Rajmahal (2 page)

“What do you mean,
Bhapaji
?” said an anxious seventy-year-old son. “What do you mean by ‘last time'?”

“I refer to my impending death,” said the Sardar Bahadur impatiently. “Please do not make a fuss!” he preempted, before anyone could protest at the mention of the unmentionable.

It was arranged he would spend his last days on the veranda of a cousin's home skirting the temple where he could gaze beatifically at the divine Harmandir Sahib afloat on its pool of nectar. His progeny, who kept the ownership of the ground floor apartment, left it in a watchman's care, while they took the air of Chandigarh, Delhi, Jaipur, and, when they could wangle a visa, Lahore. Here, drifting on the fringes of the polo set and driving their vintage Bentleys and Rolls Royces, they preferred to boast about their old palace in Calcutta rather than live in it.

The dejected Rajmahal's spirits had revived only partly with the arrival of the first of the fifth generation, Surjeet Shona, who was born just before its desertion by the Ohris. Her birth entitled the Sardar Bahadur to a fifth rung on the tiny golden ladder, prepared to give him an easier passage into the next life. Her parents left Calcutta, taking her with them after the Sardar Bahadur's demise and it was not until Surjeet Shona lost her husband and came back twenty-six years later, that an Ohri again lodged permanently in the Rajmahal. So she was destined to inherit at least some of the original artifacts of the mansion, as well as the genes of both Raja Sheetanath and the Sardur Bahadur, for her father, an Ohri, had done the unthinkable by marrying a Bengali woman, a direct descendant of the Raja. It was a mixed heritage of which Surjeet Shona was both proud and well aware.

The Sardar Bahadur's wife was just as upset when her husband decided to shift to Amritsar and sell the Rajmahal at the tail end of their lives as she had been decades earlier when she had been uprooted and shifted in exactly the opposite direction.

“Why does he have to move again at this age, when it's too late for any good to come from it?” she said despondently to her maid Heera.

“It is of no use to argue,
Bi
'
ji
,” said Heera, perfectly familiar with the ways of her employers. “Think how auspicious it will be to move near Harmindar Sahib!”

“Well, at least he is keeping the lowest floor.”

An elaborate process had to be set in motion. Not only did the ground floor have to be converted into a self-sufficient unit, but the
Guru Granth Sahib
room had to be moved down too. And the great man intended to see to this reverential task himself. To him, as to all believing Sikhs, the
Guru Granth Sahib
was more than just the holy book. It was the Guru incarnate. At the
sukhasan
every night, the Sardar Bahadur himself wrapped the book in its sheet so the Guru could have a comfortable sleep.

The stairway on the ground floor veranda, no longer needed, was broken down to make space for the new
Granth Sahib
room. No expense was spared and the ceiling and walls were decorated with gold embellished scenes from the lives of the gurus. Rugs were acquired directly from Persia through the Sardar Bahadur's friend, Isfahani, a tea merchant, and laid in the room. All was set for the installation.

The Sardar Bahadur had earlier shifted his wife down with him to the first floor once his near-static period had begun, to make going out easier. And Inderjeet Kaur had obediently moved her belongings down to the mirrored bedroom which she had managed to sneak into occasionally for a good pry in earlier times, and which had always upset her by its existence.

“Only when he is past it,” she thought bitterly, “am I to be allowed official ingress!”

She saw to it that the shameful mirror over their bed, which so clearly reproduced their gross, spreading bodies when they lay down, was screened and put out of action. But this didn't stop her from reflecting on fantasies of the old goings-on, based, after all, on her actual witnessing on one tragic occasion, a mind sport set in a time warp.

After moving into the Rajmahal in 1910, the Sardar Bahadur had arranged to receive his mistresses at home. His sex life was for him a must, and the best he could do was to keep up the charade for the sake of his wife's dignity. It was obvious he was more concerned with enjoying what he considered his right than protecting his wife's feelings. But in those days, wives also knew they had to keep their mouths shut and be aware of their good fortune in netting such fine, manly husbands. Besides, in a joint
family household, infidelities by the womenfolk weren't uncommon either. But poor Inderjeet Kaur, though a handsome specimen before perpetual childbirth ruined her looks, had never strayed. The tragedy of her life started, therefore, when she allowed her youth to pass her by in a state of meaningless honor before she first woke up to her husband's philandering ways. The Sardar Bahadur played his role by telling her he needed to spend the night on the first floor whenever business became protracted. He also cautioned her not to enter this floor since she observed purdah, always screened from outsiders, and would be sullied by contact with undesirables. She accepted this almost unquestioningly, though she had her first prickle of suspicion. But this was forgotten in her happiness at having the Sardar Bahadur on the premises, promising surely, a larger share of his time. How was she to know he would straight away acquire a courtesan who danced for his visitors in the conservatory? Inderjeet Kaur heard the music and the jingling of the dancer's bells and decided momentously, when silence had descended one night, to go downstairs. She hadn't seen her husband for three days, no one, including sons and daughters-in-law, servants and other members of the household would divulge anything. And their sly looks and ambivalent attitudes were galling.

“All the visitors must have left,” she fooled herself. “I have not set eyes on him for three whole days. Ei Heera,” she called to her faithful ally, “have all the guests left him?”

“Why
Bi
'
ji
? You are not thinking of going down, are you?” said a frightened Heera.

Inderjeet Kaur, though a dutiful wife, was far from mousy. She imperiously brushed Heera aside and prepared herself for the descent. The s
ardarni
had made other preparations too, coloring her long thick hair carefully with henna, reddening her fingers and toes with the same herb, and tenting her body with a particularly gorgeous
shalwar-kameez
of a shade of pink bordering on magenta, with silver work scattered over it.

She emerged onto the landing of her floor and, reluctant to direct her eyes downstairs, looked first up at the silent and dark landing of the top floor. Then fearfully down toward the ghostly marble ladies dimly spotlighted and blessing the house with the sound of tinkling water. “Almost like that dancer's bells,” she thought with a sob. Then, clutching her veil to her bosom, she allowed her eyes to reach her husband's floor. Lights glowed behind the heavy curtains of the glassed doors. The ghosts whispered and the house stiffened with suspense. Inderjeet Kaur descended, quivering
with each step. On the first floor landing she cautiously approached the veranda outside her husband's bedroom, reciting a prayer as a charm against the unknown. The silver on her clothes flashed on and off, turning her into an exotic traffic warning, and a lone pigeon set up a coo. “Shut up!” hissed Inderjeet Kaur.

Then she spotted a sliver of light between the lowest slats of the bedroom window, waddled to it, took a deep breath and stooping painfully, peered in. The matter was made more painful by the fact that the slats pointed upward, so she had to twist her neck to find herself gazing at the ultra clear reflection in the ceiling mirror. Whatever it was she saw was devastating enough to make her wail in her deep contralto, “Hey Gurujee-eee!” And then she fainted right there on the veranda, making the house wince, and creating such a disturbance with her metallic outfit and bulk of bosom and buttock that the guard came shouting into the lobby, Heera who was peeping from above came running down, and the lord of the house stormed out wrapped in a sheet. He took one look at Inderjeet Kaur and roared, “So this is how you obey me, oh Mother-of-Rupinder!” He made a magnificent spectacle, his leonine head cascading with hair albeit from a thinning top, his vast hairy shoulders, and the sheet robe. Some of the witnesses imagined they were in a film. They almost expected him to draw a sword from a jeweled scabbard and plunge it into the heaving breast of the equally hugely magnificent figure of his wife sparkling on the veranda floor. When the courtesan yawned inside the bedroom, as the mischievous mirror recorded, she seemed contemporary and two-dimensional by contrast. She dressed, knowing by experience that the frolicking was over for the night, and picked up her discarded bells, jingling them contemptuously before putting them away in a bag. Then she sat down, made herself a
pan
, and chewed while awaiting developments. But she was not to be one of the Sardar Bahadur's major loves, and he sent her away in his carriage that very night, one of the rare nights he forgot to pay homage to the
Guru Granth Sahib
and bestow on it a serene
sukhasan
.

Now, three decades later and on the eve of their final departure, Inderjeet Kaur had to join the
Guru Granth Sahib
's reinstallation procession with her husband. She was a good five years younger than him, but that made her almost ninety and she didn't look forward to negotiating the stairs. She
waited patiently while the Sardar Bahadur got himself ready, in spite of his dangerously enfeebled state and the dissuasions of his family.

“You must listen!” his favorite great grandson, Satinder, pleaded. “One of us can do it for you. Choose whoever you wish. And we will carry you down so you can watch everything in calmness. But do not try to do it yourself. It will be too much.”

He was right, but the Sardar Bahadur's passion carried him through the occasion. Just. Pulling on his elaborate and much too tight
achkanchuridar
, the long jacket and tight leggings he insisted on wearing with his sash and medals, he ended up blue in the face and had to sit down heaving, fanned, and fussed over. Fortunately, the ceremony demanded bare feet, though the shoes, which went with the formal wear, had been cleaned and kept ready. When his normal color returned and his breathing calmed, he was hauled up and with an anxious procession supporting him staggered into the old
Granth Sahib
room. Here, he picked up the book, placed it on his head and summoned the family
bhaiji
to follow him down the staircase with his yak-tail whisk. The Sardar Bahadur was of a great bulk, and it was hard for him or the procession to proceed in spite of the soothing vocal passage of the musicians summoned to sing
shabads
and the attempts of the house and ghosts to cushion him. Inderjeet Kaur preceded her husband while her great grandson, Satinder, walked by her holding the pitcher from which she would sprinkle water to purify the path ahead of the book. Thus, sprinkling and whisking, they took off. It was a painfully slow progression. The Sardar Bahadur's arms trembled under the weight of the book and Inderjeet Kaur found both sprinkling water and walking down sideways almost impossible at her age. The installation was miraculously achieved and the musicians surpassed themselves with their impassioned singing.

The hymn they sang was the same as was sung on the day of the
Granth Sahib
's original installation in the Golden Temple.

“ . . . the wondrous deed is done

Satisfied are all desires

Filled is the world with joy

All pain ended

Complete, pure, eternal . . . ”

The Sardar Bahadur had by then passed out in a dead faint, beginning his own end to pain. Inderjeet Kaur sat by him and fanned him, fearfully aware the inevitable had been put into motion, while a huge feast for all
continued in a tent in the garden. The old man recovered in the evening, but stayed on in his holy room, feverishly anxious to move to Amritsar.

So, against the doctor's advice, he set off just two days later, to achieve his final aim in this life, seen off by the sorrowing house and its ghosts.

He had ensured his peace of mind. After his arrival at Amritsar he was carried on a stretcher straight up to the veranda of his relative's house, where he opened his eyes briefly to look on the Golden Temple. Then he was laid finally on the floor.

In a feeble voice yet with the familiar commanding authority, he confirmed that fifty cows with gilded horns along with gold sovereigns were to be distributed among the temples and
gurudwaras
listed by him in Amritsar, Calcutta, and Saidabad, his birthplace. “Be kind to your wives,” he said. “And be devoted and dutiful to your children and grandchildren. You must carry on the family traditions and enterprises and bring further glory to the house of Ohri. And above all, remember to honor and worship your mother.”