The Great Indian Novel

The Twelfth Book: The Man Who Could Not Be King

71

Is this all I can recall of the glorious period of our attainment of Independence, I see your elephantine frown ask me. Can death, destruction, and despair be my only recollections of the first flush of national freedom? No, Ganapathi, I too was not oblivious of the excitement of the age, the exhilaration of change. I can and do recall other things about 1947, petty moments, perhaps, which reflected and affirmed that things were no longer the same. I remember Englishmen who edited newspapers in the big cities suddenly discovering virtues in the nationalists they had reviled till noon the previous day. Signs being taken down in exclusive establishments, signs which read ‘Indians and dogs not admitted beyond this point’. Children being born at inconvenient times of the night who would go on to label a generation and rejuvenate a literature. Pink-skinned civil servants with worthless lifetime contracts frantically arranging their own premature retirements and passages home while learning to be attentive and obsequious to Indians who had suddenly been placed above them.

Like Jayaprakash Drona, Minister of State for Administrative Reform, who sat in his saffron robe, black beard flowing messily over his desktop, as perspiring ICS officials pressed him to put his newly valuable signature on to pieces of paper they had drafted with meticulous attention to the interests of their kind.

‘Routine paper, sir. Annual leave chart. The leave’s already been taken, sir.’

‘All right.’ Drona signed suspiciously.

‘Now this file, sir, approves ex gratia compensation payments to all those whose career expectations have been, ah, affected by, er. . recent events in the country.’

‘No.’

‘But you must, sir! It’s been carefully worked out. On a sliding scale, taking into account seniority, length of service. .’

‘No.’

The official swallowed, then placed the offending docket in a tray labelled ‘Pending’.

‘This is an altogether simpler matter, sir. An individual case. Civil servant who lost everything, all his possessions, papers, antiques, in a nasty disturbance during the Partition riots. Most unfortunate case, sir, in fact I’ve just seen him this morning at the ministry, pretty distraught as you can imagine. If you’d just sign here, sir, we’d make him a special one-time grant in partial restitution, authorize an advance on his next six months’ salary to get him back on his feet again, and allow him exceptionally to convert into cash the freight costs he would have claimed from the government if all his furniture hadn’t gone up in flames.’ Drona opened the file and picked up a pen. ‘Thank you, sir,’ his Secretary went on. ‘I think you’d really be doing a fine thing for poor Heaslop. He’s spent all his career in India and. . sir?’

For Drona, who had put pen to paper, had lifted it again and was looking at him with what the poet, some British poet, had called a wild surmise.

‘Did you say his name was Heaslop?’

‘Yes, sir, I. .’

‘Ronald Heaslop?’ The Secretary nodded. ‘And you say he is here, now, in the ministry?’ The Secretary nodded again, unhappily. ‘Send him in,’ Drona directed. ‘I want to talk to him.’

Ronald Heaslop was duly ushered in, sporting white ducks a shade too large for him, borrowed from a friend while the only suit that had survived the arsonists was receiving the none-too-tender attentions of a dhobi. The suit accentuated the extent to which he seemed to have shrunk, physically and in spirit.

Drona leaned back, his fingertips steepled in a gesture of greeting or reflection, it was not clear which. ‘Mr Heaslop,’ he asked, ‘do you remember me?’

The Englishman looked at him blankly for a moment, then with an effort summoned up a recollection. ‘Why, of course! Devi Hill — you talked to me about Indian spiritualism.’

‘Amazing what adversity will do for the memory cells, isn’t it, Mr Heaslop?’ Drona asked in his most swadeshi voice. He now made a special effort to Indianize his diction with the colonials: they had to realize he had both an axe and an accent to grind. ‘While you are being so amazingly accurate, you would not be able to recall a more recent encounter, no?’

Heaslop looked at him again, hesitated, then slowly began to flush red, like a toilet after the Holi celebrations.

‘Shall I give you clue, Mr Heaslop? A visiting card? A request for help “Ghaus Mohammed, purse lao”? Or were there several such incidents in your distinguished career in this country that you are knowing so well?’

Heaslop began to speak, but the words would not get past his throat. ‘I. .

I’m. .’ he croaked.

‘And now it is your turn to be coming to me in need,’ Drona remarked, with the subtlety of a juggernaut. ‘Now what shall we do, Mr Heaslop? What would you do in my place? Shall I, too, summon my Ghaus Mohammed?’

Heaslop remained redly speechless.

Drona pushed a button on his desk. A peon poked his head round the door. ‘Secretary-sahib ko bula do,’ he commanded. Sir Beverley Twitty, kcmg, emerged with a promptness accelerated by apprehension.

‘Ah, Sir Bewerley,’ Drona said expansively. ‘You were putting a certain file before me just now, isn’t it? File of Shri Heaslop? You have it?’

The Secretary handed it over with a set face.

‘Now, let me see.’ Drona examined the paper before him with exaggerated care. ‘What is it you are proposing, Sir Brewerley? “Special one-time grant in partial restitution for losses suffered to private property in performance of service-related functions.” My my, what long sentence, Sir Bewerlily. I must be learning how to write like this soon. Otherwise how I will manage when you and your fellow British are no longer remaining here? What were these losses, Shri Heaslop, that you, er. . suffered in performance of service-related functions?’

‘They set fire to my house,’ Heaslop replied bitterly. ‘I lost everything I had — or almost everything. Fact is, I was rather lucky to escape with my life at all. I woke up smelling smoke and leapt out of the window. Seconds later the place was gone.’

‘Most unfortunate,’ Drona clucked. ‘So you were asleep in your home at the time this happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see. So that was your service-related function — sleep?’

Heaslop looked nonplussed. Sir Beverley, still unsettled by Drona’s waywardness with his name, sprang to his junior’s defence. ‘Well, sir, everyone has to sleep.’

Drona ignored him. ‘There was a riot going on in the city?’

‘Yes,’ replied Heaslop eagerly. ‘Nasty business, it was. Hindus killing Muslims, Muslims butchering Hindus — oh, the Muslims were much worse,’ he added hastily, in deference to Drona’s saffron robes. ‘And probably both sides turning on the British.’

‘A major riot, would you say?’

‘Oh, definitely. Decidedly major.’

‘And you were asleep? A major riot between two sections of His Majesty’s subjects in your district, and you, Mr Heaslop, were sleeping? You surprise me, Shri Heaslop. I would have seen you instead in your official jeep, restoring law and order and sanity to the population. That would have been your. . “service-related function”, would it not?’

‘But — ’ Heaslop spluttered. Drona interrupted him ruthlessly.

‘In the circumstances, I am hardly thinking this one-time payment recommended by Sir Brewerly is justified,’ he commented. ‘What is it — 20,000 rupees, is it, Sir Bewarley — 20,000 rupees for being asleep at the wrong time in the wrong place. No, no, Sir Bowerley, goodness gracious, this will not do at all.’ He moved his fingers to the next line on the file. ‘Six months’ salary advance? Six months? But my dear Mr Heaslop, will you be working six months still with this dreadful native government? I am rather thinking not. I am rather thinking that your name will be figuring on the list of those recommended for early termination of service and reversion to the Home cadre.’ Sir Beverley seemed about to speak. Drona added meaningfully, ‘And there may be other names too.’ The Secretary relapsed into silence.

‘Now let us see,’ Drona went on, ‘what else? Exceptional conversion of freight into cash? But I am surprised, Sir Liverbelly. A civil servant recommending exceptions? Never am I hearing before of such a thing. Exceptions in a time of national calamity? I think not.’ He put the file down and wrote across it in bold, decisive letters. ‘I very much regret to be rejecting your recommendation, Sir Lewerbey,’ he said with a pleasant smile. ‘But Mr Heaslop, though I as a minister of the government of India cannot help you, as an individual I am simply overcome with sympathy for your predicament. Sir Weberley, you must start a collection for poor unfortunate Mr Heaslop. Here is my own contribution.’

His hand disappeared into the saffron folds of his garment and produced a fistful of small coins.

Drona got up, leaned over the table and very slowly and deliberately poured them, in a tinkling cascade, into Heaslop’s lap.

No, in fact it didn’t happen that way, Ganapathi. Sometimes I wish it had, that Indians had proved capable of paying the Raj back, if you’ll pardon the metaphor, in its own coin. But I’ve let an old man’s vengefulness get the better of me, and I have been untrue to Drona. Revenge was the one quality conspicuously absent in the way he, and other members of the independent Indian government, treated their former masters.

Forgive me, Ganapathi. What happened was far more prosaic than my fantasy.

‘Mr Heaslop,’ Drona asked, ‘do you remember me?’

‘Why, of course!’ the Englishman responded, after a pause. ‘Devi Hill — you talked to me about Indian spiritualism. I had no idea that you — ’

‘No,’ Drona interrupted him mildly. ‘I don’t imagine you did. I believe, though, that you might recall a later encounter.’ He looked directly at Heaslop, who shifted uncomfortably in his chair, but said nothing. ‘Well? Do you?’

‘I. . I. .’ Heaslop stammered, his mouth opening soundlessly as it used to during his old exchanges with Sir Richard. Drona’s unflinching gaze seemed to pin him to his seat, nailing his squirming conscience to the truth. ‘Y. . yes,’ he said at last, miserably. ‘I. . I say, I’m afraid I behaved most aw. . awfully. I’m sorry.’

Drona’s face lightened, as if that had been what he was waiting to hear. ‘I am not,’ he responded equably. ‘That meeting taught me a great deal, Mr Heaslop. In fact, you could almost say that that is why I am here today.’ He smiled, and there was no rancour in his voice. ‘So you see, I am really quite grateful to you.’ He turned the pages of the file before him and looked up from them to the speechless Englishman. ‘I am most distressed to read of your misfortunes, Mr Heaslop. Of course I shall approve the recommendations submitted by Sir Beverley. With one addition.’ He paused, seeking the right paragraph in the dossier before him. ‘The Secretary-sahib has suggested that — where is it now? — “Consideration be given”, that’s right, consideration be given to your transfer to New Delhi, in the circumstances, pending any decision you might wish to make about your future career.’ Drona looked up from the file inquiringly.

‘Yes,’ Heaslop nodded, since confirmation seemed to be called for. ‘It would help me, and I don’t really want to go back to the district, after all. . all that’s happened.’ He stopped unhappily, aware of the awkwardness of his situation, made no more bearable by the solicitousness of the saffron-robed figure across the desk.

‘I see,’ Drona said. ‘In that case, I will give consideration immediately.’ He wrote on the file as he spoke. ‘You shall be transferred to New Delhi with immediate effect, Mr Heaslop.’ His eyes briefly met those of the Englishman, who was reddening with embarrassment and gratitude. ‘To my department, in fact. As long as you wish to remain in the service of this government, you are welcome here. I believe we shall work very well together.’

Heaslop rose, stretched out his hand, and found the minister’s palms folded in a polite but correct namaste. Clumsily, he retracted his own and mirrored the gesture. There seemed to be nothing else to say.

72

And through this delightful era, what, you may well ask, of the Viscountess Drewpad? Till Drewpad’s final exit she continued to come to my blind son’s arms. There were many opportunities for the relationship to. . er, fructify, as her husband prepared for the ceremonial handover of his symbolic position, now no longer that of Viceroy but Governor-General, to his Indian successor, the scarred and decrepit but undoubtedly symbolic Ved Vyas. (Who held it, I might add, Ganapathi, for that brief interregnum between Drewpad’s departure and the proclamation of the Indian Republic, when the country was a dominion under an appointed Indian Governor-General. But I had not cut many inaugural ribbons or cracked many coconuts against the hulls of ships when I had to make way, in turn, for an elected President. They say every dog has its day, Ganapathi, but for this terrier twilight came before tea-time.)

But I am getting away from Georgina Drewpad. She came, as I was telling you, to Dhritarashtra, and she came back even after her official position had elapsed. Some exits, Ganapathi, are simply to permit a different sort of entrance. Lady Drewpad had waved a composed official farewell by her husband’s side from the steps of a BOAC Constellation as her husband departed into the relative obscurity of uniformed nepotism. But she came back soon enough, Ganapathi, and often enough, the nation’s unofficial First Tourist, slipping quietly into the country on unpublicized visits to Priya Duryodhani’s widower father.

Nature and history would not be denied. Soon after one of those journeys she returned much earlier than expected. This time she stayed incognito, clad in billowing caftans and noticeably preferring the curtained indoors, for longer than she had ever done before. At last, on 26 January 1950, as the Constitution of the new Republic of India was solemnly promulgated by its founding fathers, Georgina Drewpad, her face awash with tears, delivered herself of a squalling, premature baby.

The infant girl, bearing the indeterminate pink-and-brown colouring of her mixed parentage, a tiny frail creature with strong lungs, used frequently and well was immediately handed over to the faithful low-caste servant who had served Dhritarashtra and his companion throughout this difficult period. She was to be adopted; neither of her natural parents could openly acknowledge the intimacy that had produced her.

The baby was called Draupadi, a subtle Indianization of her mother’s family name, and she took the uncouth patronymic of her adoptive father, Mokrasi. Draupadi Mokrasi. Remember the name well, Ganapathi. You will see a lot more of this young lady as she grows up in independent India.

73

History, Ganapathi — indeed the world, the universe, all human life, and so, too, every institution under which we live — is in a constant state of evolution. The world and everything in it is being created and re-created even as I speak, each hour, each day, each week, going through the unending process of birth and rebirth which has made us all. India has been born and reborn scores of times, and it will be reborn again. India is for ever; and India is forever being made.

The India of which Dhritarashtra assumed the leadership on 15 August 1947 had just been through a cathartic process of regeneration, another stage in this endless cycle. But you must not think, Ganapathi, that the trauma of Partition represented a disruption of this constant process, a sidestep away from a flowing dance of creation and evolution. On the contrary, it was a part of it, for the world is not made by a tranquillizing wave of smoothly predictable occurrences but by sudden events, unexpected happenings, dramas, crises, accidents, emergencies. This is as true of you or me as of Hastinapur, of India, of the world, of the cosmos. We are all in a state of continual disturbance, all stumbling and tripping and running and floating along from crisis to crisis. And in the process, we are all making something of ourselves, building a life, a character, a tradition that emerges from and sustains us in each succeeding crisis. This is our dharma.

Throughout this unpredictable and often painful process of self-renewal, despite the abrupt stops and starts of the cosmic cycle, the forces of destiny remain unshaken in their purpose. They are never thwarted by the jolting and jarring of history’s chariots. The vehicles of human politics seem to run off course, but the site of the accident turns out to have been the intended destination. The hopes and plans of millions seem to have been betrayed, but the calamity turns out to have been ordained all along. That is how a nation’s regeneration proceeds, Ganapathi, with several bangs to every whimper.

This constant rebirth is never a simple matter of the future slipping bodily from the open womb of history. Instead there is rape, and violence, and a struggle to emerge or to remain, until circumstances bloodily push tomorrow through the parted, heaving legs of today.

So it was in our story: Gangaji died, his assassin Shikhandin was hanged, Karnistan was hacked off the stooped shoulders of India, Dhritarashtra attained the prime ministry of a land racked with chaos and carnage, and out of this all, Draupadi Mokrasi was born, cried and, not without struggle, grew up — into an admirable, beautiful, complicated, desirable (I could do this for another twenty-two letters of the alphabet, Ganapathi, but I won’t) creature whose life gives meaning to the rest of our story.

The India of those early years of Independence was a state of continual ferment. It was constantly being rethought, reformed, reshaped. Everything was open to discussion: the country’s borders, its internal organization, its official languages, the permissible limits of its politics, its orientation to the outside world.

One of the first issues confronting the new government was the future of the ‘princely states’ — the hundreds of fiefdoms and kingdoms that had nominally remained outside British rule, as had Hastinapur before Gangaji incurred the Raj’s wrath. Even before the British left they had made it clear to the nawabs and maharajas of these principalities that they were obliged to accede either to India or to Karnistan. Most made their choice according to the dictates of geography and common sense, but one or two of the bigger states dragged their constitutional feet in the hope that they might be able to hold out for their own independence. One of these was the large, scenically beautiful and chronically underdeveloped northern state of Manimir.

Manimir, with its verdant valley and its snowy mountain peaks, had been linked politically to the rest of India since the sixth century AD. Its Maharaja, in fact, traced his descent from the Rajput warrior-kings of western India, though this was elaborated in the officially inspired myth to imply a higher ancestry, both geographically and spiritually (the Maharaja numbered the sun and the god Shiva amongst his progenitors, and Shiva, at least, made his celestial home on the top of Mount Kailash in the Himalayan ranges to the north of Manimir). Whatever his genealogy, though, Maharaja Vyabhichar Singh was a soft-jowled hedonist, with pudgy hands and a taste for Caucasian carnality that had already dragged him at least once through the British courts. (There the Indian Office had succeeded in having him referred to throughout as ‘Mr Z’, an expedient which, far from concealing his identity, only presented his numerous detractors with another epithet of abuse.)

While princes to the south of him, with varying degrees of good grace, merged their possessions into the Indian Union and accepted ambassadorships and seats in Parliament as revised symbols of contemporary status, Vyabhichar Singh obstinately refused to cede either throne or title. He declared himself to be independent, a condition no other nation recognized, and sent ‘ambassadors’ to India and to Karnistan, who were ostentatiously ignored by all except the printers of visiting cards.

All this might have been mildly amusing, were it not for two inconvenient facts about Manimir. One, it was sandwiched between the border of what remained of India and what had emerged from Mr Nichols’ tender mercies as the new state of Karnistan. Two, its population was overwhelmingly Muslim, while the religion of the Maharaja, inasmuch as sybaritism did not qualify as one, was Hinduism.

‘We can’t let that concupiscent coot get away with this much longer,’ Mohammed Rafi, his aristocratic lip curling, said with feeling in the Prime Minister’s study. ‘The longer that fool Vyabhichar Singh takes to make up his mind, the more time Karna and his minions have to stir up communal feeling for the state’s accession to Karnistan. And,’ he added, ‘we can’t afford to lose Manimir.’

The ‘we’ was, let’s be frank, as much a personal pronoun as a patriotic one: the greater the number of his co-religionists on Karna’s side of the population ledger, the lower the credibility and influence in India of party President Rafi and his fellow Kaurava Muslims. Already it was clear that they were doing none too well from the haemorrhaging exchange of populations that was taking place in the wake of Partition, particularly on the western border. But even politicians have principles, and Rafi’s concerns about Manimir were more than mere electoral mathematics. The future of India as a secular nation depended on its ability to integrate a Muslim-majority state successfully, to nail Karna’s lie that India’s Muslims needed a country of their own in order to breathe free and flourish.

‘With respect,’ said a quiet voice. ‘I believe the Maharaja thinks he has made up his mind.’ Vidur’s tone was the epitome of the senior civil service: his voice contained an omniscient reserve, as if concerned that the knowledge it carried might be frightened away by too dramatic an octave. ‘He wishes to remain Independent in perpetuity. Of course, he is not being very realistic.’

‘He is being a damned fool,’ Dhritarashtra said. ‘What’s worse, of course, is that for years we have supported the Manimir National Congress of Sheikh Azharuddin against Mr Z’s undemocratic rule, and now the Sheikh is likely to find his support being cut from under his feet by the Muslim fanatics clamouring for merger with Islamic Karnistan. What can we do, Vidur?’

Not a great deal, I’m afraid, Prime Minister.’ The Principal Secretary for Integration, as he now was, was always scrupulously correct in official meetings with his half-brother. ‘As you know, in the course of my missions to most of the wavering princes in 1947 I pointed out rather forcefully, with Lord Drewpad’s acquiescence, the unviability of the independence option to those who were contemplating it. In most cases the palace guard was the only armed force in these princely states, arid they could easily have been overwhelmed by a small detachment from the nearest police-station in British India, so the princes did not require much persuasion. In Manimir, regrettably, though the palace guard is even more effete and less effective than most, the Maharaja did not possess enough, ah, good sense to make the decision he should have.’

‘Why don’t we just march in?’ asked Rafi, with nawabi impatience.

‘It’s a little delicate, Mr Rafi,’ Vidur replied, in the tone of a doctor circumspectly advising a wealthy patient of one more indulgence he would have to give up. ‘It is one thing to, er, as you put it, march in to a little fiefdom surrounded completely by Indian territory. Quite another to contemplate military action in a state the size of Manimir, which has an even larger frontier with Karnistan than it does with us.’

‘So what can we do?’ Rafi asked, impatiently echoing his Prime Minister.

‘I’m afraid we must wait a little longer,’ Vidur said, his face assuming the mournful manner that bureaucrats adopt when saying things they know politicians don’t want to hear. ‘You know, sir, await developments. A number of things could happen that might end the stalemate.’

‘Such as?’

‘One possibility is an internal uprising, led for instance by Sheikh Azharud- din, which might overthrow the Maharaja and proclaim adherence to India. Our intelligence reports to date do not, however, suggest that the Sheikh is capable of mounting and leading such a rebellion, at least in the near future. We could seek to finance, supply and even organize an uprising, but that, of course, calls for a. .’ he paused before uttering the next word, to make it clear it rarely passed his lips, ‘political decision which is yet to be made.’

‘Well, let’s make it, then,’ said Rafi.

‘Suppose we do,’ Dhritarashtra said mildly, ‘these things would still take time to, ah, become operational. We are speaking now about the immediate future. You were indicating, Vidur, that an Azharuddin-led rebellion is a possibility, but not, right now, a probability. What if our intelligence fellows are wrong?’

Vidur raised an eyebrow as if the very thought was blasphemous.

‘Well sir, if they are, and if Sheikh Azharuddin is capable of leading a popular rebellion against the Maharaja, and if he succeeds — all of which, as you will appreciate, sir, is purely hypothetical — it is still far from certain that the Sheikh, despite the affinity between his party and yours, will necessarily accede to the Indian Union. It is said that he needs India — he needs Manimir to join the Indian Union — in order to obtain power, but if he gets power without Indian help he may decide he does not need us.’ Vidur coughed discreetly.

‘And the other possibilities you want us to wait for?’ asked Dhritarashtra.

‘Intervention by Karnistan,’ Vidur replied. ‘If Karna decides he won’t wait any longer and tries to take over in Manimir by force, we can step in on behalf of the legally constituted authorities, assuming of course the legally constituted authorities ask us to.’

‘You mean Mr bloody Z has to invite us in before we can do anything about a Karnistan invasion?’ This was, of course, Rafi again.

I m afraid so. Otherwise we would be invaders ourselves, without the head start the first invaders would have. It would not be an easy position to sustain, militarily or’ — Vidur grimaced like a headmaster obliged to utter an indelicacy — ‘politically’.

‘I wonder how my friend Sheikh Azhar would react in that sort of situation,’ Dhritarashtra mused.

‘It is not very clear, Prime Minister,’ Vidur replied. ‘It is said that though he has been sympathetic in the past to Kaurava aims, he is increasingly frustrated by what he is beginning to see, most unfortunately, as Indian complacency about a Hindu maharaja. If Karna were to seek to exploit this by invading with the declared intention of putting the Sheikh in power in Manimir as the true representative of the people of the state, we might lose Manimir for ever.’

‘Never. They can’t stand each other,’ Rafi pointed out.

‘There’s an even more important reason why that won’t happen,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘Karna is the only leader of any consequence in Karnistan. Azhar’s popularity in Manimir is equally undeniable. If I know the Khalifa-e- Mashriq, he will never risk placing someone in power in one part of his domain who could be a popular threat to himself. No, Vidur: if Karna decides to act, it will be without Azhar. He will want Manimir, but he will want it, like everything else, on his own terms.’

‘And that, Prime Minister, may offer us our best chance,’ Vidur said. Having expressed a political opinion, he blushed self-consciously, like a chartered accountant who had accidentally indicated a preference for shapely rather than binomial figures.

There was a knock on the door. I haven’t done this to you too often, have I, Ganapathi? Stretching the limits of coincidence unacceptably far? I mean, it’s not always in this narrative that a character has said, ‘It would be really convenient if the sky were to fall on us right now’ — and the sky has fallen on the next page. Fair enough? So do you think you can excuse me now if a sweat-stained despatch-rider bursts into the room and announces that Manimir has been invaded by Karnistani troops?

No? Very well. Take away the despatch-rider then. A secretary walks in. Not one of your ICS types with a capital S, but a secretary, a chap who takes dictation and passes messages. ‘Prime Minister, Sahib,’ he says urgently. ‘Excuse me for interrupting you, but I thought you’d like to know immediately. A message from the Defence Ministry has just been flashed in. The minister is on his way over to see you. Manimir has been invaded from Karnistan.’

Notice, Ganapathi, from, not by, Karnistan. Not by regular troops either — the spit-and-polish-wallahs hived off from the Indian Army — but by ‘irregulars’.

‘What do you mean, “irregulars”?’ Dhritarashtra asked the Defence Minister when he arrived. ‘If you ask me, the whole thing seems quite irregular to me.’

The Defence Minister — none other than our jovial Sikh friend Sardar Khushkismat Singh — laughed dutifully. There was not much he failed to laugh at. ‘It seems they are not soldiers at all, but Pathan tribesmen,’ he explained. ‘Though we don’t doubt for one minute that they have been armed and supplied by Karna’s government. Their declared objectives are certainly identical — the “liberation” of their Islamic brothers from tyrannical Hindu rule, and the merger of Manimir with Karnistan.’

‘Well, what do we do now?’ asked Rafi, transforming the gathering into an impromptu council of war.

‘How long will it take for our troops to reach the Manimir border in invasion strength?’ Dhritarashtra asked.

‘I’ve already spoken to the Chief of Staff,’ replied the Defence Minister. ‘Assembling the men, arranging logistics, vehicles, supplies, the troop-movement itself — about twelve hours.’

‘That’s it, then.’ The Prime Minister turned to the Principal Secretary for Integration. ‘That’s how much time you have to fly to Manimir, see the Maharaja and get him to accede to the Indian Union. The moment he does so, Karna’s irregulars are no longer invading a defenceless princely state but the sovereign territory of India. And he will have a war on his hands.’

‘I shall leave immediately,’ Vidur said in his low bass. ‘But. . ah. . Prime Minister, if I do not succeed in obtaining accession, what do you propose to do?’

‘The orders that go out now will not be rescinded,’ Dhritarashtra announced firmly. ‘Our troops will march in anyway. If you do your job quickly enough, the invasion will be legal. If not. .’

He did not need to complete the sentence. ‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ Vidur said, gathering his papers with a swift and practised hand, and left.

74

When his plane landed in Devpur, the capital of Manimir, it was snowing. The off-white flakes unevenly covered the habitual grime of the city like silver foil stuck on a discoloured barfi. Vidur, who preferred his cities clean and his barfis without silver foil, suppressed a shudder. His radio message had apparently got through: a corpulent uniformed official was at the airport to greet him, looking very like a doorman employed at the better class of hotel.

‘Mr Principal Secretary?’ The official snapped a round-armed salute that nearly popped the brass-buttons on his ill-fitting coat. It was clear he had put on some weight since it was tailored — perhaps for the previous winter, Vidur thought. Uniformed officialdom in Manimir was rarely required to exert itself. ‘Bewakuf Jan, Colonel of the Guards. Welcome to Manimir, sir. Your bags?’

Vidur gestured apologetically at the black briefcase in his hand. ‘This is all I’ve come with,’ he said, in the tone of a physician who has brought all he needs for the delivery. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t very much time.’

‘Haven’t. . very much. . time?’ the colonel seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘But aren’t you planning to see the Maharaja tomorrow?’

‘I am planning,’ Vidur said firmly, ‘to see the Maharaja tonight.’

‘Tonight! But that’s quite impossible. The Maharaja has been entertaining an important private guest and. . and. . they have already retired for the night. He has left strict instructions that he not be disturbed.’

‘Then I’m afraid he is very likely to be disturbed by the rattle of Pathan rifle-butts on his window-pane tomorrow morning,’ Vidur replied. ‘As for me, I shall not need to trouble you further, colonel. I shall return to Delhi as soon as my plane has been refuelled.’

‘Come, sir, come, I am sure that won’t be necessary,’ said the colonel. Despite the freezing temperature in the unheated airport, Vidur saw he was perspiring. ‘His Highness will be most disappointed. Please follow me. The car is waiting.’ He turned to lead the way.

Vidur did not move. ‘I am here to see the Maharaja,’ he said. ‘And I am expected to report back to my Prime Minister in Delhi before dawn.’

‘Before dawn,’ the colonel echoed dully.

‘Exactly. Vidur went on without pity. ‘In the circumstances, I see little point in accepting your invitation to drive to the palace. Good day, colonel.’

Colonel Bewakuf Jan swallowed, and looked skywards for inspiration. ‘In the circumstances,’ he said miserably, ‘I suppose the Maharaja will have to be disturbed.’

‘I suppose he will,’ Vidur concurred. ‘And in the circumstances, I’m sure he’ll understand,’ he added confidently. The colonel nodded, as if he were considerably less sure.

The palace limousine — an enormous vehicle with a seating capacity half-way between a London taxi and a Delhi bus — purred them to the pink- and-guilt Devpur Palace, a similarly immense rococo edifice overflowing in gaudy ornamental detail. Ochre exterior lighting cast a yellowish glare on asymmetrical rockwork, randomly-cast shells, flowing scrolls and marble curves abruptly begun and ended, as if the architect had been paid on a per-feature basis. Crenellated battlements completed the structure — appropriate, Vidur thought, for an embattled Maharaja.

Vidur and the colonel walked up red-carpeted stairs and down endless red-carpeted corridors until they entered what Vidur guessed — from the somnolent guards who slouched to attention as Colonel Bewakuf Jan appeared — were Vyabhichar Singh’s private quarters. Two immense oak portals guarded by fiercely moustachioed (and surreptitiously yawning) subedars in red opened to admit them into shorter passageways laid with carpeting of a deeper pile in more opulent hues. At last they were alone before an elaborately carved door from which emanated a faint whiff of sandalwood.

‘The Maharaja’s bedroom,’ the colonel whispered.

‘Why are you whispering?’ Vidur asked.

‘So as not to wake up the Maharaja,’ the colonel whispered back.

‘We are here,’ Vidur pointed out, ‘to wake up the Maharaja.’

A gale of giggly laughter from inside suggested the deed did not need to be done. ‘Arrete.’ A girlish Gallic scream floated through the keyhole. ‘Mais non!’ came the high-pitched response of indeterminate provenance. ‘Continue!’

The colonel blanched. ‘His Highness is. . er. . entertaining an overseas guest,’ he whispered. ‘I really think we should come back later, Mr Principal Secretary.’

‘And risk him going to sleep? Look, I’m sorry to interrupt his little party, but at least we know he’s awake. And apparently in a good mood. I really have no time to waste, colonel. Shall I knock on the door or will you?’

The colonel suffered again the agony of irresolution, then lifted the brass knocker and dropped it gently on the door. A peal of laughter sounded from the room.

‘That is either the most sophisticated door-bell I have ever seen, or they haven’t heard you,’ Vidur said after a moment. ‘Allow me?’ And before the horrified colonel could prevent him Vidur had seized the brass knocker and swung it against the door with a crash.

There was a startled silence from the other side. Then a peremptory voice raged in a squeaky bellow: ‘Who the hell is that?’

The colonel’s corpulent features crumpled. ‘It’s. . me, sir,’ he articulated through paralysed vocal chords.

‘Who? Speak up, son of a donkey.’

‘Me, sir. Colonel Bewakuf Jan. With the Pr — ’

‘Bewakuf?’ The voice cracked in incredulity at its highest pitch. ‘Colonel Bewakuf? I thought I told you I was not to be disturbed, Major Bewakuf.’

Tears seemed to spring to the colonel’s porcine eyes. ‘Yes, sir, but. .

‘There are no buts, offspring of a rancid pig!’ screamed the royal voice on the other side of the door. ‘How dare you disobey a direct order, Captain Be- wakuf?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but. .’

‘You’re sorry? You’re sorry, licker of a eunuch’s behind? You try and break down my door when I am trying to sleep, Lieutenant Bewakuf, and you say you are sorry?’

‘Sir, it was not I, but he said. .’

‘He? He said? You mean there is someone else with you, turd from a tenotomized transvestite? Are you having a party outside my bedroom door, Havildar Bewakuf, in the middle of the night? I shall have each of my guards horsewhipped tomorrow, Lance-Naik Bewakuf, and as for you, Bewakuf, I shall spend all night thinking up a suitable punishment. Now get out, do you hear? Get out, and if your shadow so much as falls on my door again, eater of a dog’s offal, I shall personally come out and wring your neck! Is that clear, Sepoy Bewakuf?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The ex-colonel was visibly in tears.

‘Just a minute, Your Highness.’ Vidur addressed a busty carving on the sandalwood door just above the brass knocker he had so improvidentially wielded. ‘I apologize for this intrusion, but it was not the colonel’s fault. I insisted he bring me here.’

The effrontery of the unfamiliar voice seemed to take away the Maharaja’s breath. At any rate his response was a somewhat more subdued scream. ‘And who, may I ask, are you?’

‘Vidur Hastinapuri, Principal Secretary for Integration of the Government of India, and special emissary of His Excellency, Prime Minister Dhritarashtra Vidur announced at his most official. ‘I must leave Devpur shortly, sir, and I have flown here from Delhi expressly to see you. I had understood such a visit would be welcome and I have very little time.’ He paused, then added firmly, ‘I must see you immediately, Your Highness.’

‘Oh you must, must you?’ Vidur might have preferred another choice of words, but the voice was decidedly less strident. ‘Do you realize what time it is?’

‘I had understood this was an emergency,’ Vidur replied drily.

There was a moment’s silence, then a slapping sound, like that of a palm against flesh. ‘Very well,’ the Maharaja said, amid the splutter of giggles being stifled, ‘if you insist, I shall receive you now. Just a minute.’ A rustle of sheets — or was it something else? — was briefly heard, and the murmur of low voices. ‘You may come in.’

The door was not locked. Vidur opened it and stepped in. The colonel seemed undecided as to whether he should enter or not, and stood on one foot on the threshold.

‘Wait outside, Bewakuf!’ the Maharaja barked. The colonel hopped backwards like an offended, if overweight, ostrich. The door swung shut behind him.

75

Vidur had expected to find Mr Z in his dressing-gown, entertaining a female friend (or friends — he had not been sure of the number of distaff voices). He was startled to see the Maharaja propped up in bed, covered by an enormous silk razai that reached up to the lowest of his several chins. Its nearer length rose as a large mound, almost as if the Maharaja had chosen to throw so many blankets on to his lower extremities that half his anatomy reposed under a small hill.

‘I’m sorry, Your Highness,’ Vidur apologized. ‘I didn’t realize you were in bed. The colonel and I heard voices and I. . er. . I thought you were still awake.’

‘I am awake.’ The Maharaja giggled. ‘My guests have. . er. . retired.’ This time the giggle seemed to emanate not from the Maharaja’s throat, but from lower down. ‘Please take a seat.’

Vidur turned to the nearest chair, a Louis-Quinze piece that might have been designed by the palace architect. A garment had been flung over its side. Vidur meticulously picked it up. It was a smooth satin lady’s slip. He gazed stupidly at it, nonplussed.

‘Put it anywhere,’ the Maharaja waved a pudgy hand.

Vidur looked around in increasing embarrassment, and found a heap of similar apparel on an identical chair. He walked to it and dropped the garment on to the pile as if it was burning his fingers. It slipped to the floor, bringing a lace brassiere down with it. Vidur flushed.

‘Never mind,’ the Maharaja said, gesturing him back to his chair. ‘What can I do for you?’ One of his hands suddenly disappeared under the razai.

Vidur sat down delicately. ‘With respect, Your Highness, I think it is more a question of what we can do for you,’ he said.

He was taken aback by another giggle; this time, he could have sworn, from the region of the Maharaja’s belly.

‘What exactly do you mean?’ the Maharaja asked, an expression of intense concentration on his face.

‘We have information that a large band of Pathan irregulars has streamed across your borders,’ Vidur replied. ‘They are encountering practically no resistance and are already making considerable inroads into Manimiri territory.’

‘I know all that,’ the Maharaja said impatiently. His other hand had now disappeared under the embroidered quilt. He seemed to be straining at something, with considerable effort. Vidur was reminded of his own bouts of constipation.

‘I realize Your Highness is aware of the problem,’ he said. ‘What Your Highness may not know, however, is that these tribesmen have raised the slogan of liberating Manimir from your. . ah. . oppressive rule. And that they are almost certainly armed, supplied and directed by the government of Mohammed Ali Karna, which intends to annex Manimir.’

The Maharaja gasped, and a gurgling noise sounded from beneath the mound of the razai. Vidur was gratified by the reaction, but could not escape the feeling that it was not his statement that had caused it.

‘But — that’s terrible!’ The Maharaja breathed heavily, squirming under his silken covering. He seemed to be sliding under the quilt as he spoke. ‘Why haven’t. .’ his neck had almost disappeared from Vidur’s line of vision, ‘why haven’t my own people been telling me how serious this is?’ He sat up suddenly again with a jerk, a bare pale chest popping startlingly into view.

‘Perhaps because they can’t get in to see you,’ Vidur couldn’t resist replying. He was tired of the odd behaviour of this peculiar little man, and conducting such a discussion in a bedroom removed certain constraints, as far as he was concerned. ‘The point is, Your Highness, that by this time tomorrow, and probably sooner, this palace will be in Karnistani hands.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Unless you act now.’

A short high-pitched giggle emerged in reply. Vidur had been looking directly into the Maharaja’s hooded eyes and could have sworn he hadn’t seen the lips move — but the sound was unmistakably oral.

‘I hardly think this is a laughing matter, Your Highness,’ he said sternly.

‘No — of course not,’ the Maharaja breathed, the words emerging in gasps. ‘I’m sorry.’ His hand, under the razai, slapped flesh. ‘Bugs,’ he explained, superfluously.

‘I understand,’ Vidur replied, far from certain he understood at all. ‘I assume you need help.’

The Maharaja twisted again under the covers, his eyes rolling. ‘No. . thank you. I. . simply must get this bed changed tomorrow,’ he said, breathing heavily.

‘I meant military help.’ Vidur was finding the conversation increasingly difficult to control. ‘That is why I am here, Your Highness.’

‘I am most grateful.’ An expression of rapture was beginning to suffuse the royal face. Vidur was amazed at how the Maharaja could alternate so easily between discomfort and bliss in response to a fairly consistent line of argument from himself. Decidedly a most peculiar character.

‘Can. . you. . send. . us. . Indian. . troops?’ the Maharaja panted.

‘Certainly, Your Highness.’ Vidur began to feel alarmed by the Maharaja’s tone. ‘Are you quite sure you’re well, Your Highness?’

‘Yes,’ Vyabhichar Singh nodded vigorously, ‘yes — yes.’

The mound moved.

‘As I was saying,’ Vidur began, and then stopped, because he no longer recalled what he was saying and because the hillock on the lower half of the Maharaja’s bed was now moving up and down to a remarkably steady rhythm and. .

‘Exercises,’ the Maharaja breathed. ‘Every day. Don’t pay ‘tention. Ah, yes. Yes.’ His eyes closed and his fleshy round head turned from side to side. ‘Troops. Yes. Please. As many. Ah! As you can. Yes! Yes! Troops.’ The razai was positively heaving now, and little beads of perspiration were appearing on the Maharaja’s forehead.

‘We’ll need a formal request from you, of course, Your Highness,’ Vidur said, shrinking into his chair.

‘Yes. No — problem. Formal request. Ah. Bring a paper. I’ll sign. Yes. Ah. Ah. Yes. Yes! Aaah!’

Vidur found himself speaking rapidly, as if to shut out of his mind the horrible supposition that had entered it and which he found too unthinkable to be allowed to linger there. ‘We believe the most appropriate course would be for you to sign an Instrument of Accession and then appeal formally for Delhi to intervene,’ he said, looking at the marble floor, the wool carpet, the velvet bedroom slippers, anything to avoid that quivering quilt. ‘That would, of course, legitimize the entry of Indian troops on to Manimiri soil and permit India to act officially without the slightest constraint against the bandits who have encroached upon our — I mean your — sovereignty. I shall. .’ He stopped short, his eyes having travelled from the carpet to the foot of the armchair — and to the flimsy female undergarments he had knocked on to the floor.

‘No!’ The Maharaja cried, half-sitting up and then subsiding again on to his pillow. ‘Ah. Yes. No. No accession. Never! Yes. Ah. Why? Yes. Can’t you send? Ah. Indian troops? Ah. Yes! Friendly basis? Why accession? No! Yes! Yes!’

‘I beg your pardon, Your Highness?’ Vidur asked in some confusion.

‘Yes! Dammit, no! No! No, don’t stop — n’arrêtes pas — yes! Yes!’ The words were emerging in little grunts. ‘Send me. Troops. Aah. Save my state. Aah Then go away. Aah. No accession. Aaah. Understand?’

‘I don’t think you understand, Your Highness,’ Vidur stood up. ‘If what you are suggesting is that India should send you her armed forces as a gesture of friendship, defeat the invaders and then restore your kingdom to you, I am afraid you are. . you are living, sir, in’ — he found himself looking at the mobile mound again, and his tongue switched on to automatic pilot — ‘a fool’s paradise.’ As soon as the words were out he regretted them; one simply did not speak to a Maharaja like that, not even to a colossal fool like Mr Z. ‘I. . I’m sorry, Your Highness, I. .’

But the Maharaja did not seem to have heard him; his ‘ahs’ had become too frequent and too loud now to permit conversation. The royal eyes were completely hooded, the hands were moving under the razai, and the discernible portion of the Maharaja’s trunk was arched in unabashed ecstasy.

‘Your Highness!’ Vidur expostulated.

‘Yes. . yes. . yes!’ screamed the Maharaja. The heaving mass of silk and embroidery gave one last convulsive jerk, and Vidur found himself staring as a bare white foot popped briefly into view and slipped back under the razai. It was a soft, delicate foot, with painted nails pointing downwards; but the Maharaja was still lying on his back. .

Vidur closed his incredulous eyes, and tottered heavily on to his chair. ‘Aaaaaahh!’ he heard the Maharaja say, expelling air like a deflating brown balloon. When he opened his eyes again Vyabhichar Singh was sitting up against the pillows, his hands pudgily outside, holding the edge of the razai up to his uncollared collar-bone. ‘That feels much better,’ the Maharaja said cheerfully. ‘Nothing like a spot of exercise last thing at night. Does wonders for the constitution.’

Vidur nodded silently, his vocabulary defeated by the occasion.

‘Now you were saying, Mr Secretary. .’

I was saying,’ said Vidur at last with uncharacteristic bluntness, ‘that the only basis on which India will send you troops, Your Highness, is if Manimir accedes to the Indian Union.’

You can’t be serious,’ the Maharaja said, bliss fading rapidly from his face.

‘I’m afraid I am.’

‘You mean you’ll let me down, expect me to cope with these marauding Muslim hordes all by myself, let Manimir fall into Karna’s hands, unless I sign my throne away?’

Vidur thought about the truckloads of troops even now rolling towards India’s border with Manimir, and decided that honesty was not, the Mahaguru’s teachings notwithstanding, the best policy. ‘Yes,’ he lied for the only time in his life. ‘The Prime Minister has no intention of sending Indian troops to fight for your throne, Your Highness. But we will fight — for Indian soil.’

‘It’s not much of a choice, is it?’ the Maharaja asked bitterly. ‘If I don’t get your help, I lose my throne; if I get your help, I still lose it. What difference will it make whether I sign or not? I’m finished as Maharaja either way.’

The mound stirred at these words.

‘It will make a world of difference, Your Highness,’ Vidur said. ‘If you sign the Instrument of Accession, I will fly you in my plane tonight to your winter palace in Marmu, a few hundred miles further from the. marauding hordes you refer to; Indian troops will move in, beat back the invaders and preserve your palace and your property; and the Cabinet in Delhi will undoubtedly express its gratitude to you in a. . a tangible way.’

‘Ambassador to Outer Mongolia?’ Vyabhichar Singh’s lip curled.

‘On the other hand,’ Vidur went on, ‘if you prefer not to sign, the Pathans will push aside the opposition of your royal guard as if they were swatting flies, take over this palace and all within it, and conceivably string you up, Your Highness, from the nearest flagpole.’ A little shriek was stifled under the razai. Vidur found himself relishing every word. ‘Probably not before they have worked their gentle touch on you and any — companions and friends of yours they may find,’ he went on cruelly. ‘You know the reputation of our dear ex-countrymen from the North-West Frontier. They stay bottled up in those dry, drab hills for months on end, and then they have an opportunity to let off a little steam when someone finances a jolly little expedition like this. The kind of steam, Your Highness, that scalds rather deeply. I wouldn’t say it is such a poor choice after all.’

The Maharaja swallowed. ‘I’ll need time to think about this,’ he said.

‘Time, I’m afraid, is one thing I haven’t got, Your Highness. Even as I speak to you, my plane is warming up to fly me back to Delhi — and, if you wish, to drop you at Marmu. I am carrying in my briefcase a typed draft of the Instrument of Accession. All you have to do is put your signature to it — I shall even provide the pen — and Indian troops will begin to advance into Manimir. Otherwise, it is best I take my leave now. I have no desire to be stuck in Devpur when the Pathans get here.’

‘I — ’ The Maharaja had barely begun to speak when the mound rose abruptly and the razai was flung back off the foot of the bed, burying him under its heavy embroidered folds. A steatopygous blonde wearing nothing but a look of panic turned to the well-swathed Maharaja. ‘Mais c’ est affreux,’ she exclaimed as the Maharaja struggled to free himself from his silken encumbrances. ‘Qu’est-ce que tu attends? Que ces Pathans me violent ou quoi? Signe!’

She bent forward, presenting Vidur a perfectly proportioned behind, and proceeded to pummel her helpless helpmeet. Mr Z flailed his hands in a vain bid to escape from the all-embracing quilt and the relentless assault. ‘Signe!’ she screamed. ‘Sign!’ Vidur closed his eyes and tried to recall long-forgotten French lessons, but the words kept getting mixed up in his mind with his only previous recollection of a bare Caucasian behind, glimpsed during a Folies show at a daring private club in the country’s great eastern metropolis. ‘Oh, Calcutta!’ he breathed. (Now you know, Ganapathi, how old that malapropism is.)

Four hours later he walked into Dhritarashtra’s study — my blind son had been up all night waiting for him, but then night and day mattered little to our Prime Minister — and flapped a piece of paper under his half-brother’s sensitive nose.

‘Here it is,’ he declared in what were to become (thanks to a pair of indiscreet biographers) the most historic words ever spoken by an Indian civil servant. ‘We’ve got Manimir. Mr Z has signed the Instrument of Accession. And now that I’ve done my job, I hope the bloody army can do theirs.’

76

As you can see, Ganapathi, Vidur spoke a very different language in private from that which he employed in official meetings (‘that which’ — got it? Good). But he had usually, throughout his long career, been right. What he had said to the Maharaja about the Pathans, for instance — though you would have been forgiven for thinking it was just a ploy to scare Mr Z into signing — turned out to be, in the army phrase, ‘spot on’. The Pathans believed fully in enjoying their all-expenses-paid opportunity to ‘let off steam’, and so threw away the great tactical advantage of their initial stealthy advance into Manimir. They digressed into little forays of loot, rape and pillage that diverted them from the main objectives their Karnistani paymasters had charted. As a result, an invasion that could quite conceivably have taken the Manimiri capital before the Indian troops even got under way, became stalled first at the shelves of successive shops (rapidly stripped by the raiders) and finally at a wayside convent full of German nuns and white wine (ditto) While the Pathans indulged themselves in every kind of Liebfraumilch, the First Sikh Regiment and nine metric tonnes of Indian Army matériel were airdropped on Devpur. When the Maharaja’s accession to India was announced, a furious Karna committed regular troops to the fray to make up for the unprofessionalism of the irregulars. The first Indo-Karnistan War had begun.

Apart from the distractability of Karna’s chosen instruments, there was one other important element in India’s favour. Sheikh Azharuddin, the Manimir National Congress leader, announced his welcome to the Indian troops early in the campaign, at a massive public rally in Devpur after the Maharaja’s flight from his palace with Vidur and his panicky companion. ‘When our friends from Karnistan are attacking and violating our sisters and our homes in the name of Islamic brotherhood,’ he declaimed passionately, ‘I say, to hell with Karnistan! The Indians have deposed the tyrant who has oppressed us for so long. They offer us the prospect of people’s rule — our rule — democracy. I pray for their success,’

With Azharuddin on their side, Ganapathi, the Indians had won half the battle — that crucial half which is fought in the hearts and minds of the people. There were no fifth columnists to worry about, no fear of having to defend their backs from the treachery of a resentful population. The Indian Army rolled back the invasion with panache. They were poised to push the unfirm irregulars and the uniformed regulars completely out of Manimir when they were drawn up short — several hundred miles short — by an inopportune cease-fire cast over their heads like an ill-directed fishing net. My blind and visionary son had decided to appeal to the UN.

Many of us who never forgave him for that decision found all sorts of indefensible impulses behind it. It was common talk, for instance, that Georgina Drewpad had chosen this period to visit her old dominion, and ventured a viceregal opinion to which Dhritarashtra had been unduly susceptible. Others thought that it was my son’s education that was to blame, that his mind had been formed by the very sort of people who had founded the United Nations to meddle in other people’s affairs. Still others suggested that had the Prime Minister been able to see, even just a tiny little crack, he would not have made such an obviously stupid decision. I think all these critics were overlooking one thing: that Dhritarashtra had not, after all, been the Mahaguru’s hand- picked heir for nothing. The boy had a conscience, and his conscience would not allow him to let soldiers take and lose lives for land he was certain India would regain at the conference table, in an international court of law or in a democratic referendum. Of course he was wrong, but he was wrong, Ganapathi, for the right reasons.

So Manimir remained condemned to the label of ‘disputed territory’, part of it in Karnistani hands, the bulk in ours. The state whose attachment to India was the most eloquent possible repudiation of the religious Partition paid a high price for Dhritarashtra’s idealism. To this day it is scarred by tank-tracks, amputated by cease-fire lines, exploited by rhetoricians and fanatics on both sides of the frontier who prostitute its name for their own meretricious purposes.

Yet, Ganapathi, what a story it was. A story of India: of the decadence and debauchery of princes, of the imperatives and illusions of power; of the strengths of secular politics and the weaknesses of internationalist principle. An Indian story, with so many possible preambles and no conclusion.

It was also over Manimir that Dhritarashtra first revealed the technique of political self-perpetuation that he was to develop into such a fine art in the years to come. When the first criticisms were openly raised within the Kaurava Party, Dhritarashtra silenced them promptly by offering to resign. He knew perfectly well that with Gangaji gone and Pandu dead, Karna across the new frontiers and Rafi sidelined by the fact that much of his community had suddenly become foreigners, there was no obvious alternative leader the party could find. The critics responded by muting their objections; and Dhritarashtra learned how easy it was to get his own way.

The consequences of idealism and the imposability of individual will were prime ministerial lessons also learned, and profoundly absorbed, by the dark- eyed young daughter whom the widower Prime Minister had appointed as his official hostess. Yes, Ganapathi, Priya Duryodhani listened, and watched, and imbibed tone and technique from her paternal model. With Manimir, she learned her first exercise from her father’s political primer. It was an education from which the country was never to recover.

77

And what of the offspring of India’s blind leader and Britain’s all-seeing Vicereine, the infant Draupadi Mokrasi?

The frail girl quickly overcame the handicaps of her premature birth, her health improving as Dhritarashtra quietly devoted a discreet eye — forgive me the expression, Ganapathi, but it was one of Dhritarashtra’s — and an equally discreet cheque-book to her welfare. It was soon clear she would grow into an extraordinarily beautiful woman, but in childhood her other traits of character were apparent in a way they would not be in later years, when her beauty too often blinded men to everything else.

One of her teachers at the time, a Professor Jennings, was asked to describe the young Draupadi. He cleared his throat in that unnecessary British way and spoke in a voice as dry as the tomes he had authored, looking through horn-rimmed glasses at a point just above the questioner’s tilted head.

‘To her exquisite looks,’ he said in a self-consciously passionless tone, as if he were describing an English breakfast, ‘she added an open manner, an ability to learn from and adapt to the conditions in which she found herself, and a willingness to play with all the children in the neighbourhood, irrespective of caste, creed or culture.

‘If Miss D. Mokrasi had a fault,’ he went on, knowing he was expected to be aware of one, ‘it was that she spoke a little too readily, in a voice that for a young girl was somewhat too loud, and in terms that ought to have been more self-restrained. She did not always eat enough, and though she studied hard she often tended to learn by rote; but that completed the list of her disabilities. While she was not always the equal to every situation with which she was confronted, she was blessed with great faith in herself. She might not always perform brilliantly, she knew; but she could always muddle through.’

A true daughter of India, little Miss Mokrasi. With her, we felt that we, too, could always muddle through.