Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (28 page)

The duchess was just behind him, looking untidy, older and somewhat motherly in the faintly bawdy way of some doting mothers with big awkward sons: friendly, frumpy, a bit hunched, smallish and compact, potbellied in her tight combination of dark jacket and skirt—much too formal for this desert heat, more appropriate for a garden party in England, which she perhaps believed a maharajah's banquet to be the nearest equivalent. That was forgivable in someone who had never been to India before.

She touched the prince's arm and said in a vague and likable way, "Bother, I've forgotten my dark glasses."

Someone overheard her and quick-marched to deliver the order that the glasses must be found.

Prince Charles said to me, "What are you doing here?"

"Just traveling, sir. Heading south."

"Are you writing something?"

"Trying, Your Highness. Scribble, scribble."

This made him laugh. "I'm scribbling too. But not books. And not for publication, though I sometimes wish..." And instead of finishing the sentence, he laughed again.

The previous month, portions of the prince's Hong Kong diary had become public. He had printed it privately and circulated it among his friends. It was full of colorful observations and a few pointed ones, and the unexpected sharpness of these had made headlines in London newspapers. He had mocked the hand-over ceremony, called some of the Chinese notables "waxworks," spoken of the Chinese president's "propaganda speech," and scorned the goose-stepping Chinese soldiers. He also complained of being stuck in club class, rather than first, on his way out: "Such is the end of empire, I sighed to myself." What this proved was that though he may never be crowned king of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, he could still make a decent living as a travel writer with such breezy generalizations.

"Travel safely," he said. Then a photographer caught up with him, and he was posed with the staff for a group photo. As the picture was taken he said into the dazzling flash of the camera, "Are you absolutely sure you want me to do this?"

Then the duchess's dark glasses were found, and off the royals went to their private plane. They had an entourage of twenty-six people, including the prince's private chef.

"The prince apparently doesn't like your food," I said, teasing a man who told me he had helped organize the royal visit.

"Oh, his highness is very particular about his meals," the man said, suddenly fussed and stern, as though remembering. "There was quite a hullabaloo here to find the ingredients for a certain kind of brown bread that the prince likes to eat. Certain herbs. They finally found them somewhere in the market."

***

ANOTHER DAY, I HAD TEA
with Maharajah Gai Singh II. The thirty-eighth Rathore Chief of Marwar and Maharajah of Jodhpur was fifty-eight but seemed older, with the weather-beaten air of an aged warrior. He had assumed the throne and had taken on the title of maharajah at the age of four, on the death of his father. He was well known for having
no pretensions. He may have been descended from Surya, the sun god, but he urged everyone to call him Bapji—Daddy Dearest. Just as well. The English had never allowed themselves to be impressed with semi-divine claims of ancestry. In Victorian times, the College of Heralds stated: "The Aga Khan is held by his followers to be a direct descendant of God. English Dukes take precedence."

Bapji had allowed part of the Umaid Bhawan Palace to be converted to a hotel, in much the same spirit as some of the hard-up English aristocracy with their castles and stately homes, turning them into museums and teahouses, fitting them for rose garden tours and game parks and croquet lawns, so that they could go on living in one wing and paying the bills. In the most heavy-handed way, by amending the Indian constitution in 1969, Indira Gandhi had stripped the Indian royals of their privy purses. In response, some maharajahs became businessmen, others became landlords, and many sold the family silver. Indian antique dealers were always unwrapping daggers or crystal goblets adorned with crests and saying, "Royal family of Cooch Behar, sir. Deaccessioned, sir. I obtained the whole blooming lot, sir."

Bapji had made himself popular as a member of the Indian parliament and as an ambassador. To raise funds, he had collaborated with the Taj Group in creating a luxury hotel. Over the years, it had fallen into disrepair, but it was restored to its former glory. It was also something of a menagerie of the moribund—toothy tiger heads on most walls, stuffed leopards in feline attitudes on plinths and above staircases, buffalo, antlered bucks, pairs of enormous elephant tusks in the game room and even in the private apartments—trophies of alpha males gathering dust, and photos of memorable days: upright hunters cradling rifles, with their boots resting on dead tigers and dead leopards.

"Welcome, please sit," Bapji said when I arrived in his study. He was a stoutish man in a traditional Rajasthani outfit resembling white pajamas, the long shirt called a
kurta,
and tight trousers—jodhpurs indeed. And he was barefoot. The room was a repository of family photographs and books and files, and on the coffee table in front of me, videocassettes of
Godzilla, Great Journeys,
and
Yes, Minister.
A cricket match was in progress on a television across the room, and it remained on, Bapji glancing at it from time to time throughout our conversation.

"Things have settled down. It was quite busy with the royal visit, as you can imagine. But it was a private visit."

"What other kind is there?"

"A formal visit. In that case it would be state-sponsored. The prince would get one day off—the informal part of a formal visit, so to say. But this one he paid for himself."

"He seemed pretty jolly."

"He's happy. She's happy too."

It seemed to me that Bapji and Charles were about the same age. I said, "You weren't at school with him by any chance?"

"I was at Eton. Then Oxford—Christ Church, the first in my family to go to Oxford. He was at school at Gordonstoun." Bapji smiled. "A grim place—highly spartan. He would have been happier at Eton. His boys went there."

"Had you met the duchess before?"

"I knew her brother, Mark Shand. And she has a sister Annabel. I don't know her."

A servant brought tea and cookies. I asked Bapji about his ancestry—whether it was true, as I'd heard, that his family was descended from the sun deity.

"It's true, we're associated with Surya," he said. "There is no sun worship as such, but you know the yoga position, the
surya namaskar.
Our family goes back to the
Ramayana.
We are
kshattriya
—warrior caste."

This was a delicate way of putting it: the family claims descent from Lord Rama, who is associated with the sun. By contrast, Lord Krishna is associated with the moon.

"This is all documented?"

"Oh, yes. Our family history is well recorded. My ancestors arrived in these parts in 1211. Prior to that, the grandson of Jai Chand ruled, so our family traces their relation to the Rashstra Kuta family, early in the tenth century."

He was speaking of a family tree stretching back a thousand years, from branches to roots.

"I seem to remember being in a sun temple."

"There's one in Jaipur."

It was at the height of Galta Gorge, near a temple I had visited long ago on the outskirts of the city.

"Are you fasting for Navratri?"

"I am doing my best. Fasting depends on choice. Some people eat nothing for nine days—take only water. Some eat one meal. Some eat
fruit. And there are Rajputs who kill a goat—as a
prasad,
an offering. Alcohol is also offered. And, yes, some drink it."

"I hadn't realized that everyone did something different."

"I'll tell you," he said.

"I hope you don't mind my writing this down," I said. "I find this interesting."

He waggled his head in the Indian way, meaning, Okay. And now I realized what was lovable about him, what made him sound trustworthy and unpedantic: it was his lisp, a slight slushiness of delivery, a lopsidedness in his jaw, which made him seem, in spite of his full mustache, like a small boy.

"Each community assigns special values to certain foods. That which makes you strong and excitable is forbidden to Brahmins, because theirs is an ascetic tradition. But a sadhu might smoke hashish"—and he raised his hand and puffed an imaginary joint. "But
bhang
is not smoked. It is powdered and made into milkshakes, called
thandhai."

"What's the mixture?"

"Milk, water, ground almonds, and some other ingredients added to it. And of course the
bhang
—you call it cannabis? It makes you pretty silly."

"I must try it"

"Some people start laughing. Some people pout," Bapji said. "Opium eating is also part of our culture. That's become a ritual in western Rajasthan. In the past it was common, eating opium."

"No religious sanction against it?"

"No. It's a tradition. We
kshattriyas
can eat meat and drink alcohol, though within the
kshattriya
caste there are some differences. Especially at the two ends of the spectrum, you can say—the high castes at one end, and the scheduled and tribals at the other end."

"I thought vegetarianism was the norm," I said.

"There is an untruth abroad that the majority of Indians are vegetarians." He laughed in refutation and wiggled his toes. "It's not true. One Englishman made a study. He found that, on balance, there are more nonvegetarians than vegetarians in India."

"You eat meat, sir?"

"Us, yes, meat eaters! Hunting was part of our tradition. And there was a tradition of a goat being slaughtered in front of the temple." He made a slicing, throat-cutting gesture with one hand. "I saw you at the
puja
the other day at the fort. Goat sacrifice would have been done there some years ago."

"How long ago?"

"In my lifetime," he said. Not long ago—he'd been born in 1948. "As a young boy I saw it, the killing of the goat. It was very shocking to me. But my mother said, 'It is part of growing up. If the sight of blood bothers you, you can't be a warrior. "

I loved his candor, his ability to talk about anything, his interest in explaining the minutiae of drug use and goat sacrifice. He leaned forward, eager with a new detail.

"There are subtleties, you see. Apparently, if the goat doesn't shudder, it won't be accepted as a sacrifice. The animal needs to be afraid, to be suitably terrified, to stand still but also to visibly show fear. If not, you take it away and put a ring in its ear. The animal is impure."

Though Bapji did not say so, I later learned from pilgrims that at the Kali temples—deemed very sacred—in Kolkata and Gauhati, goats (always black ones) are beheaded and bled as sacrifices every day, sometimes as many as fifteen or twenty. The carcasses are later butchered, cooked in the temple kitchens, and served in curries to the poor.

Behind his head was a shelf of photographs. I recognized one as being the Rajmata of Jaipur, the former Gayatri Devi, a great beauty in her time. Rajmata literally means queen mother. She had endured a number of hardships—not just the early death of her husband and eldest son, but a fairly long and vindictive imprisonment by Mrs. Gandhi for refusing to knuckle under when the constitution was arbitrarily changed. A heavy smoker, known to be a connoisseur of single-malt whiskey, the rajmata lived in Jaipur much the way Babji did, in an annex of her grand palace.

Bapji explained the connection: "The first wife of the Maharajah of Jaipur was the sister of my grandfather. The deal was that his niece would also marry. So aunt and daughter"—that is, the sister and her daughter, I guessed—"were both married to the same man. The aunt was eight or nine years older than he was—you see, he was only fifteen."

I was somewhat lost in this explanation, and not sure of the dates, but it was so steamy in its complexity it didn't matter. I urged him to go on.

"His British guardian wouldn't let them cohabit. She came out of the bedroom in a huff. 'What's the point of being married if I can't sleep in there? Ha-ha!"

He got up and stretched, and we walked to the wide pink balcony that overlooked the palace gardens, a white marble pavilion shimmering in the distance on the green lawn. He said, "I was born in this palace. This was my only home. How old are you?"

I told him.

"You look younger than me," he said.

But then his life had been somewhat more eventful than mine, not just his glorious birth as a descendant of Lord Rama, the relentless rituals, the goat sacrifices, and the prophetic assumption of his mother, the reigning maharani: "You must be a warrior." But his becoming a maharajah at the age of four, after his father, just twenty-eight, died in an air crash. His princely world of privilege had been turned upside down by Mrs. Gandhi. Still in his twenties, he'd been a diplomat, the Indian high commissioner to Trinidad. And there was his son's tragic accident, something else to age him.

As if that weren't commotion enough, there was an unstable younger brother—illegitimate and vindictive—who made several attempts to behead Bapji. On one occasion, the filmmaker Ismail Merchant, who had made a movie at the palace, was present, and watched horrified as the crazed brother blundered into a dinner party and swiped at the guests with a sword. Ultimately, Merchant reported, this mad, disinherited brother was himself beheaded and cut to pieces. All this Babji seemed to bear with equanimity.

"Maybe I should do yoga," Bapji said, clutching his belly through his
kurta.

"How did you like diplomatic life?"

"I enjoyed it. I got on very well with the Indians in Trinidad. They were keeping the balance, and so was I. It was like walking a tightrope. But I told them that I was not their high commissioner. They were Trinidadians, weren't they? I made it plain to them that I was not batting on their side."

Probably it was the cricket match on television that brought back the memory and the metaphor.

"My predecessor was an old Muslim gentleman who wrote a memo to the effect that he wanted to ban cricket tours between India and Trinidad because they aroused strong emotions." He laughed recalling it. "A black Trinidadian came to me and said, 'We want cricket tours! We want
to see Gavaskar!'"—a great batsman. "'What happens among us is our problem!'"