Classic Mulk Raj Anand

by Mulk Raj Anand

  But from the invidious position Victor enjoyed as the remnant of an absolutist monarchy, in an age which had more or less dethroned the idea of kingship, Victor suffered from all the ills of the decaying order to which he belonged, losing his grip on the old conception of toil and prayer, and slipping down the slope, heading for a fall. Coming to the gaddi just before the Second World War, and in the period of disruption when, under the influence of the various European revolutions, the concepts of political and economic democracy began to percolate even into the most moribund fastnesses of the Himalayas, Victor began to feel the fatal contradictions of his role as a hereditary king with the urges of his people for an increasing share of power in the government of the state. And, as he could not, from the very nature of his affiliations, regain contact with the oppressed people of his kingdom, through any amount of fake worship at the temples, during the various festivals and durbars, nor extend the orbit of his consciousness to draw into himself the urges of the life-force, which still uprushed and coursed through their unquenchable blood stream, he was like a fish out of water. And his profligate education at the Chief’s College, Lahore, his whole promiscuous upbringing, and his ill-assorted, unnatural life had prepared his inevitable doom, only postponed by the other manifold contradictions that kept him in a state of suspended animation.

  The aetiology of Victor’s malady revealed itself to me far more clearly through the news and rumours that came in the next few days from the several parts of Sham Pur, and from his own meanderings which filled the palace day and night.

  We heard one fine morning that the Communist guerillas had not only divided the land among the peasantry, on the parallel of Red China and Telengana in Hyderabad, but had defeated the State Forces and were marching on the capital, being only thirty miles away from the Sham Pur old fort. And in the wake of this news came Pandit Gobind Das, the Premier, for an emergency consultation with His Highness.

  Victor’s temperature had not gone down for seven days below a hundred. And he lay in bed after Dorothy, the young Christian nurse, had just given him a sponge bath. He was a little rested and calmer than usual when Gobind Das was announced. I was all for telling the Prime Minister that His Highness was in no condition to see him, but Victor’s curiosity about the purpose of his erstwhile enemy’s visit made him insistent that the visitor be shown in.

  Pandit Gobind Das came in, rather uneasy on his chappals, and anxiously assembling the folds of his homespun dhoti and tunic in his left hand, lest he should trip up on something, his small Gandhi cap sitting precariously on his round head. His face was wreathed in smiles, which accentuated the whiteness of his walrus moustache and narrowed his myopic eyes. His forehead was covered in beads of sweat. Obviously, he was excited by all kinds of fears, hopes and desires.

  Victor pointed him to a chair casually.

  Pandit Gobind Das did not know whether to bow before His Highness or to join hands in the usual Hindu Congressite manner. For, the European-style bedroom of the Maharaja demanded a Western courtesy, whereas the homespun ideology dictated the conventional Indian approach. And in the soul of the Prime Minister there was the confusion of the various pulls which the maelstrom in the state had created in him, dominant among which was an essential fear of His Highness, arising from the fact that he, who had ousted the Maharaja from power, had ushered the state into utter chaos since. Torn between the two forms of greetings to His Highness, he compromised and executed both, nearly tripping up as he thought he might, even as he negotiated his bulky posterior into the armchair.

  ‘How is your exalted temperament?’ he asked, without pausing to breathe calmly the breathless breaths that he was inhaling and exhaling.

  ‘My temperament is not well,’ said Victor with his usual disarmingly naïve honesty. ‘I have lost my gaddi and I have lost my woman. . . .’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Pandit Gobind Das.

  ‘Don’t be a hypocrite!’ cried His Highness. ‘You have been responsible for both the disasters, and you—’

  ‘Your Highness, I may have led the campaign of the Praja Mandal for democratic rights, but I never made any reference to your personal life.’ Pandit Gobind Das’s head shook involuntarily, as it did when he was a trifle excited.

  ‘But you have employed that traitor Bool Chand, who ran away with my wife, as your secretary!’ said Victor, half raising his head from the pillow.

  ‘I am afraid I shall have to ask Pandit Gobind Das to leave if he is going to excite you like that,’ I said solemnly.

  ‘But, your Highness, I did not know that Shrimati Ganga Dasi had left you,’ said Pandit Gobind Das, his innocent, puritanical and conventional mind aghast at this news. ‘And I had no idea that Bool Chand had taken her away. Mr Bool Chand was imposed on me by Srijut Popatlal Shah, the Administrator.’

  ‘Not Administrator so much as pimp,’ shouted Victor. ‘He himself had an affair with Gangi and then, being respectably married, he passed her on to Bool Chand!’

  The prim and proper mind of Pandit Gobind Das, traditional enemy of woman, was shocked. His face went red with anger and his neck was covered with sweat. He remained silent while his head swayed, as though in a series of prolonged negations. The Prime Minister was not devoid of conscience, though he was amenable to the many influences which shape the mind of a provincial politician: ambition, inborn cunning, or rather an innate capacity for intrigue in order to achieve his ends, narrow-mindedness, tinctured by the desire not so much of power as prestige—though both these are, I suppose, the two sides of the same coin.

  ‘I will see to it that Mr Bool Chand restores the woman of your house to you,’ said Pandit Gobind Das, deliberately emphasizing each word. ‘I can’t oust him from his job, because the Administrator Sahib sent him to me. And that is what I came to see you about—the Administrator is acting in a very high-handed manner, sire. Although I represent the States People’s Congress, I am not allowed to do anything not sanctioned by Srijut Shah. And . . . how shall I tell you? . . . But the . . . the Communists have defeated the State Forces and are near Sham Pur. . . .’

  Victor stared at Pandit Gobind Das with a suppressed, violent rage. If he had been in full enjoyment of his powers, monarchical or physical, he would have got up and torn him limb from limb. As it was, he ground his teeth, flushed red, lifted his head to say something, but fell back exhausted.

  ‘Please don’t excite yourself,’ I said, going over to sit by his pillow and stroking his head.

  ‘Why does he come here to give me this news?’ Victor shouted. ‘What can I do now that you have taken everything away from me!’

  ‘Your Highness,’ said Pandit Gobind Das anxiously, ‘please do not be angry or afraid. Sardar Patel has said the Congress is not an enemy of the princely order. As a matter of fact, your Highness’s name has been proposed for Raj Pramukhship of the border states union which the Sardar envisages. I have been insisting in all my speeches that your exalted person, as well as your property, be respected by all citizens of the state. Only, in this crisis, which has arisen through the Communist revolt, we have to get together. As Benjamin Franklin said, “We have to hang together, otherwise we will hang separately”.’ After quoting Benjamin Franklin, the Premier looked pompously towards me for approval.

  I realized, almost with a sense of horror, that here we were face to face with a provincial politician, who had perhaps his own conception of duty but who was singularly unaware of anything but the crudest lumps of experience. To him the personal life of the Maharaja had no significance, because persons as such did not matter to him except as units in the scheme of government, for he was a Brahmin and thus part of a ruling oligarchy rather than a democrat, for all his pretensions to liberal ideas. Dead to his own and other people’s intrinsic life, he was also unaware of the need for a wider perspective. Of course, most of us are preoccupied by the fears, hates, prejudices and sentiments of the ordinary daily life, but, increasingly, our accumulating sense of the cross currents in the shrinking world e
nlarges our awareness. And, especially if we are thinking people, we remind ourselves now and then of outside events, beyond the competitive jealousies and affections of our humdrum existence. We strive to keep the good of the greatest number in mind, without leaving out of account the intimate life of the individual, and thus we try to be human. But Pandit Gobind Das seemed so involved in party politics that a man or woman did not matter to him personally, and his vision did not extend beyond the horizons of Sham Pur, except to certain phrases of the great which he had picked up from the ‘thought for the day’ column of the daily newspaper.

  ‘Do you realize that I have not even enough power to make a search in my own state for my own wife?’ said Victor as he despairingly spread his arms on his bed.

  ‘Perhaps she is at the house of Seth Sadanand,’ Pandit Gobind Das ventured the guess, having heard that the Maharaja’s mistress was friendly with the wife of Sadanand, the moneylender and capitalist.

  ‘I am not a child!’ raved Victor. He knew that Seth Sadanand would not give asylum to his mistress. And he sensed, with a shrewd enough instinct, that Gangi had not left because of her lack of security, which she might seek from the richest man in the state, but because she wanted new physical sensations.

  ‘I only thought Seth Sadanand was friendly towards your Highness,’ the Premier said, mixing his innocence about domestic matters with a clever innuendo against Victor for having supported a local capitalist who had stood outside the Praja Mandal.

  ‘I suppose you people even resent the few friends I have left,’ said Victor, quick to sense the significance of Pandit Gobind Das’s subtle hint. ‘I suppose you want to invite Birla and Dalmia in. . . . Well, do so, then! Who am I to object? You have reduced me to dust! And I am broken. I shall accept the new disasters that are coming. . . . I can see them sometimes. I can see them coming like monsoon clouds, rolling overhead, suffocating my life-breath! I want to live. I want to fight. But you have reduced my life to dust. I feel like a ghost swirling along like a whirlwind made up of specks of dust.’

  I felt that in his own mad way Victor had grasped the significance of the ‘bloodless revolution’ in his state. The Congress and the Praja Mandal crowd did, indeed, want to open up the backward areas to investments by the big monopolists.

  ‘Your Highness,’ said Pandit Gobind Das, agitated by Victor’s hysteria and struggling to be sincere, ‘I have told you that Sardar Patel has promised not to interfere in the domestic life of the princes after the states’ accession.’

  ‘To be sure!’ said Victor, bitter and recalcitrant. ‘That is why the Sardar saw my cousin Raja Praduman Singh! And that is why you have given him a portfolio in the Cabinet! . . . Well, if the Communists have risen, it is because Raja Sahib, and the other jagirdars, forcibly occupied the lands and the houses of the tenants on my own personal estates. I hate the Communists. But I abominate my cousins more. For they have been my undoing! And you sit side by side with Raja Parduman Singh! . . . And yet you come to me in your time of trouble!’

  It was uncanny to me to hear Victor shrewdly catch hold of the basic alliance which had ousted him from power. I realized that he had, in spite of his egoism, a clumsy but rule-of-thumb method of reckoning up his assets and liabilities as a statesman.

  ‘This trouble in Panna and Udham Pur is also due to the fact that the army under Chaudhri Raghbir Singh was not disciplined and began to commit dacoities in the village,’ said the Premier.

  ‘Again, you are attacking my friends in the state!’ roared Victor. ‘I will not have charges made against General Raghbir Singh which cannot be substantiated.’

  ‘Sire, please do not be impatient,’ said the Premier. ‘Chaudhri Raghbir Singh is a trusted servant of the new Government. And I am not accusing him. Only, during the quick changeover, all kinds of lawless elements have begun to take advantage of our weakness.’

  ‘I thought it was my prerogative to be a weak ruler!’ taunted Victor. ‘The Praja Mandal was to usher in a utopia!’

  ‘Maharaj, your anger is needless,’ appealed Pandit Gobind Das. ‘Please have shanti and I shall explain to you our real attitude towards your Highness. We had a family quarrel in the state. Now, that has been settled by your signing the Instrument of Accession. We want to forget the past and start on a new basis. Your private property and privy purse is guaranteed. And if there are plans of building industries here, as there will be, you can have big shares in the companies which are formed. I told the same to Seth Sadanand, who was afraid of friends from Calcutta and Bombay coming in with big capital and squeezing him out. And our state will have a hand in framing the constitution. Also, the centre has given other safeguards about taxation and property. So do not harbour any fears!’

  ‘I have not much desire left for possessions,’ Victor said tiredly. ‘All I want is that you order Bool Chand to restore my wife to me.’

  For a moment, Pandit Gobind Das sat with his mouth half open. Perhaps he could not understand that neither worldly possessions nor the ideals of the highest good of the community, which he pretended to espouse, had any particular appeal for the Maharaja. And he seemed amazed at Victor’s obsession with a mere woman.

  ‘Of course, your Highness!’ said Pandit Gobind Das. But he still couldn’t get over what seemed to him to be a mere whim of the Maharaja.

  ‘I have not slept for nights!’ Victor screamed. ‘I cannot sleep more than an hour or two. And I have been waking up in hot sweats and talking to myself in my sleep. I cannot bear the empty space against me where she used to lie. I cannot, I cannot! I cannot bear to be without her! She is a whore, but I want her. I need to put my arms round her to feel safe. I shall go mad if she does not come back! . . .’ And, lifting his hands, he wrung them and then let them fall by his side, and continued to burble under his breath, ‘Oh, I am broken, broken, broken! . . .’

  I too felt a shiver of shame and pity go through my spine. For the first time I realized that, in spite of his terrific self-will, Victor could crack up if he let go of himself. I knew that he would have to become far worse before the danger point could be reached. But if the insomnia continued and the hysteria rose to a crescendo unabated under the pressure of his longing for Gangi, as well as the mounting adverse conditions around him, Victor was done for. The only hope was that his hurt might become a slow, dull pain which he could bear more easily and that the untoward outside situation would not become any worse than it was. For if there was time I could perhaps help him to endure the frustrations by explaining things to him, though he had already sunk so far down into the depths of despair that it would be impossible to help him for a long time to come.

  ‘Your Highness must get well,’ appealed Pandit Gobind Das. ‘We have to stop the menace of Communism at all costs.’

  ‘I feel there are more disasters coming my way,’ said Victor, still talking to himself. ‘I am afraid! I dread the future! I fear myself—my own thoughts! I feel a terrible sense of foreboding! It is all darkness, darkness, darkness around me! . . .’

  ‘Highness, I can’t allow Panditji to excite you any more,’ I protested at this juncture. ‘Your fever will never go down at this rate.’

  ‘All I want is that Maharaja Sahib should get well,’ said Pandit Gobind Das, his head shaking as though in a trance. ‘I will go. Only, I would like His Highness to exert some influence on the Administrator, to help rather than hinder. After all, we of Sham Pur know the state better than he does. And he should realize that the Communists are only thirty miles away.’

  ‘Panditji, it is an irony that you ask for help from the person you denounced as an oppressor!’ Victor said. ‘Well, let me tell you that the new oppressors will put us all in our places properly. It suits the purpose of Mr Shah that the Communists are advancing. He will assume full powers in the state. . . .’

  ‘I will defend our democratic rights, then!’ shouted Pandit Gobind Das. ‘And we shall not remain non-violent in that contingency!’

  ‘Acha, I will see what I can do,’ V
ictor assured him. ‘But I expect you to dismiss Bool Chand and extort some information about my wife’s whereabouts.’

  ‘To be sure, I shall do that, Maharaj,’ said Pandit Gobind Das, looking away furtively. Then he heaved himself up from the chair, his head still shaking involuntarily, and he retreated two yards, even as he bowed and moved out.

  That afternoon, as I came in to tea with Victor, he waved a couple of pale blue sheets of paper before me and said excitedly:

  ‘She has written after all.’

  ‘What does she say? Where is she?’ I asked shyly.

  ‘She is staying in the Bara Dari palace on the banks of the Sutlej, at Madho Pur, which I gave her. She says she is staying there alone, though I am quite sure she has Bool Chand with her.’

  ‘But what does she say? Why did she go away?’

  ‘It is terrible,’ said Victor, with tears in his eyes. ‘She is accusing me of petty crimes against her. How could she be so mean? I thought she was so generous in giving, and often she helped me with advice in the affairs of the state. How could she after our seven years together! The letter is typed out in English and must have been written for her by that swine Bool Chand.’

  ‘But what does she say?’ I repeated, impatient with curiosity.

  ‘She says that I went on favouring Maharani Indira all these years and did nothing to have my son by her recognized heir to the gaddi!’ He said all this in a mouthful. ‘That I did not settle the property on her which she wanted. That I was always scolding her about her past lovers. That I would not do anything to marry her and allowed her to be insulted by all and sundry, who called her my mistress! That I refused to give her enough money! . . .’

  ‘She is mad,’ I said. ‘But with a low woman like that you can’t—’

  ‘Hari!’ Victor exclaimed, affronted.

  ‘Your relations were not equal,’ I said emphatically. ‘However kind and generous you were, she was in the position of a kept woman. And much as you try to think of her as an inspiring partner, the kind of courtesan of ancient days who helped kings to rule their states, she was far below that level and used the relationship for quite different ends, such as security and comfort and money and jewellery and houses. . . . I think you are inclined to mistake her charm, and her ability to dress in modern styles, for intelligence and personality. She certainly had not developed, and she is unlikely, with her present accomplishments, to become anything. Personally, I would like to see you freed of her.’