The Ravi Lancers (6 page)

A dozen chickens burst into the air like a bomb of bursting feathers from under the wheels. The young man cried out involuntarily, and looked back over his shoulder. He saw four racing chickens, and one bundle of white feathers in the road. ‘It is nothing, lord,’ the orderly beside him said, ‘they have plenty of chickens.’ But Krishna pressed on the brake and brought the car to a standstill. ‘Run back, Hanuman,’ he said, ‘and bring the owner of the chickens to me. I’ll pay her.’

The orderly got out of the car, grumbling, flicked dried mud spots off his ornate yellow tunic and turban and walked back down the road. A woman ran out of a hut, picked up the dead chicken by its neck, and hurried forward, her other hand outstretched. ‘Murderer!’ she cried, ‘villain, robber of widows! The apple of my eye, the most valuable of all our hens, a great layer ...’

‘Quiet, woman, quiet!’ Hanuman said. ‘You are lucky. Your chicken has been killed by the august Lord Krishna Ram, Son of the Sun, grandson and heir of our Rajah.’

The woman stared at Krishna and then stooped low, hiding her bowed face behind joined palms. She crept closer, muttering, ‘Maharaj ... maharaj.’

‘Here!’ Krishna felt in his pocket and gave her an eight-anna piece.

She took it and bent to kiss his feet where he had swung them negligently out of the open door and rested them on the running board. She recoiled when she saw he was wearing European shoes.

Hanuman said, ‘Go, woman, and be thankful, for thou knowest the chick was not worth four annas.’ He gave her a push, climbed up into the car and settled his squat form beside his lord. Krishna put the car into gear and headed north again, but at a slower speed. The sun had set. It was the hour when the world lost its edges, and the eye could not tell whether the looming mountains were nearer or farther than the village ahead, or the lone temple on the far bank of the Ravi. Krishna switched on the headlights but their beams, too, blended into the universal warmth of twilight.

Low hills began to rise on either side, and the road curved into the Ravi gorge below Basohli, his grandfather’s capital. He drove slowly through a village, its mud houses set under a cliff along the bank of the great river, among tall trees. Women at the water’s edge covered their faces with the ends of their saris as they saw the car approach. Men made low salaams when they recognized the Rajah’s yellow livery in the front seat, bowing to the dark-skinned servant in his yellow splendour rather than to the paleskinned young man at the wheel, who might have been a European. They don’t see many English here, Krishna thought; the English go up to Dalhousie and Bakloh to the east or Sialkot to the west, but this road leads only to Basohli... and what would any Englishman want there? Woodsmoke from the evening cooking fires touched his nostrils, and drifts of it trailed like blue scarves across the road. A line of cattle plodded out from among the houses, and Hanuman said sharply, ‘Careful, lord! ‘ Krishna sighed, and slowed still more. The cattle were sacred, of course. His poor country would never rise until the people outgrew such superstitions. Even here in the rich foothills of the Himalayas there were more cattle than the land could support. Yet it was forbidden to kill them. Only last week his grandfather had had the right hand cut off a Muslim villager who had been found to have killed a calf and secretly eaten it on some ceremonial occasion, with his family. Superstition ... dirt ... poverty ... disease ... and yet the people so good, so kind. It frightened him to think that one day soon he would rule them. Better to die in battle, for in truth he did not understand the people as his grandfather did.

He fell to thinking of how he should approach the Rajah to get what he wanted. Grandfather was very old--seventy-eight--and very old-fashioned. He couldn’t speak a word of English and he could barely read or write Hindi. Sometimes he was cruel and sometimes he was kind. It was impossible to tell what he was going to do because he didn’t act according to a definite set of rules, like the English did. It was important not to let him make the wrong decision at first, because although it was not impossible to get him to change his mind, it was not easy. Krishna’s goal was difficult, but worthwhile. There was a great opportunity for the State. There was a chance for glory, and for his grandfather’s army to outstrip the armies of all other States in experience and efficiency. As for himself ... his thoughts wandered, to London, to tail-funnelled ships, to the ocean he had never seen, to Buckingham Palace and the King-Emperor, a cricket field intensely green, with huge gasometers at one end, just like Mr. Fleming had told him about, and men in Free Forester and I Zingari blazers, here and there a dark blue county cap. And the women, so pale, lovely, aloof ...

Yellow lights began to prickle the dark, the hills fell back and the city spread out ahead, sharp-edged on the left by the black void of the river. He passed the
maidan
and the twinkling row of lights in the cavalry lines the far side. What excitement there would be over there if they could know what he was going to propose! For a moment he thought of driving across the
maidan
and telling the quarter-guard the news, whence it would spread in a flash all through the regiment; but Colonel Hanbury would be offended, and in any case it was not settled yet. He must get to his grandfather as soon as possible, for fear another State forestalled Ravi with the same offer.

As he drove slowly into the heart of the city he heard the thud of drums and the wail of chanters and hillmen’s pipes. The clash and clink of leg ornaments grew louder under the music, and he remembered that it was the Feast of Vishnu, the ancestor of his race, and the creator of the river and the kingdom. As a child he had loved those feasts and festivals, with the steady shake of drums all through the night, and the flash of women’s bangles in the light of the oil lamps, and the red glow of fires reflected in the dancers’ faces; but since growing up he had come to think them a little barbarous, surely a waste of the people’s time and energy, as much as the fantastic sums a father had to spend on the marriage of a daughter--enough, often, to entail his land to the moneylenders for three generations. Surely his grandfather could do better things for the people than pay for all these musicians and tumblers and dancers and acrobats?

He was about to drive the car round the edge of the square behind the mass of spectators, when he noticed that a great peacock feather fan was waving under the yellow awning that had been erected by the palace gates. That meant his grandfather was there, watching the dancing. He’d better not take the time to bath and change. He stopped the car and told Hanuman to take it into the palace courtyard and unload and unpack. Then he walked round behind the milling people and went in under the awning.

The Rajah of Ravi squatted on a pile of huge cushions, two men slowly fanning him. He was wrinkled, pale skinned, a little stooped forward even in the squatting position, his knuckles swollen where his hands rested on his knees. The three vertical red stripes of a follower of Vishnu were painted up his forehead, and his mouth, lips, and tongue were stained dark red with betel juice. Even as Krishna came forward, passing among the courtiers and followers squatted on the carpet under the awning, and in front of the women in their separate section, the old man accurately spat a stream of betel juice into a brass pot beside him. Then he saw Krishna coming and cried, with a cracked smile, ‘Aha, here comes the Young Sahib.’

Krishna knelt and touched his hand to his grandfather’s ankle, and then to his own forehead, in obeisance. He said eagerly, ‘Grandfather, there is ...’

‘Wait, boy, wait! Sit beside me here and watch the dancers. It is the Mahabharata.’

Krishna knew then that he would have to contain himself for a time. The Mahabharata was his grandfather’s favourite story--as indeed it was of most Indians--and when the tale was being recited or danced he would always be present. In fact, Krishna could have guessed it was a performance of the Mahabharata as soon as he saw the peacock feather fans.

He squatted down beside the rajah, glad that the British officers he had been playing cricket with in Lahore could not see him now. The ability to squat, they seemed to think, was something an Indian was born with, but no Englishman could ever achieve. He turned his attention to the packed earth of the square, surrounded by a white and brown and red wall of people, which swayed to show that it was human. Above the continuous light tap-pause-tap of the hand-held drums he distinctly heard a distant roll of thunder. ‘God be praised,’ his grandfather muttered. ‘We need the rain.’ They were dancing the long scene of the Bride’s Choice. He recognized one of the dancers, whose hands and face were dyed dark blue, and who wore an ornate crown on his head, as the demi-god Krishna, avatar of Vishnu, for whom he himself had been named. They were near the end of the scene, for Krishna appeared only at the end. Various suitors had failed to bend the great bow, and then Karna had succeeded, only to be refused permission to shoot because he was thought to be the son of a mere charioteer, not of royal blood; then kings and princes had tried to bend it and instead had been knocked over backwards by its recoil; and mighty Arjun, the Achilles of the epic, disguised as a Brahmin, had bent the bow and shot an arrow--and only then came dark blue Krishna, beloved of women, to swing around and around the beaten earth while the singers squatted in a row facing the awning and drummers pounded their drums with the fiat of their hands and the pipes droned and the dancers’ feet thudded.

The singers chanted the tale in Sanskrit:

Krishna knew the son of Pandu, though in robes of Brahmin dressed;
To his elder Baladeva thus his inner thought expressed:
‘Mark that youth with bow and arrow and with lion’s lordly gait.
He is helmet-wearing Arjun! Greatest warrior mid the great,
Mark his mate, with tree uprooted, how he meets the suitor band
Save the tiger-waisted Bhima none can claim such strength of hand!
And the youth with eyes like lotus, he who left the court erewhile,
He is pious-souled Yudisthir, man without a sin or guile
And the others by Yudisthir, Pandu’s twin-born sons are they.
With these sons the righteous Pritha escaped where death and danger lay.
For the jealous fierce Duryodhan darkly schemed their death by fire
But the virtuous sons of Pandu ‘scaped his unrelenting ire!’
Krishna rose amidst the monarchs, strove the tumult to appease,
And unto the angry suitors spake in words of righteous peace.
Monarchs bowed to Krishna’s mandate, left Panchala’s festive land,
Arjun took the beauteous princess, gently led her by the hand ...

The dancers moved to the side, the music died. The crowd stretched and shuffled. The tale of the Bride’s Choice was over. Next would come the Imperial Sacrifice, but first there would be a pause--half an hour, perhaps more--while dancers and musicians refreshed themselves. The next spell would last two more hours. All around the square, men squatted against the walls of the houses, relieving themselves. The women were doing the same in the darkness under the palace wall, behind the awning. Krishna felt glad that Miss Bateman had not been able to accept his invitation to visit Basohli. She wouldn’t have said anything, of course, but he knew what she would have been thinking.

‘Grandfather,’ he said, ‘I have something important ...’

‘Tch, tch, boy, I don’t want to hear about it now. The Imperial Sacrifice is one of the best parts of the story. It’s a favourite with our people.’

Krishna knew that, and knew why. The next part of the Mahabharata began with Arjun, who has won the beautiful Draupadi, returning to his mother, together with his four brothers. They tell the mother that they have won a great prize; before they can tell her what it is or what they mean, she says, ‘Enjoy it in common’. The command of a mother must be obeyed, and so Draupadi becomes the wife of all five brothers, not merely of Arjun who won her. The reason it was popular in Ravi was that in the upper regions of the kingdom, where eternal snow swept down to rolling grassland 10,000 feet above sea level, all the brothers in each family did indeed share one wife in common. Looking across the square, Krishna saw a dozen of these Paharis (hillmen), easily recognizable by the homespun wool of their clothes, the rope wound around their waist, the red-bronze Mongolian tint of their skin and the high embroidered caps the women wore on top of their heavy tresses. That was another thing he was glad he didn’t have to explain to Miss Bateman--how five brothers could bow down before one woman, share her body, and obey her without degradation to their manhood; for among the Paharis, land and flocks passed only through the female line.

His grandfather had been following his glance and now said, ‘Perhaps we should marry you to a Pahari, Krishna. They are good stock, strong and healthy. And beautiful. See that one there, staring at you so proud and haughty. Ai, if I were twenty years younger I’d have her brought to my couch. Why don’t you?’

Krishna laughed uneasily. It was barbaric to treat women like cows to be brought to the bull. He said, ‘I don’t want to share my bride with Hari and Gopal,’ naming his younger brothers.

‘Of course, you wouldn’t have to,’ the rajah said, ‘we’d find a family where more than one girl had survived. There are some, if they’re born at the lucky season.’

Krishna nodded. Among the Paharis girl children were put out naked on the ground for the first twenty-four hours of their life. Most died, leaving the few who survived to be the brides of the men. A girl born at this season, August, was more likely to live than one born in December, when a foot of snow covered the high pastures. More barbarism ... indeed the British treated it as murder, where it was practised in British Indian territory, such as Bashahr.

The music began again, hesitant, gradually picking up volume and confidence. The crowd came back and squatted dense around the square. Thunder boomed louder to the north and lightning began to flicker along the mountain rim. Krishna settled down to watch the dance of Draupadi, won by Arjun but eventually becoming the chief wife of Yudisthir, the eldest son and heir to the kingdom. In spite of himself, he became absorbed ...