Shivaji’s son. I thought of his tenderness when he’d come to our courtyard to heal the broken wing of the tiny bulbul. He was only seven years older. And Anu would only be one house away. I wrote swiftly, “It’s perfect. More than perfect.” I found myself wondering who Father might have found for me if life had been different and I had been destined to marry. But I pushed these thoughts away, since they didn’t serve any purpose. I was forever duty-bound now to the rani. Fortune’s wheel had turned in a different direction for me.
Father reached out and patted my leg. “Sab kuch bhagwan ke haath mein,” he wrote. And in Hindi, this means, It’s all in God’s hands.
Father spoke with Shivaji, and it was agreed that a priest should be called to read the Janam Kundlis of the prospective bride and groom. I have already spoken about the difficulties of being born manglik. But neither my sister nor Ishan were bad-luck children, and according to the priest, their Janam Kundlis matched.
When the priest was gone, Anu found me in the kitchen, placing bowls of water under the legs of the small table where we kept our vegetables so the insects couldn’t climb into the vegetable bowls.
“Is it true?” she said. “Am I really going to marry Ishan?”
“Yes. Next year. And I don’t think I need to tell you how fortunate you are that both of your charts matched.”
Because Anu was a worrier, it took some days for her to become accustomed to the idea that her marriage had been arranged. Then, as I suspect most nine-year-olds do, she forgot about it entirely, opting instead to play with her dolls whenever she wasn’t helping our grandmother in the kitchen. And once the excitement of Anu’s marriage died down, there wasn’t much for me to do. It was too cold to visit the markets, or to go with Father to deliver his carvings. So I sat by the brazier and read Rumi.
Be with those who help your being.
Don’t sit with indifferent people,
whose breath comes cold out of their mouths.
Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.
A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces.
If you don’t try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it’s too late for all you could become.
Leaves get yellow.
The tree puts out fresh roots and makes them green.
Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?
The last line confused me. Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow? What love did I have that was mediocre?
At last a courtier arrived with a retinue of seventeen soldiers to bring me back to Jhansi.
I had the strange feeling of wanting to be in two places at once, like a sailor who misses the sea as much as he misses dry land. I was sad to kiss Anu and Father good-bye, but at the same time, I felt duty-bound to the rani. And I missed the other Durgavasi.
I mounted Sher, who had been forced to take shelter in Shivaji’s stable these past four weeks, and my sister reached up to hand me a small box of sweets.
“I made laddus,” she said. “Your favorite.”
“Thank you, Anu.” I realized that the next time I returned, it would be for her wedding. “Be kind to Pita-ji,” I told her. “And listen to Dadi-ji. You remember what I told you?”
She nodded.
“I’ll see you soon,” I promised.
Chapter Fourteen
I studied Jhalkari in the warm glow of the brazier. She’d grown thinner in the past month, and now, she looked less like the rani. There were other changes as well. While we’d been gone, carpets had been hung on the walls of the queen’s room to keep out the cold, and there were thicker, plusher carpets on the ground. Servants had brought in a dozen braziers, and the other Durgavasi huddled around them in small groups. Jhalkari and I were in the farthest corner of the chamber, separated from the others by the fountain, which had been stopped for the winter.
“So where is Kahini?” I asked. A very foolish part of me hoped that the truth had been exposed and Kahini had been banished from the Durga Dal.
But Jhalkari had returned a day earlier, and she gave me a look. “In the rani’s chamber, with Sundari-ji.”
“So Sundari-ji never told the rani—”
“How could she? There would have to be proof. Without it, Sundari-ji could lose her position, which Kahini would love. She’s already cost the rani’s physician his job. When the rani asked a British doctor—Dr. McEgan—about the status of the plague, he said he hadn’t heard anything. Then the rani summoned her physician to her chambers and demanded to know where the two victims had been buried. But, of course, there were none. So when he couldn’t tell her, she dismissed him as a liar.”
It was amazing to me that there were people who went through life like a sickle, cutting down everything in their path, except for what was useful to them. Didn’t the hard work of constant destruction ever tire Kahini? Didn’t it become depressing? Even Lord Shiva, the Destroyer of Worlds, regretted his act of burning down Tripura after it was done.
“Anyway, the rani won’t be leaving her chamber now until the baby comes due. We’re only allowed inside if we’re called.”
“Does she know that we’ve returned?”
Jhalkari watched me for a moment. “You mean, does she know that you’ve returned? Because I don’t think she has any reason to summon me.”
I’m sure my cheeks turned the color of my angarkha. I changed the subject.