Rana spat at the hot, dry, lusterless night. The loo had passed late afternoon and a pale yellow chaddar of fine sand hung in a stifling blanket. Far below the headlights of a convoy of trucks laboured its way up the narrow hill cut road to the Jaigarh Fort. It would be an hour, maybe more, before they would reach.
Rana trudged back to the big canon that stood silent sentinel over Jaigarh. Locals told him that the canon was fired just once and the half-ton canon ball landed 22 miles away, creating a crater which today has become a lake.
Rana rubbed khaini in the cup of his palm, massaging with his thumb the wad of tobacco into fine dust. He grimaced as his teeth registered the grit that had mixed with the khaini with a nerve tingling crunch. Rana thought about the family name of Topewalle, given by the Maharaja of Patiala to his great grandfather for his dexterous handling of canons. The name had passed on from generation to generation, long after the canons had been replaced by the awesome power of the snub nosed, lightweight howitzers.
The clank of a falling lathi broke his reverie, announcing company that he wasn't too eager for.
"Sali Haramzadi… she will fix each one of these purple maharajas," Nathuram frantically scratched his crotch, itching with the sand that had found their way up the floppy khaki half pants that was standard issue for the local Amber police.
Rana nodded, spat to get rid of yet another layer of dust that had coated his respiratory tract, "Her behenchod son is no, better. Sala, madarchod, he is cutting off everyone's balls in the name of family planning."
Nathuram flopped down, "Betichod is taking our biwi and behen to bloody clinics and tying their womb up, bastard. The other day, the fuckers came to my village. We were ready. Beat the shit out of the madarchods."
Rana studied Nathuram. He wondered what Nathuram was doing here. The only local, and that too a local policeman in the entire contingent which had taken over Jaigarh Fort in the wee hours of the morning. Throwing out the Maharajas retainers and retinue at gun point. For that matter, he wondered what his regiment was doing here, overnight flown all the way from their current posting in Secunderabad.
But this was the Emergency. Nobody asked questions. Not even in the Indian Armed Forces.
"Behenchod, when shall we get out of here? What are we waiting for?"
Nathuram crouched next to Rana, "They are making a mistake though. You don’t treat our Maharaja like a common criminal. There will be hell to pay."
Rana shrugged. He had seen the Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh drive up to the Fort in his jeep along with his sister-in-law a little after the battalion had taken complete control of the Fort and thrown out the last of the Maharaja's employees. Sawai meant one and a quarter, a sobriquet that the otherwise cruel Emperor Aurangzeb had bestowed on the princeling Jai Singh, the Maharaja who went on to build Jaipur. Rana had thought that the title of adha was more apt as the Maharja was away by the CBI men. As the Maharaja's jeeps left, three desert camouflaged jeeps raced to the front and formed the lead while two olive green jongas and two jeeps took up the rear.
For many of those watching, it was not unfamiliar a sight. The Emergency had made many of the country's leading lights guests of the Government of India. Two more, blue blooded or not, made no difference.
"Stay here. Watch the road. I'll be back," Rana shifted the weight of his SLR, a new acquisition for the battalion after the 1971 Bangladesh War which had finally seen the army surrender for good the World War vintage rifles.
He dragged tired feet across the hard, dry ground. Far below, he could see the lights of Amber twinkling in the sandy haze. Amber Palace, a pale yellow, stood dark, silent, sullen as if protesting the sacrilege of its guardian fort perched.
There was a strange hush, made all the more suffocating by the weight of the sand that hung in the air.
Rana shuffled down the ramp and reached the quadrangle where men in uniform stood together in little groups. Pressure lanterns hissed at the far corner, the glow of the expanded cloth bulbs throwing tall shadows on the pink walls.
A small group of men clothed in black moved around purposefully near the entrance of the huge water tank that sat squarely in the middle of the quadrangle. The sunken water tank was said to be about a 100 feet deep and stored the rain water captured by the mesh of open drains and catchement waterworks around the fort.
"There is a huge khazana under the water. The navy divers have located it and are bringing it up," his roommate at Secunderabad, Hyder Ali, whispered as he sidled up to Rana.
"I saw the first box when they opened it. Gold coins. Diamonds. Jewels." Hyder Ali's voice trembled. Rana studiously massaged the khaini, patted it and handed over to Hyder.
The old soldier tucked the khaini at the back of his jaws, "This is not good. Something is not right."
"Why?" Rana asked.
"None of our men are really in charge. Tell me why we are here. Sala, we are EME, not fucking infantry. And they have got the bloody divers from the Navy here. Look like commandos to me. And some of those civys look like the IB or CBI types. The bastards are watching us. We can't even go for a fucking moot without one of those bastards poking their head around."
Hyder, Rana knew, had an active imagination. But it was common knowledge that the khazana was located under the water tank. Indeed, the few in the battalion who from these parts had spun a tale about the nine openings on the far side of the tank being meant for depositing collections and booty of the Maharaja. The lance naik who lived in Amber had come up with a fairly intriguing tale of coins that settled at the bottom of the water which was then recovered by treasury workers who used shovels to scoop up the coins and deposit them.
But Rana doubted that the Maharajas were naïve enough in the mid-1970s to park all their wealth under a water tank. Rana personally favoured the reports of huge sums having been funnelled off to Swiss banks which the government was trying to trace in yet another effort to convince the people that the Emergency was needed to save the country from the leeches who were bleeding the country. In the India of mid-70s, the Swiss banks had become a much favoured yardstick to judge moral and material corruption. It had become an integral part of the political discourse, with every opponent being damned with broad hints about the clutch of Swiss bank accounts where they had squirreled away the loot.
"What goes of my father? Let them be" Rana shrugged. "I just want to get out of this behenchod sand dune. Its fucking raining sand."
A sharp honk broke the quiet hubbub that pervaded the quadrangle. The laboured whine of India's national car, the ambassador, could be heard making its way towards the quadrangle. The heaving behemoth came to a panting halt, the engine wheezing from the effort of climbing the six kilometres up. The front door of the Ambassador creaked open and out came a young man in white kurta and pyjama.
"Betichod, sala, that's the Son." Hyder swore. "Behen ki! Let's kill the bastard. What is he doing here? I told you! There is something fucking wrong going on here."
Rana could feel Hyder's venom as much as his terror. Perennial travelling that came with being in the Indian Army had made Rana see 'larger' issues more clearly than his brethren back home. Few of these 'national' issues really touched home but the Son had managed to make himself loathed in every part of the country. The man who had unleashed a strange terror on a country where terror of the cultural kind had become alien for the past few centuries.
Rana had once chanced upon a rare street meeting (in these days of MISA everywhere) where a firebrand Opposition leader from one of the Hindu parties was in full flow declaring, "Bhaiyon, the British had come but without crusading zeal, without a mission to convert the heathen. They had come for power, glory and commerce. The Angrez were dukandaars, they were a nation of dukandaars. The few missionaries who made their way in their trail had success in pockets and never the patronage of the state. The Islamic zealots who had last unleashed cultural terror had subsided in the all consuming embrace of the Hindu civilisation. They had defaced temples, with a vengeance; buried centuries-old monuments under Islamic tombs; dismantled defaced and reused as ordinary supports glorious sculptures that would have shamed the better known brethren of Florence. But even they had not managed to spread the kind of terror this young man had unleashed as he went after young and old, men and women with a single intent to sterilise the country in the name of controlling a burgeoning population."
It was a stirring speech but Rana thought the shakha youth was exaggerating a wee too much. The Indian Army was witness time and again to the animal hatred that consumed the nation centuries after the Islamic rape of Hinduism had come to a halt and not a few decades after both sides had spilt each others' blood and guts on the streets of the subcontinent.
But, yes, the Son had achieved what few after Independence had managed to. Political rivals had been summarily locked up, some of them branded traitors, the rest saboteurs and anti-national. The graying leaders from the era before Independence once again found themselves in familiar company and behind bars. Political paths that had diverged in the lust for power since Independence started coming together once again as the extreme right embraced the extreme left in jail kitchens, canteens and courtyards.
Still, there was some good, after all, Rana mused. At least, government officials reached office on time and looked over their shoulders for the ever-present man in mufti. Bribes and corruption suddenly disappeared from the face of Indian bureaucracy as if -- they liked to say in Rana's village chaupal -- the village randi had become virgin again. Trains ran on time and babus started doing the work they were paid for. On the other hand, newspapers began carrying blank spaces as censors moved in to remove innocuous and, yet not so innocent, references to the Mughals and maharajas of yore. Rana did think that the media was carrying the righteous indignation bit a little too far. After all, there was little righteousness in much of the filth that was inked before Emergency.
But the terror that gripped the countryside was not fear of being on the wrong side either in politics or in religion, Rana agreed with the shakha youth. It was the fear of the state that had intruded into everyone's home. Worse, it was the fear of being naked before unnamed faceless people who wanted, in the name of the State, to reach out, molest and outrage their women and themselves. A rape that was sanctioned by the State. The mai baap sarkar had become the destroyer, the father-protector had become the rapist.
Ghanshayam could see Lt Colonel Asirwatham walking across to meet the young man. Lt Col Asirwatham, AVSM, PVSM, much decorated but seen to be commanding more out of lineage than valour. Few of his men could recount any particular tale of bravery of the man who lead them. Like many in the days of personalised rule by Emergency, Asirwatham was chosen to lead, not one who had earned his spurs.
A weak chin made more pronounced a bulbous nose and a whisper thin moustache, the Emergency had made men like Asirwatham the darlings of the establishment. Men of integrity but little character in the face of authority. Asirwatham escorted Sanjay, the Son of India as he was being referred to by his many sycophants, towards where the divers in their wet suits were standing.
Rana watched as the Son went to the boxes and jerked open the lid. Quickly he slammed down the lid, almost as if he knew what was inside but was just checking to ensure that it was all there. Methodically, he moved from box to box. Rana kept count as the Son opened and shut boxes. Impatiently, pulling up his sleeve, he would put his hand into the odd box to turn over an artifact or weigh a palm-full of coins.
Twenty three boxes, Rana counted. All roughly the same size: a largish trunk, the kind that was regulation issue in the army, strapped down by fine leather and gleaming buckles.
Sanjay turned to the half colonel and said something. The colonel flinched. From where he stood, Rana could see Asirwatham swallowing hard -- a habit, Rana had noticed, which the colonel had when trying to rustle up the nerve to take a stand. Rana quietly worked his way in the shadows to hearing distance. The colonel was nervously flapping his hands in a remonstration that was stopped short by a curt gesture from the young man.
Rana could see him better now. The famous Son of India. A boyish face with a faint stubble. Thick, black frames sitting on a handsome nose. Hair thinning at the top . "My mother wants it that way, colonel".
The voice was respectful but there was no mistaking the command. Rana saw the Lt Colonel Asirwatham hesitate.
Before the colonel could reply, a commotion erupted at the mouth of the tunnel that went into the water tank.
Fifteen jawans were trying to haul up a large wooden chest that seemed to be winning the battle of obstinacy.
"Jawan!" Aswirtham barked at Rana, "Lend a hand here".
Rana slipped off his SLR and ran into the tunnel. The wooden chest was a good four feet in height and six feet across. The sides bore the Maharaja's Crest of Arms while fine inlay ivory work covered the front of the chest. Rana found a place to wedge his shoulder in while around him other shoulders began to muscle in.
Amidst shuffling of feet, more soldiers, more shoulders and yells directing the procession, the Royal Chest was carried to the open ground and put down with a heavy thud.
The sweating jawans collapsed on the ground only to be moved out of the way by a preemptory "Hato, hato".
The young man in pyjama kurta patted the chest.
"Open it", he said, oblivious for the moment of the men around him.
Two army locksmiths moved in with iron prongs. The lock gave way after ten minutes of heaving and hammering.
The soldiers lying on the ground began to scramble to their feet to see what was inside.
"Wait!" the young man held up his hand.
"I think your men need a break, Colonel".
Asirwatham nodded, turned to his men "15 minutes. Reassemble at 0100 hours".
The soldiers backed off, muttering.
Rana quietly moved to pick up his SLR. He had been lucky so far. If anyone saw him with the SLR, they would know that he was supposed to be on guard duty, not heaving boxes around.
"Jawan!"
Rana turned around.
The Son was looking at him. "Come here. Open this".
Rana pushed at the heavy lid with Sanjay tugging at the other end of the lid. It sprang open, throwing Rana off balance.
He got off the ground, wiping the wet sand off his khakis. From behind the young man, he could see a velvet cover which the Son almost reverentially pulled aside. Bricks of gold, four inches thick, six inches across were packed neatly from the top. The young man caressed the bricks, weighing them in his hands, a beatific smile lighting up his face.
He turned to see Rana looking over his shoulder. Rana froze as the smile on the young man's face was wiped out.
No comments:
Post a Comment