The Great Indian Novel (2 page)

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.

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.’

‘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.