“I want you to meet Anand,” the rani said.
The other women had also come running, and now we all stared at the little boy. The childless rani had made another woman childless.
Shri Bhakti stepped forward. “The official adoption will take place tomorrow.”
At twenty minutes before noon, the rani appeared in a lavender sari with yellow jewels. She was carrying the boy, and he looked a little calmer.
We walked in a quiet procession to the Durbar Hall, where the raja was seated on his throne, propped up by several pillows and looking extremely ill. He had lost a significant amount of weight. Men stood on either side of him, ready to catch him if he should fall.
In the years since, I have heard some claim that this child’s adoption took place in the raja’s bedchamber. But I was there to witness the event, and I can tell you, it happened at noon in the Durbar Hall. A dozen or so British officials were in attendance, including Major Ellis, dressed in uniforms of bright scarlet serge.
It took several hours for the papers to be drawn up, but eventually a will was made, and Anand was declared to be the rightful heir to Jhansi’s throne. In the case of the raja’s death, the rani was to act as Anand’s regent.
The papers were read aloud, and then the raja, the rani, and nearly all of the British officials in attendance signed them.
When this was finished, the raja requested that everyone leave the room with the exception of the rani. We filed out into the hall. The British officials left, but the rest of us remained standing near the open doors. We could hear the raja just the same as if we were standing next to him. His voice was hoarse and weak.
“Manu,” he said. “If life had been fair, I would have been born a rani, and you would have been born a raja.”
“Next time,” she said.
“If I die, the other kingdoms will see Jhansi as weak. Remain friends with the British. They’re strong enough to save us from our enemies.”
I’m sure the rani was clenching her jaw, but we heard her agree.
There was silence after this. Perhaps he was weeping. Maybe they both were.
It was October fifteenth.
By the twenty-first of November, the raja was dead.
For thirteen days—the very minimum—the rani didn’t leave the Panch Mahal. When she emerged, she only did so to break her bangles outside, as was the custom, leaving behind the pieces for poor women to sweep up and sell. She didn’t shave her hair or change her colorful saris for widow’s white. But as we made our way through the silent fortress to the lake near Mahalakshmi Temple, the sight of the raja’s funeral pyre made me suddenly nervous.
I glanced at Sundari, who was standing near the rani as the raja’s lifeless body was lifted from his gilded litter onto the neatly piled wood. But she was too distracted by the rani to notice me. I looked at the growing number of people: advisers, soldiers, farmers, and merchants—all of them crowded onto the lakeshore to bid the Raja of Jhansi farewell. Many of them stole secret glances at the rani, wondering if she was going to do as her ancestors and countless other women before her had done.
“She can’t do it,” I said.
“Committing sati is the greatest form of respect a wife can show her husband,” Kahini replied.
How could Kahini be so callous? I felt sick. Without the rani, what would become of Jhansi? What would become of the Durga Dal? But Shri Bhakti’s head was bowed, and the Dewan kept looking from his adviser Shri Lakshman to his adviser Shri Bhakti and back again. No one spoke, no one moved.
The priest stepped forward with a torch and intoned a few important words in Sanskrit. Then the pyre was lit and everyone turned. I could hear my heart beating in my ears.
The rani moved toward the pyre and the taste of metal was thick on my tongue. Everyone believed she was going to do it, and no one was willing to cry “stop!”
Not even me.
Then she stood in front of the flames and shouted, “What Jhansi needs now is a leader, not a martyr!”
The cheer that went up was deafening.
“There are people standing in front of me today who will condemn me for not entering the flames. But what woman has ever changed her husband’s fate by joining him on his pyre? And what woman has ever built a stronger kingdom by disappearing from it? Our ancestors believed that committing sati was an act of courage. I say that with the exception of the goddess Sati, who after all, is immortal, it is an act of cowardice! Who will raise her children, or care for her parents, or tend her garden? No. If I die, it will be by the sword, not by the flame.”