The Crimson Throne

by Sudhir Kakar

  ‘Yes, if you will teach me.’

  ‘Show me your right palm.’

  Puzzled, I extended my hand. He took it gently in his own, leaned forward and peered closely at the lines on my palm. His breath smelt strongly of garlic, a purifier of blood in Hindu medicine, and I had to imperceptibly move my head to avoid its full impact.

  ‘Yes,’ he said after a while, nodding vigorously and scratching his cheek, ‘you have the gift. Without it, medicines refuse to unlock their secrets. You see, it is the doctor who makes a medicine effective.’

  His gaze returned to my palm and he gently traced the lines with the nail of his index finger. ‘This boy is destined to make a fortune at the court,’ he told Luigi. ‘He will face many dangers. If he wishes I will teach him about the medicines we create for rejuvenation. They will bring him both good fortune and ill luck.’

  In the euphoria of youth that closes ears to words like ‘danger’ or ‘ill luck’, I revelled in the future I discerned in his prophecy. The tropical villa became grander, the young Indian women sharing my bed more voluptuous.

  Like most Hindu physicians, Luigi’s friend was a palmist and a wonderful cook. The prognosis of a disease in the Hindu system of medicine depends as much on accurately deciphering the lines on the palm as on a physician’s expertise in reading bodily signs. Fate determines the outcome of an illness as much as the virulence of a fever or the state of the patient’s organs. Most Hindu medicine is based on the patient’s intake of the correct diet for a particular illness. A doctor needs to possess extensive knowledge of the healing properties of plants and fruits and the correct preparation that would render them most effective. Take the humble coconut as an example. Young coconuts are used for almost a dozen infantile complaints such as diarrhoea and sores in the mouth. When the fruit is fully grown but still tender, its sweet water is used to good effect in the treatment of inflammation of the liver and the bladder since it increases the frequency of urination. When the nut ripens, an oil with great medicinal value is extracted from the hard coconut meat and used as a purge for the irascible since it expels bile. The oil also helps soothe ulcers and burns and reduces adipose tissue.

  Later in the evening, as we lay under the stars on our mattresses, Luigi enlightened me about his friend’s enigmatic offer to educate me in the medicines of ‘rejuvenation’. Simply put, Vaidraj had offered to teach me the secret science of aphrodisiacs, knowledge that was much in demand among the nobility of the Mogul empire. The Omrah in the imperial court were known to possess ravenous sexual appetites, but given the number of women in their harems, their performance could never hope to match their expectations. While the Mohammedan physicians at the Great Mogul’s court possessed extensive knowledge of aphrodisiacs, their potions, while increasing a man’s vigour, did not especially add to his pleasure. This they left to nature, unaware that in such matters nature reveals itself best when coaxed through artifice. This was where my expertise, acquired from my new friend would come into play, should I so choose.

  Having accepted Vaidraj’s offer with alacrity and a becoming humility, I paid three more visits to his village after that first one. Each time I stayed with him for four days. Vaidraj first taught me the basics of reading the pulse and progressed to the examination of stool for its colour, consistency and smell to diagnose disorders of the stomach, which the Hindus regard as the root of most ailments. He was far too shrewd not to divine the real purpose of my visits. But I believe he wanted to test my patience as much as my commitment by revealing the mysteries of rejuvenation to me only during my third and last visit. The centrepiece of Vaidraj’s teachings was the preparation of a potion which the woman rubs on the inner walls of her sex before intercourse. It makes lying with her exquisitely pleasurable for the man, heightening his pleasure to the point of pain. At least for a while, it stops him from going to other women.

  ‘If you rub the ointment on the genitals of a bitch, you will see that in a couple of hours all the dogs in the neighborhood will come sniffing and try to mount it. And this when the bitch is not even on heat!’ Vaidraj said.

  This particular preparation gained me quite a reputation in the harems of the Mogul court, and I was careful to be very selective about my clients for its administration. But while it made me wealthy it also brought me great grief, as I shall narrate later.

  Looking back at the first year I spent in India, I see that my fondness for the Hindus comes from the generosity shown to me at the beginning of my sojourn by two of their race, one a man and the other a woman. Both were my teachers, educating me in more ways than one. I have already talked of the man, Vaidraj, Luigi’s friend. The woman? She was an illiterate young prostitute, no more than sixteen years old, who was as new to her profession as I was to mine. The other girls in the brothel are now only half-remembered bodies on unmade beds, but not Mala.

  I was the only regular European patron of a native establishment which lay midway between the town and a Hindu village. Other Europeans, with more money, preferred a better class of brothels. The mestica in these houses wore long sleeved dresses, carried painted hand fans and affected Portuguese airs. The girls in the brothel I visited were from villages in the neighbouring Maratha region. Most were in their teens or early twenties and the establishment hummed with youthful high spirits. They wore bright-coloured saris and loved to wear silver necklaces, bracelets, ankle-rings, large earrings and nose-rings. I remain grateful to those young Hindu girls, with their kohl-rimmed dark eyes, jet black hair pulled back in a high bun and wreathed in bright yellow flowers, for so generously letting me in their beds and sharing their bodies with me. Especially Mala.

  As I age, the periods of reverie more welcome than those of expectation, Mala pushes herself more and more to the forefront of my awareness. I close my eyes and gaze at her as she lies naked on her stomach. I caress her smooth back, the hue of woodsmoke. She sits up and laughingly pulls my face into her lap. She runs her fingers through my curly hair, now lank and thinning. Even today, the memory of her smell can enliven my withered senses: the faint aroma of coconut oil combined with the scent of a flowery perfume that came off the sweat between her breasts. I am as one intoxicated as I nuzzle deeper into her lap. Here, the darker musk of her body struggled against being swamped by the briny odour of her female oils. At the time, to say goodbye to Mala, to never lie in her bed again with her warm body nestling against mine, was not difficult. It is only now, with age, that Other than the fabled tree-lined Agra-Lahore highway, which M. Briffault had described as ‘one of the best in the world’, most roads in India are little more than muddy tracks that cease to exist when passing through forests and ravines. The highway from Surat to Agra and then on to Delhi is one of the main arteries of the Mogul empire. It was in much better condition than other Indian roads, although it had its share of potholes and stretches where patches of mud that had been washed away during the last rains were yet to be repaired. Rattling along on uneven ground in my light cart, covering about twenty miles a day in the white heat of the Indian sun, the first week of travel was trying, especially since the canteen of wine which the Governor had thoughtfully included in my provisions did not offer the refreshment of body and spirit I had hoped it would when the caravan halted for the night at a serai. On the second day itself the heat and the constant jolting had turned the wine into no more than expensive vinegar!

  The serais, where we sought shelter at the end of a day’s travel, are inns strategically located on the highway outside towns or large villages in order to allow travellers to camp in safety. The gates of a serai close at sundown with the watchman’s announcement that everyone must look after his belongings and picket his horses and oxen by their fore and hind legs. At sunrise, the watchman once again shouts out three warnings for everyone to check his belongings. The gates are opened if no theft is reported. In case there has been a theft, a thorough search is carried out till the thief is discovered, and the poor wretch is promptly strung up from the branch of a tree
outside the serai. Some of the serais, such as the one built by the Great Mogul’s eldest daughter sixty miles from the city of Surat, are spacious, fortified enclosures of stone or brick, with a central courtyard encircled by arcaded chambers that can lodge up to a thousand travellers along with their horses, camels and carriages. Most serais, however, are groups of fifty or sixty thatched huts enclosed by a wall or by hedges. A few are but large, odorous barns, raised and paved all round, where human beings mingle with their animals. In summer, these barns are hot and suffocating while in winter nothing but the body heat and breath of so many animals saves the inmates from dying of the cold.

  The traveller has to provide his own bedding but can buy his food from idolater men and women attached to the serai. The meal normally consists of khichri, a mess of rice and lentils boiled together and flavoured with mild spices and onions fried in ghee, which is hugely relished by the idolaters. Save for the heat that gradually worsened in the course of the day and the native khichri, which is frankly quite inedible and took me a while to get accustomed to, I can say that travelling in India is no less convenient than journeying either in France or Italy.

  The tedium I would have felt of travelling alone was lightened on the very first evening when Afzal, a handsome, young Mohammedan merchant, with skin whose smoothness would have been the envy of our Parisian ladies of noble birth, decided to attach himself to me. Speaking in fluent Persian, he informed me that he was travelling with the caravan till Burhanpur, one of the larger towns on the road to Agra. Here, he intended to buy the excellent cloth, scarlet and white and of an exceeding fineness, from which women’s head-dresses and veils are made and which enjoys a big market in Persia, Turkey and Armenia. He had made the journey from Surat to Burhanpur eleven times before, and I was grateful to have someone so appealing to the eye and so knowledgeable about the land explain its sights and make sense of the many curious incidents that occurred on the way, which would otherwise baffle any foreign traveller.

  Afzal, the first Mohammedan I met and whom I quickly grew fond of, was a man of good humour, fond of witticisms (not all of which I understood) and, like most others of his race, possessed a tendency towards flights of fancy that I found more enchanting than tedious. As we sat together companionably after the evening meal, the water in the bowl of his hukka gurgling every time he drew in the smoke with a loud, satisfied whoosh, we talked about what had struck me as curious during the day’s travel. Afzal would provide a context to my impressions, offer his own opinions and elaborate further on related matters, some interesting, others not.

  The conversation was not one-sided, however, with me playing the student asking questions and Afzal reacting as a teacher would. I, too, had the satisfaction of correcting some of his misconceptions about Europe and Europeans. Afzal believed that Europeans live on islands and that it is only at sea that they are proficient in battle and are formidable opponents. His impression of Europeans, farangis as the Indians call them, was derived from those who serve in the artillery of the Moguls and with whom the natives are most familiar. The farangis are devoid of all fear of God, he said. They take eight to ten wives, are constantly drunk, have no occupation but gambling, and are eager to cheat whomsoever they can. Their morals are much worse than those of the Mohammedans, or even of the idolaters, since for small monetary considerations they are willing to abandon their faith and convert to the religion of Mohammed. These Europeans are Christians only in name, I hastened to correct him. Most people in Europe are as God-fearing as any Mohammedan. Some may occasionally drink to excess or succumb to other all-too-human weaknesses but, then, was this not true of any race?

  ‘Ah, yes, Bernier,’ Afzal said agreeably, his voice pleasingly gravelled from the smoke, ‘we are all creatures of God. We are all human, more human than otherwise. Allah the Merciful will forgive our failings.’

  I knew that as a Mohammedan to whom all intoxicants are forbidden, he struggled against his addiction to bhang, a beverage made from leaves of dried hemp ground to powder and soaked in water, and normally drunk by poor people who do not have enough money to procure alcoholic spirits. He was a generous man, this Afzal, who never let me pay for our dinners at the serais, but then generosity towards people they like—and they are quick to decide on their likes and dislikes—seems to be one of the more attractive features of the followers of Mohammed.

  At the beginning of our travel, the land was of mixed character, sometimes covered with woods and sometimes with fields of wheat and rice. Although most of the rivulets were now dry, we had difficulty fording others because of the stones and rocks under the water that could overturn a wagon if the driver was not careful. As we approached Burhanpur, the road became better. Each day, we came across brooks with fresh water, shady and pleasant woods filled with deer, gazelles, wild oxen and a variety of birds. I was tempted by the opportunity to hunt with the matchlock M. Briffault had given me as a farewell present, but Afzal warned me not to stray away from the road because of the presence of robbers in the woods, who lay in wait of any unwary traveller who was unable to resist this temptation.

  The caravan rested in Burhanpur for two days and Afzal graciously offered to show me around the town rather than immediately attend to his business. Burhanpur is a medium-sized town on the bank of a river with good, clear water but without fortifications. Its crumbling monuments and the general air of neglect and decay, which I had also seen in a couple of other towns where we camped for more than a day instead of the night halts at serais that were our normal resting place, reinforced the impression I had gathered from Surat that Indians must be among the laziest people in the world, or at least the most indifferent. For although more people in India live in towns than in Europe, the urban landscape appears desolate and its imminent decay is distressing to the discerning European eye. Gardens, mansions, palaces are kept in repair only so long as the owner is alive. Once he is dead no one will care for what he built. Each succeeding generation tries to erect buildings of its own, utterly disregarding the labours of its ancestors, with the result that roads leading to cities and towns, as indeed many areas of a city itself, are strewn with fallen columns of stone. It is a miracle how any monument that is not a temple or a mosque has managed to survive more than two to three generations in this country.

  On the first morning of our stay in Burhanpur, while walking around the market which was well stocked with fresh fruit like oranges, lemons and mangos and plenty of fresh vegetables, we were witness to an amusing spectacle. In contrast to idolaters, Mohammedans wear beards. The new governor of Burhanpur, a scrupulous observer of the Faith, had issued an edict that no Mohammedan should wear a beard longer than four finger-breadths and had appointed an official to enforce the regulation. Each morning, this official sallied forth in the company of his attendants and soldiers to measure the beards he came across on the street and, if necessary, to trim them to the required length. It was entertaining to see the official and his men running around in the market, laying hold of men by the beards in order to measure them and clip off the excess. They would also run a razor over an incipient moustache to uncover the lips, so that when pronouncing the name of Allah, there would be no impediment to the sound ascending straight to heaven.

  On the following day, I was sorry to part with Afzal whom I now regarded as a friend. He had made my journey informative and agreeable. He appeared hurt when I refused his farewell gift of a night at the town’s best bordello to seal our friendship.

  ‘Perhaps you would prefer a boy, Bernier? I can wager that our boys are better than your European lads. They know how to tighten their sphincter muscles at the right time,’ he tried again.

  I had had no such experience with a European boy and had no desire to have one with an Indian lad, I told him, declining the fresh offer. It is true, however, that teenaged Indian boys, with their silky nut-brown skin, bright black eyes, flashing white teeth and lissome limbs make an attractive sight and can be tempting to men with un-Christian inclinations.


  The rest of the journey to Agra was uneventful in that we were neither set upon by brigands nor delayed for long on account of being detained on the way by one of the Great Mogul’s governors demanding, as is their habit, inordinately large bribes to let goods pass through his domain. For the last one hundred miles or so, right up to our destination, the caravan passed among fertile fields which strongly resembled the Beausse plain around Chartres. I noticed that without Afzal as a guide to inform and explain, and in the manner of all first -time travellers to a strange country, I, too, allayed my nervousness (of which I was not aware at the time) by concentrating on features of the land that were similar to those at home, while my eyes quickly passed over sights to which I was unaccustomed and which could have disturbed my equanimity. It also helped that the villages were close to each other, making travel more comfortable since there was little hurry to reach a particular serai before sunset when the towns and serais close their gates and do not allow any one to either enter or leave.

  Twenty-seven days after setting out from Surat, I arrived in Delhi on the evening of the twenty-fifth day of April, 1657.

  ‘I crused them for setting me a severe test in which failure was almost certain’

  NICCOLAO MANUCCI

  I HAD, FROM THE time of my arrival in India, regarded my stay in Goa as a prologue to the main act of my life, and so while I left Goa in haste it was not with a heavy heart. I knew that the time was upon me to venture out into the larger world. I was certain that glory awaited me with a certain foot-tapping impatience.