Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar

Author:Kiran Nagarkar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2014-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter

24

It was a morning of sullen and lucid beauty. The Gambhiree was a festering gold rupture in the plains below Chittor. Someone had plucked the sunflower in the sky and torn off the petals and smashed the glowering bulb at the centre. The light was angry pollen scattered from horizon to horizon. It was in a state of constant flux but refused to rise or descend. Soon I would be covered in a patina of yellow dust. It would enter my lungs, burnish them and fill up the holes in my bronchi till all the air had been forced out and I would stand petrified forever in gold in honour of my ancestor, the Sun-god. Gangs of peacocks were out, celebrating the sudden break in the monsoons, fanning out their one-eyed feathers in shimmering waves. The peahens with their acrid scent of sex flew for short bursts and cawed mercilessly while pretending indifference to the frenzied attentions of their future mates.

It had looked as if the rains would never come. The granaries were half empty and the Gambhiree was a cracked bed of stones, pebbles, rusting coins and other detritus of life, an abandoned and shrunken skeleton with the occasional puddle and a ragged trickle of water. They had already started rationing the water and food in the fort. Two and a half months after everybody had given up on the rains, the sky was tarred over, the Sun-god was shut out, the moon and the stars banished and a final darkness closed in on the earth. There was no air to breathe, the birds disappeared and babies choked silently. No rain. The displeasure of the gods with Mewar was obvious. There was only one remedy. Appeasement. A propitious day was chosen by the priests to conduct a mahayagnya for mercy and rains. It took a week of frantic preparations. When the wood, ghee, milk, coconuts, turmeric powder, camphor and kumkum were in place and the fires about to be lit and the darkness lifted, it started to rain. It continued for a month and a half. What were the gods trying to tell us?

It was a beautiful morning if you could hold your breath, or better still, never breathe again for Chittor was in the grip of cholera and the stench of death, debris and excreta was unbearable. I had been in exile in my own home for over seven months. Father was right, people have short memories. I was not ignored, I was forgotten. I’m not quite sure which is more insulting. Those who could afford to, have left Chittor, among them His Majesty, Queen Karmavati and Vikramaditya and most of the court. In a sense I have the run of the capital once again.

The roads are slush, a wild and exuberant mix of rainwater and shit that races along open gutters, clogs them and leaps out with abandon. Nothing new, this. In the summer, the heat cakes and disinfects everything instantly. In the winter, lips chap, the skin cracks and the drainage and sewage waters dry up.

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