The Great Indian Novel Page 8

  Kunti, still shocked - for you know the conservatism of our Indian women, Ganapathi, they are for ever clinging to the traditions of the last century and ignoring those of the last millennium - waited for the inevitable exegesis from the shastras. It was not long in coming. Pandu readjusted his lotus position, tucking his feet more comfortably under his haunches, and went on in high-sounding tones. ‘You know, if you read our scriptures you will realize that there was a time when Indian women were free to make love with whomever they wished, without being considered immoral. There were even rules about it: the sages decreed that a married woman must sleep with her husband during her fertile period, but was free to take her pleasure elsewhere the rest of the time. In Kerala, the men of the Nair community only learn that their wives are free to receive them by seeing if another man’s slippers aren’t outside her door. Our present concept of morality isn’t really Hindu at all; it is a legacy both of the Muslim invasion and of the superimposition of Victorian prudery on a people already puritanized by purdah. One man married to one woman, both remaining faithful to each other, is a relatively new idea, which does not enjoy the traditional sanction of custom. (Which is why I myself have had no qualms about taking two wives.) So I really don’t mind you sleeping with another man to give me a son. It may seem funny to you, but the deeper I steep myself in our traditions, the more liberal I become.’

  He could see she was not yet convinced. ‘Look, I’ll tell you something that might even shock you, but which, in fact, is in full accordance with our divine scriptures and ancient, traditions. It’s a closely guarded family secret that even I learned only when I became a man. Vichitravirya, my mother’s husband, isn’t really my father. Nor Dhritarashtra’s, for that matter. Our mothers slept with their husband’s half-brother, Ved Vyas, when their husband died, to ensure he would be graced with heirs.’ Pandu saw that this story, at last, had sunk in. ‘So you see? You’d just be following a family tradition. You’ve always done as I asked you to - so go and find yourself a good Brahmin and give me a son.’

  Kunti’s resistance melted at last. ‘The truth is,’ she began, ‘I don’t really know how to tell you this, but I already have a son.’

  ‘What?’ It was Pandu’s turn to register offended astonishment. ‘You? Have a son? By whom? When? And how could you talk so glibly of having been faithful to me?’

  ‘Please don’t be angry, my dear husband,’ Kunti implored. ‘I only mentioned it because you brought up the subject this way. And I have been faithful to you. My son was born before we even met, before your family asked for my hand for you.’

  Comprehension dawned on a paling Pandu. ‘Hyperion Helios,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘The travelling magnate. So the scandal-mongers were right after all.’

  Kunti hung her beautiful head in acknowledgement.

  ‘And where is your son today?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kunti admitted miserably. ‘I was so ashamed when he was born - though I shouldn’t have been, for he was a lovely little boy, his golden skin glowing like the sun - that I put him in a small reed basket and floated him down the river.’

  ‘Down the river?’

  ‘Down the river.’

  ‘Then there isn’t much point in talking about him, is there?’ Pandu asked a little cruelly.

  ‘Someone must have found him,’ Kunti said defiantly. ‘I’m sure he is still alive. And I know I’ll recognize him the moment I see him again. His colour - it’s so extraordinary I’m sure no one else in these parts would have anything like it. And then there’s his birthmark - a bright little half-moon right in the centre of his forehead. There’s no way he could have got rid of that.’ She turned to Pandu. ‘If you want a son, I know we can find him,’ she pleaded. ‘Let us have inquiries made in the area.’

  A wind blew, Ganapathi, at those words, stirring up leaves, dust, shadows, clothing; eyelashes flickered in disturbed hope; an age sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ Pandu replied. ‘It’s no use. A son born to you before we were even married, even if he were found, how can he be an heir of mine? No, you will simply have to find someone else, Kunti.’ A hard edge entered his voice. ‘And it shouldn’t be all that difficult for you. After all, you do have the experience.’

  Kunti seemed about to say something; then her face assumed a set expression. ‘As you wish, my husband,’ she said. ‘You shall have your son.’

  18

  I remember, Ganapathi, I still remember the night our late Leader was born. It was a monsoon night, and the rain lashed down upon us, while a howling wind tore branches off trees and ripped roofs off shacks, turned our pathetic parasols inside out and drove the water into our homes. I entered the palace dripping, handed the shambles of my umbrella to the bowing servitor and mounted the stairs towards the women’s quarters. A female attendant came out of Gandhari’s room just as I reached the landing. Something about her expression led me to fear the worst. I asked her quietly, ‘How is she?’

  ‘Still in labour, sir.’

  I nodded, both troubled and relieved. Still in labour: but it had been twenty-four hours already, time enough for me to receive the news and make my way through the mounting rage of the storm to the palace. And still she lay there; Gandhari the Grim lay there and sweated and suffered. I had a vision of that small, frail, delicately proportioned body stretched out and arched in the most grotesque of contortions, as a hundred lustily bawling sons fought their way out of her half-open womb . . .

  And then, from behind Gandhari’s closed door just down the corridor, there emerged a single, long, wailing sound. We both stood transfixed. It was a baby’s cry and yet it was more than that; it was a rare, sharp, high-pitched cry like that of a donkey in heat, and as it echoed around the house a sound started up outside as if in response, a weird, animal moan, and then the sounds grew, as donkeys brayed in the distance, mares neighed in their pens, jackals howled in the forests, and through the cacophony we heard the beating of wings at the windows, the caw-caw-cawing of a cackle of crows, and penetrating through the shadows, the piercing shriek of the hooded vultures circling above the palace of Hastinapur.

  ‘What was that, sire?’ the woman servant asked, fear writ large on her face.

  ‘Dhritarashtra’s heir has been born,’ I said.

  I was right. For when the doctor emerged from Gandhari’s room he was ashen with the strain. It had been the most difficult delivery of his life, he said, and it had taken a terrible toll on the brave young mother. She had survived, but she could never have children again. This one child would be her only offspring.

  ‘A boy, of course?’ Dhritarashtra, anxiously leaning on a cane, his dapper features strained with anticipation, asked the doctor. For weeks the midwives had said that all the signs pointed to a male heir: the shape of Gandhari’s breasts in the eighth month, the sling of her uterus in the ninth. ‘How is he?’

  ‘A girl,’ the doctor said shortly. ‘And she’s very well.’

  The cane slipped with a clatter from Dhritarashtra’s hand. A servant bent to pick it up and the new father leaned against the wall, breathing heavily.

  I slipped quietly into the room and shut the door behind me. ‘It is I, my child,’ I said. ‘I have come a long way to congratulate you.’

  ‘A girl!’ Gandhari’s head was sunk into her pillow and the beads of perspiration had yet to dry on her face. She had refused to take off her blindfold even to see her own infant, and it clung wetly to her closed eyelids. Her customary grimness was accentuated by a startling pallor, as if all the blood had been drained out of her in the delivery. ‘Is that all I shall have to show, Uncle, for the hundred sons you once promised me?’

  I looked at her, pity overwhelming the admiration I had always felt for this spirited woman. I felt the exhaustion of that long wet night, the fatigue of that long hard birth; and my mind is still haunted by the image of poor grim Gandhari, head sunk into the pillow because she had failed to create the son her husband needed. History, Ganapathi, is full of savage ironies.r />
  ‘Your daughter, Gandhari,’ I said, taking her hand in mine, ‘will be equal to a thousand sons. This I promise you.’

  I could not see into those closed eyes; I knew she did not believe me. Nor would she have believed what destiny had in store for her painfully wrought child. Gandhari would not live to know it, but her sombre-eyed daughter, Priya Duryodhani, would grow up one day to rule all India.

  The Fourth Book:

  A Raj Quartet

  19

  The news of the annexation of Hastinapur by the British Raj was announced by a brusque communiqué one morning. There was none of the subtle build-up one might have expected, Ganapathi; no carefully planted stories in the press about official concern at the goings-on in the palace, no simulated editorial outrage about the degree of political misbehaviour being tolerated from a sitting Regent, not even the wide bureaucratic circulation of proposals, notes and minutes that Vidur, now a junior functionary in the States Department, might have seen and tried to do something about. No, Ganapathi, none of the niceties this time, none of the fabled British gentle- manliness and let-me-take-your-glasses-off-your-face-before-I-punch-you-in- the-nose; no sir, John Bull had seen red and was snorting at the charge. One day Hastinapur was just another princely state, with its flag and its crest and its eleven-gun salute; the next morning it was part of the British Presidency of Marabar, with its cannon spiked, its token frontier-post dismantled and the Union Jack flying outside Gandhari’s bedroom window.

  Sir Richard, former Resident of Hastinapur, now Special Representative of the Viceroy in charge of Integration, and a hot favourite to succeed the retiring Governor of Marabar himself, breakfasted well that morning on eggs and kedgeree, and his belly rumbled in satisfaction. He had just wiped his mouth with a damask napkin when an agitated Heaslop burst in.

  ‘Come in; Heaslop, come in,’ said Sir Richard expansively if unnecessarily, for the equerry was already within sneezing distance of the pepper-pot. ‘Tea?’

  No, thank you, sir. I’m sorry to barge in like this, sir, but I’m afraid the situation is beginning to look very ugly. Your intervention may be required.’

  ‘What on earth are you on about, man? Sit down, sit down and tell me all about it.’ Sir Richard reached for the teapot, a frown creasing his pink forehead. ‘Are you sure you won’t have some tea?’

  ‘Absolutely sure, sir. The people of Hastinapur haven’t reacted very well to the news of the annexation, sir. Ever since this morning’s radio broadcast they have been pouring out on the streets, sir, milling about, listening to street- corner speakers denouncing the imperialist yoke. The shops are all closed, children aren’t going to school nor their parents to work, and the atmosphere in the city centre and the maidan is, to say the least, disturbing.’

  Sir Richard sipped elegantly, but two of his chins were quivering. ‘Any violence?’

  ‘A little. Some window-panes of English businesses smashed, stones thrown, that sort of thing. Not many targets hereabouts to aim at, of course, in a princely state. It’s not as if this were British India, with assorted symbols of the Raj to set fire to. A crowd did try to march toward the residency, but the police stopped them at the bottom of the road.’ Heaslop hesitated. ‘My own car took a couple of knocks, sir, as I tried to get through. Stone smashed the windscreen.’

  ‘Good Lord, man! Are you hurt?’

  ‘Not a scratch, sir.’ Heaslop seemed not to know whether to look relieved or disappointed. ‘But the driver’s cut up rather badly. He says he’s all right, but I think we need to get him to the hospital.’

  ‘Well, go ahead, Heaslop. What are you waiting for?’

  ‘There’s one more thing, sir. Word is going round that Ganga Datta will address a mass rally on the annexation this afternoon, sir. At the Bibigarh Gardens. People are flocking to the spot from all over the state, sir, hours before the Regent, that is, the ex-Regent, is supposed to arrive.’

  ‘Ganga Datta? At the Bibigarh Gardens? Are you sure?’

  ‘As sure as we can be of anything in these circumstances, sir.’

  Sir Richard harrumphed. ‘We’ve got to stop them, Heaslop.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I thought you might want to consider that, sir, that’s why I’m here. I’m afraid we might not be able to block off the roads to the gardens, though. The police are quite ineffectual, and I wouldn’t be too sure of their loyalties either, in the circumstances.’

  ‘What would you advise, Heaslop?’

  ‘Well, sir, I wonder if we don’t stand to lose more by trying to stop a rally we can’t effectively prevent from taking place.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘So my idea would be a sort of strategic retreat, sir. Let them go ahead with their rally, let off steam.’

  ‘You mean, do nothing?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes, sir. But then passions would subside. Once they’ve had their chance to listen to a few speeches and shout a few slogans, they’ll go back to their normal lives soon enough.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense, Heaslop. Once they’ve listened to a few speeches from the likes of Ganga Datta and his treacherous ilk, there’s no telling what they might do. Burn down the residency, like as not. No, this rally of theirs has to be stopped. But you’re right about the police. They won’t be able to do it.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, sir,’ Heaslop said unhappily. ‘Not much we can do, then.’

  ‘Oh yes, there is,’ Sir Richard retorted decisively. ‘There’s only one thing for it, Heaslop. Get me Colonel Rudyard at the cantonment. This situation calls for the army.’

  20

  The Bibigarh Gardens were no great masterpiece of landscaping, Ganapathi, but they were the only thing in Hastinapur that could pass for a public park. The plural came from the fact that Bibigarh was not so much one garden as a succession of them, separated by high walls and hedges into little plots of varying sizes. The enclosures permitted the municipal authorities the mild conceit of creating differing effects in each garden: a little rectangular pool surrounded by a paved walkway in one, fountains and rose-beds in another, a small open park for children in a third. There was even a ladies’ park in which women in and out of purdah could ride or take the air, free from the prying eyes of male intruders; here the hedge was particularly high and thick. The gardens were connected to each other and to the main road only by narrow gates, which normally were quite wide enough for the decorous entrances and exits of pram-pushing ayahs and strolling wooers. On this day, however, they were to prove hopelessly inadequate.

  One of the gardens, a moderately large open space entirely surrounded by a high brick wall, was used - when it was not taken over by the local teenagers for impromptu games of cricket - as a sort of traditional open-air theatre-cum-Speakers’ Corner. It was the customary venue (since the maidan was too big) for the few public meetings anyone in Hastinapur bothered to hold. These were usually mushairas featuring local poetic talent or folk-theatre on a rudimentary stage, neither of which ever attracted more than a few hundred people. It was the mere fact of having staged such functions that gave the Bibigarh Gardens their credentials for this more momentous occasion.

  When news spread of a possible address by Gangaji on the day of the state’s annexation, Bibigarh seemed the logical place to drift towards. Soon the garden was full, Ganapathi; not of a few hundred, not of a thousand, but of ten thousand people, men, women, even some children, squeezed uncomplainingly against each other, waiting with the patience instilled in them over timeless centuries.

  When Colonel Rudyard of the Fifth Baluch arrived at the spot with a detachment, it did not take him long to assess the scene. He saw the crowd of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, standing, sitting, talking, expectant but not restless, as a milling mob. He also saw very clearly - more clearly than God allows the rest of us to see - what he had to do. He ordered his men to take up positions on the high ground all round the enclosure, just behind the brick walls.

  It is possible that his instruct
ions had been less than precise. Perhaps he was under the assumption that the people of Hastinapur had already been ordered not to assemble for any purpose and that these were, therefore, defiant trouble-makers. Perhaps all he had was a barked command from Sir Richard, telling him to put an end to an unlawful assembly, and his own military mind devised the best means of implementing the instruction. Or perhaps he just acted in the way dictated by the simple logic of colonialism, under which the rules of humanity applied only to the rulers, for the rulers were people and the people were objects. Objects to be controlled, disciplined, kept in their place and taught lessons like so many animals: yes, the civilizing mission upon which Rudyard and his tribe were embarked made savages of all of us, and all of them.

  Whatever it may be, Ganapathi - and who are we, all these decades later, to speculate on what went on inside the mind of a man we never knew and will never understand - Colonel Rudyard asked his men to level their rifles at the crowd barely 150 yards away and fire.

  There was no warning, no megaphone reminder of the illegality of their congregation, no instruction to leave peacefully: nothing. Rudyard did not even command his men to fire into the air, or at the feet of their targets. They fired, at his orders, into the chests and the faces and the wombs of the unarmed, unsuspecting crowd.

  Historians have dubbed this event the Hastinapur Massacre. How labels lie. A massacre connotes the heat and fire of slaughter, the butchery by bloodthirsty fighters of an outgunned opposition. There was nothing of this at the Bibigarh Gardens that day. Rudyard’s soldiers were lined up calmly, almost routinely; they were neither disoriented nor threatened by the crowd; it was just another day’s work, but one unlike any other. They loaded and fired their rifles coldly, clinically, without haste or passion or sweat or anger, resting their weapons against the tops of the brick walls so thoughtfully built in Shantanu’s enlightened reign and emptying their magazines into the human beings before them with trained precision. I have often wondered whether they heard the screams of the crowd, Ganapathi, whether they noticed the blood, and the anguished wails of the women, and the stampeding of the frampling feet as panic-stricken villagers sought to get away from the sudden hail of death raining remorselessly down upon them. Did they hear the cries of the babies being crushed underfoot as dying men beat their mangled limbs against each other to get through those tragically narrow gateways? I cannot believe they did, Ganapathi, I prefer not to believe it, and so I think of the Bibigarh Gardens Massacre as a frozen tableau from a silent film, black and white and mute, an Indian Guernica.