In the City of Gold and Silver (8 page)

In the palaces the atmosphere is gloomy, life seems to have come to a standstill, and the women drift about aimlessly. Without the king's visits to look forward to, they while away the time, having their hair done and being massaged with perfumed oils for hours on end. But now, these previously joyful rituals have a bitter taste: whom are they making themselves beautiful for? The very idea seems absurd, even shameful. These women existed for “the beloved,” for a glance, a word, a smile from him . . . From now on, for whom and for what exactly are they living?

Hazrat Mahal no longer leaves her apartments. She could never abide all the gossip and backbiting anyway, let alone the whining. And while her sworn enemy, the first wife, has gone, she has also lost her protector, the Queen Mother. She now realises how much the latter had done to smooth her way. The cutting remarks and treacherous innuendos she suffered after the king's departure—“You poor darling, he did not want to take you . . . How strange, we all thought you were so close to him . . . !”—were more surprising than painful. She did not know how jealous the others were of her.

Nevertheless, thinking about it, she has to acknowledge that the women in the zenana react very much like her young companions from the time she was a part of Amman and Imaman's household, and that possibly it is her attitude that provokes them. She is never unpleasant, but she does nothing to nurture the easy relationships that make life in such a confined atmosphere more bearable. She prefers to spend her time alone, reading or composing poems, rather than participating in games and chatter she considers childish. Even if she is always polite and even-tempered, her indifference incites bitterness and resentment. Anyway, she has long abandoned the adolescent illusion of wanting to be loved by everyone. After all, what is the point of being appreciated by people one has not much regard for? Obviously, living this way implies a certain isolation, but apart from the few months of happiness spent with her husband, the king, until he moved on to others, solitude has been her most precious companion for a long time now.

Her son? Birjis Qadar, the apple of her eye—for whom she would give her life a thousand times over—she almost never sees him since he had been entrusted to the tutors.

Lost in her thoughts, Hazrat Mahal has not heard Mammoo enter.

“Huzoor?” The eunuch coughs discreetly. “Huzoor?”

Smiling, she watches him approach. After eleven years in her service, he has not changed much, apart from a slight plumpness and prematurely whitened hair that he dyes with henna, leaving a carrot-like tinge of questionable taste, which—given his oversensitivity—she refrains from commenting on.

“Huzoor, I have just returned from the great mosque. Something terrible has happened! Can you imagine, after the morning prayer, His Majesty's brother, Prince Mustafa Ali Khan, gave a speech inciting the faithful to disobey the foreigners. The people applauded him, but guards waiting at the exit forcibly led him away to the chief commissioner's
38
headquarters. The crowd tried to intervene, but the guards had their rifles trained on them, so the people could do nothing but shout insults against the Angrez.”

“May Allah protect the poor prince! He is simple-minded, irresponsible! I wonder who drove him to make such a declaration . . . ”

“The chief commissioner has already ordered an enquiry and has threatened the prince with exile should it happen again. Sir James has no intention of taking any risks, as he seems to fear a rebellion. The population is up in arms against the foreigners. In the streets they do not acknowledge them, in the bazaar the shopkeepers refuse to extend any further credit
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and even the porters refuse to carry their packages.”

At the idea of an English person weighed down with cumbersome packages, panting and sweating, Hazrat Mahal cannot suppress a mocking smile. What a great lesson! How long can it last though? She knows her compatriots are first and foremost realists, and how could she possibly blame the poor for making the compromises she reproaches the rich for? Can one bite the hand that feeds you your daily
chapati
40
? Great principles rarely withstand hunger . . . As a child, she saw the ravages misery wrought around her, and since then, she has often wondered whether traditional morality has a place in these extreme situations, or even whether it has any meaning at all . . . This morality, flouted daily by the virtuous circle of the wealthy, who cry “thief!” whenever a starving man summons the courage to “steal” something to feed himself with.

Which of them is the criminal? Who should be judged?

 

As evening falls, the sky gradually turns a pink hue and flocks of starlings initiate their graceful ballet while on the edges of the fountains, nightingales trill, competing with one another. Mammoo has retired. Hazrat Mahal has asked for her writing case to be brought to her. Since the king's departure, she has received no news from him, but every day she keeps her diary scrupulously up to date for him. How will she send it? She does not know yet, but the eunuch has promised to find a safe way.

After the excitement of being entrusted with such an important mission, she has begun to doubt: is this journal really the king's idea or the Queen Mother's invention to console her for having been abandoned, and to give her existence in the zenana some meaning? It used to be so cheerful here, but since the departure of the man who was its very
raison d'être
, this zenana has been reduced to an absurd monstrosity, a prison where the most beautiful women of the kingdom wilt away. Will Wajid Ali Shah ever return?

And if he does not return, will I remain here, buried alive? At the age of twenty-five, can my life already be over . . . ?

Her throat constricted with anxiety, she paces up and down her bedroom. She refuses to lament like all these fools, who are mainly prisoners of their luxurious and indolent habits. Her life has never followed a chalked-out path; she has boundless energy and an ardent desire to live. If the sovereign does not return, she will leave the zenana. How? To go where? She has no idea. She only knows that she will survive, as she has done so far, always managing to extricate herself from the most difficult situations.

 

* * *

 

The new British authorities were expecting the population's gratitude, but they were quickly disillusioned. Despite their claims that those dissatisfied are in a minority, they have felt it necessary to post spies everywhere and adopt a series of measures to consolidate their power. They must obliterate all memory of the previous regime, the governor general from Calcutta recommends: “Our authority will be contested until the people have forgotten their king.”*

To this end, everything that evokes the magnificence of the dynasty is to be destroyed, dispersed or confiscated.

It starts with the superb zoo that Wajid Ali Shah had set up along the banks of the river Gomti, which he loved to visit in his impressive fish-shaped boat. Seven thousand animals are thus auctioned off: hundreds of lions, elephants, tigers, two thousand thoroughbreds from the royal stables, thousands of peacocks, parrots and homing pigeons. Everything is bought by Europeans and their “lackeys,” as no respectable Indian would contemplate acquiring the spoils of the kingdom. All the more so as the profits from the sales are to be handed over to the East India Company.

 

In May, Sir James Outram, who is unwell, is replaced by Coverley Jackson, the new chief commissioner, a man with brutal manners who does nothing to hide his contempt for the “natives.” With his zeal for reform, he turns a deaf ear to any advice advocating caution. He orders the demolition of some of the town's ancient monuments in order to, he declares, make room for wide avenues and a railway track. The inhabitants of Lucknow watch, broken-hearted, as palaces and stately houses are razed to the ground. The great Khas Bazaar, the most important market for luxury goods in the whole of north India, is also destroyed. Many religious buildings are torn down too, in particular a small Hindu temple—a revered pilgrimage site. As for Kadam Rasul, the monument erected to house a stone believed to bear the impression of the Prophet Muhammad's footprint, it is transformed into a storehouse for gunpowder.

The population is sickened by what it perceives as arbitrary measures designed to destroy the capital's beauty and to erase the very memory of its grandeur. All kinds of rumours circulate: “The king has been taken prisoner. Nobody knows where he is . . . The king has fallen ill with grief, they fear for his life . . . ”

On May 15th, news declaring the sovereign has been reinstated and British rule is over draws everyone out into the streets. Yet again the information is false and the chief commissioner, furious at these challenges to the new order, has the ringleaders arrested and publicly hanged. He does not dare go so far as to have the publisher of the weekly
Tilism
executed for publishing this information, but, in order to set an example, he condemns him to three months' imprisonment.

Coverly Jackson has no compunction either about confiscating Wajid Ali Shah's precious library for the Company, with its forty-five thousand works and ancient manuscripts of inestimable value. In vain, the Lucknawis accuse him of theft, but as with the sale of the king's menagerie, he just does not care. In charge of administering Awadh, he takes the decisions he deems necessary and has no intention of allowing the population's moods to influence him.

To cap it all, on August 18th, Jackson delivers the final blow intended to destroy the very foundations of the previous regime. A decree is passed ordering the taluqdars to disarm the six hundred and twenty-three forts and the troops they maintained in order to preserve a certain independence
vis-à-vis
the capital. What the sovereigns of Awadh tolerated, British authority now opposes. It intends to centralise power and thus prevent any kind of resistance to the new agrarian reform.

Under the influence of puritanical rigour and notions of social justice currently in vogue in England, the decision to dispossess the taluqdar, “this hedonist, this exploiter,” is taken to benefit the peasant who works the land. One way the British do this is to demand the payment of taxes before the sale of the May harvest. As most of the taluqdars do not possess the necessary funds, their land is confiscated and then handed over to the farmers. Thus, this is not only a “highly moral action” but also a means of decapitating the opposition—leaving the ruined feudal lords without the means to challenge the new regime—while the British gain the eternal gratitude of millions of poor wretches, who, in the event of problems, will surely come out in support of their recent benefactors.

 

* * *

 

“We have to fight! We cannot just sit by and watch them strip us of our rights!”

About thirty taluqdars are gathered in the comfortable
mardana
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belonging to the Rajah of Tarapur. The situation is serious. The unyielding administration has refused to extend the deadline for them to make their payments, and despite all their efforts—family jewels pawned, loans at usurious rates—many of the important landowners have not been able to amass the required funds. Some have been thrown into prison, others have fled to escape this indignity, yet others have barricaded themselves into their forts with the firm intention of resisting. In the district of Faizabad alone, where the taluqdars possessed eight thousand villages, they have lost half of them. In the Bahraich district, one third of the villages have been confiscated.

“Did you know that they wanted to throw the old Rajah of Kalakankar into prison, but he was so ill, they agreed to take his eldest son instead?”

“They have even incarcerated a poor simpleton, the taluqdar of Bhadri's adopted son, on the pretext that the man could not settle all his taxes before the end of May!”

Each of them cites examples of recently imprisoned friends or relations.

“What a disgrace! What on earth are they trying to do?”

“Simple, they want to ruin and dishonour us to eradicate any influence we have over our farmers, assuming sole responsibility as masters.”

“In my opinion it is more complicated than that,” intervenes a man with a white beard. “The English are not only avaricious, they are convinced only they possess the ultimate truth which they then claim must be spread worldwide. It is a sense of superiority that stems from their ignorance of other civilisations. The strongest rarely take the trouble to understand those they dominate, they just pick up some details they find shocking or funny with which to reinforce their prejudices.”

“When we try to explain something to them, even when we manage to prove them wrong, they just dig their heels in and end the discussion!”

“Obviously! They need to turn a blind eye. If they did not believe themselves much more advanced, how could they legitimise their domination? If they realised that their culture, their religion, their system of government are not superior to others, they would have no justification for imposing them. They would be forced to admit that the ideals they spout—creating a better world, defending the oppressed—are only empty words that conceal their desire to appropriate the resources of people who cannot defend themselves.”

“Exactly what they did when they deposed our king and confiscated our properties on the pretext of immorality,” approves a hefty taluqdar, smoothing his moustache. “These British are the devil incarnate!”

“Do not let yourself be fooled, my friend, not only the British use these methods but the powers that be in general. They have always behaved in this manner and will continue to do so.”

“In this regard I find the animal world far superior,” remarks an old taluqdar
.
“They kill only to satisfy their vital needs, letting other creatures live. With men, there is no limit to their greed. They accumulate more wealth than they have use for, and too bad for those whom they plunge into misery!”