The Great Indian Novel

The First Book: The Twice-Born Tale

1

They tell me India is an underdeveloped country. They attend seminars, appear on television, even come to see me, creasing their eight-hundred- rupee suits and clutching their moulded plastic briefcases, to announce in tones of infinite understanding that India has yet to develop. Stuff and nonsense, of course. These are the kind of fellows who couldn’t tell their kundalini from a decomposing earthworm, and I don’t hesitate to tell them so. I tell them they have no knowledge of history and even less of their own heritage. I tell them that if they would only read the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, study the Golden Ages of the Mauryas and the Guptas and even of those Muslim chaps the Mughals, they would realize that India is not an underdeveloped country but a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay. They laugh at me pityingly and shift from one foot to the other, unable to conceal their impatience, and I tell them that, in fact, everything in India is over-developed, particularly the social structure, the bureaucracy, the political process, the financial system, the university network and, for that matter, the women. Cantankerous old man, I hear them thinking, as they make their several exits. And, of course, there is no party-ticket for me any more, no place for me in their legislative confabulations. Not even a ceremonial governorship. I am finished, a man who lives in the past, a dog who has had his day. I shall not enter the twenty-first century with them.

But I do not finish so easily. Indeed, I have scarcely begun. ‘I have a great deal to say,’ I told my old friend Brahm, ‘and if these fellows won’t hear it, well, I intend to find myself a larger audience. The only thing is that the old hand doesn’t quite behave itself any more, tends to shake a bit, like a ballot- paper in a defecting MP’s grasp, so could you get me someone I could dictate it to, an amanuensis?’

Brahm looked a little doubtful at first, and said, ‘You know, V.V., you have a bit of a reputation for being difficult to work with. You remember what happened to the last poor girl I sent you? Came back in tears and handed in her resignation, saying she didn’t want to hear of the Apsara Agency again. I can’t afford another one of those incidents, and what’s all this about a book. anyway? You ought to be leaning back on those bolsters and enjoying a quiet retirement, letting these other fellows run about for you, reaping the adulation of a good life well spent. After all, what are laurels for but to rest on?’

I fairly bit his head off, I can tell you. ‘So, you think I’m not up to this, do you?’ I demanded. ‘Dammit, what I am about to dictate is the definitive memoir of my life and times, and you know what a life and times mine have been. Brahm, in my epic I shall tell of past, present and future, of existence and passing, of efflorescence and decay, of death and rebirth; of what is, of what was, of what should have been. Don’t talk to me of some weepy woman whose shorthand trips over her fingernails; give me a man, one of your best, somebody with the constitution and the brains to cope with what I have to offer.’

And Brahm said, ‘Hmm, well, if you insist, I have a chap in mind who’s almost as demanding as you, but who can handle the most complex assignments. Humour him and you won’t be disappointed.’

So, the next day the chap appeared, the amanuensis. Name of Ganapathi, South Indian, I suppose, with a big nose and shrewd, intelligent eyes. Through which he is staring owlishly at me as I dictate these words. Brahm was right about his being demanding. He listened to me quietly when I told him that his task would be no less than transcribing the Song of Modern India in my prose, then proceeded to lay down an outrageous condition. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said, without batting an eyelid, ‘provided you work to my pace. I shall reside with you, and as long as I’m ready, you must not pause in your dictation.’

Something about him, elephantine tread, broad forehead and all, impressed me. I agreed. And he was back in the afternoon, dragging his enormous trunk behind him, laden with enough to last him a year with me, I have no doubt. But I hadn’t given in without a thought. I made my own condition: that he had to understand every word of what I said before he took it down. And I was not relying merely on my ability to articulate my memories and thoughts at a length and with a complexity which would give him pause. I knew that whenever he took a break to fill that substantial belly, or even went around the corner for a leak, I could gain time by speaking into my little Japanese tape-recorder. So you see, Ganapathi, young man, it’s not just insults and personal remarks you’ll have to cope with. It’s modern technology as well.

Yes, yes, put it all down. Every word I say. We’re not writing a piddling Western thriller here. This is my story, the story of Ved Vyas, eighty-eight years old and full of irrelevancies, but it could become nothing less than the Great Indian Novel.

2

I suppose I must begin with myself. I was born with the century, a bastard, but a bastard in a fine tradition, the offspring of a fisherwoman seduced by a travelling sage. Primitive transport system or not, our Brahmins got about a lot in those days, and they didn’t need any hotel bookings then. Any householder was honoured by a visit from a holy man with a sacred thread and no luggage but his learning. He would be offered his host’s hospitality, his food, his bed and often, because they were a lot more understanding then, his daughter as well. And the Brahmin would partake of the offerings, the shelter, the rice, the couch, the girl, and move on, sometimes leaving more than his slippers behind. India is littered with the progeny of these twice-born travelling salesmen of salvation, and I am proud to be one of them.

But fisherfolk weren’t often their style, so the fact of her seduction says something for my mother Satyavati. She was on the river that day, the wet fold of her thin cotton sari flung over one shoulder, its hem riding up her thigh, the odour of perspiration mixing with that of the fish she was heaving into her boat, when a passing sage, Parashar, caught a glimpse of her. He was transfixed, he later told me, by the boldness of her beauty, which transcended any considerations of olfactory inconvenience. ‘Lovely lady,’ he said in his best manner, ‘take my love’, and coming from a Brahmin, especially one as distinguished as he was, that was an offer no woman could refuse.

But my mother wasn’t wanton or foolish, and she had no desire to become known as either. ‘There are people watching from both sides of the river,’ she replied, ‘so how can I give myself to you?’

The Brahmin was no novice in the art of seduction, though; he had spotted a little deserted island some way up the river, whose interior was screened by a thick copse of trees. He motioned her to paddle towards it, and swam to it himself in a few swift, strong strokes.

Satyavati followed, blushing. She had no intention of resisting the sage: a mist around the island, already curtained by the trees, dispelled her modest hesitation. (When she told me the story she claimed Parashar had caused a magic cloud to settle on the island to keep off prying eyes, which I took as evidence of understandable female hyperbole.) Obedience was, of course, a duty, and no maiden wished to invite a saintly curse upon her head. But Satyavati was no fool, and she understood that for an unmarried virgin, there was still a difference between bedding a persuasive Brahmin on her own and being offered to one by her father — which was hardly likely to happen, since sages did not stop at fisherfolk’s huts and Parashar could not be expected. with one of her caste, to go through a form of marriage that would sanctify their coupling. ‘I’ve never done this before,’ she breathed. ‘I’m still a virgin and my father will be furious if I cease to be one. If you take me, what will become of me? How can I show my face amongst my people again? Who will marry me? Please help me,’ she added, fluttering her eyelashes to convey that though her flesh was willing, her spirit was not weak enough.

Parashar smiled in both desire and reassurance. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘virginity isn’t irretrievable. I’ll make sure that no one will doubt your virginity even after you yield to me. That’s nothing to be afraid of.’

And his ardour stifled further conversation.

Even men of the world — and few in this category can equal one who is above this world — feel tenderly for those they have loved. So, afterwards, lying by her side, Parashar asked Satyavati when she had had her time of month. And when he had heard her answer, he did not attempt to evade his responsibility. ‘There will be a child born of our union,’ he said simply, ‘but I will keep my word and ensure that your normal life as a daughter of your people will not be disturbed.’

Refusing to let her panic, Parashar led Satyavati to her father’s hut, where he was received with due deference. ‘Your daughter, whom I have met by the river today, has a spark of grace in her,’ he intoned sententiously. ‘With your permission, I wish her to accompany me for a short period as my maid, so that I may instruct her in higher learning. I shall, of course, return her to you when she is of marriageable age.’

‘How can I be sure that no harm will come to her?’ asked the startled father, who was no village innocent either.

‘You know of me in these parts,’ Parashar responded haughtily. ‘Your daughter will return to you within one year, and she will return a virgin. You have my word.’

It was not often that a fisherman, even a head fisherman, which is what Satyavati’s father was, challenged the word of a Brahmin. He bowed his head and bade his daughter farewell.

Satyavati fared well. Parashar took her far away from the region before her pregnancy began to show. I was born in an old midwife’s home in the forest.

‘We must name the child Dvaipayana, one created on an island,’ said Satyavati rather sentimentally to my father. He nodded, but it wasn’t a name that ever seemed likely to stick. ‘Women,’ he said to me once, years later, shaking his head in amused tolerance. ‘Imagine, a name like that for the son of a wandering Brahmin in British India. No, Ved Vyas is much easier. I’ve always wanted a son named Ved Vyas.’ And so Ved Vyas it was and, since I was a somewhat diminutive fellow, V.V. I became.

After less than a month’s suckling, I was taken away from my mother, who had to begin her journey home. My father had taught her several lessons from the ancient texts, including one or two related to the inscrutabilities of virginity. Upon her return, to quell the rumours in the village, her father had Satyavati examined by the senior midwife. Her hymen was pronounced intact.

Brahmins knew a great deal in those days.

3

It was just as well, for Satyavati the fish-odorous was destined to become the wife of a king. Yes, we had kings in those days, four hundred and thirty-five of them, luxuriating in titles such as Maharaja and Nawab that only airline ads and cricket captains sport any more. The British propped them up and told them what to do, or more often what not to do, but they were real kings for all that, with palaces and principalities and twenty-one-gun salutes; well, at least some of them had twenty-one guns, but the number of cannonballs wasted on you descended in order of importance and the man who was entranced by my mother was, I think, only a fourteen- or even an eleven- gunner. His name was Shantanu and he had had a rather unfortunate marriage in the past to an exquisite Maharani who suffered seven successive miscarriages and disappeared when her eighth pregnancy produced a son.

There were all sorts of stories circulating about the ex-queen, one saying that she was in fact enamoured of Shantanu’s father, the old King Pritapa, and had married the son instead, as a sort of substitute; others casting doubt on her pedigree and claiming that Shantanu had picked her up on the banks of the Ganga; another suggesting that they had what would today be called an ‘open marriage’ which left her free to lead her own life; still others, whispered, that the seven children had died not entirely natural deaths and that the Maharani was not altogether normal. Whatever the truth of the rumours — and there was always enough evidence to suggest that none of them was wholly unfounded — there was no doubting that Shantanu had seemed very happy with his wife until she abruptly left him.

Years later, inexplicably, the now middle-aged king returned from a trip to the river bank with a handsome lad named Ganga Datta, announced that he was his lost son, and made him heir-apparent; and though this was a position which normally required the approval of the British Resident, it was clear that the young man possessed in abundant measure the qualities and the breeding required for the office of crown prince, and the Maharaja’s apparently eccentric nomination was never challenged. Not, that is, until my mother entered the scene.

She was in the woods oft the river bank when Shantanu came across her. He was struck first by the unique fragrance that wafted from her, a Brahmin- taught concoction of wood herbs and attars that had superseded the fishy emanations of pre-Parashar days and he was smitten as my father had been. Kings have fewer social inhibitions than Brahmins, and Shantanu did not hesitate to walk into the head fisherman’s hut and demand his daughter’s hand in marriage.

‘Certainly, Your Majesty, it would be an honour,’ my maternal grandfather replied, ‘but I am afraid I must pose one condition. Tell me you agree and I will be happy to give you my daughter.’

‘I don’t make promises in advance,’ the Maharaja replied, somewhat put out. ‘What exactly do you want?’

The fisherman’s tone stiffened. ‘I may not be able to find my Satyavati a better husband than you, but at least there would be no doubt that her children would inherit whatever her husband had to offer. Can you promise her the same, Your Majesty — that her son, and no one else, will be your heir?’

Of course, Shantanu, with the illustrious Ganga Datta sitting in his capital, could do nothing of the kind, and he returned to his palace a despondent man. Either because he couldn’t conceal his emotions or (more probably) because he didn’t want to, it became evident to everyone in or around the royal court that the Maharaja was quite colossally lovesick. He shunned company, snubbed the bewhiskered British Resident on two separate occasions, and once failed to show up at his morning darshan. It was all getting to be too much for the young Crown Prince, who finally decided to get the full story out of his father.

‘Love? Don’t be silly, lad,’ Shantanu responded to his son’s typically direct query. ‘I’ll tell you what the matter is. I’m worried about the future. You’re my only son. Don’t get me wrong, you mean more to me than a hundred sons, but the fact remains that you’re the only one. What if something should happen to you? Of course we take all due precautions, but you know what an uncertain business life is these days. I mean, it’s not even as if one has to be struck by lightning or something. The damned Resident has already run over three people in that infernal new wheeled contraption of his. Now, I’m not saying that that could happen to you, but one never knows, does one? I certainly hope you’ll live long and add several branches to the family tree, but you know, they used to say when I was a child that having one son was like having no son. Something happens and sut! the British swoop in and take over your kingdom claiming the lack of a legitimate heir. They still haven’t stopped muttering about the way I brought you in from, as they think, nowhere. So what happens if you pick a fight with someone, or get shot hunting with some incompetent visiting Angrez? The end of a long line, that’s what. Do you understand why I’m so preoccupied these days?’

‘Yes, I see,’ replied Ganga Datta, who was certain he wasn’t seeing enough. ‘It’s posterity you’re worried about.’

‘Naturally,’ said Shantanu. ‘You don’t think I’d worry about myself, do you?’

Of course that was precisely what Ganga Datta did think, and probably what the ageing Maharaja had hoped he’d think, for the Crown Prince was not one to let matters drop. Kings, he well knew, did not travel to forests alone; there were drivers and aides to witness the most solitary of royal recreations. So a few inquiries about the Maharaja’s recent excursion rapidly led the young man to the truth, and to the hut of the head fisherman.

Ganga Datta didn’t travel alone either. In later years he would be accompanied by a non-violent army of satyagrahis, so that the third-class train carriages he always insisted on travelling in were filled with the elegantly sacrificing élite of his followers, rather than the sweat-stained poor, but on this occasion it was a band of ministers and courtiers he took with him to see Satyavati’s father. Ganga D. would always have a penchant for making his most dramatic gestures before a sizeable audience. One day he was even to die in front of a crowd.

‘So that’s what you want,’ he said to the fisherman, ‘that’s all? Well, you listen to me. I hereby vow, in terms that no one before me has ever equalled and no one after me will ever match, that if you let your daughter marry my father, her son shall succeed as king.’

‘Look, it’s all very well for you to say so,’ said the fisherman uneasily, warily eyeing the ceremonial weaponry the semicircle of visitors was carrying. ‘I’m sure you mean every word you say and that you’ll do everything to keep your vow, but it’s not really much of a promise, is it? I mean, you may renounce the throne and all that, but your children may have, other ideas, surely. And you can’t oblige them to honour your vow.’ His guests bristled, so he added hastily, ‘Forgive me, huzoor, I don’t mean to cause any offence. It’s just that I’m a father too, and you know what children can be like.’

‘I don’t, actually,’ Ganga Datta replied mildly. ‘But I have made a vow, and I’ll ensure it’s fulfilled. I’ve just renounced my claim to the throne. Now, in front of all these nobles of the realm, I swear never to have children. I shall not marry, I shall desist from women, so your daughter’s offspring need never fear a challenge from mine.’ He looked around him in satisfaction at the horror-struck faces of those present. ‘I know what you’re thinking — you’re wondering how I can hope to get to Heaven without producing sons on this earth. Well, you needn’t worry. That’s one renunciation I don’t intend to make. I intend to get to Heaven all right — without any sons to lift me there.’

The head fisherman could scarcely believe how the discussion had gone. ‘Satyavati,’ he called out in joy. ‘The king can have her,’ he added superfluously. ‘And I shall be grandfather to a maharaja,’ he was heard mumbling under his breath.

The wind soughed in the trees, signalling the approach of the monsoon rains, rustling the garments of the consternated courtiers. A stray gust showered petals on to Ganga Datta’s proud head. He shook them off. ‘We’d better be going,’ he announced.

One of the courtiers stooped to pick up the fallen flowers. ‘It’s an omen,’ he said. ‘The heavens admire your courage, Ganga Datta! From now on you should be known as Bhishma, the One Who has Taken a Terrible Vow.’

‘Ganga is much easier to pronounce,’ the ex-Crown Prince said. ‘And I’m sure you know much more about omens than I do; but I think this one means we shall get very wet if we don’t start our return journey immediately.’

Back at the palace, where the news had preceded him, Ganga was greeted with relief and admiration by his father and king. ‘That was a fine thing to do, my son,’ Shantanu said, unable to conceal his pleasure. ‘A far, far better thing than I could ever have done. I don’t know about this celibacy stuff, but I’m sure it’ll do you a lot of good in the long run. I’ll tell you something, my son: I’ve simply no doubt at all that it’ll give you longevity. You will not die unless and until you really want to die.’

‘Thanks awfully, father,’ said Ganga Datta. ‘But right now I think we’d better start trying to get this arrangement past the Resident-Sahib.’

4

‘Wholly unsuitable,’ the British Resident said, when he heard of Satyavati. ‘A fisherman’s daughter for a maharaja’s wife! It would bring the entire British Empire into disrepute.’

‘Not really, sir, just the Indian part of it,’ replied Ganga Datta calmly. ‘And I cannot help wondering if the alternatives might not be worse.’

‘Alternatives? Worse? Don’t be absurd, young man. You’re the alternative, and I don’t see what’s wrong with you, except for some missing details in your. . ahem. . past.’

‘Then perhaps I should start filling in some of those missing details,’ Ganga replied, lowering his voice.

There is no record of the resulting conversation, but courtiers at the door swore they heard the words ‘South Africa’, ‘defiance of British laws’, ‘arrest’, ‘jail’ and ‘expulsion’ rising in startled sibilance at various times. At the end of the discussion, Ganga Datta stood disinherited as crown prince, and Shantanu’s strange alliance with Satyavati received the official approval of His (till lately Her) Majesty’s Government.

That was not, of course, the end of the strange game of consequences set in train by the wooded wanderings of my malodorous mother. The name ‘G. Datta’ was struck off imperial invitation lists, and a shiny soup-and-fish was shortly placed on a nationalist bonfire. One day Ganga Datta would abandon his robes for a loincloth, and acquire fame, quite simply, as ‘Gangaji’.

But that is another story, eh, Ganapathi? And one we shall come to in due course. Never fear, you can dip your twitching nose into that slice of our history too. But let us tidy up some genealogy first.

5

Satyavati gave Shantanu what he wanted — a good time and two more sons. With our national taste for names of staggering simplicity, they were called Chitrangada and Vichitravirya, but my dismayed readers need not set about learning these by heart because my two better-born brothers do not figure largely in the story that follows. Chitrangada was clever and courageous but had all too brief a stint on his father’s throne before succumbing to the ills of this world. The younger Vichitravirya succeeded him, with Gangaji as his regent and my now-widowed mother offering advice from behind the brocade curtain.

When the time came for Vichitravirya to be married, Gangaji, with the enthusiasm of the abstinent, decided to arrange the banns with not one but three ladies of rank, the daughters of a distant princeling. The sisters were known to be sufficiently well-endowed, in every sense of the term, for their father to be able to stay in his palace and entertain aspirants for their hands. None the less, it came as a surprise when Ganga announced his intention of visiting the Raja on his half-brother’s behalf.

He had been immersing himself increasingly in the great works of the past and the present, reading the vedas and Tolstoy with equal involvement, studying the immutable laws of Manu and the eccentric philosophy of Ruskin, and yet contriving to attend, as he had to, to the affairs of state. His manner had grown increasingly other-worldly while his conversational obligations remained entirely mundane, and he would often startle his audiences with pronouncements which led them to wonder in which century he was living at any given moment. But one subject about which there was no dispute was his celibacy, which he was widely acknowledged to have maintained. His increasing absorbtion with religious philosophy and his continuing sexual forbearance led a local wit to compose a briefly popular ditty:

‘Old Gangaji too

is a good Hindu

for to violate a cow

would negate his vow.’

So Ganga’s unexpected interest in the marital fortunes of his ward stimulated some curiosity, and his decision to embark on a trigamous mission of bride-procurement aroused intense speculation at court. Hindus were not wedded to monogamy in those days, indeed that barbarism would come only after Independence, so the idea of nuptial variety was not in itself outrageous; but when Gangaji, with his balding pate and oval glasses, entered the hall where the Raja had arranged to receive eligible suitors for each of his daughters and indicated he had come for all three, there was some unpleasant ribaldry.

‘So much for Bhishma, the terrible-vowed,’ said a loud voice, to a chorus of mocking laughter. ‘It turns out to have been a really terrible vow, after all.’

‘Perhaps someone slipped a copy of the Kama Sutra into a volume of the vedas,’ suggested another, amidst general tittering.

‘O Gangaji, have you come for bedding well or wedding bell?’ demanded an anonymous English-educated humorist in the crowd.

Ganga, who had approached the girls’ father, blinked, hitched his dhoti up his thinning legs and spoke in a voice that was meant to carry as much to the derisive blue-blooded throng as to the Raja.

‘We are a land of traditions,’ he declared, ‘traditions with which even the British have not dared to tamper. In our heritage there are many ways in which a girl can be given away. Our ancient texts tell us that a daughter may be presented, finely adorned and laden with dowry, to an invited guest; or exchanged for an appropriate number of cows; or allowed to choose her own mate in a swayamvara ceremony. In practice, there are people who use money, those who demand clothes, or houses or land; men who seek the girl’s preference, others who drag or drug her into compliance, yet others who seek the approbation of her parents. In olden times girls were given to Brahmins as gifts, to assist them in the performance of their rites and rituals. But in all our sacred books the greatest praise attaches to the marriage of a girl seized by force from a royal assembly. I lay claim to this praise. I am taking these girls with me whether you like it or not. Just try and stop me.’

He looked from the Raja to the throng through his thin-rimmed glasses, and the famous gaze that would one day disarm the British, disarmed them — literally, for the girls emerged from behind the lattice-work screens, where they had been examining the contenders unseen, and trooped silently behind him, as if hypnotized. The protests of the assembled princes choked back in their throats; hands raised in anger dropped uselessly to their sides; and the royal doorkeepers moved soundlessly aside for the strange procession to pass.

It seemed a deceptively simple victory for Ganga, and indeed it marked the beginning of his reputation for triumph without violence. But it did not pass entirely smoothly. One man, the Raja Salva of Saubal, a Cambridge blue at fencing and among the more modern of this feudal aristocracy, somehow found the power to give chase. As Ganga’s stately Rolls receded into the distance, Salva charged out of the palace, bellowing for his car, and was soon at the wheel of an angrily revved up customized Hispano-Suiza.

If Ganga saw his pursuer, it seemed to make little difference, for his immense car rolled comfortably on, undisturbed by any sudden acceleration. Salva’s modern charger, the Saubal crest emblazoned proudly on the sleek panel of its doors, roared after its quarry, quickly narrowing the distance.

Before long they drew abreast on the country road. ‘Stop!’ screamed Salva. ‘Stop, you damned kidnapper, you!’ Sharply twisting his steering-wheel, he forced the other vehicle to brake sharply. As the cars shuddered to a halt Salva flung open his door to leap out.

Then it all happened very suddenly. No one heard anything above the screeching of tyres, but Ganga’s hand appeared briefly through a half-open window and Salva staggered back, his Hispano-Suiza collapsing beneath him as the air whooshed out of its tyres. The Rolls drove quietly off, engine purring complacently as the Raja of Saubal shook an impotent fist at its retreating end.

‘So tiresome, these hotheads,’ was all Ganga said, as he sank back in his seat and wiped his brow.

6

Vichitravirya took one look at the women his regent had brought back for him and slobbered his gratitude over his half-brother. But one day, when all the arrangements had been made in consultation with his — my — mother Satyavati, the invitations printed and a date chosen that accorded with the preferences of the astrologers and (just as important) of the British Resident, the eldest of the three girls, Amba, entered Ganga’s study and closed the door.

‘What do you think you are doing, girl?’ the saintly Regent asked, snapping shut a treatise on the importance of enemas in attaining spiritual purity. (‘The way to a man’s soul is through his bowels,’ he would later intone to the mystification of all who heard him.) ‘Don’t you know that I have taken a vow to abjure women? And that besides, you are pledged to another man?’

‘I haven’t come. . for that,’ Amba said in some confusion. (Ever since his vow Ganga had developed something of an obsession with his celibacy, even if he was the only one who feared it to be constantly under threat.) ‘But about the other thing.’

‘What other thing?’ asked Ganga in some alarm, his wide reading and complete inexperience combining vividly in his imagination.

‘About being promised to another man,’ Amba said, retreating towards the door.

‘Ah,’ said Gangaji, reassured. ‘Well, have no fear, my dear, you can come closer and confide all your anxieties to your uncle Ganga. What seems to be the problem?’

The little princess twisted one hand nervously in the other, looking at her bangled wrists rather than at the kindly elder across the room. ‘I. . I had already given myself, in my heart, to Raja Salva, and he was going to marry me. We had even told Daddy, and he was going to. . to. . announce it on that day, when. . when. .’ She stopped, in confusion and distress.

‘So that’s why he followed us,’ said the other-worldly sage with dawning comprehension. ‘Well, you must stop worrying, my dear. Go back to your room and pack. You shall go to your Raja on the next train.’

For Gangaji’s sake I wish that were the end of this particular story, but it isn’t. And don’t look at me like that, young Ganapathi. I know this is a digression — but my life, indeed this world, is nothing more than a series of digressions. So you can cut out the disapproving looks and take this down. That’s what you’re here for. Right, now, where were we? That’s right, in a special royal compartment on the rail track to Saubal, with the lovely Amba heading back to her lover on the next train, as Ganga had promised.

If Gangaji had thought that all that was required now was to reprint the wedding invitations with one less name on the cast of characters, he was sadly mistaken. For when Amba arrived at Saubal she found that her Romeo had stepped off the balcony.

‘That decrepit eccentric has beaten, humiliated, disgraced me in public. He carried you away as I lay sprawling on the wreck of my car. You’ve spent God knows how many nights in his damned palace. And now you expect me to forget all that and take you back as my wife?’ Salva’s Cambridge-stiffened upper lip trembled as he turned away from her. ‘I’m having your carriage put back on the return train. Go to Ganga and do what he wishes. We’re through.’

And so, a tear-stained face gazed out through the bars of the small-windowed carriage at the light cast by the full moon on the barren countryside, as the train trundled imperviously back to Ganga’s capital of Hastinapur.

‘You must be joking, Ganga-bhai, I can’t marry her now,’ expostulated Vichitravirya, ripping the flesh off a breast of quail with his wine-stained teeth. ‘The girl’s given herself to another man. It was hardly my idea to have her shuttling to and from Saubal by public transport, in full view of the whole world. But it’s done: everyone knows about her disgrace by now.’ He took a quick swallow. ‘You can’t expect me, Vichitravirya of Hastinapur, son of Maharaja Shantanu and Maharani Satyavati, soon to be king in my own right and member of the Chamber of Princes, to accept the return of soiled goods like some Porbandar baniya merchant. You can’t be serious, Ganga-bhai.’ He rolled his eyes in horror at his half-brother and clapped loudly for an attendant. ‘Bring on the nautch-girls,’ he called out.

‘Then you must marry me yourself,’ said the despairing Amba when Ganga had confessed the failure of his intercession with the headstrong princeling. ‘You’re the one who’s responsible for all this. You’ve ruined my life, now the least you can do is to save me from eternal disgrace and spinsterhood.’

Gangaji blinked in disbelief. ‘That’s one thing I cannot do,’ he replied firmly. ‘I cannot break my vow, however sorry I may feel for you, my dear.’

‘Damn your vow,’ she cried in distress. ‘What about me? No one will marry me now, you know that. My life’s finished — all because of you.’

‘You know, I wouldn’t be so upset if I were you,’ replied Gangaji calmly. ‘A life of celibacy is a life of great richness. You ought to try it, my dear. It will make you very happy. I am sure you will find it deeply spiritually uplifting.’

‘You smug, narcissistic bastard, you!’ Amba screamed, hot tears running down her face. ‘Be like you, with your enemas and your loincloths? Never!’ And she ran out of the room, slamming the door shut on the startled sage.

She tried herself after that, imploring first Vichitravirya, then Salva again, equally in vain. When six years of persistence failed to bring any nuptial rewards, she forgot all but her searing hatred for her well-intentioned abductor, and began to look in earnest for someone who would kill him. By then, however, Gangaji’s fame had spread beyond the boundaries of Has-tinapur, and no assassin in the whole of India was willing to accept her contract. It was then that she would resolve to do it herself. .

7

But I am, as Ganapathi indicates by the furrow on his ponderous brow, getting ahead of my story. Amba’s revenge on Gangaji, the extraordinary lengths to which she went to obtain it, and the violence she was prepared to inflict upon herself, are still many years away. We had paused with Vichitravirya committing bigamy, bigamy inspired by Gangaji and sanctioned by religion, tradition, law and the British authorities. Another instance of Ganga’s failure to judge the real world of flawed men, for his debauched half-brother needed no greater incentive to indulgence than this temple-throbbing choice of nocturnal companions. Ambika and Ambalika were each enough for any king, with ripe rounded breasts to weigh upon a man and skins of burnished gold to set him alight, bodies long enough to envelop a monarch and full hips to invite him into them; together, they drove Vichitravirya into a fatally priapic state. Yes, it was terminal concupiscence he died of, though some called it consumption and a variety of quick and quack remedies were proposed in vain around his sickbed. He turned in his sceptre just seven years into his reign, in what the British Resident, in his letter of condolence, was to describe as the ‘prime of life’, and he died childless, thus giving me a chance to re-enter the story.

When kings died without heirs in the days of the Raj, the consequences could be calamitous. Whereas in the past the royal house could simply have adopted a male child to continue the family’s hold on the throne, this was not quite as easy under the British, who had a tendency to declare the throne vacant and annex the territory for themselves. (We even fought a little war over the principle in 1857 — but the British won, and annexed a few more kingdoms.) Satyavati, whose desire to see her offspring on the throne had deprived Gangaji of more than a crown, turned to him anxiously.

‘It’s entirely in your hands,’ she pointed out. ‘If the British want, they can take over Hastinapur. But one thing can stop them — if we tell them one of the queens was pregnant at the time of Vichitravirya’s death, and that his legitimate heir is on his way into this world. Oh, Ganga, my son’s wives are still lovely and young; they can produce the heirs we need. Do your duty as a brother, as the son of my husband, and take Ambika and Ambalika to bed.’ She saw his expression. ‘Oh God, you’re going to tell me about your vow, aren’t you, Ganga? You took it, after all, for me. Now I’m asking you to ignore it, for the sake of the family — for your father’s dynasty.’

‘But I can’t, Mother,’ said Ganga piously. ‘A vow is a vow. I’d rather give up my position, this kingdom, the world itself, than break my promise.’

‘But no one need know,’ Satyavati remonstrated, adding, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘except the girls themselves.’

‘That’s bad enough,’ Ganga replied, ‘and it doesn’t matter whether someone knows or not. What’s essential is to remain true to one’s principles. My vow has never been so sorely tested, but I’m sorry, Mother, I won’t give in to untruth for any reason.’ (He tried not to sound pompous while saying this, and nearly succeeded.) ‘But don’t despair, the idea’s still a good one, and I’m not the only person who can fulfil it. Don’t forget that we have a long tradition of Brahmins coming to the rescue of barren Kshatriyas. It may have fallen somewhat into disuse in recent years, but it could be useful again today.’

‘Dvaipayana!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course — my son Ved Vyas! I hadn’t thought about him. If he’s anything like his father, he can certainly do the job.’

And indeed I could. We Brahmin sons never deny our mothers, and we never fail to rise to these occasions. I rose. I came.

Permit an old man a moment’s indulgence in nostalgia. The palace at Hastinapur was a great edifice in those days, a cream-and-pink tribute to the marriage of Western architecture and Eastern tastes. High-ceilinged rooms and airy passages supported by enormous rounded columns stretched ever onwards across a vast expanse of mosaic and marble. In the dusty courtyard beyond the front portico stood a solitary sedan, ready for any royal whim, its moustachioed chauffeur dozing at the wheel. The other vehicles lay in garages beyond, below the servants’ quarters where the washing hung gaily out to dry against walls of red brick — saris, dhotis, and, above all, the tell-tale uniforms of the numerous liveried attendants, brass buttons gleaming in the sunlight. The estate was all that was visible, lush lawns and flowered footpaths; the visitor was made conscious of a sense of spaciousness, that evidence of privilege in an overcrowded land. Inside, the cool marble, the sweeping stairways, the large halls, the furniture that seemed to have been bought to become antique, imposed rather than captivated. But one could walk through the mansion at peace with oneself, hearing only the soft padding of the servants’ bare feet, the tinkle of feminine laughter from the zenana, and the chirping melodies of the birds in the garden, being wafted indoors by the gentle afternoon breeze. And sometimes, when my ageing but still exquisite mother forgot herself, another noise could be heard, the high, tinny sound of a gramophone, Hastinapur’s only one, scratching out an incongruous waltz as a lonely head swayed silently in tune with the music.

At night there was stillness where once there was sound, and new sounds emerged where silence had reigned during the day. Raucous laughter from behind closed doors broadcast the young king’s pleasure: a fat madam musician played the harmonium while singing of romance through betel-stained lips, and lissom nautch-girls clashed their jingling payals with each assertive stamp of their hennaed heels. And Vichitravirya threw his head back in delight, flinging gold and silver coins, sometimes a jewel or a necklace, at the hired houri’s feet, or after a particularly heady mixture of music and ambrosia, tucking his reward into her low-bent cleavage as she pouted her gratitude. Then there followed all the frolic, and all the futility, of intoxication, which ended, eventually, in my princely half-brother’s death.

It was to this place that I went, and it was here that my mother told me anxiously why she had sent for me. ‘Of course I’ll help, Mother,’ I assured her, ‘provided my royal sisters-in-law are willing. For they have never seen me, and after a lifetime, even a short one, spent as a wandering Brahmin sage and preacher of sedition, I am not a pretty sight.’

My mother took in my sweat-stained kurta, my face burned black with constant exposure to the sun, the cracked heels of my much-walked feet, and the livid scar from a recent political encounter with the lathi-wielders of the Raj. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘But Ganga will take care of them.’

Between them, my mother and Ganga obtained the widows’ acquiescence — the issue of dynastic succession is, as every television viewer today knows, a powerful aphrodisiac. A few discreet inquiries and my father’s training enabled me to calculate the exact day required for the production of offspring. At the appointed moment Ambika, freshly bathed and richly adorned, was laid out on a canopied bed, and I duly entered the room, and her. But she was so appalled by the sight of her ravisher that she closed her eyes tightly throughout what one might have called, until the Americans confused the issue, the act of congress. Ambalika was more willing, but as afraid, and turned white with fear at my approach. The result, I warned my mother as I went to her to take my leave, was that the products of our union might be born blind and pale, respectively. So, on my last night Satyavati sent Ambika to me again, in the hope of doing better. But Ambika had had enough, and sent me a substitute, a maidservant of hers, bedecked in her mistress’ finery. By the time I discovered the deception it was too late, and a most agreeable deception it had proven, too. But I had made my plans to leave the next morning, and I slipped out as quietly and unobtrusively as I had come, leaving the secret of my visit locked in three wombs.

From Ambika emerged Dhritarashtra, blind, heir to the Hastinapur throne; from Ambalika, Pandu the pale, his brother; from the servant girl, Vidur the wise, one day counsellor to kings. Of all these I remained the unacknowledged father. Yes, Ganapathi, this is confession time.