Never Mind the Bullocks (33 page)

Where one state authority left off, the other picked up; or rather didn't. It looked like the MP government had gone off to spend the road budget, if there even was such a thing, elsewhere; the NH47 stretch between the Gujarat border and Indore was truly and unequivocally the
worst
section of national highway I had driven on. There were potholes everywhere. The road would sometimes even out for a couple of kilometres or so, but soon I'd be back to steering Abhilasha between the craters, or, when there was no choice, slowing her right down and having to dip through the trenches, gritting my teeth at the sound of rocks thumping angrily on the bottom of
the undercarriage. My hope of continuing at our previous pace all the way to Indore was a pipe dream: the first 150 km took us five hours, while the remaining 45 km between the aptly named town of Lebad and Indore took a further three and a half. By that time the sun had long since set and I was driving with tears in my eyes, this time least of all from the pain of oncoming full beams and mostly out of pure exhaustion and frustration at the slow-moving odometer.

Finally, on the outskirts of town somewhere near the airport, I was waved down by a rickshaw driver whose fraught motioning seemed more than merely the standard salute to the nitwit in the Nano that I so regularly enjoyed. I pulled over to the side of the road and saw with the help of the rickshaw's headlight, which the driver had thoughtfully angled directly at Abhilasha's right flank, that her new front tyre had already given up the ghost. Within minutes we were joined by half a dozen more rickshaw-wallahs, who all appeared to be friends with the guy who had stopped me and were infinitely more pleased than I was at the prospect of a Nano in need.

Given the last seven hours' jolting around, the flat didn't come as much of a surprise. Probably because the road had us shuddering and shaking anyway, I hadn't noticed it and had no idea how far we'd driven with a deflated tyre. Luckily for me, Team Rickshaw were more than willing to take on the task of replacing the wheel, making me feel like it was more of a privilege than a favour. I perched on the edge of the driver's seat and watched with consternation as the volunteer mechanics ratcheted the hubcap off and back on at lightning speed. Tired and dozy from the beating we'd taken from the NH59, I was deeply grateful to them, though I could think of no other way of showing my gratitude at 10 pm on a far-flung Indore roadside than slipping a couple of hundred rupees into the pocket of the driver who had spotted me. But their service didn't end
there: compelled by a sense of chivalry or perhaps a lingering paternal urge, the group insisted on giving me a full rickshaw escort to my hotel, where they waited until Abhilasha was parked in the lot and I was safely through the doors, luggage in tow, and in the capable hands of reception staff.

It occurred to me the next afternoon as I descended the stone staircase to the Maharaja's house that the old place might have suffered some infrastructural decline in the decade since I was last there. The dwelling itself was a stocky stone building whose once-white walls were blackening with the spread of a dark moss or lichen that appeared to be thriving in the humid heat. It was situated on a rocky outcrop on the banks of the river Narmada, just by the footbridge that led to the island of Omkareshwar, a place of pilgrimage for acolytes of Shiva.

As I rounded the old stone walls and came to the front of the house, my suitcase trundling loudly in tow, I saw the Maharaja sitting at a table on the terrace outside his kitchen, flanked by a couple of dogs. Although his title lost most of its political sway many decades ago with India's independence, the Maharaja, who was descended from a line of local royalty, still had a distinctly regal air about him. Clad in a white vest and pyjamas and flanked by his two dogs, he was every bit the landowner and district suzerain, living in what looked like an ailing residence said to be several hundred years old. After a fleeting moment of surprise at my arrival, he shot up out of his chair.

‘Welcome, welcome!' he exclaimed, shaking my hand and calling for his daughter from the kitchen, who hurried out to complete the welcoming committee. I told them I hoped my late arrival hadn't scuppered their plans for a cocktail party, but
the Maharaja waved away my concern and cut straight to the chase.

‘What do you say we kick things off with a peg of whisky?'

I'd have preferred a dry Martini, but as I was to discover, the Maharaja's cocktail cabinet was limited to two substances: whisky and gin. Whisky it was: a bottle of Royal Choice marked with a stamp that read ‘For sale to military personnel only' was opened by the Maharaja's daughter, poured into two glasses and swiftly necked by myself and my host.

The Maharaja suggested I take my bags to my room straight away, lest, I imagine, I should have to crawl there later under the hazy spell of military-issue whisky. Ostensibly the only guest there, I was given the best digs in the house, the highly coveted Room Number One, which the Maharaja told me had recently been vacated by a Belgian guy.

‘He was a fine fellow,' the Maharaja told me. ‘He stayed in this room for an entire year with a very large lingam for company.'

High ceilings and ogee-arched recesses with a double door leading out onto the precipice right above the river nonetheless failed to mask the decrepitude of a building the family told me was over 600 years old. Damp to the core, and with a layer of white paint peeling off to reveal a wash of turquoise underneath, the most striking feature of the room was its host of inhabitants. I disturbed a cockroach that scuttled across the floor as I walked in and, once inside, I heard the brief squeaks of a creature under the bed, which also made a run for it but was caught mid-flight in the unforgiving jaws of the largest member of the Maharaja's pack of dogs, who had stealthily snuck in behind me.

Disturbed at the cold-blooded kill that had just taken place, I managed to ascertain as the dog trotted triumphantly out onto the porch that the animal between his jaws was not a rat as I had hoped, but the limp body of what had been a cute
little squirrel. Two other squirrels raced out in the wake of their deceased brother, as a gecko shot past me, climbing up the nearest wall and into a crack by the doorframe. Later, to compound the zoological congregation, I also saw an enormous – what I would call Jurassic Park–sized – snake slither across a rock about two metres past the doors of my room that opened onto the river.

The hapless squirrel's corpse was subsequently toyed with for two hours by the happy hound, who was compelled to parade his prey to and fro across the main terrace. His royal master was largely oblivious to this display, far more focused on his Royal Choice and deciding what we were going to eat for dinner. I was invited to join him as more pegs were poured and his daughter and another woman worked in the kitchen, peeling garlic and shallots cross-legged on the floor while a television set in the back of the room beamed out a 1980s Bollywood movie in fuzzy analogue.

The last decade hadn't changed the Maharaja one bit; at 78, he cut a stout figure. He smoothed his moustache while losing himself in stories about hunting, shooting tigers, the various excellent fellows he had known and other chronicles of what he made sound like the good old days of the Raj (though I calculated he had been just a teenager at the time of Independence). He spoke about the Holkar dynasty and their palace on the opposite shore of the island, and how his own portrait hung there in the hall of fame, but try as I might, I couldn't quite fathom where the Maharaja stood in the greater scheme of the royal family tree. As the whisky began to take its toll on both of us, I could have sworn his accent grew thicker, or my ears grew more cabbage-like, and I had increasing difficulty making out what he said. Swathes of incomprehensible utterances were interspersed with very clear phrases like ‘I stood facing the beast with my rifle; it was my life or his…' Still, I was hanging
on to every expression. The Maharaja had an incredible knack for storytelling, and even if I couldn't quite discern every word, it didn't matter. We were just getting drunk, having a chunter and eating his daughter's incredible chicken curry, which, although apparently tempered for my western buds, still had the effect of torching my palate and made for fireworks on the loo the next day. Mouth burning from the spices, I drank more whisky, and so the evening passed until the Maharaja doubled in my vision and I figured it was time for bed. He bid me goodnight and drained the last dregs of the bottle. Who was this guy, Hunter S. Thomson?

The next morning I woke up with a feeling that Godzilla had tunnelled into my brain and was performing star jumps while roaring into a megaphone. The bed was so damp I could have been sleeping in a paddling pool, and I had to shoo a tiny frog away from the toilet bowl before folding over it in a very uncomfortable squat. As the fog of unconsciousness began to lift, I realized the noise I thought was a Japanese monster roaring ferociously from inside my skull was actually coming from outside. Gunfire.

I opened the double doors of my room to find the Maharaja brandishing his shotgun.

‘It's a little early for hunting, isn't it?' I mumbled, fumbling for my sunglasses.

The Maharaja was unmoved. Wearing a long-sleeved grey vest and pyjama bottoms, he stalked the rocky ground outside my room, aiming the barrel of his rifle into the overhead branches of the surrounding trees.

‘Damn monkeys!' he cried as he fired off a couple of shots. Satisfied that the gun was pointed high enough for the bullets to miss the top of my head, I stepped outside. Sure enough, the branches were occupied by at least half a dozen primates who were showing the old man their teeth like they were egging
him on. Incredulous how anyone could even think about engaging in armed conflict with a group of monkeys only a few hours after draining a bottle of Royal Choice, I concluded that the Maharaja was three times the man I could ever hope to be.

An hour or so later, as I was still lying on my bed, trying to pick up the will to finish the final leg of our trip back to Mumbai, I discovered the source of the Maharaja's monkey misgivings. I noticed a figure standing in the doorway that I had left open for the breeze; it was a primate, about one metre tall; from a quick look at its genitalia, I deduced it was a bloke.

There was something extremely disconcerting about being in the presence of an animal about half my size with whose genus I had little hands-on experience. I immediately stood up, grabbed the nearest weapon I could find, which was a water bottle, and made threatening gestures towards the monkey, who eyed me with the nonchalance of a bored audience considering a mid-show exit. Instead of legging it back out of the door as I had anticipated he would, the monkey turned instead to face me full frontal and opened his mouth to bare his teeth in a sort of terrifying yawn.

Sweet Bubbles, how was he not scared of me? Faced with a creature twice my size, making strange noises and swinging an empty bottle of water around in the air, I'd have run for the hills. There was a moment of silence in our face-off when I put down the bottle and watched as his eyes darted slightly to the right. I knew exactly what he was looking at. On a chair in the corner was a green plastic bag containing several bananas, some biscuits, nuts and possibly an apple. The monkey had identified his target, and he was willing to risk a pummelling by plastic to get it.

Disheartened by his indifference to my earlier intimidation tactics, I began to feel a twinge of panic at the sheer force of the creature's determination. Where was the Maharaja with his
shotgun when I needed him? I thought about lobbing the bottle in the monkey's direction, but decided it might start an all-out war that would most likely end in my being quarantined to the rabies unit at an Indore hospital. I figured the best plan to get him out of the room was to take away the thing he had come for. I started to sidestep slowly towards the bag at exactly the same time the monkey decided to go for it. We moved towards each other with duel-like intensity. I grabbed the bag and he shot back. Without giving it another thought, I leapt into the bathroom and locked the door, hoping the monkey wouldn't decide my camera or laptop was a sufficient booby prize.

A few minutes later, I emerged to find the simian out on the porch in front of my room, engaged in an act of self-stimulation that I presumed was intended to show me the greatest gesture of disrespect a primate could bestow on a human. I watched aghast from behind the door as he finished himself off before making for the treetops, leaving nothing but a small pool of monkey spunk to remember him by.