Tikkipala (18 page)

After she had gone, the Raja took Devi in his arms and held her close to him. ‘I am sorry you were put through that, my darling, but it is because I so much want your life to be happy.'

‘I know, I know,' she said, and he thought she was going to begin to cry again.

‘Don't, don't. Please don't.' He felt guilty. It was all his fault. He should never have set up the meeting. He saw now how much it must have humiliated her. Taking his handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped her face then sought about for ways to distract her and cheer her up. ‘I know. Let's get out the mineral cabinet.' Her sorrows and her pains had always been cured by looking at the stones.

Devi giggled. ‘I'm not three years old, Pops.'

‘No, sorry,' he said, a little crestfallen.

‘But I would love to see them. It will cheer me up like anything.'

Eagerly, he pulled out the drawers and the two of them took turns with peering through the microscope.

‘I've always loved this zigzag one,' she said.

‘Oh, muscovite. When you were ten you like Apophyllite best,' laughed the Raja.

‘I remember saying that. It was because it looked like a little mountain peak covered in bright green trees,' said Devi. ‘And this piece of Kyanite is marvellous. It looks as though it's embedded with vertebrae.'

‘Ah, and here's Thomsonite,' said the Raja. ‘You used to say it looked like fluffy pompoms and that Prehnite was like a knotted orange rope.'

‘Crysoprase, Cornelian, Jasper, and the agates. There is nothing in the world to beat those colours,' cried Devi, totally joyful again. ‘One day I think I will go to the hill palace and discover a completely new mineral. One that no one else in the whole world knows about. I might find out what happened to Uncle Anwar too.'

They both looked at the sepia photo on the wall. It was coloured by hand and showed a laughing little rosy cheeked boy sitting on his white pony with Hari, the syce, at its head. The child wore a silken regal costume with pearl embroidered shoes and a turban with a peacock feather.

Devi said, ‘Isn't it amazing that, even to this day, no one knows what happened to him? I remember ayah telling me he was eaten by a tiger and I asked her if the tiger had had to spit out his shoes in case it choked from swallowing all those pearls.'

The Raja laughed sadly. ‘It destroyed my father, the loss of Anwar. My mother, of course, has found another way of coping.'

‘Even now, I sometimes still imagine him alive in those high jungles with wolves looking after him like they looked after Mowgli. I've always thought of the high jungle as a wonderful magic place.'

‘My father became convinced that Anwar was up there. After my grandmother found she was pregnant, she came back to the Bidwar palace, but my father stayed on and kept employing people to create machines to get him up there. He never did, though.'

‘I know, Pops, I know. You have told me all that a thousand times.'

‘Have I? Did I tell you before? I must be getting forgetful in my old age.'

‘Darling old Pops,' she giggled.

A month later, Devi and her father received an invitation to the Maharaja and Maharani's son's wedding. He was marrying another girl.

‘I would not mind if you do it in the Western way,' her father said, putting down the invitation. ‘If you should meet some young man and fall in love with him, I would not mind even if he was of a lower caste.'

‘Enough, Pops. Stop,' ordered Devi. ‘I don't want to hear of this sort of thing anymore.'

The Raja let it go after that. Sometimes his sisters-in-law would tell him, ‘You must persuade her. Or even force her if necessary. She is young now and not bad looking, but in a few years when the bloom of youth has left her, she will start wishing she was married and then it will be too late.'

But the Raja knew his daughter. ‘There is nothing I can do. The matter is dropped.' He had done his best, he had not been selfish and now he was glad his daughter was not getting married because he could keep her for himself.

Srila and Mala would say to each other, when the Raja was not listening, ‘How can Anoo say there is nothing he can do. He should threaten to disinherit her if she refuses to obey him.' It was said half jokingly for everyone knew that such a thing would never happen.

Here Devi was, five years later, on her way to the hill palace and still wondering if she would find her great uncle, though she thought that even if she did come across him, she probably would not recognise him for he would be middle aged and not the least like his photo in the Bidwar Palace.

At first, when Devi announced she was going to go and stay for a week in the old family palace in the hills and look for minerals, her father had not taken it seriously. ‘That is quite impossible. No one has lived in it since Anwar vanished. It will be a total wreck.'

‘I am determined to go.'

‘What will you do up there in the empty hills, without servants, food, or even running water?' demanded her father.

‘I will take Khan.'

‘I need Khan.'

‘You will have to find another driver, Pa.'

‘I will not let you go.' How would he live without her? She was only twenty three and was the centre of his life.

‘You can't stop me.'

‘I wish now I had never showed you the minerals and geodes my father found,' and when she was insistent, ‘Just wait till May when I am free to come with you. You are
very young to go this wild strange place alone.' He had a large estate and a great plains palace to run, ‘In May I am employing a manager. Wait till then and we will go together.'

‘It will be too hot then. I'm going now.'

Khan's family had worked for the family of the Rajas for more generations than anyone could remember and, though his parents and grandparents had many stories to tell of wild ranis, Khan did not think that any of them had been as crazy as Devi Madam. He was shocked when the Raja told him he must drive her to the hill palace at Parwal and stay and look after her when they got there, but the Raja was firm. ‘You are the only one who can be trusted to look after her.'

Khan's misgivings were well founded. Forty miles from the hill palace, in some totally uninhabited place, the car gulped then choked then stopped and though Khan tried everything he knew, he was unable to get it going again. He was a town man and his voice shook as he told Devi, ‘There is nothing I can do.'

‘Probably someone will come up from the village and rescue us,' Devi said happily. She was already looking up the hillside, wondering if this was one of the places where her great grandfather had found his minerals forty years ago.

‘They say that the people living in that village are thags,' Khan said with a shiver.

‘Thags?' said the Raja. ‘What kind of word is that?'

‘It seems that these people previously went by the name of ‘Thug', this being their caste. However they discovered that the word ‘thug' in the English language refers to persons of a criminal class whereas these people consider themselves devout followers of the goddess Kali and religious worshippers. They have altered the name so as not to be associated with robbery. But, whatever their name, it is well known that they are robbers.'

‘Oh, well, in that case, when people come to help us we will send them away,' laughed Devi. ‘For we don't want to be helped by bandits,' she teased,

‘But what other hope is there, Madam?' said Khan shrilly.

‘We shall just have to spend the night in the car.'

‘But the hills are full of man eating tigers and already your uncle has been eaten by one of these,' moaned the driver, wishing more than ever that he had not been compelled to drive Devi Madam on this mad mission. ‘Definitely we should not be sitting here alone in the night and also, madam, they are saying that these hills are haunted.'

‘Really? Ghosts here?' Perhaps it was her uncle Anwar's spirit, she thought. She smiled at the idea and the driver looked annoyed.

‘Are you not afraid of anything, Devi Madam? At least you should fear the ghosts even if you are not afraid of spending all night here. And it might not be all night. Who knows how long before help comes to us. We might be here for weeks.'

But Devi's attention had been diverted. ‘Look, look.' Diving into the middle of the road she grabbed up a stone. ‘A geode. Wait till I open it. Wait till you see the crystals inside. We can't even tell what colour it is. It might be anything. I bet there's more up there.' She went scrambling up the hillside, stopping at intervals to pick up something and letting out shouts of triumph.

A roaring in the sky filled Khan with hope and when the helicopter appeared, he began to jump and wave, but the pilot did not see him, but continued on, until it became a small dot over the high jungle covered peak in the distance,

‘We should be thinking of how we are to get from here, not finding stones, Madam,' Khan called. But Devi was almost too high to hear him and still climbing. He could easily imagine her vanishing from sight and never finding her again. He wondered
what he would do then, stranded alone here. Or if he was rescued, how would he tell her father, the Raja, that he had lost the precious daughter?

‘Come back, Madam. Come back,' cried Khan and when she answered him, her voice was almost lost in the wind and the echo of the hills. He thought she shouted, ‘It looks like Molybdenite, but is this found in India?'

By the time Khan saw the bullock cart, he was feeling faint with worry and fear. He watched it toiling up the mountain side for ages, winding round, vanishing among trees and round rock banks before appearing again, tiny toy bulls and driver and a little cart at first and then slowly growing bigger. Khan feared, as it vanished at each bend, that it would not reappear.

‘Madam, Madam,' he shouted up to Devi, whose pockets and arms were full of rocks now. She began to come down at last and Khan saw that she had rolled up her shirt and filled that with rocks as well. He could see her stomach. He could see her navel. He turned his head away in anguish at such immodesty. ‘A bullock cart, Madam. There.'

Three quarters of an hour later it appeared with a squawk of un-oiled wheels. Khan waved his arms and shouted and the bulls gave him a curious glance, but the old man, nodding on his seat, did not stir and the cart went rumbling on. Khan strode alongside, shouting at the driver, who continued to ignore him. Khan was not an animal person, and the bulls with their sticky noses and gummy eyes looked repulsive but there was nothing else to do. In the end he had to forced himself to dash to the front and grab the leading animals by their nose ropes. The cart came to a grinding groaning halt. The load of logs, bales and sacks toppled precariously and the old man woke with a start. He stared around him, then seeing Khan holding onto his bulls, let out a shout of fury and tried to reach Khan and hit him with his stick.

It took Khan a long time to explain what was required. When at last the driver understood, he mumbled that there was no room on the cart for anyone or anything and prepared to whack and whistle his bulls into action again. Clinging to the nose ropes, Khan shouted, ‘But this is the daughter of the Raja. He will punish you if you do not help her.' He called to Devi who was still gathering pieces and particles of rock. ‘Madam, come down now and inform this man.' Khan was feeling desperate. ‘This fellow of a driver will go away without us if you do not come down and sternly command him.'

The bullock driver was an emaciated ancient with a white moustache covering the lower part of his face. The upper part was half concealed by an enormous scarlet turban. ‘Take your hands off my bulls,' he shouted and tried to whack Khan again. ‘Let go of them, I tell you.'

Even when Devi leapt down onto the road in a clatter of rocks and dragging out a hundred rupee note from her pocket, flourished it before the old man's face, the bullock cart driver would not yield.

‘You cannot bribe me, Ma. I am an honest man and have been employed by the Raja to bring water and firewood to the palace of his daughter and no money will turn me from my task.'

‘But I am the daughter,' cried Devi.

‘Impossible,' cried the old man, giving her a swift glance of scorn. ‘When did one ever hear of a Ranee going dressed in the trousers of a man?'

‘This is Devi Ranee and you know nothing of the dress of the modern Indian woman, that is your trouble, you stupid old fool,' said Khan.

When the bullock cart driver eventually grasped who Devi was, his grumpy indifference because transformed into utter abnegation.

‘Forgive me, I pray forgiveness,' he begged and clambering from his cart, flung himself to the ground at her feet. Grasping her ankles, he let out wild wails of apology. Even when she tried to pull herself away and climb onto the loaded cart, he clung on and was dragged along over the road still frantically begging forgiveness.

Devi would have liked to leave Khan with the car. ‘I will send people back to help you, I promise,' she told him, but he was adamant in his refusal. ‘I would rather be sacked from your presence than spend the night with the ghosts and spirits of this mountain,' he said firmly and scrambled after her to perch on top of a sack of rice.

All her childhood Devi had heard of the beautiful Parwal palace, surrounded by glorious fountain-sparkling gardens and orchards of lychees, mangoes, oranges and big black plums. But her father had told her, ‘You will be disappointed. It will not be at all like it was when I was a boy. No one has lived in it for fifty years and I shudder to think what state it's in. The only thing that will be unchanged is the high jungle beyond, because no one can get up there.'

‘I might be the first person to manage it,' boasted Devi.

‘The palace might not exist at all anymore,' pursued the Raja, but he did not forbid her to go. He was proud of his only child and would boast to his friends that his daughter had more courage than all their sons put together.