The Crimson Throne Read online

  The Crimson Throne

  Sudhir Kakar

  Dzanc Books

  1334 Woodbourne Street

  Westland, MI 48186

  www.dzancbooks.org

  Copyright © 2010 Sudhir Kakar

  All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Published 2015 by Dzanc Books

  A Dzanc Books rEprint Series Selection

  eBooks ISBN-13: 978-1-941531-27-3

  eBook Cover Designed by Awarding Book Covers

  Published in the United States of America

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  To the memory of my dear friends

  Ali Baquer and Vijay Pillai

  ‘The story of any momentous event in history is told and re-told in different eras by many different voices, in varied contexts and for many different audiences.’

  —From The Linguistics of History, Roy Harris

  ‘History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.’

  —E.L Doctorow

  prologue

  MY FRIEND KHWAJA CHISTI is an optimist. He does not think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the greatest empire on earth. But then, he is not completely of our tribe. Something went awry when he was being castrated. He still feels remnants of the urgings that compel men to ignore what is plainly in sight, or to espy what is not there. Eunuchs, by nature, are realists. Our eyes have long stopped being seduced by illusion.

  We are sitting in my quarters in the royal harem on an early August afternoon. The usual sounds of the harem, which normally resemble the high-pitched chatter of an aviary at the break of dawn, have reduced to the distant mumble of a mountain stream. Latticed blinds have been lowered to cover the entrances to the apartments of the queens and princesses to shut out the glare of the sun. Almost all the maids and slave girls have retired to their chowk adjoining the walls of the fort. Matrons entrusted with the task of looking after the harem squat in groups of three or four on the veined marble floors of the broad verandas outside the apartments, gossiping in voices that barely rise above a whisper. A few of them have dozed off, their legs stretched out in front of them as they lean against the cool marble pillars. The emperor, too, has retired for his afternoon siesta, and I am free for a couple of hours till he awakens and prepares to attend court at five in the evening.

  Chisti and I are old friends who share the special bond of being emasculated on the same day. I was nine, Chisti a year younger. We have done well for ourselves. Chisti is the chief eunuch in the harem of Danishmand Khan, the emperor’s advisor on foreign affairs. I serve the emperor himself and hope to soon be raised to the rank of a senior eunuch. I will enjoy being a Nazir.

  ‘Khwaja!’ I tell him, ‘Empires are like human beings that begin to die the moment they are born. The emperor Akbar was the high noon of the Mughul empire and our own sovereign is its setting sun. Praise Allah that we have lived in the time of the empire’s greatest splendour. If it was also the time of its greatest decadence, then that is the nature of all empires. After us no more Taj Mahals shall be built. Delhi will never again be the magnet that attracts the best jewellers in the world to craft another Peacock Throne. The treasury of the emperor of Hindustan will never again bulge with such vast quantities of gold, silver and precious stones as it does today. The Mughal armies will never again be so victorious as they were during the thirty years of Shah Jahan’s reign.’

  ‘If you are such a great historian, Niamat,’ Chisti says, his eyes narrowing with characteristic scorn, ‘then tell me why the House of Timur is fated to disappear.’

  ‘I am not a historian,’ I say, ignoring his sarcasm, ‘but I am one of the emperor’s personal attendants. I can pick up the whiff of decay emanating from the centre of the empire that has not yet reached other nostrils. You only see the brilliant light of today’s fire; I see tomorrow’s ashes. If you want to call me anything then call me a visionary. Historians look at the past, I look into the future. They are concerned with beginnings, I envision ends. But if you insist on asking “why”, then I will say that the will to govern, to rule, is lost, my friend. I look around at the dazzling splendour of the court, and all I see is an emptiness of purpose. Our emperor is tired and seeks rejuvenation in women’s bodies. The Wali Ahad values learning more than governance. The only prince whose will to rule is intact is a bigot. He has the pride, hardness and cunning an emperor needs, but does he also possess the wisdom to make these qualities means to achieve great ends?’

  I can see Chisti’s eyes begin to get a glassy look. I am aware that he thinks I monopolize our conversations, that I am often too serious, even portentous. I pass him the hukka and ask him about the latest court gossip. Chisti becomes animated. He is in his element now. The hukka gurgles happily. Intrigues are rampant, conspiracies abound. The nobles are dividing into factions that form and reform like remnants of monsoon clouds racing aimlessly into each other across the August sky. He lowers his voice when he comes to the escapades of the royal princesses. We chuckle over their sexual appetites that match those of the men of the House of Timur. My attention begins to wander once his stories become uneventful. Two farangi doctors have recently joined the court…

  Khwaja Chisti is my oldest friend but I wish he were less longwinded.

  ‘Even when there is a darkness all around the star, light my path alone’

  NICCOLAO MANUCCI

  I BELIEVE I HAVE been singularly favoured by fortune ever since my birth in 1631, the year that the plague, which decimated almost a quarter of Venice’s population, finally retreated. That my impoverished parents survived the plague in one of the most wretched parts of the city, overrun by garbage and rats, when it did not spare even the Doge and his family, can only be a miracle.

  ‘My little Niccolao,’ my mother would say, Your birth was a sign from God that after a decade of death Venice was once again ripe for new life.’

  For the most part of my life, even in the most adverse circumstances, I have known that I am being watched over by a benign Providence. Even when there is darkness all around, a star lights my path alone. How else could it be that I, who grew up on the docks of Venice, and found my way to distant Hindustan where I was welcomed into the mansions of the nobility, received at the court of the Great Mogul himself, became a confidant to the Crown Prince, or the Wali Ahad as his subjects addressed him, took part in the war of succession to the throne of the Mogul empire and, above all, became rich and famous for my proficiency in the healing arts? Especially since I had not studied medicine in Italy. Or, for that matter, studied anything at all, anywhere.

  Not that I am ashamed of my low birth, or my lack of a formal education. I have acquired my education in the school of fife and I owe my success to the lessons it has taught me. Neither have I neglected to use my God-given gifts. A gift for learning languages, for instance. Within a year of my arrival in Hindustan, in the Portuguese stronghold of Goa, I could speak fluent Persian and Portuguese and a fair smattering of the native tongue of the Hindus. I also have a talent for passionate speech and find it easy for me to bring people around to my views. I can usually convince them to follow a course of action that they might be hesitant about but which I hold to be correct. In the years of my youth, of which I write, I was often told that my grey eyes, bronzed curls and manly chin with the hint of a cleft aided my persuasive ways.

  But what good would these gifts have been without the opportunity to use them to an
y effect? India gave me this opportunity, as it still does to poor but adventurous European youth.

  The day my ship docked at the port of Goa on the last Sunday of March 1653, after a seventy-day voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, the captain, a middle-aged Neapolitan on his last voyage to the Indies, called me to his cabin as I was preparing to go ashore. At sea, he had been a strict taskmaster. My swabbing of the decks, a task I performed to pay for my passage to India, had never managed to meet his high standards. Now, with the ship safely anchored, his normally stern expression had seeped away, like water into sand. He was reclining on his bunk bed, his boots thrown carelessly on the floor, a near-empty bottle of rum precariously wedged between his slack thighs. The cabin reeked of sweaty feet, dirty socks and alcohol fumes.

  ‘Look for shelter with one of the Christian orders, Niccolao,’ he said as he handed me a few ducats he had pulled out of the pocket of his dirty coat. ‘These church vermin live shamelessly off the land and the sweat of its people, but some of them are too afraid of the Lord not to have an occasional kind impulse. They’re your best bet, boy.’

  My first steps on the wharf were an unsteady pirouette. I was as one intoxicated, as much from the portents of a glorious future as from the beauty of the surroundings, which my eyes had imbibed since the previous afternoon. As I scrubbed the deck for the last time, I watched the waves ripple through the pale aquamarine sea and gently lap the beaches of fine white sand. The next morning, a warm breeze bearing the premonition of a hot day gently blew over the ship as it entered the mouth of the river Mandovi from the sea where it had been for the night. The mist that had hovered above ground and stretched almost halfway towards the chain of blue hills in the distance had begun to lift. As the ship sailed towards the port of Goa, some ten kilometres inland, I marvelled at the lush, impenetrable, dark green mangroves intersected by narrow creeks that exuded a faintly menacing air. Thatched huts had peered out of thick coconut groves. Further inland, closer to our destination, the dwellings on the riverbank were transformed. Grand villas with sprawling gardens of exotic plants came into view, their strange flowers bursting in vivid colour. My spirit soared. I could already see myself as the owner of one of these mansions. In Venice, I had often walked past the palaces of the nobility—the Barbaros, Pisianis, Grimanis, Padavins, Ottobans— gaping at their grand palazzos in envy, tinged always with longing. I would never have been allowed to enter those palaces, even as a servant; they were as inaccessible to me as would be the seraglios of the emperors of China or India.

  My mother had died when I was seven years old. My father, the least happy man I ever knew, worked on the docks loading and unloading ships. He had neither the means nor the inclination to look after a growing boy. I was largely left to fend for myself. Sleep to me meant a dirty mattress spread on a stone floor. Food was an occasional stew of sardines and potatoes growing cold on a grease-spattered, unlit iron stove. Home was infrequent glimpses of a father who returned late at night, drunk, and felt no compunction in beating me awake, for past transgressions neither of us remembered, or in advance for sins I was yet to commit. I had grown up on my own on the streets and docks of Venice, honing my wits, listening to the fantastical tales sailors spun of their travels in distant lands, and nurturing my fevered dreams of escape to the legendary lands of the East.

  The houses of the Portuguese in Goa do not have a scrap of iron,’ I would hear the sailors say. ‘Everything in them is made either of gold or silver.’ The Portuguese, I was told, thought so little of gold that they used it liberally to paint and adorn the beams, doorways and window frames of their houses. Their beds were made of fragrant aloe wood and had gold feet. The sprawling rooms in the mansions where rich merchants lived were swept with brooms with handles made of gold. When the lady of the house stepped out, two women servants walked alongside her litter with gold incensers and gently blew the fragrant smoke into the litter with Japanese ivory fans to protect her from the stench and miasma of sickness and disease on the street.

  ‘From Goa,’ the sailors said, Young men less than your age make but two or three voyages to Japan or China, Malacca or the Philippines. On their return, they sell goods they bring back with them at five or six times the cost. Soon, they acquire riches beyond imagination.’ Even discounting the exaggeration arising from a liberal partaking of our fine Italian wine after months spent at sea, the sailors’ stories of Goa’s fabled riches were heady enough for a youth with ambition but no prospects.

  Now, having arrived in the land of my dreams, I could see myself as lord and master of a tropical villa in Goa, being waited on by a host of native servants, sharing my bed with dusky Indian maidens with lissome limbs. Satiated and wealthy, I would return to Venice after a few years with a head full of stories and wooden chests crammed with silver and gold. Ah, youth! When the future is a sky ablaze with light and life but a parade of dreams!

  The disenchantment came later, when I was no longer standing on the deck of a ship gliding on water but walking on earth. It began as I wandered Goa’s cobbled streets and saw the city of my dreams start to crumble before my eyes with each step I took.

  Built from a porous, latérite stone the colour of dried blood, found in abundance in these parts, Goa had more than a hundred palaces that must have been splendid at one time. In more than a hundred years of Portuguese presence, the city flourished as the capital of Portuguese possessions in the East. It was a centre of commerce and Christian faith. But by the time I arrived, Goa had slid far down along the slope of decline. Save for the main cathedrals, seminaries and convents of the larger religious orders, most buildings were shabby and ill-kept. The once splendid mansions were on their way to becoming equally spectacular ruins. Scorched yellow palms drooped in gardens that had not been tended to in years and were now overwhelmed by weeds. Window panes, made not from glass but from thin polished oyster shells set in wooden frames, were grimy with dust and speckled with lozenge-shaped holes where broken shells had not been replaced. There were few carriages on the streets. Most people walked. I discovered, too late, that the wondrous Goa of the tales I had heard in the taverns of Venice, the Goa of gold and silver for which I had sailed so far, had ceased to exist around the time I was born.

  There was the competition, of course. Other Europeans, especially the Dutch, who had deprived the Portuguese of their trade by interdicting their sea routes and gaining control of the route to the Moluccas and the Spice Islands. The English, too, reigned supreme in the Persian Gulf after their capture of Ormuz. With the loss of their monopoly over trade in the East, gold and silver no longer flowed into Goa as had happened for most of the last century.

  The more I explored the city, my steps no longer spritely, my spirit weighed down by the ruin, decay and lawlessness I saw around me, the more convinced I became that the haughty Portuguese had brought this fate upon themselves. Their ancestors had been distinguished by courage, a zeal for religion and grand exploits. Indian princes, without exception, had courted their friendship. But the present generation of the Portuguese in India seemed to revel in being petty, mean and unnecessarily cruel, addicted to every imaginable vice and shallow pleasure.

  What happens to the Portuguese, to these simple Iberian lads, when they first come out to the East, I wonder. No sooner has their ship rounded the Cape of Good Hope than they become/idaîgos, gentlemen. Each one of them adds a ‘Don’ to the simple Pedro or Mario by which he was known just a fraction of time earlier. And as their names change, their natures too undergo—an alarming transformation. They become violent, mean-spirited and treat others—especially the native Hindus—with utter disdain. I found the Hindus, most of whom had by then retreated inland to remote villages, to be utterly cowed down. If some of them had to come to the city on business, they could be seen scurrying along the main street with their heads bowed and shoulders hunched. They may not be conversant with the true faith, and their own religion may be incomprehensible to outsiders, yet they too are human, even if sorely misg
uided, and deserve Christian compassion.

  The Portuguese also despised the native Christians, who were either converted Hindus or the much more numerous Mestica, the mixed breed of Portuguese and Indian blood. But unlike the meeker Hindus, the mestica returned the compliment by openly calling the Portuguese arrogant and ill-mannered. I found the mestica men to be generally amiable and easy-going. Having spent many agreeable evenings in their taverns I can say of them that they are honest drinkers who drink for the purpose and to the point of intoxication. They also love to sing. My first lessons in Portuguese were acquired by the unusual method of joining them in their drunken singing, which went from bawdy to melancholy as the evening progressed. In return, I taught them Italian curse words I had picked up on the docks of Venice. Soon, they were using iglio di puttana, son of a whore, and cornuto, cuckold, as terms of endearment for each other. ‘Your language is so musical,’ they said.

  Even among themselves, the Portuguese are a vindictive lot. I have seen no other nation whose men are as jealous of their women as the Portuguese of Goa. If a fidalgo entertains the least suspicion about his woman he will not hesitate to do away with her by poison or dagger. The man involved in the affair rarely escapes death. He is sought out and killed by the cuckold’s Kaffirs, black slaves imported from Mozambique, wherever they find him, even in a sacred place. As I prayed in church one Sunday morning, about a month after my arrival, I witnessed the most gruesome of crimes. Three slaves came running up the aisle, and a man who had been kneeling two rows ahead of me made a dash towards the altar. Unmindful of where they were and of the screams of the parishioners the Kaffirs discharged their blunderbusses at his retreating back. Two innocent bystanders were killed and the priest was wounded in the shoulder. The man himself escaped and fled Goa the same day.