An extract from 'Chanakya Returns'

CHANAKYA RETURNS

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CHANAKYA RETURNS

TIMERI N. MURARI

ONE love, i advise, and

I speak from experience, is fragile as rotting silks and will disintegrate when infidelities, jealousies, betrayals, impotence infect it. The heart is not to be trusted as it is brainless and mistakes lust for love while the loins mistake love for lust. Love is a watery foundation on which to build one’s life. Love is violent too, be warned of its treachery. Men and women murder for love; the clash of bodies, hearts and souls only leaves behind the ashes of defeat when one is vanquished and abandoned on the battlefield of the bed.

Believe me, love has sent more men and women to the gallows of tears, despair, grief and suicide than a thousand tyrants his enemies to an executioner. No, love will prove to be unfulfilling and transitory, but power (and I shiver at the word)—on the other hand—is to be pursued. It is an aphrodisiac, it is unending hot sex of 1001 positions, it is magical, it is miraculous. Your followers will worship you like an idol that can confer riches and miracles, more than any god, on those fortunate to worship you, and you will feel their outpouring of love in gratitude. Your subjects cannot take it from you, unless you give it away through foolishness, and you can keep hold of that lightning rod until you are buried in a grand tomb, accompanied by great pomp and ceremony and outpourings of grief.

My prince(ss) listened carefully to what I had to say. I wondered which would triumph—the power of love or the love of power. It is a crossroad—right or left—there is no middle way.  On this day, it is hot and humid, the sky overcast with clouds. The monsoon is very near, the still air perfumed with the promised rain. The light is luminous as beaten silver. But the city is always oppressive, monsoon or not. Only in winter does the cold lighten the weight of the city. High walls surround the large garden, with an extensive lawn, and mango, peepul, neem and tamarind trees stand as sentinels along the borders.

I follow discreetly as Avanti slips through the shadows to the 1

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arbour at the far end of the garden and see him pacing, waiting for her, dressed in his best—a cream silk shirt, jeans, polished black shoes, his long hair tied in a fashionable pony tail. She is in his arms.

Smothering him with her silks and perfume, hot skin and the sweet taste of her mouth. They are breathless with laughter in the heat and the wanting. His hand slides up her waist to her breasts and I know the sensation of the first touch of those wondrous orbs on a woman’s body that drive men insane and befuddle their brains. He bends his head to grasp the erect nipple in his mouth, knowing this is the pathway back into the womb that ejected him into the world and where both pain and pleasure lie hidden between those legs.

The heat of a woman’s loins melts men’s minds. She allows him a moment of drunken sensation, also arousing the erection that is hard as a cane between his legs, and then pulls up his worshipping head.

He tries to resist, he is determined to seduce her, in the arbour, on the hard earth.

-No, not yet.

-Give yourself a present you’ll remember all your life.

He tries to gently, tenderly wrestle her down. His voice is husky with longing.

-And get my new clothes dirty, she laughs. We have the whole night. You said you’d reserved a room in the hotel.

-I can’t wait that long. We can fuck again there.

Ahh, the beauty of the language. That word, which I savour, even though I was ignorant of its meaning at first, just the sound of those four letters conjures up the collision of bodies, the pelvic thrust of sexual pleasures in countless variations, an orgasmic heaven.

It didn’t exist in my time. I wish it had, for it encapsulates our basest desires and greatest pleasures, pithily.

-You’re always so impetuous.

-And you’re conservative. Let yourself go. Celebrate with sex and sensuality. Experience becoming a woman.

-You make it sound like a disease. Am I really conservative?

-Yes. And spoilt.

-I know that. You do love me?

-Since I was knee high. It was instant, a lightning bolt. I’m crazily, madly in love with you.

-I’m never sure whether to believe you or not. You’re so crazy.

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-I know. And you?

-I think so.

-Love isn’t a think; it’s a feel, a fire, a volcano, an insanity. Give into passion, not thoughts.

-Then yes, I do love you.

But she remains stubbornly resistant, teasing him, yet always with kindness. A wraith, just always out of reach, yet warm in his arms. I feel no envy, no jealousy, my only concern is that love will warp my plans. As I wrote so long ago: The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman. My wisdom still awes me.

His name is Aditya, a nobody, and love will only lead her to the role of a housewife, serving one man and not a nation. She has known him since childhood when he had looked over their compound wall in the old neighbourhood and saw, what he always told her, ‘an angel haloed in sunlight’. They couldn’t have been more than ten years old.

They were together in school too. When she was sent to board at the convent school in the hills, Aditya had followed to a boys’ one nearby. And she had followed him to the States, though not to the same university. He went to the New York University Film School; she went to New York Art School to fulfil her longing to become a painter. She is moderately talented, applying herself diligently to her art daily. She calls it abstract; I consider it indescribable. It was as if they were destined for each other.

-Wait, he says.

I know he loves her truly and I grow wary when he offers up his heart with the engagement ring in the small, velvet-lined box.

I can barely see the diamond, the size of star dust.

-Happy Birthday, my love.

-Is this a proposal?

-What else?

-I must ask my parents.

-You’re of age. Let’s run away and marry.

-I can’t do that. I’ll wear it on my right hand until we’re officially engaged.

-There’s an inscription on it.

She peers. It’s too dark to read it.

-Tell me what it says.

-We’ll read it in bed together tonight.

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She admires it, kissing him, and I pray she won’t slip it on. An heir to power cannot nurture a vulnerable heart. Power and love are incompatible, for power cannot trust the love offered up to it on a gold platter. Men and women are devious as serpents in a pit, coiling and uncoiling their calculations to win the love of power. He is not a serpent, yet. I break the spell with a low cough, breaking the enchantment of suppressed passion. She has to heed my whisper ‘your mother calls’, a necessary lie. She pecks him. They aren’t to know then it is a farewell kiss. I meet his malevolent stare with my bland dismissive glance as I follow her back to the house.

She hurries out of the arbour, pausing a moment to remove the engagement ring and knot it in the pallu of her saree. Her mother’s sharp eyes will spot it. I follow at a stately pace, having placed her mother at the entrance. An advisor must justify the lie. He follows slowly, disconsolate. He had expected her to throw her arms around him and shriek ‘yes, Aditya, yes.’ That’s the way he’d planned it in his script. I rewrote it. I have no shame, no remorse at breaking a young man’s heart, knowing it will self-repair. My ambitions are more important than paltry love.

The bungalow has two floors and sprawls in many directions as rooms were added as afterthoughts. Its entrance is through a pillared verandah that circles it and is the ancestral home of this family. Armed guards at either end block the road leading to it and the quiet is an escape from the din of the city. The garden is strung with coloured bulbs, as if this is a festival, Diwali, Pongal, Christmas. A long table is set on the front lawn, covered with a white tablecloth, laid with expensive crockery and polished silver. There are twenty places, though Aditya is the only guest. A military band stands to attention beyond the table. In the periphery are shadowy men, clutching machine pistols, as ineffectual as men with swords and shields to stop a determined assassin. Her mother waits under the porch, a lonely silhouette. Now, she is looking around as if unsure whether she should be where I had placed her. Behind her are a dozen bearers, carrying a cake, checked for poisonous substances. The ritualized twenty-five candles rising above it like deodars on a plain.

-Oh, Mother, Avanti says crossly. I’m not a child anymore to have birthday cakes and candles.

I move into the shadows, always the observer unless needed to

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participate to guide the events.

-Birthdays have cakes, and cakes always have candles, her mother says placatingly, softening Avanti’s petulance. Isn’t that right, Aditya?

She has an enchanting voice, soft and husky, and almost sings her words.

-Yes ma’am, he says, standing beside Avanti, admiring the splendid cake, large and flat as a cartwheel, enough to feed a hundred. It’s a very beautiful cake.

Avanti leans across to him and whispers. You’re always sucking up to her.

-When are your friends arriving? You did tell them the time, didn’t you? her mother says in a calm yet stubborn voice that she knows will wear down Avanti. Avanti frowns and at the same time manages to wink at Aditya. She always disagreed with or teased her mother. I thought they were mismatched, two people trapped in a wrong relationship. They look somewhat alike.

–The same straight nose, the high cheekbones. Except her mother’s mouth is sensual, compliant, loose enough to capitulate quickly. No doubt, marriage shaped it that way. Avanti’s is a firm line, inherited from her father.

-I can’t remember, Avanti says. What did I tell you?

-Seven, Aditya says. It was for high tea. He checks his watch.

It’s seven thirty now.

Avanti shrugs. Maybe they’re not coming. Maybe I didn’t invite anyone else. She links her arm with Aditya’s. Maybe I only invited him.

-I’m sure they’ll come soon, her mother says complacently.You’re a very popular girl and besides, they wouldn’t dream of refusing.

-Who says I am popular?

-I did, she says and tells the bearers to take the cake to the table.

Avanti is popular, she is the sun to a small group of privileged young women and men her age. They are a secret society, and take no other members, unless they can prove their privilege is equal to theirs. They party in exclusive clubs, they dance together, lunch and dine together, text each other constantly. They live within an enchanted square mile, guarded from the city not by walls, but by the ring of security police that protect her residence, and theirs, from interlopers, assassins, the poor and the envious. They are her courtiers, her favourite being Monika, an astounding beauty who is

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in love with herself, mostly. They were in the convent together, then at a Swiss finishing school and continued on to New York for their higher studies. But on this evening, she hasn’t invited even Monika to witness the celebration; it is private.

When her mother follows the cake to the table, the band strikes up the first bars of ‘Happy Birthday’. The bandmaster is taking his cue from her mother. But then a swift finger across her throat from Avanti silences him, and the tune dies apologetically, leaving a haunting sadness in the air.

-If your guests are not coming, we may as well go ahead. Light the candles, she tells the bearers.

-You can’t, not until Father comes. The bearers don’t need any further instruction. They put away the matchbox, knowing whom to obey. He’s the most important guest.

-He’s not coming, her mother says in triumph. The weather’s so bad that his plane can’t take off. Then with satisfaction. Even he can’t command the weather.

-He’ll come, Avanti says stubbornly. He always comes for my birthday. Always.

She sits with an immovable weight. Her mother too; they will wait each other out. Beyond her, I see her mother shyly take a box from the folds of her sari. It looks larger than the one in Aditya’s pocket.

-Happy birthday, my dearest Avanti, her mother sings out and gives her the present.

-Oh my god, I’m blinded, Aditya says, when Avanti opens the box. He shields his eyes from the diamond earrings. The stones are large as peanuts, winking with an internal light.

-They’re beautiful, Avanti says and kisses her mother. It is a delicate brush of the cheek.

-Put them on.

She shifts in her chair, lifting her hair to expose her ears. They are bare. Avanti seldom wears jewellery, rebelling against the custom.

Her mother fixes one, then the other. They weigh the lobes down.

Then her mother pinches her cheek and brings her fingertips to kiss them.

Avanti turns to Aditya, hair tucked behind her ears.

-They’re stunning, he says.

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-They were my mother’s, her mother explains. When Avanti gets married, she’ll get all the jewellery.

-And is that going to be soon? Aditya says, trying to tease Avanti into committing herself.

She smiles and shrugs.

He looks down at her right hand, pointing to it to show her mother his gift which had one tiny diamond. But it isn’t there. He notices the knotted shape in the corner of her pallu where she’s hidden it.

It makes him feel discarded and angry. We’ll be late for the movie. Come on.

-There’s always a later show, she says sweetly and pats the chair.

-Which picture… her mother says.

Avanti’s shriek cuts her off. That was the shriek Aditya had wanted to hear when he had proposed. A shriek of joy, excitement, happiness. Except this is caused by the headlights of a dozen cars racing up the curve of the drive. The lead car is a SUV, a red lamp spinning above the driver. Guns stick out from the side and back.

It drives under the porch and through to stop. Commandos jump out, taking up positions. Two other cars pull aside to let the third glide through and stop under the porch.