The rani moved toward the pyre and the taste of metal was thick on my tongue. Everyone believed she was going to do it, and no one was willing to cry “stop!”
Not even me.
Then she stood in front of the flames and shouted, “What Jhansi needs now is a leader, not a martyr!”
The cheer that went up was deafening.
“There are people standing in front of me today who will condemn me for not entering the flames. But what woman has ever changed her husband’s fate by joining him on his pyre? And what woman has ever built a stronger kingdom by disappearing from it? Our ancestors believed that committing sati was an act of courage. I say that with the exception of the goddess Sati, who after all, is immortal, it is an act of cowardice! Who will raise her children, or care for her parents, or tend her garden? No. If I die, it will be by the sword, not by the flame.”
Shri Bhakti began to weep. Even the seemingly emotionless Dewan had tears in his eyes. Behind me, people began repeating the speech the rani had given, and word began to spread through the thousands of mourners that Jhansi was not going to lose its queen.
There was a feeling of triumph in the air, as if suddenly, we were attending a celebration, not a funeral. The rani stepped away from the burning pyre, and when her eyes met mine, I was grinning widely.
W hen the funeral was over, the rani made her way to the Durbar Hall. This time, she heard the petitioners not from behind the latticed screen, but from the throne. Hundreds of men had come, and as the last of the petitioners filed out the door, Arjun appeared from beyond the curtains to ask if the rani might give one last audience.
“Your Highness, I believe this is important.”
There was something in the way he said it that made all of us sit up straighter on our cushions. The rani no longer kept purdah in the Durbar Hall, so when Major Ellis arrived, he could see that her face was thinner and that she no longer wore the red vermillion mark of a wife in the parting of her hair.
“Sita, will you take Anand for me?” the rani said.
She passed her son to me, and the rajkumar gave an enormous screech. He began kicking his little legs, afraid of being separated from yet another person he now loved. Next to him, Kashi held out her arms.
“Want me to take him?”
I passed the rajkumar to Kashi, who somehow knew how to hold him, because he settled against her chest just the same as he did for the rani.
The major looked particularly worried today. His hat was in his hands, and he kept twisting it around, too nervous to meet the rani’s eyes.
“Major Ellis, we have been friends since I first arrived in Jhansi. You know I can handle whatever it is. If it’s bad news, then simply give it to me.”
“I’m sorry, Your Highness—”
“For what?”
“I—” His eyes filled with tears, and I realized at that moment how young he was. The rani’s age, maybe twenty-five. “The British are talking among themselves. They wish . . .”
He couldn’t bring himself to say it, and a cold feeling seized my spine, the same as if someone had put an icy hand beneath my angarkha. Next to me, Kashi felt it, too, because she froze, and Anand began to whimper.
“Major Ellis, I want you to say it. Whatever they wish, we are allies, and I’m sure it can be accommodated.”
“Your Highness, they wish to annex Jhansi. I’m sorry.”
This was not what she was expecting. She stood from her throne. “Have I been a poor ruler?”
“It isn’t you.”
“Have I disobeyed any of their commands? Ignored their requests?”
Major Ellis looked beside himself with grief.
“Why would they want to do this?” she cried in English. “We’ve done everything for them! Bent to all of their rules! They were here for my son’s adoption. You saw it, you signed the papers.”
“Yes.” The major nodded. “I know. But now they’re saying it isn’t enough. That he isn’t your actual son. When they set their minds on something—”
Everyone began speaking at once, and Kahini’s voice was the loudest. “They will never take Jhansi!”
The rani looked down at the major. “What can we do?”
“Why are you asking him? He’s one of them!”
The rani held up a hand to silence Kahini.
“We must begin the appeals process,” he said.
She returned to her throne. “It’s gone that far?”
“The letter will arrive in a few weeks. Your Highness, I don’t know what you intend to do. Whether you wish to remarry—”
The Durgavasi began talking again, and the major looked from face to face, confused.
“Major Ellis, I am an Indian woman. I have been married, and we only marry once.”
His face turned as red as the uniform he was wearing. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I—” He stood. “Perhaps I should go.”
“No! Please. We need your help. What can I do to stop this?”
“I don’t know that it can be stopped.”
“It has to be!” The rani sounded desperate. “Jhansi is my home. It’s my life. It’s the kingdom Anand was born to rule.”
Ellis gave a pitying look at the baby in Kashi’s lap, as if he were a poor substitute for a real heir.
“He is my son,” the rani said. “And this is my kingdom. What right do the British have to rule in my place?”
“None,” he admitted.
“Then help me, Major. Please.”
“In December, we can appeal to the governor-general in Fort William.”
“Yes. What’s his name?”
“Lord Dalhousie.”
“Will you help me write it?”
“Of course, Your Highness.” His eyes met hers. “Anything you wish.”
He left, and we all remained where we were. The horror of it was too great to comprehend. The British were our allies. On his deathbed, the raja’s very last words had been about his treaty with them. He’d begged the rani to honor it at any cost, afraid that our neighboring kingdoms would arrive like vultures to pick at his dead carcass. And he’d been right. Except that neighboring kingdom was England.
When we reached the queen’s room, I wrapped myself in my warmest shawl, then excused myself and went into the courtyard. Arjun found me beside the fountain.
“Did you hear?” I said. My breath fogged up the night air. It was going to be a cold December.
“Yes. But she must have known it was coming.”
I sat back. “Why?”
“Didn’t you hear the way the British spoke of the raja at his funeral?”
I thought back, but nothing stood out to me.
“You speak better English than I do,” he said, “but even to me it was obvious. They were calling the raja a prince, not a king. And the painting that Captain Malcolm presented to the rani . . . Did you see it?”
“No. The rani refused to hang it.”
“Because it shows the governor-general meeting with the raja, and they are both seated on Western chairs—at equal levels.”
I gasped.
“When that letter arrives in a few weeks”—his voice grew low—“there is going to be rebellion. The sepoys won’t stand for it,” Arjun predicted, “and the rani is going to be in a very delicate position. If she supports the rebels, the British will kill her. If she supports the British, then the rebels will do it.”
“What do you mean kill?”
“There is going to be war, Sita. The British are coming to take over our kingdom.”
I felt as if someone had pushed the breath from my chest. “But what about the appeal?”
“Did an appeal work for the Mughal emperor or Baji Rao?”
Despite the cool air, my head began to feel dizzy. My entire life was the rani. What would happen to the Durga Dal? Wha
t would become of the cooks and gardeners and thousands of other people who depended on her throne? What would become of Jhansi?
“Our job is to protect the rani and rajkumar at all costs,” Arjun said. “There may be dangerous times coming. I want you to be careful.”
“They’ll listen to an appeal. They have no reason to take Jhansi. We haven’t violated any treaty,” I reasoned.
But Arjun didn’t look convinced.
Chapter Nineteen
1854
When the rani announced that we would be practicing yoga with Shri Rama every morning, the Durgavasi were upset. With so many problems threatening Jhansi, no one thought we should be spending our time doing salutations to the sun.
“The goal of yoga,” the rani announced, “is to remind us that we are not oxen; we can put down the burden of our worries whenever we want.”
Most of the Durgavasi laughed privately at this. Within weeks, however, my body felt more limber and my mind felt sharper.
I know that in the Western world, yog—or yoga as it has come to be called—is seen as exotic. It’s something mystics practice with their hands resting, palms upward, while they close their eyes. All sorts of nonsense exist about this form of meditation, but I will tell you what yoga is and what it isn’t. Yoga is not something a person practices with music or mirrors or any other distraction. Its purpose is less about samyoga than it is about viyoga, which is to say, it is more about disconnecting than it is about connecting, which many Westerners find strange, until they hear it explained. The reason a person practices every day is to disconnect from their deep connection to suffering.
The author of the ancient Yogatattva Upanishad believed that without the practice of yoga, it was entirely impossible to set the atman free. The atman, of course, is the soul. And just as the rani said, we are so burdened down by our daily worries that many of us have become no different from beasts. We walk around eating and drinking and caring very little about our purpose in this life. Some of us are not even very clever beasts. We are merely trudging through our work, yoked to some terrible master or job. The goal of yoga is to change all of this; to remind the human who has become like an ox that their yoke and harness can be taken off, even if it’s only for a few minutes a day, and that through silencing the mind, we can silence greed, and hunger, and desire as well.
Of course, this all sounds very nice. But the theory of yoga and the practice of it are very different. One is easy to learn, the other takes much time and dedication.
Eventually, even Mandar, who had scoffed the loudest when the rani decided that we must embrace yoga, was noticeably calmer. But yoga can’t change reality, and on the fifth of December, the letter arrived from Major Ellis: Jhansi was indeed to be annexed by the British East India Company. And as advised by the major, the rani appealed. A response arrived on the twenty-fourth of February. The rani’s father delivered it to her in the library, where I was sitting with Kashi on a soft yellow cushion, reading with the rani and Anand. He joined her on her wide orange cushion and waited while she read.
I watched her face. It was bad news. “Kashi, will you take the boy to my chamber?” After they’d left, she said, “They’re giving me three months to pack.”
She saw the confusion on our faces, so she handed me the letter and asked me to read it aloud. As I did, I felt the world shift beneath my feet, as if the hand of Brahma was actually pushing the earth out from under me. The rani had three months to move from the Panch Mahal into a smaller palace at the bottom of the hill. The Company was euphemistically calling it the Rani Mahal, and they promised to give her a yearly pension large enough to run it with a “suitably sized household.”
“And what will happen to our people?” the rani asked. There were tears in her eyes, but they lingered at the edge and refused to fall. She pressed her lips together, and I followed the direction of her gaze to the flag of Jhansi, a kettledrum and whisk on a field of red. “Tomorrow, it will be a British flag,” she whispered. She stood. “I am going to appeal the governor-general of India himself.” He was the man elected by Company officials to oversee the Company, and his election was subject to the British queen’s approval.
I had never felt so angry or afraid. What gave these foreigners the right to destroy our kingdom? Our people lived here for five thousand years—now a company would be deciding our fate.
“We should encourage the sepoys to rebel,” her father said. “It is time.”
“Not if there is a chance that the British East India Company will listen to reason.”
That night, I lay awake in my bed, thinking about how the Durgavas would belong to the British. The walls, the carpets, the beds where we slept, even the small tables where we made our pujas to Durga. I tried to imagine what the rani was feeling, lying in the room where she’d spent every night from the time she was fourteen, knowing that soon, a foreigner would make it his home. All because she’d had the misfortune to lose her husband and son.
When the sun rose the next morning, I didn’t wait to hear the soldiers blowing conch shells in the courtyard to rise. As soon as the sun pushed its way through the windows, I dressed myself in my warmest shawl.
“Where are you going?” Jhalkari said.
“I want to see it for myself.” A few other women were dressing as well. Mandar, Heera, even Rajasi. Jhalkari sat up, and I took her folded angarkha from her chest. “Come,” I said, handing it to her.
We went outside, and a small group of the queen’s guardsmen followed us down the avenue. Arjun was among them. He was dressed in his usual outfit, only this morning, his long hair wasn’t tied back by a muretha. The way it framed his face made him seem younger. We walked to where we could see the south tower, and there, snapping in the crisp morning breeze, was the Union Jack. Tears rolled down several of the men’s faces.
Rajasi said, “There wasn’t even a fight.”
“Exactly how the British like it,” one of the guardsmen said bitterly.
Thousands of people attempted to reach the Durbar Hall. They crowded the halls of the palace, and the soldiers had to keep order as soon as the British officers began to arrive. Inside the hall, only the rani’s advisers and Jhansi’s most important officials had been given seats. We led the rani through the angry press of citizens, and when she took her throne, silence—as heavy and still as water—filled the room. We stood behind her, with our hands on our pistols in case there should be violence. Behind us, her guardsmen were ready as well.
“My people,” she began formally. “Main Jhansi nahin doongi!”
A cheer rose up in the audience and the British officers exchanged nervous looks.
“I will never leave you!” the rani vowed. “But today, I humbly surrender the government of Jhansi to the British. Major Ellis”—she indicated who he was—“will be speaking on behalf of the British East India Company. Major Ellis, please relay for us the information you received from the governor-general of India, Lord Dalhousie.”
Major Ellis rose from his chair. “Subjects of Jhansi,” he began, and immediately, men began to shout. The rani held up her hand, and there was silence.
“Lord Dalhousie, under the command of the British East India Company, has declared the kingdom of Jhansi to be British territory.” There was silence in the room. “The Rani of Jhansi shall take up residence in the Rani Mahal, where she will continue to be a source of inspiration for the people of Jhansi.”
They were reducing our capable rani to a figurehead. The rani would keep the Durga Dal and her personal guards, but the army of Jhansi no longer existed.
“A pension will be provided to the rani on a yearly basis, and her adopted son shall receive an inheritance that is as yet to be determined.” He lowered the paper.
“And when do the British plan to tell the rani what this pension will be?” the rani’s adviser Shri Bhakti demanded.
Major Ellis flushed. “
I’m sorry. That’s all I know.”
The rani’s other advisers rushed to their feet, but it was General Singh who shouted the loudest. “What about the Panch Mahal? What happens to the palace?”
“British officers will be arriving next week to take up residence.”
“In the palace my ancestors built?” someone cried.
“This is an outrage!” the Dewan said.
Someone else shouted threateningly, “This is the precursor to war!”
The rani stood. “We will conduct ourselves peacefully and with dignity. The move will begin tomorrow,” she said.
And then it was over and our kingdom belonged to the British.
Many people have asked me what it was like to move from the glittering Panch Mahal into the Rani Mahal. They imagine terrible scenes, but as anyone knows who has experienced an unpleasant change in their life, so long as it happens gradually, there is rarely drama. I suspect this was why the British gave the rani three months to change actual residences.
At first, the British didn’t want the rani to take any belongings with her. The carpets, the furniture, even the elaborate peacock throne—these were all things the British had hopes of keeping. But the rani wrote appeal after appeal, and finally, the governor-general himself weighed in with the following announcement: “It is beyond the power of the Government to dispose of the property of the late raja, which by law will belong to the boy he adopted. The adoption was good for the conveyance of private rights, but not for the transfer of the principality.”
“Do they understand the irony?” asked the rani, almost amused, instead of growing angry as her father did while he read the announcement aloud. “The adoption is legal when it comes to property rights, but is not legal when it comes to inheriting a throne.”
“They’re making up laws as they go along!” her father shouted.
But we were all so in shock that no one had any time for rage.