She raised her hand to beckon him and tell him not to be anxious and instantly brought it back to cover her breasts.
‘Please open the door,’ she called out to Sangram Singh softly. There was no response from within. ‘Please open the door, please. Someone will see me.’
‘Let them. You went out on your own.’
‘Please, I’m naked.’
‘You should have thought of that earlier.’
‘Please, your son is watching me.’
The door opened. He dragged her in and made love to her. This time she did not tell him not to withdraw.
He put on his clothes and shoes. He was at the door when he smiled and turned around. ‘What was all the merriment last night?’
‘Last night? Oh, nothing special. Everyone’s been so depressed because of the drought, we felt we should sing and dance a little bit and cheer ourselves up.’
‘Seems to have been some heavy drinking. A regular party.’
‘No, nothing of the kind. Mangat had a half bottle of hooch, that’s all.’
‘And the beef, where did that come from?’
‘Where would we get beef from?’
‘So what’s that in the clay pot?’
‘Oh that? That’s just something a visitor from Jalta got.’
‘Good, I hope you had a good time.’
‘It was okay.’
‘I better be off.’ He unfastened the bolt. ‘Where’s Ram?’
‘Ram?’
‘Why do I have to repeat everything today?’ Sangram Singh took off his turban and wiped his brow with it. ‘Yes, where’s my ox … Ram?’
‘Ploughing the field, I guess.’
‘You want to guess again?’
‘He’s with Dulare. He is helping out one of our neighbours.’
‘Oh, I see.’ He fixed the turban on his head and stepped out. ‘One last guess, Savitri. Where’s Ram?’
‘I don’t know, Huzoor. Dulare took him to the field, that’s all I know.’
‘Or did you kill my fine, robust animal and have him for dinner last night?’
‘No, Huzoor. I swear to you … How would we? He was such an old beast, that’s why Dulare kept telling you to give us Lakhan and not Ram. Dulare was afraid something like this would happen but you wouldn’t listen. You forced him to take Ram.’
‘The two of you begged and begged. I knew I shouldn’t give my fine animals to you but I looked at you and I relented. And what did I get for my kindness? You killed a fine, young and sturdy animal so that you could have your feast.’
‘That’s not true.’ Savitri broke down. ‘He died yesterday while he was in the field. Just fell down and never got up.’
‘Why didn’t Dulare come and tell me about it if that was the case?’
‘I told him to. I told him again and again. But he said you would never believe him. You would make him out to be a liar and insist that he had killed him. Might as well eat him and have a good time and then face the consequences.’
‘You expect me to believe that you ate dead meat?’
‘Don’t make fun of us, Huzoor. What other kind of meat have we had in the last two thousand years? When could we afford to buy fresh meat?’
‘And where’s Dulare?’
‘He ran away. He was terrified of what you would do to him.’
‘How far will that cripple run? Have no fear, we’ll get him. He’s also wanted for another crime. I know that Dulare broke into Siyaram’s house some weeks ago and stole the wood from him.’
Savitri looked aghast. ‘Come into your part of the village and break into someone’s house? Which untouchable would dare to do that? Least of all Dulare!’
‘Let’s have the truth, Savitri.’
‘It is the truth. Ram dropped dead of old age.’ Savitri was sobbing now. ‘Dulare had nothing to do with it. Why don’t you believe me? I swear to you as the gods are my witness.’
She then ran out and did the unthinkable. She took Himmat in her arms and kissed him again and again.
‘I love your son, Huzoor. I love Himmat as my own, since I’ve no children. I swear on Himmat’s forehead, Dulare is innocent.’
‘Put my son down, Savitri.’
His Highness had done the manly thing after Sunanda Devi’s demise. He had had a series of mistresses to assuage his grief but then all of a sudden he had changed course and proceeded to court, seduce, ravish and marry Princess Kalawati of Paramgarh, though, if truth be told, it was the other way round: it was she who had courted, seduced and ravished His Highness. Princess Kalawati was no spring chicken. She had the effervescence of a woman who has seen much and experienced far more but carries it off as gullible innocence. It hadn’t been an easy life for her and her nine siblings. Their father was perpetually sozzled and whoring with not a naya paisa in his bank account. Of his four sons and six daughters, she was the only one who had kept her head above the water. No Prince or pauper was going to sink her. She was looking for a home and Kantagiri was her best bet.
Time swirled past like a speeded-up 35mm film. The Palace came alive with activity and guests. In the past, when His Highness was a little tight with Scotch, he liked to say that Kantagiri had got misplaced when the planet was created and the continents had surfaced, and that to this day it was still missing. But now Kantagiri suddenly appeared on the map. Guests felt privileged to be invited to that godforsaken place in the desert.
No one could tell who cast an evil eye on the good times. But most folks suspected it was Parbat Singh himself who had gone back to his old theme song: what is the purpose of a marriage and what is the duty of a wife? He wanted a son and he was damned if he was going to support a wife who failed to deliver. But he had misjudged his lady. Princess Kalawati was no Sunanda Devi. She put up with Parbat Singh’s tirades and demands while she siphoned off his late wife’s fortune and simultaneously got herself a lawyer who took him to the cleaners.
She got her divorce and a year later emerged with an industrialist-husband and a son and paraded them both through Kantagiri, winning the top position in the Prince’s black book.
It was by sheer accident that Sangram Singh managed to enter the employ of the Prince. It so happened that horse-racing was the love of His Highness’s life. His favourite horse, Bindhaas, was a legend in Kantagiri and in the racing circles as far as Mumbai and Bangalore. He had won almost every race for his master. Everybody in town knew that His Highness preferred the company of Bindhaas to that of his friends and acquaintances. The Prince would get up at six in the morning, don his jodhpurs and riding boots and have long chats with him. ‘Morning, my friend,’ he would say, stroking Bindhaas’s back and offering him jaggery. ‘Bit of a nip in the air, wouldn’t you say? Winter will be here soon and we can go for much longer rides. We are one in body and spirit, my soul mate. As long as you are there, my life will always be bindhaas, carefree as the wind, and I can roam the peaks of the Aravali mountains, touch the clouds, ride deep into the endless desert and never get lost and never fear for my life. Let’s go, my fearless one, and conquer the world.’
It seemed as if Bindhaas took his master’s words to heart. He would venture anywhere the Prince led him and he always protected him.
‘I thought I should inform you that I’m going riding with two of the Princes from Anantgarh, Jai Singh and his younger brother Vijay Singh,’ the Prince spoke softly into Bindhaas’s ear. ‘Some of our own nobles are also accompanying us. Who should know better than you how these innocent rides can turn into races and become a matter of honour? As you may recall, Jai Singh has a rather inflated notion of himself and I was thinking that it would be a good idea to puncture that swollen head of his. Frankly,’ the Prince laughed theatrically at this point, ‘who can achieve this better than you, my closest and most reliable ally?’
His Highness nuzzled his head against Bindhaas’s and whispered, ‘Now this is what I propose.’ When he had finished laying out his strategy, he queried, ‘You like my game-plan, Bindhaas?’ Then he
smiled wickedly. ‘I knew you would, because we think alike. Onward ho, then. Let’s give Jai Singh a taste of Kantagiri’s superior bloodline.’
The party rode together for some distance in the flat desert with the occasional hillock of sand. After a while, His Highness got bored and suggested an impromptu race to add a little excitement to the royal visitors’ stay and get their blood pumping. ‘See you then at the Chandani Chakore Temple.’ The Prince waved out to the other riders. ‘May the best man win.’
It didn’t take Jai and his brother Vijay long to establish an easy lead and soon they were galloping ahead of the rest. Bindhaas was straining to overtake them but His Highness kept him under tight control. Now even the three or four Kantagiri sardars had left Bindhaas and his master behind. Parbat Singh watched Jai and Vijay almost disappear into the line of the horizon. He gently prodded Bindhaas in the flank and the horse took off as if it had gained wings.
In no time the Kantagiri nobles had been overtaken and Bindhaas was steadily gaining ground. Parbat Singh’s strategy was not to overtake the guests but to bypass them in a wider circle and wait to receive them at the Chandani Chakore Temple. His Highness was making good progress without exerting unnecessary pressure on Bindhaas when it occurred to him that perhaps he had taken it easy a little too long and that instead of him, the brothers Jai–Vijay might be welcoming him at the other end. Time to step on it. Man and beast were one and the desert began to fall behind at a frantic pace.
The Kala Bhram region emitted a sharp, rancid smell. Every bird, beast and reptile stayed away from it. As a matter of fact, hardly any human being, villager or townsman, cared to go near the Black Delusion. Every once in a while, the land would burble with glistening black bile from the depths of the earth and spontaneous flames would spark all over the place. The curious thing was that often they were gone the very next day and the wary traveller was convinced that he had been hallucinating or seeing mirages. It was rumoured that all kinds of black arts were practised there. Some fourteen years ago, there had been a terrible storm with thunder and lightning and the place had erupted in a conflagration that stretched for miles.
Bindhaas was deliberately keeping his distance from Kala Bhram when His Highness decided that he couldn’t take a chance – those two brothers might already be nearing the finishing post. He steered Bindhaas to the forbidden ground. They were now within hollering distance of the one and only tree in this part of the desert. Nobody knew how many decades it had lain on its side, like a barasingha trapped in the oily sand, trying to grasp the sky with its gnarled antlers. Bindhaas attempted to circle around it but Parbat Singh was in a hurry. As the stallion rose in the air, almost floating up, his rear legs slipped and slithered on the slime. His Highness was catapulted forward like a rocket and the horse came down and was pinioned on one of the outstretched branches of the tree.
Parbat Singh lay crumpled and twisted, unable to move. His right leg lay crushed under him. He was in terrible agony but kept trying to retrieve his gun from under him. It was an hour and a half before Jai and Vijay along with the local sardars discovered the broken Prince. An ambulance was sent for and as he lay on the stretcher he managed to retrieve his gun from its holster. Bindhaas was barely breathing but his eyes begged his master for forgiveness. His Highness cursed Bindhaas and shot the beast six times for shaming him in front of his guests. But that was not enough. He ordered his sardars, even as he was about to pass out, that Bindhaas was not to be buried. Let the vultures make a meal of him for his betrayal.
Dheeraj Singh’s status had always been a little shaky. Most of the time he was just a retainer. But every once in a while he was referred to by the royal family of Paar as a nobleman of no particular rank. His son, however, had not found favour with His Highness despite his many attempts. The Prince’s freak accident, though, was Sangram Singh’s ticket to employment. His Highness’s right leg was three centimetres shorter than the left one now and while he could still manage to walk, it was with a painful limp. As to his dislocated hipbone, it had already been operated upon thrice and was the cause of much agony in the winter months. The doctors in Mumbai had assured him that there was an eighty-five per cent possibility of setting it right with a few more operations but the Prince was adamant. He had spent seven months in hospital in Mumbai and did not wish to lay his eyes on another doctor for the rest of his life.
A motorized wheelchair was ordered and for five months His Highness had a rollicking time terrifying his staff members as he headed straight for them and swivelled away in the nick of time, missing them by just a few centimetres. Unfortunately, one morning the fun came to an end when it was discovered that the battery had been battered and broken and the seat ripped open. No mechanic was available nearby and in any case even the Prince could tell that the mobile chair was beyond repair. He went berserk, questioned and accused every single member of the staff, starting with the sweeper-woman and the cook. He threatened to call in the police and hang the whole lot but the mysterious offender was never found.
There were no funds in the treasury and His Highness had to settle for a manually operated wheelchair. It was tiring work and far worse, it was unseemly for the head of Paar to be seen by his people pushing his own wheelchair. Dheeraj Singh had died a few years ago and so H.H. didn’t have much of a choice. Since a known devil was supposed to be better than an unknown one, Sangram Singh got the job of wheeling the Princeling around.
‘Did Dulare really kill our Ram?’
Sangram Singh ignored his son’s question. Perhaps Himmat did not expect an answer either. It was late afternoon and the sun was climbing down but that did not alter the temperature. The heat was wedged tight between the sky and the earth. Its weight was so great and it was bearing down so hard, the ground had begun to sink. To make progress, father and son had to walk with heads bent as if they were fighting gale winds. Nine-tenths of the homes in the untouchable quarters had been abandoned. The water tankers hardly came to the village now and whenever they did, by the time everybody else filled up four or five pots and a bucket, there was nothing left for the untouchables.
Sangram Singh turned into the fields.
‘Aren’t we going home?’
No answer. They walked through fields ploughed and reploughed, sown and resown without having yielded a crop for years. The birds and the worms had picked the soil clean of every seed. Himmat’s foot got caught in a furrow. He stumbled and fell. The cast-iron clods of earth split open the flesh over his knee and cut his lips and forehead. He sat down and dusted his knee. He drew it close, licked it with his tongue and spat out the dirt. The nicks and bruises on his face he could not see and so he let them be.
Sangram Singh went to the edge of Dulare’s field and started to measure it from east to west and north to south. Himmat followed his father, counting his footsteps.
‘I want you to count the exact number of steps it takes to cross from one end of the farm to the other.’
Himmat didn’t know who his father was talking to. ‘I don’t know how to count beyond thirty.’
They ran into the schoolteacher and his wife when they got back to the road.
‘Where are you going, Masterji?’
‘We are leaving.’
His wife stood some distance away and put down the tin trunk she was carrying.
‘And what happens to the children’s education?’
‘Which children, Sangram Singh? Almost all the families have left the village. The children who are here hardly ever turn up. What am I supposed to survive on?’
‘The Prince is not going to be happy about your leaving.’
‘He doesn’t even know that I live here.’
‘You are mistaken. He’s aware of everything.’
‘Maybe, but what good is that to me?’ The teacher turned to his wife. ‘The bus station’s seven miles from here. We can’t afford to stop every hundred yards.’
He lifted the trunk and placed it on her head.
‘What kind
of teacher are you?’ Sangram Singh called out after him. ‘Himmat can’t count beyond thirty.’
Himmat ran ahead when they were close to home and waited at the gate for his father to catch up.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’
Sangram Singh kept walking. He had to locate Dulare. It was evening by the time he reached the police outpost at Jalta. The chowki was open but there was no one there. The constable who looked after Jalta and seven other villages had gone out. Sangram Singh asked a villager when he was likely to be back but the man had no idea. Perhaps he had gone to the regional headquarters in the district town. Sangram Singh sat in the constable’s chair and waited. He put a plug of tobacco in the left rear corner of his mouth and put his feet up on the table.
Some hours after midnight he knocked on the village headman’s door.
‘His Highness wants me to see the constable about an important matter. When is he coming back?’
‘Tomorrow, a week, maybe a fortnight, who knows?’
Earlier, His Highness rarely stayed in his Palace for more than three or four weeks. Kantagiri, he liked to say, was at the arse-end of the world and the more often it shat him out, the better he felt. He used to travel abroad or stay for months in Mumbai or Delhi. It was only after his freak accident that he was forced to settle down. Perhaps it was his latest mistress, Raat Rani, the one he had acquired around the time he had bought the wheelchair, who brought a semblance of routine to his life. But that was only after the first turbulent months during which the master and his mistress had been at each other’s throats. The point of disagreement was always the same: despite the fact that Raat Rani didn’t leave the Palace except with His Highness, she was not available till eleven in the night.
Sangram Singh reported for work every morning. He rarely got to see either the Prince or his lady but he was always watching, waiting to catch a glimpse of the two, especially of the mistress. There was no doubt in his mind that she was not a creature of this planet. He had never seen anyone so beautiful or entrancing. She must surely be a celestial creature, an apsara. From the very first day of her stay at the Palace, Sangram Singh noted that Raat Rani, as her name declared, was the queen of the night. Her routine didn’t vary. She woke up around three in the afternoon, had a lazy bath and spent the next hour in the mini-temple she had created next to the bedroom. She collected gods, goddesses, saints, babas and gurus regardless of whether they belonged to the Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Christian, Buddhist or any other pantheon. When the puja was done, she switched on the TV and watched till the last serial ended. Come eleven p.m., the TV was switched off and Raat Rani was ready for a night of frolic and fun.