The Legend of Kuldhara: A Historical Novel set in Rajasthan

By Malathi Ramachandran

Kuldhara, a village in the Rajasthan desert, perched at the edge of time. Abandoned, cursed, nearly two hundred years ago, to remain a heap of rubble and stone. It lies dreaming of its vibrant past when the streets echoed with laughter and the fields swayed green and gold. What happened one night that drove its inhabitants from their homes, never to return? Did they flee to preserve their honour, when the covetous gaze of a local lord fell on Pari, the headman’s daughter? Where did they go? How did they survive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Niyogi
• Release date: Apr 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9789386906007

Book preview

62.

They say the desert is ageless, timeless. That it was never born and will never die. They say it has no form either…its shifting sands take one shape today and another tomorrow. Constantly covering its own secrets, its mysteries, its stories of countless generations that lived and loved and lost, and fought and bled and fled. So much lies buried under the silken, restless dust, glittering gold in the sun and gleaming silver at night that one wonders, did history actually happen here, or was it all the dream of a traveller lost and parched and trammelled by the sudden onset of a swirling hot loo? Or was history just the bedtime lore of a village perched at the edge of time, uninhabited by any but the nomads and their stock? Who knows, for what is left are only stories, and storytellers, their words and music evocative of distant times now buried under the sands, forever…

Like the desert, the man was ageless too. He sat cross-legged on a stone platform under a spreading neem tree, bony knees peaking his yellowed dhoti , his gnarled hands holding the instrument like a lover would his beloved. With shaggy grey locks lowered over the ravanhatha, he played as if there was nothing else in his world but the passionate, soul-stirring music rising into the air, the rich whine of strings blending with the song from his wrinkled lips, the shiver of bells tied on the draw keeping perfect time.

It seemed he had been here forever, at the end of a narrow lane in Jaisalmer town, at the edge of the desert, sitting on this stone bench under a neem tree and narrating his tales of love and valour.

He sang, full throated like his ravanhatha, the sounds blending and rising and falling together, making his listeners’ hair bristle, making their spines tingle, making them long for something, they knew not what…

He sang of the Rawals who had ruled the kingdom for centuries, he sang of the Mughals who had besieged the fort, he sang of men dying at the hands of the enemy, and of women dying at their own hands. He spoke not, for he was known to have never spoken.

Parvati leaned on the latticed balustrade of the tower and listened to the minstrel’s music as it wafted through the narrow lanes of the city, around the squat sandstone dwellings and finally up to where she stood, as she had every evening of her life here in her husband’s haveli. When the music finally died away the air was rent with the first harsh call of the peacocks as they flew up into the branches of trees to nest for the night.

Parvati lived through each day for sundown, when the sandstone hillocks all around would cool and the hot and dusty city of Jaisalmer would turn into a beautiful painting by a master who only had yellows and reds and browns in his palette.

She would sigh with a pleasure that was almost physical and gaze at the fort on the hill, its sandstone structure a pale gold in the setting light and the distant conical temple towers inky silhouettes against the dusky sky. All around her, tall havelis of other nobles and merchants leaned perilously close to one another, like well-dressed women caught in conspiratorial chatter.

She would look down at the town with its thin paths spidering between mud houses, camels meandering along the by-lanes, lines of colourful clothes strung along the walls and balconies like daubs of paint on a drab brown canvas. Sometimes, the whole scene would shimmer and shake like a mirage in the desert, the pale yellow stone blocks turning to molten gold. At other times, as she stood gazing down, she would watch the narrow lanes and dwellings closing ranks and turning into a dark ominous maze. And she was down there, lost in the labyrinth, claustrophobic, gasping, looking to find her way out. But the darkening sky had settled over the town like a blanket, and she could barely see, barely breathe. She could hear the laboured grunts of camels near her shoulder, but when she turned, they were always behind a bend. She could sense large sand rats scuffling around in the gutters, but they never crossed her bare feet. She screamed for help, but her voice sounded far, far away, like the neigh of a whipped horse at the other end of town.

At moments like these, when she had her waking nightmares, Parvati would stand clutching the filigreed balustrade, fists clenched and eyes closed tight, until the panic attack passed and she could breathe again.

As her body sagged, enervated with the heat and the terrifying visions, she knew her hour of solitude was over. She had to go back down, call her son to her, light the diya in her shrine and perform the evening aarti. She would play with him, help him with his lessons, feed him, put to bed. Then lie down in her own chamber and wait for the demons to take over again.

Parvati took one last look at the Jaisalmer town lighting up dimly with glimpses of cooking fires and oil lamps, through narrow doors and windows, and started down the steep stairs, unwillingly stepping back into the harshly real world below.

Havelis in the heart of Jaisalmer have a cadence of their own. From the first rooster call at dawn to the last chime of the brass wall clock at midnight, they hum softly within to a rhythm that is as unique as the people who inhabit these exquisite edifices of sandstone, granite and marble.

Saalim Singh ki haveli nestled a stone’s throw from the Golden Fort like a jewelled ornament that had fallen from a treasure chest and rolled a little away. Its sandstone tower with latticed balconies on all four sides dominated the solid structure below, allowing the inmates to keep a watch in all directions, while remaining out of sight themselves. They needed to be cautious, for this was the home of the head of the Mehta family, the prime minister of the state of Jaisalmer, the right hand of the Maharawal Gaj Singh and a man of strategy, of guile. He was the Diwan Saalim Singh, a man with more than just the burden of the state on his mind. He had his personal devils to live with, his enemies to avenge, women to possess, power to capture and only one life in which to do it all.

He sat on a low seat in his silk-padded salon, back resting against a heavy brocade-covered bolster, legs splayed wide in a characteristically arrogant posture, holding an ornate abacus in his hands. His long, hard fingers first felt the rounded contours of the carved mahogany frame like they were exploring the face of a woman in the dark. Then they moved down the rows, gently rippling through the coloured gemstones polished round into beads. They paused at the fourth row, plucked the stones almost absently, pushed three blue turquoises out, moved down to tease two deep red garnets and a green jade, then fiddled with a row of black agates and finally, in a graceful movement, twirled six moonstones to one side. The clock on a wall kept time to the clack-clack-clack of the man’s thoughts.

In his mind he was seeing the great Golden Fort on the hill, he was seeing a band of soldiers marching up to the King, the Maharawal sahib, with a man in their midst, a man dragging heavy chains looped around his ankles, leaving a trickle of blood to thicken in the dust. As the twelve-year-old boy watched, sweat pouring down his face in fear, the man was pushed down until his head rested on a stone cube. His face was turned towards the boy, held in place by strong hands. The eyes gazed at him, all that fire almost dead in them, just a glimmer now, a glimmer of a message for him. The boy strained at the hands that held him back, screaming voicelessly. He closed his eyes as the axe was raised high in the air and opened them again, but the face was not on the stone, it was down on the sand, looking up at the sky. And from where he stood, he could see that the glimmering embers were only cold lumps of coal now.

It was nearly thirty years since Saalim had vowed to avenge his father’s gruesome end. Another Rawal, Gaj Singh now sat on the throne. Another Mehta, Saalim Singh, was now his prime minister. Much had changed, but something would never change. The Maharawal and his family would pay, no matter how long it took.

The servants padded noiselessly in camel skin slippers up and down the verandahs enclosing the Diwan’s room, carrying copper jugs of steaming, cardamom-flavoured tea and plates of cut fruit, fried kachoris and crisp onion pakoras covered with muslin cloth. It was late tea hour at the haveli and the maalkins had to be served in their own boudoirs. But not one minion dared to disturb the deep study in which the sahib was immersed. Their experience had taught them that even to gently announce ‘Chai, Huzoor’ would be to invite a violent meeting with the nearest object in his reach. They would await his imperious clap and a ‘Koi hai?’ before entering the room, head bowed, knees atremble, to wait for his command.

The mistresses of the house, however, were easier to serve, their little idiosyncrasies seeming trivial in comparison. The oldest of them, Dharmavati, the Diwan’s eldest wife, never left her room, not even for a little fresh air in the evening. Grossly overweight and flaccid, she would be ensconced in her large, deep bed, ostensibly worrying prayer beads in one hand, but actually enjoying her maid’s local gossip and banter with the other servants who padded in and out of the room. She had never been known to leave her bed except to visit the bathroom, and once a month, on every Amavasya, the Devi temple half a furlong away. Then, four maids would help her down the stairs to a horse-drawn carriage that she would mount painfully, step by step, held by the women and two horsemen, and ride to the shrine to offer prayers to the deity, then back again to sink into her bed with a ragged sigh of relief. It was said that she had taken to her bed the day the Diwan brought home his second wife, Parvati, a good twelve years ago.

Parvati was as slim and supple as her souten was obese and expansive. Chosen by the most powerful man in the state of Jaisalmer to be his favourite wife, she had once entered the house like a proud queen, supremely confident of herself and of the love she had seen in his eyes on the day he had asked for her hand in marriage. But as the first few years rolled by, her dreams were shattered as she slowly saw her husband for what he actually was. A cold, ruthless man on a mission, someone to whom his women were only to be used in rare moments of passion and to be looked through with his hard marble eyes if they ever crossed his path later.

Soured and embittered, Parvati now spent her days in a nervous frenzy, pacing the corridors of the haveli, hoping to catch a glimpse of her husband and perhaps, feel that spark again that she had experienced in their first few weeks together. To fill up her days, she played dice with her companion, her eyes forever darting to the doors and windows, and changed her clothes again and again at finding the slightest speck of dirt on her heavily embroidered skirts and diaphanous dupattas, and slept little, her mind restless with thoughts of the betrayal she had suffered at her husband’s hands over the last decade, every time he brought a younger woman into the house.

There were four more of them now. All six wives living under the same roof. To the world, it appeared they all lived in harmony. But how different was the truth! Parvati had never met Dharmavati after that first, awkward meeting in the Rang mahal, when the older woman had welcomed her with an aarti. With both their sari pallus pulled low over their faces, and amidst showers of rice and flowers flung at the new bride by the women of the harem, all they had seen of each other was a hazy curtain of fabric. After that, the first wife was never again seen out of her quarters. As for the other younger wives, who had gradually come into the Diwan’s life, Parvati often heard them across the courtyard shrieking and giggling together like silly young girls. It only made her feel old and jaded. And deeply lonely, for there was no one who understood her and her unsated hunger for the presence of her husband.

When Parvati went up to the towers to amble in the late evening light, she would study the unique architecture and walk around, looking out between the lattices of each of the thirty-eight balconies and for a while, be at peace.

Born into the family of a rich merchant, she had been privately tutored and brought up to appreciate the arts and aesthetics. Strangely, that was what had brought Saalim Singh to her father’s haveli, one afternoon.

The Diwan, then a young man and the Rawal’s right hand, was a collector of art. Having heard that one Gadwal Singh was a connoisseur of exquisite paintings and patron of brilliant young artists, he had sent word to his haveli, asking for an audience.

Gadwal responded by return messenger, saying that he would be delighted to host the Diwan at his home the very next day. He had a large collection of paintings by unknown artists that he wished to promote and if the Diwan sahib would be kind enough to see them, he may like to choose some, of course, as a gift in appreciation of the trouble taken by him to step into the humble home of Gadwal Singh.

Parvati was informed by her giggling maids that a very handsome young man was in audience with her father. She blushed, wondering if he had come to ask for her hand, as her father had asked her to wear her most richly embroidered lehenga on that day. At that moment, a manservant called softly from behind the silken curtains.

‘ Huzoor has asked for the young mistress to come to his sitting chamber.’

‘For what?’ squealed the youngest maid.

‘ Huzoor is discussing artworks with his guest and asked me to call the young mistress.’

Puzzled and confused, Parvati pulled her pallu low over her face and walked through the long passages to her father’s chamber, the silken folds of her skirt rustling along the way.

‘Come in, my daughter,’ said Gadwal Singh with a hint of pride in his voice. He held up a cloth scroll and looked at her bowed head. ‘ Diwan sahib here asks what is so special about this piece. Can you tell him?’

Parvati rubbed her sweaty palm on her skirt and raised her right hand to lift her pallu. She carefully moved it with two fingers so that she could see the painting through the tiny gap.

‘This is a phad painting done in the Marwar style. There is a freshness of colour because instead of the usual blues, reds and yellows used in miniatures of this kind, it is painted in greys and pastels. Also, the perspectives are different. There are no multiple plane perspectives used here. They are all on the plane of the main characters, which are…’

Suddenly she stopped, feeling painfully shy. There was a silence in the room. She peeped at her father. He was smiling at the other man. Then she deftly moved her fingers and increased the gap in the pallu to look at the Diwan. She caught his eye and something in them made her fingers boneless. They released their grip and the heavy pallu slid back over her head and Saalim Singh looked straight at her face.

Almost gasping for breath, she scrambled for the veil with numb fingers, then unable to bear the young man’s strangely intimate gaze any longer, turned and ran out of the room.

Within two days they were married. She entered her new home as his favourite wife, the new mistress of the haveli. But there was something she had never imagined, in any of her romantic dreams. That the passion she had seen in his eyes had not been love, but just raw physical attraction. Night after night, he came to her. They made love wildly, wantonly, repeatedly. It was as if he could never have enough of her, but once satiated, he would not wait to hold her and caress her, but tumble out of the bed as though he had other things to do.

The flame died as quickly as it had flared. In the months that she padded around her chamber heavily pregnant, then the times that she sat nursing her son, and the nights she lay on the cool sheets awaiting his footfall, the years had begun to roll on, and she knew it was all over. Then she began to live for his rare visit in the dead of the night, to ravage her body even before she had woken up fully. Turning over afterward, she would hold out a beseeching hand in the semi-dark, but he would have already rolled out of the bed to dress and leave, as quietly as he had come in.

Parvati lived like the waking dead, drifting wraith-like along the corridors all day, longing for something she knew in her heart she would never get. And tossing all night on cool satin sheets as she waited in vain to hear the soft footfall of the only man she lived for…

As he dismounted from his horse, Pratap Singh Yadav stopped to listen to the music snaking out of the narrow alleyways of the rundown locality of Titinka in the Eastern outskirts of the city. He nodded, pleased. He had come at the correct time. The old man was in full form.

As he picked his way carefully over the uneven mud path, avoiding heaps of camel dung, Pratap looked around at the neighbourhood. The skyline rose and fell as shallow mounds of brown dwellings. The streets were dust paths, there were dogs everywhere, and an occasional ambling camel.

‘Jai Ma Rukmini, Jai Ma Bhavani,’ he murmured to himself, and said a little prayer that his mission today be promising.

Pratap stood in front of the old man, waiting for the music to stop, for his eyes to open, his lined face to re-crease into a welcoming smile. For he had known this minstrel almost all his life. This was the same soothsayer who had foreseen every calamity in the desert since the people of Jaisalmer could remember, and who could predict the future, good or bad, even though he never spoke…

Pratap folded his hands and bent his head respectfully as the drone of the stringed instrument died away with the last rays of the sun. This was the witching hour, between night and day, light and dark, when the old man’s eyes would look deep into his and know the truth.

In the silence still vibrating with the magical notes, Pratap spoke in a low voice.

‘Baba, I have been sent to you by my village mukhiya, Harshvardhan. He asked me to beg you to guide us. We are Paliwal Brahmins inhabiting more than eighty villages. We live peacefully and trouble no one. We tend our fields and trade our goods with places as far and wide as the Mewar and Malwa regions. Our clan deity, Rukminidevi, the incarnation of the Supreme Goddess Jagamba, has been very kind. We trace our lineage over two thousand years, ever since our first ancestor helped Princess Rukmini send a secret message to Lord Krishna to save her from marrying the evil Shishupal.’

The old man’s eyes flared suddenly with a knowledge and then closed as he picked up his ravanhatha and tucked it into his armpit where it fitted like it belonged to that nook.

The air was rent once again with the sound of man and instrument as they sang of what had been, what would be, and what no man could stop from coming to be…

In the days before the great ocean swallowed the land of Krishna, in the days after the evil Kamsa was destroyed…a princess remembered Krishna…She prayed to the Lord to carry her away from the hands of Shishupala…

Kulguru Sukhdev and his clan travelled to Dwarka carrying Rukmini’s patra to Krishna…For this good deed, was the Patriwal rewarded by Rukmini who blessed his clan ever after…

But the Lord’s own clan Yaduvansh had become immoral and depraved…he created a great wave to come in from the sea and destroy them…

The soothsayer paused and his hands stayed still on his instrument as he waited for the past to reveal itself in his closed eyes. Pratap held his breath and waited, knowing what would come.

…but the Lord saved the clan that had saved his queen… he sent the Patriwals to Pali before the sea devoured his land…With the blessings of Rukmini the humble clan flourished for centuries and become the Paliwals…the most prosperous community in Bharatvarsh…

…but the fate of the Paliwals was doomed indeed… the great invaders from beyond the mountains came to Pali looking for their wealth, but the brave souls feared them not, even when they laid siege to their city. Only when the enemy turned their waters red with carcasses, did the Paliwals run out to their gory end…so many were slain by the Sultan’s men that their sacred threads alone weighed forty maunds…and their women’s chudas were found strewn everywhere…O the lives that were lost! The innocent lives that were lost!

Then they came, the Paliwals came to the lands of the setting sun. They had nothing but their hands. And those hands turned sand into gold.

Pratap waited for a pause in the ballad, to speak softly. The old man opened his eyes but did not flicker a muscle. He sat still, his deep, haunted eyes fixed on the visitor’s face.

‘Baba, now difficult times seem to be upon us. Over the past fifty years, our hard work and unity have earned us riches and prosperity. But it has become a source of jealousy for many. We are being visited regularly by the men from the Maharawal’s court, sent by his Diwan, Saalim Singh, ordering us to appear before the King and declare our assets. He has sent word that we will be henceforth taxed heavily on our business earnings.

‘Our headman, Harshvardhan is deeply worried. Ours is