To this grand carnival Janki and Gauhar had been invited, to sing a song of felicitation before the King Emperor and his queen, and though Gauhar had insisted on composing the main song and setting it to tune, it had fallen to Janki to select a bunch of minor numbers showcasing their separate styles and initiating a foreign ear gradually into the melodic cadences of Hindustani music. They would both have to be in Delhi well before 7 December, needing at least a week to rehearse together, before taking part in the mandatory rehearsals to be held at Kingsway Camp in company with all the participating nobility and gentry of the Indian Empire, as preparation for the grand event.
Janki had chosen to travel from Allahabad to Delhi on the Upper India Express, along with her musicians, rather than join Gauhar on the Calcutta Mail. After the unfortunate gaffe at Akbar Sahib’s house, and Gauhar’s marked annoyance, she had decided to tread with care. She arrived in Delhi a couple of days before Gauhar did and was hosted at the Maidens Hotel in Delhi’s leafy Civil Lines. This graceful edifice, with its high imperial architecture, was where most of the guests who attended the Coronation Durbar hosted by Lord Curzon in 1903 had stayed. Her entourage of accompanists and staff were housed in another hotel in old Delhi close by. A carriage had been provided and on the first evening she drove out, taking the route from Ludlow Castle, north of the walled city of old Shahjahanabad towards the Lahore Gate, to see the decorations. The streets were beautifully bedecked, colourful lamps hung from the trees and something Janki had never seen before, electric bulbs in rainbow colours festooned in scallops from pole to pole, lining the entire extent of the streets. There were triumphal arches all the way from Chandni Chowk and the Dariba to the steps of the Jama Masjid. In some squares fireworks were already being lit in meticulous rehearsal of the festive week to follow. The band was playing in the hotel’s lobby when she returned. Illuminations everywhere. The bar jostling with guests. Dancing in progress in the grand ballroom.
Gauhar arrived next morning, in very high spirits, her pique of their previous meeting apparently forgotten. She had with her, apart from her usual retinue, her handsome young Pathan manager, whom she introduced as Abbas. Her first dramatic outcry erupted in the grand foyer of Maidens Hotel, on learning that her manager had not been accommodated in the same hotel as her and had been put in another hotel nearby, just beyond the green avenues of Civil Lines, an Indian hotel in old Delhi.
‘An Indian hotel, if you please!’ exclaimed Gauhar. ‘Where exactly is this one located, if I may ask? In the British Isles? At the very least, you could put him in the Cecil, so much nicer than this stiff-upper-lip dump. Nothing like the lovely garden look of the Cecil with its majestic neems and its lovely lawns. But I suppose we natives have to be grateful that we are housed at the angrez sarkar’s generous expense, we who have come to sing for our supper!’
This was not quite fair on the Maidens with its graceful ivory facade, its swirling driveway and vast stretch of arches, its emerald lawns with strolling peacocks and birds, but Janki hoped Gauhar would have the good sense not to make a scene.
‘We only follow instructions from Government House, madam. Only Indians who are royals or great artists like yourself have been accommodated here or at the Cecil or the Swiss,’ explained the velvet-voiced usher.
That somewhat mollified Gauhar and she retreated to her corner of the foyer and flounced down on the brocade sofa, fanning herself frenetically although it was a cool December morning.
‘Who, I ask, is your viceroy then?’ she fumed behind her veil but taking care to keep her voice down so that only Janki heard. ‘Your King Emperor’s manager, is he not? And they have the impertinence to tell me that this hotel is “socially unsuitable for persons in my employ”. “Socially unsuitable for persons in my employ!” Trust these British to twirl their sentences about like sugary thumri crooners at a second-rate mehfil. Well, Abbas,’ she sighed, ‘the sarkar has decreed that as a person in my employ you are unsuitable company for me. It makes no difference to those chameli-faced lads behind the counter and the puffy old gasbag in the hotel office if I plead with them that as my manager you might in a court of law be said to possess the management of me and then who is to decide who is in whose employ?’
‘Bai Sahiba is needlessly upset,’ murmured the bashful young man, obviously embarrassed by Gauhar’s flamboyant coquetry in Janki’s presence, ‘but really, I have no objection to staying in the other place.’
‘Have I asked your opinion, sir?’ snapped Gauhar, meteorically transformed into the queenly employer. Gauhar was brittle, all charged up. Fluctuating between chattiness and cold reserve. ‘It is not you but I who object to your being banished to the other place. But go, go, if you must. Go before you give me a headache!’
She swirled herself round, turned her back on Abbas, who waited awkwardly a moment or two, then bowed and slipped away. Janki’s eyes followed him. A most unlikely suspicion had come to assail her mind.
‘Is that Sabzwari?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘It is,’ replied Gauhar. ‘I often call him my Sabzwadi—my green valley. In the stark desert of my life, Janki, he is my oasis. Where would I be without this watchdog of mine?’ And she broke into one of her gurgling laughs. Then, just as suddenly, her expression changed to one of extreme irritation. ‘At the very least, at the very least, they’ll not object to arranging a motor car for me to drive out and see the sights.’
‘There is a carriage,’ Janki told her.
‘A carriage! Two meagre horses when I am accustomed to six! No, Baiji, a motor car is what I shall demand.’
Demand she did but was politely refused. In the privacy of the shaded balcony outside their suites Gauhar gave vent to another paroxysm of rage.
‘They’ve got a row of cars lined up outside, at least a score, and they cannot arrange a single one for me, Gauhar Jaan!’
‘Those are private cars, Bai Sahiba,’ reasoned Janki, ‘belonging to the princes and dignitaries staying here.’ They checked the printed programme to see who else was staying at the Maidens. The Nizam of Hyderabad, the Gaekwad of Baroda.
‘Not a single petty prince here who wouldn’t bow down in reverence before Gauhar!’ ranted Gauhar. ‘There are at least a dozen who know me personally, whose states I have visited and performed in. Wait, I shall find out if one of them is willing to allow me the use of his car. Ah, what have we here?—a telephone! Look at the pretty brass thing. One might mistake it for a piece of bathroom gear in a memsahib’s gusal-khana. Let me phone their office and find out the who’s who of these chambers.’
Which she wilfully did, and successfully. After a dozen phone calls that saw her at her charming best, she hung up the ornamented phone on its bracket and turned to Janki with a smile. ‘Not one car, my Janki, but five! A different one for the next five days. What do you say to that? I can have my pick. There is the Waverley of the maharaja of Jodhpur. There is a 1911 model Auburn of the maharaja of Datia. What else—let me see? A Lozier, an Oldsmobile Limousine and a Gaylord 30! Darbhanga, Patiala, Cooch Behar. I think I shall go for the Lozier. And which would you rather drive out in?’
Janki was embarrassed. ‘I think a carriage is just right for me,’ she answered.
‘In that case, my sister, we shall go out separately, if you don’t mind. Maybe Abbas won’t object to giving me his company.’
Her mood had changed to light-hearted teasing. ‘Oh, by the way,’ she said as though remembering something suddenly, ‘I have found out all about this marriage of yours that you were so silent about. My informers tell me that you gifted away a house as a rok-token and caught him securely by the neck.’
Her laugh of tarnished silver cut Janki to the quick. Impatience had been building up in her for quite some time. ‘If that was the way to catch a husband, then Bai Sahiba Gauhar doubtless has many houses to gift away,’ she retorted abruptly. A second later she wished she had not reacted.
But Gauhar acted as though it was a good joke. ‘True, I should have thought of it,
my Janki. Maybe I too shall follow your example. Soon.’ And she turned away, flashing a brilliant smile, leaving Janki wondering what she meant, marriage or the gift of a house.
As it happened, both. As Janki was to learn, by way of her own informers. For in a little over a year Gauhar would enter into a most unsuitable muta marriage with her manager, Abbas, and sign away her massive villa at 49 Chitpur Road, Calcutta, a step which was to reduce and torment her for the rest of her life.
They retired to their respective suites to rest their voices. The remaining days were devoted to practising and rehearsing at Kingsway Camp and then they gave themselves up to the pageantry unfolding all around them, driving out to join the crowds to witness the greatest show on earth. They witnessed the arrival of the ruling chiefs at Kingsway Station. They looked on as the grand procession passed, identifying from the printed programme which was which. Then the Royal Horse Artillery firing a salute. Then, the most spectacular arrival of Their Imperial Majesties at Selimgarh Station. On the 7th there were back-to-back events: the royal arrival at the reception tent, followed by the state entry into Delhi Fort. Janki and Gauhar, in their separate conveyances, were part of the throng that watched the royal procession passing the Ridge to the King’s Camp. On the 11th there was the Presentation of Colours, and, in less solemn vein, the Delhi Polo Tournament that lasted from the 7th till the 11th.
For the Coronation Durbar Gauhar wore her signature black-and-gold gauze gharara ensemble and Janki, anticipating this, opted for a white-and-gold silk chikankari-zardosi peshwaz, draped round with an elaborate gold and net headcloth. In the hectic ceremonial whirl, only stray fragments clung to her memory in later years. The delicate snow-white onion dome of the royal pavilion, set in its fine-wrought, trellised square with four smaller domes at the corners and the filigreed eaves. And in the pavilion, awash in a blaze of light, the two stately forms on their tall, bejewelled thrones placed seven steps up a pedestal, their velvet, fur-trimmed trains arranged in a lustrous cascade down the sides of the thrones and fanning out on the lavish red carpet. The peal of many bugles and the roll of drums. Mounted cavalry all around, redcoats and cream breeches astride tall steeds, turbaned Indian troops in tunics and cummerbunds astride theirs. All the royal houses of India represented by their reigning maharajas, turned out in full regalia, glittering with state jewels, bowing thrice in ritual obeisance before the carpeted pedestal, then retracing their steps backwards without turning. His Highness, the Nizam of Hyderabad, with the Resident at Hyderabad and His Highness’s escort. His Highness, the Gaekwad of Baroda, with his Resident and escort. His Highness, the maharaja of Mysore, and His Highness, the maharaja of Kashmir, with their respective residents and escorts. Then came the Rajputana chiefs with their political officers and escorts, also the agent to the governor general accompanying the leading chief. Likewise the Central India chiefs, the Madras chiefs and the Bombay chiefs with political officers and escorts. The Baluchistan chiefs and the North-West Frontier Province chiefs came with agents, escorts and chief commissioners. Their Highnesses, the maharajas of Sikkim and Bhutan came with their political officers and escorts. The United Provinces chiefs, those of Bengal, the Central Provinces and Burma came next, accompanied by their political officers and escorts. A regiment of Indian cavalry brought up the rear.
Their own performance proceeding flawlessly, ending in a grand finale with ‘Yeh jalsa taajposhi ka, mubarak ho, mubarak ho!’
And then being led by an usher clad in breeches, buckled shoes, crimson jacket with a chestful of medals, towards the platform. Bowing low, raising their fingertips to their brows thrice in deferential homage, before raising their eyes to find them looking into two pairs of curiously light-coloured eyes. In later years all Janki remembered of George V was his hair, thin, parted and plastered down beneath a fur cap and a gigantic crown, obviously a heavy weight on that head for there was something in the tilt of his neck that suggested fatigue. She heard him say: ‘That was splendid! Splendid.’ She remembered more of the Queen’s face, an elongated face, running to fullness, but very thin lips and wavy hair swept across her forehead. She seemed to radiate light in myriads of streaming exhalations from a resplendent wall of gems. A woman who held herself very erect in her chair, with her brocade gown flaring in a wide tulip bell about her. Bending forwards, a retainer in gleaming tunic and cummmerbund had lifted two velvet pouches from the gold tray held out by a costumed page and placed them in their outspread headcloths. They bowed again and again and a third time and, walking backwards, faded out of the topaz aura of light that encircled the apparitions. The blinding dazzle, the fragrance of a hundred exotic perfumes, the flourish of trumpets, the clash of luminous colours and fabrics, had left them dazed, even Gauhar, and it was only when they were back at the hotel that they thought of opening the velvet pouches to find a hundred guineas each. With the sovereign’s head embossed. Their heads felt dizzy, intoxicated with colour and light, and sleep jerked about fitfully in their restless heads all night and it was only the next morning that the full impact of the Grand Durbar registered in their minds as the sovereign’s ringing words, among many others about the revocation of the Partition of Bengal, the appointment of a governor-in-council for Bengal, the separation of Orissa, Chhota Nagpur and Assam, clarified into sense in their heads: ‘We are pleased to announce the transfer of the seat of the Government of India from Calcutta to the ancient capital of India.’
‘Isn’t it strange,’ wondered Gauhar, ‘that Their Royal Highnesses, the Indian maharajas, were given just a medal each and we, lowly song–dance women received a hundred? I mean, just in terms of the gold alone . . .’
‘On the other hand,’ Janki quipped, ‘our mohurs have just a man’s face on them—a hundred faces. But their medals have a woman’s face too. Proving that one woman is equal to a hundred men!’ For this Delhi Durbar 102 gold and 26,800 silver medals bearing the faces of George V and Mary of Teck had been struck, to be distributed to officers of proven loyalty, high-ranking functionaries of governance and princes who pledged allegiance.
‘Truth to tell, she quite outshone her husband,’ murmured Gauhar, reverting to women’s talk.
‘So did the vicereine.’
‘She was betrothed to his elder brother, did you know? But he died of pneumonia, poor thing, and so she finds herself married to the younger one. That’s luck, if you ask me. One heir apparent dies, presto, you have another! Me, I’d marry a whole family of brothers if I could wear jewels like hers.’
‘That was a very heavy crown. He looked strained.’
‘Oh, that’s not the real one. The real one is kept safe in England, lest some wily king or queen pawns it away on foreign soil. They were known to do that, you know, in Europe’s murky past. So they made a law about it—that the Crown of England could never leave England. Funny, most of the jewels in the crown are Indian and the angrezes are insecure about their being brought to India. As though the rubies and emeralds and diamonds will pop out of the gold at the sight of Indian earth! No, that is a special crown made specially for this event. It has 6100 diamonds and that huge ruby in front and all those twinkling emeralds and sapphires and the India Office paid 60,000 pounds of Indian money for it to the jewellery house of Garrard and Company. I used to own a choker made by Garrard that an admirer once gave me. From the Royal House of Bhopal.’
‘You know the maharani?’ asked Janki, astonished. For the nawab begum, Sultan Kai Khusru Jahan of Bhopal, was the only woman ruler who had attended the Durbar.
‘Not her. I mean her son, the one walking behind her, that Hamidullah Khan. Oh, she wouldn’t have liked it, jewels being given to a singer, had she known. A real tough one. Wrote a whole lot of pious books. Bachchon ki Parwarish, Hidayat Timardari, Tandarusti. But sadly, none of that timardari and parwarish could assure tandarusti to her children, three out of the four perishing from too much parwarish!’ And Gauhar burst into a peal of laughter that Janki found reprehensible and in bad taste.
‘Oh,
she looked funny, didn’t she? All veiled, holding her robe with one fat hand and her heavy crown atop her veil, peering at the world through her mask. I thought, what if that crown fell off at the King Emperor’s feet as she bowed. As they all bowed, so low, so low.’
‘Except one,’ said Janki. ‘And he didn’t come loaded with jewels either.’ For the Gaekwad of Baroda, Sayyaji Rao III, had not only omitted to wear all his state regalia but had just bowed once, ever so lackadaisically and then stalked off, turning his back on the King Emperor, something that led to a huge outcry in the angry British press.
‘And what a resounding title the British sarkar had given him—Farzand-i-Khas-i-Daulat-i-Inglishia! After that, the man refuses to bow and scrape! He was, I distinctly saw, laughing to himself as he strode away.’
‘They’ll find some way to make him pay for the insolence, you bet. But I believe he is partial to the Congress.’
Their performance done, they could give themselves over to merriment and sightseeing. On the morning after the Durbar they drove, together for once, to be part of the massive crowd that had come to greet the King and Queen as they appeared in a balcony of the Red Fort, granting a sighting to the citizens of Delhi. And on the following day they drove out again to see the Royal Review of 50,000 troops as they marched past their king in the new capital of the country.
Requiem in Raga Janki Page 24
