The Great Indian Novel (4 page)

When kings died without heirs in the days of the Raj, the consequences could be calamitous. Whereas in the past the royal house could simply have adopted a male child to continue the family’s hold on the throne, this was not quite as easy under the British, who had a tendency to declare the throne vacant and annex the territory for themselves. (We even fought a little war over the principle in 1857 - but the British won, and annexed a few more kingdoms.) Satyavati, whose desire to see her offspring on the throne had deprived Gangaji of more than a crown, turned to him anxiously.

‘It’s entirely in your hands,’ she pointed out. ‘If the British want, they can take over Hastinapur. But one thing can stop them - if we tell them one of the queens was pregnant at the time of Vichitravirya’s death, and that his legitimate heir is on his way into this world. Oh, Ganga, my son’s wives are still lovely and young; they can produce the heirs we need. Do your duty as a brother, as the son of my husband, and take Ambika and Ambalika to bed.’ She saw his expression. ‘Oh God, you’re going to tell me about your vow, aren’t you, Ganga? You took it, after all, for me. Now I’m asking you to ignore it, for the sake of the family - for your father’s dynasty.’

‘But I can’t, Mother,’ said Ganga piously. ‘A vow is a vow. I’d rather give up my position, this kingdom, the world itself, than break my promise.’

‘But no one need know,’ Satyavati remonstrated, adding, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘except the girls themselves.’

‘That’s bad enough,’ Ganga replied, ‘and it doesn’t matter whether someone knows or not. What’s essential is to remain true to one’s principles. My vow has never been so sorely tested, but I’m sorry, Mother, I won’t give in to untruth for any reason.’ (He tried not to sound pompous while saying this, and nearly succeeded.) ‘But don’t despair, the idea’s still a good one, and I’m not the only person who can fulfil it. Don’t forget that we have a long tradition of Brahmins coming to the rescue of barren Kshatriyas. It may have fallen somewhat into disuse in recent years, but it could be useful again today.’

‘Dvaipayana!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course - my son Ved Vyas! I hadn’t thought about him. If he’s anything like his father, he can certainly do the job.’

And indeed I could. We Brahmin sons never deny our mothers, and we never fail to rise to these occasions. I rose. I came.

Permit an old man a moment’s indulgence in nostalgia. The palace at Hastinapur was a great edifice in those days, a cream-and-pink tribute to the marriage of Western architecture and Eastern tastes. High-ceilinged rooms and airy passages supported by enormous rounded columns stretched ever onwards across a vast expanse of mosaic and marble. In the dusty courtyard beyond the front portico stood a solitary sedan, ready for any royal whim, its moustachioed chauffeur dozing at the wheel. The other vehicles lay in garages beyond, below the servants’ quarters where the washing hung gaily out to dry against walls of red brick - saris, dhotis, and, above all, the tell-tale uniforms of the numerous liveried attendants, brass buttons gleaming in the sunlight. The estate was all that was visible, lush lawns and flowered footpaths; the visitor was made conscious of a sense of spaciousness, that evidence of privilege in an overcrowded land. Inside, the cool marble, the sweeping stairways, the large halls, the furniture that seemed to have been bought to become antique, imposed rather than captivated. But one could walk through the mansion at peace with oneself, hearing only the soft padding of the servants’ bare feet, the tinkle of feminine laughter from the zenana, and the chirping melodies of the birds in the garden, being wafted indoors by the gentle afternoon breeze. And sometimes, when my ageing but still exquisite mother forgot herself, another noise could be heard, the high, tinny sound of a gramophone, Hastinapur’s only one, scratching out an incongruous waltz as a lonely head swayed silently in tune with the music.

At night there was stillness where once there was sound, and new sounds emerged where silence had reigned during the day. Raucous laughter from behind closed doors broadcast the young king’s pleasure: a fat madam musician played the harmonium while singing of romance through betel-stained lips, and lissom nautch-girls clashed their jingling
payals
with each assertive stamp of their hennaed heels. And Vichitravirya threw his head back in delight, flinging gold and silver coins, sometimes a jewel or a necklace, at the hired houri’s feet, or after a particularly heady mixture of music and ambrosia, tucking his reward into her low-bent cleavage as she pouted her gratitude. Then there followed all the frolic, and all the futility, of intoxication, which ended, eventually, in my princely half-brother’s death.

It was to this place that I went, and it was here that my mother told me anxiously why she had sent for me. ‘Of course I’ll help, Mother,’ I assured her, ‘provided my royal sisters-in-law are willing. For they have never seen me, and after a lifetime, even a short one, spent as a wandering Brahmin sage and preacher of sedition, I am not a pretty sight.’

My mother took in my sweat-stained
kurta,
my face burned black with constant exposure to the sun, the cracked heels of my much-walked feet, and the livid scar from a recent political encounter with the lathi-wielders of the Raj. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘But Ganga will take care of them.’

Between them, my mother and Ganga obtained the widows’ acquiescence - the issue of dynastic succession is, as every television viewer today knows, a powerful aphrodisiac. A few discreet inquiries and my father’s training enabled me to calculate the exact day required for the production of offspring. At the appointed moment Ambika, freshly bathed and richly adorned, was laid out on a canopied bed, and I duly entered the room, and her. But she was so appalled by the sight of her ravisher that she closed her eyes tightly throughout what one might have called, until the Americans confused the issue, the act of congress. Ambalika was more willing, but as afraid, and turned white with fear at my approach. The result, I warned my mother as I went to her to take my leave, was that the products of our union might be born blind and pale, respectively. So, on my last night Satyavati sent Ambika to me again, in the hope of doing better. But Ambika had had enough, and sent me a substitute, a maidservant of hers, bedecked in her mistress’ finery. By the time I discovered the deception it was too late, and a most agreeable deception it had proven, too. But I had made my plans to leave the next morning, and I slipped out as quietly and unobtrusively as I had come, leaving the secret of my visit locked in three wombs.

From Ambika emerged Dhritarashtra, blind, heir to the Hastinapur throne; from Ambalika, Pandu the pale, his brother; from the servant girl, Vidur the wise, one day counsellor to kings. Of all these I remained the unacknowledged father. Yes, Ganapathi, this is confession time.

The Second Book:
The Duel with The Crown

A
re you with me so far, Ganapathi? Got everything? I suppose you must have, or you couldn’t have taken it down, could you? Under our agreement, I mean.

But you must keep me in check, Ganapathi. I must learn to control my own excesses of phrase. It is all very well, at this stage of my life and career, to let myself go and unleash a few choice and pithy epithets I have been storing up for the purpose. But that would fly in the face of what has now become the Indian autobiographical tradition, laid down by a succession of eminent bald- heads from Rajaji to Chagla. The principle is simple: the more cantankerous the old man and the more controversial his memoirs, the more rigidly conventional is his writing. Look at Nirad Chaudhuri, who wrote his
Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
on that basis and promptly ceased to live up to its title. It is not a principle that these memoirs of a forgotten Indian can afford to abandon.

Right, Ganapathi? So, we’ve got the genealogies out of the way, my progeny are littering the palace at Hastinapur, and good old Ganga Datta is still safely ensconced as regent. No, on second thoughts, you’d better cut out that adverb, Ganapathi. ‘Safely’ wouldn’t be entirely accurate. A new British Resident, successor of the bewhiskered automobilist, is in place and is far from sure he likes what is going on.

Picture the situation for yourself. Gangaji, the man in charge of Hastinapur for all practical purposes, thin as a papaya plant, already balder then than I am today, peering at you through round-rimmed glasses that gave him the look of a startled owl. And the rest of his appearance was hardly what you would call prepossessing. He had by then burned his soup-and-fish and given away the elegant suits copied for him from the best British magazines by the court master-tailor; but to make matters worse, he was now beginning to shed part or most of even his traditional robes on all but state occasions. People were for ever barging into his study unexpectedly and finding him in nothing but a loincloth. ‘Excuse me, I was just preparing myself an enema,’ he would say, with a feeble smile, as if that explained everything. In fact, as you can well imagine, it only added to the confusion.

But it was not just the Regent’s personal eccentricities that were causing alarm at the Resident’s residence across the hill from the palace. Word was beginning to get around of Gangaji’s radical, indeed one might say, dangerous, ideas about the world around him.

‘He’s renounced sex, of course, but we knew that already,’ the new representative of the King-Emperor said to his equerry one evening on his verandah, as one of my men hung from a branch above and listened. (We ‘itinerant seditious fakirs,’ as that ignorant windbag Winston Churchill once called us, had to have our sources, you understand. Not all of them were happy with the ash-smearing requirement, but they and I learned more wandering about with a staff and a bowl under the British than I did after becoming a minister in independent India.) ‘Problem is, he’s now going further. Preaching a lot of damn nonsense about equality and justice and what have you. And you tell me he cleans his own toilet, instead of letting his damn
bhisti
do it.’

‘
Jamadar,
Sir Richard,’ the aide, a thin young man with a white pinched face, said, coughing politely. ‘A
bhisti
is only a water-carrier.’

‘Really?’ The Resident seemed surprised. ‘Thought those were called
lotas.’

‘They are, sir.’ The equerry coughed even more loudly this time.
‘Lotas
are those little pots you carry water in, I mean
they
carry water in, Sir Richard, whereas . . .’

‘A
bhisti
is the kind they have to balance on their heads, I suppose,’ Sir Richard said. ‘Damn complicated language, this Hindustani. Different words for everything.’

‘Yes, sir . . . I mean, no, sir,’ began the equerry, doubly unhappy about his own choice of words. He wanted to explain that a
bhisti
was a person, not a container. ‘What I mean is . . .’

‘And different genders, too,’ Sir Richard went on. ‘I mean, is there any good reason why a table should be feminine and a bed masculine? D’you think it has to do with what you do on them?’

‘Well, no, sir, not exactly.’ The young man began his reply cautiously, unsure whether the question required one. ‘It’s really a matter of word- endings, you see, sir, and . . .’

‘Ah, boy,’ said the Resident, cutting him in full flow, as a white-haired and white-shirted bearer padded in on bare feet, tray in hand. ‘About time, eh?’

It was the convivial hour. The sun had begun its precipitous descent into the unknown, and the distant sky was flaming orange, like saffron scattered on a heaving sea. In the gathering gloom the insects came into their own, buzzing, chirping, biting at the blotchy paleness of colonial flesh. This was when English minds turned to thoughts of drink. Twilight never lasts long in India, but its advent was like opening time at the pubs our rulers had left behind. The shadows fell and spirits rose; the sharp odour of quinine tonic, invented by lonely planters to drown and justify their solitary gins, mingled with the scent of frangipani from their leafy, insect-ridden gardens, and the soothing clink of ice against glass was only disturbed by the occasional slap of a frustrated palm against a reddening spot just vacated by an anglovorous mosquito.

‘Boy, whisky
lao. Chhota
whisky,
burra
water, understand? What will you have, Heaslop?’

‘A weak whisky will suit me very well, too, Sir Richard.’

‘Right. Two whiskies,
do
whisky, boy. And a big jug of water, understand. Not a little
lota,
eh? Bring it in a
bhisti. Bhisti men lao.’
He smiled in satisfaction at the bearer, who gave him an astonished look before bowing and salaaming his way backwards out of the room.

‘Er . . . if I might point out, sir -’

‘Nothing to it, really,’ Sir Richard continued. ‘These native languages don’t really have much to them, you know. And it’s not as if you have to write poetry in them. A few crucial words, sufficient English for ballast, and you’re sailing smoothly. In fact,’ his voice became confidential, ‘I even have a couple of tricks up my sleeve.’ He leaned towards the young man, his eyes, mouth and face all round in concentration. ‘ “There was a banned crow,” ‘ he intoned sonorously. ‘ “There was a cold day.” Not bad, eh? I learned those on the boat. Sounds like perfect Urdu, I’m told.’ He paused and frowned. ‘The devil of it is remembering which one means, “close the door,” and which one will get someone to open it. Well, never mind,’ he said, as his companion opened his mouth in diffident helpfulness. ‘We’re not here for a language lesson. I was speaking about this damn regent we have here. What d’you make of him, eh?’

‘Well, sir, he’s very able, there’s no question about that,’ Heaslop responded slowly. ‘And the people seem to hold him in some regard.’

‘They would, wouldn’t they, with all the ideas he puts into their head. All this nonsense about equality, and toilet-cleaning. I understand he’s suggesting that caste distinctions ought to be done away with. We’ve always believed they were the foundation of Indian society, haven’t we? And now a chap comes along out of nowhere, scion of the ruling caste, and says Untouchables are just as good as he is. How does he propose to put that little idea into practice, d’you know?’

‘He seems to believe in the force of moral authority, sir. He cleans his own toilet to show that there is nothing inherently shameful about the task, which, as you know, is normally performed by Untouchables.’ Sir Richard produced a sound which might have been prompted by a winged assault on his ear, or then again by Heaslop’s implied enthusiasm for Ganga’s stand. The young man continued, carefully moderating his tone. ‘He seems to think that by getting down to their level, he will make them more acceptable to the people at large. Untouchability is no longer legal in Hastinapur, but he knows it’s still impossible for a cobbler to get into the main temple. So he makes it a point of inviting an Untouchable, or a “Child of God”, as he calls them, to his room for a meal every week. As you can imagine, sir, this gets talked about.’

‘Favourably?’

‘I’d say public opinion is divided in about equal parts of admiration and resentment, sir. The latter mainly from the upper castes, of course.’

‘Of course. And how do they take all this at the palace? Regent or no Regent, there must be many who don’t agree with his ideas. Cleaning his own toilet, indeed.’

‘Absolutely, sir. We have heard that he tried to get the royal widows to clean their own bathrooms, sir, and they burst into tears. Or threw him out of the zenana. Or both.’ The equerry cleared his throat. ‘Old inhibitions die hard, sir. Our information is that the reason he entertains the Untouchables in his own room is that there were too many objections to their eating in any of the palace dining-rooms. And the attendant who serves them has strict instructions to destroy the plates afterwards, so that no one else need risk eating off them.’

‘Hmm. What about us?’

‘Er . . . us?’

‘Yes, Heaslop, us.’

The equerry looked nonplussed. ‘No, sir, I don’t think they destroy the plates
we’re
served on. But I haven’t really checked. Would you like me to?’

‘No, Heaslop.’ The Resident’s asperity was sharpened by the buzzing around his ears and his increasing desire for a drink. ‘I meant, what does he think about us? The British Raj; the King-Emperor. Is he loyal, or a damn traitor, or what?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’ The equerry shifted his weight in the cane chair. ‘He’s not an easy man to place, really. As you know, Sir Richard, there was a time when he was rather well regarded by us. Among the king’s most loyal subjects, in fact. He was a regular at receptions here. Even arranged a major contribution to the Ambulance Association, sir, during the last war. But of late, he has been known to say things about
swaraj,
you know, sir, self-rule. And about pan-Indian nationalism. No one seems to know what started him off on that track. They say he reads widely.’

‘Basic truth about the colonies, Heaslop. Any time there’s trouble, you can put it down to books. Too many of the wrong ideas getting into the heads of the wrong sorts of people. If ever the Empire comes to ruin, Heaslop, mark my words, the British publisher will be to blame.’