes, waving the make-up woman away, ‘She’s a loving, romantic woman who is very attractive to men.’

  Outside, the audience is beginning to arrive. The atmosphere is electric. Hawkers are selling paan, popcorn soaked in ghee, and two-foot chunks of sugarcane. Wild dogs and cows amble about searching for food, against a backdrop of noise, a generator rumbling in the distance. The luckiest four thousand people in Mirza trample through the mud to the cavernous tent. Each ticket is inspected carefully because there are forgeries about. Everyone is dressed in their best clothes: women in saris, little girls in tutus and little boys in tight-fitting suits with matching bow-ties.

  Tuning their eclectic range of instruments, the band is drowned out by the growl of the generator. In the dressing-room tent the cast is assembled. One at a time, they pause to pray at the shrine, and to gulp down a mouthful of prasad, a holy offering. The Coldstream Guards dust off their scarlet coats and scruffy nylon busbies, which resemble Rastafarian wigs. Jubilee stares into space, going over her lines. Earl Spencer whispers a joke to Camilla, who pouts seductively at the punchline.

  The spectators all inside, the house-lights slowly go down, and community officials clamber onto the stage to give speeches. Assamese officials like nothing more than to give long speeches to a captive audience. Four thousand hecklers soon drive the politicians from the platform. Silence.

  And then, the extraordinary play commences.

  The Life and Death of Lady Diana begins with the screech of a car crash, and Diana’s ghost (in a white night-shirt) roving around the stage. This gives way to a rollicking Cossack-like dance scene, in which the Coldstream Guards wave Union Jacks. The actors are virtually obliterated in pungent sandalwood smoke, which ascends in clouds from beneath the stage. As the routine reaches its climax, the prow of Britannia appears, bearing Charles and Diana, who are on their honeymoon.