‘We’re there, are we!’ she exclaims. Her voice is hoarse, asthmatic. ‘Pull up somewhere. I’d like some breakfast.’
I tell the chauffeur to drive on to the end of the road. I switch on my Oxbridge. ‘There’s a palm grove beyond the village. Your Ladyship can have breakfast in peace without half of Tilpat gaping at you.’
She winces at my
haw haw.
‘Sounds lovely! I am dying for a cup of hot coffee. Bet you are too!’
I ignore her invitation. I’ll punish her till she says sorry. We skirt round Tilpat. The road ends abruptly beside a temple in a grove of date-palms. The flunky hurls himself out to open the rear door. I follow him.
Lady Hoity-Toity emerges out of her ermine cocoon. I get a full view. Fifty-fivish, small (a little over five feet), bosomless, bottomless, scraggy, sexless. Muddy blonde hair, muddy blonde down all over her leathery pink skin. Cuts on the sides of the jaw indicate a surgical face-lift. She is, as the Bard put it, ‘beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity.’ Dress: grey cardigan, powder-blue denims, khaki canvas boots. Nothing feminine about her except her little size, blue eyes and a bracelet strung with gold coins.
The Presidential hamper is opened on a Presidential collapsible table. Egg sandwiches, steaming hot coffee.
‘You speak uncommonly good English,’ says she, offering me a cigarette. ‘Bet you were schooled in England.’
I shake my head at the cigarette. ‘Haileybury.’ Haileybury sounds safe and very Blighty.
‘Old East India school!’ she says very patronizingly.
‘And surely that’s a King’s tie!’
‘It is.’ I hold up the tie I have no right to wear.
‘My husband is also a King’s man. When were you up?’
‘Seven years ago.’ Her husband must be at least thirty years older than I. No danger of being caught out.
‘What did you read?’
‘History.’
She beams. ‘So did my husband! Who was your tutor?’
I will get into trouble if I let her go on questioning me. ‘I spent more time on the sports ground than in tutorials.’
She smiles. She makes up to me. ‘I am awfully sorry. I took you to be a professional guide. They should have told me. Do forgive my discourtesy.’
‘Don’t give it a thought! Your Ladyship has Delhi’s worst unpaid guide at her service.’
‘You are a joker! We’ll get on. My name is Jane. What’s yours?’ she extends her hand. Bony, strong, cold. ‘Singh. A very distinguished name shared by fifty million Sikhs, Rajputs, Banias, Thakurs, Gurkhas, Biharis and many others.’ She chortles happily. We are old friends. I tell her I was on the same plane. I flatter her. ‘Those camera bulbs flashing! I thought you were a film star. You could be one.’
‘Liar! I like compliments not flattery.’ She wheezes a mixture of cough and laughter.
We sip coffee, munch egg sandwiches and engender rapport.
‘What do you know about Tilpat?’ she asks.
‘Not much. Legend has it that it was one of the Pandava’s five villages. You know about the Pandavas?’
She nods. ‘Tell me again.’
‘The Pandavas demanded of their kinsmen, the Kurus, their share of the inheritance consisting of five villages: Panipat, Sonipat, Indrapat, Baghpat and Tilpat. When the Kurus refused, they went to war. The battle was fought at Kurukshetra, seventy miles north-west of here. The Pandavas, helped by Krishna, won. You know the
Gita?’
She nods again. ‘Part of the
Mahabharata
, isn’t it? Krishna’s sermon on the righteous war...Wasn’t there a woman with many husbands somewhere in the story?’
‘Draupadi! She was wife to all the five Pandava brothers. Arjun, the third brother, won her at an archery contest. When he brought her home and said, “Mama, see what I’ve got!” his Mama without looking back replied: “Be a good boy and share it with your brothers.” So like an obedient Indian son he did as he was told.
‘After the Pandavas had settled the hash of the Kurus, they retired to the Himalayas: all good Indians go to the Himalayas to die when they grow old. It is possible that the people living on that mound are descendants of the Pandavas who stayed at home.’
‘Last time I was here they’d dug up grey earthenware pottery at Tilpat. I examined the specimens: Certainly 1000 bc or earlier.’ She speaks in a tone of authority and emphasizes it by pouring the dregs of her coffee on the ground. The flunky runs up to take her cup. We gaze at Tilpat which is lit by the sun. It is a huddle of mud-huts around a few brick-houses and a temple.
A herd of cows and buffaloes come from Tilpat towards us. Boys run around to prevent them straying into cultivated fields. Girls follow picking up blobs of steaming dung and putting them in their baskets. Cows eye the Rolls-Royce and shy away. Buffaloes snort at its fenders and meander along. Boys let the cattle scatter in the palm grove. They put their staves between their legs and sit down on their haunches a few feet away from us. The girls line up behind them.
‘What do they want?’ demands Lady Hoity-Toity.
‘What do you want?’ I translate.
‘Nothing’ replies one of the boys, ‘just looking.’ I repeat the reply in English. A villager alights from his bicycle and asks what it is going on. ‘Nothing,’ reply the boys. The cyclist joins them. More villagers come along. Within a few minutes we have quite an audience.
‘Bhai!
Is this a
tamasha
? Is it a zoo?’ I ask them with kindly sarcasm.
They snigger, they shuffle. But continue to sit and stare. A lad asks me, ‘Is this a mem or a sahib?’
The girls look at each other and giggle. Men grin. The lad gets cheeky.
‘Arre
, it wears a pantaloon like a sahib! It has nothing in front or behind. How can anyone tell!’ More giggles and smirks. Hoity-Toity senses he has said something about her. She takes my arm in a firm grip and demands to be told. I tell her. She drags me towards the lad. ‘Ask him to come round the bush and I’ll show him.’ I tell the lad. He is overcome with embarrassment. Hoity-Toity grabs the fellow by his ears and hauls him up to his feet. ‘Come and see for yourself.’
The lad wrenches his ears free and runs away. The boys and girls scamper away after him. The cyclist cycles off. The other men melt away. There’s the master race for you! There’s a woman who, although she has no breasts to speak of, could give suck to a regiment of Grenadier Guards!
‘That’s that!’ she says triumphantly slapping imaginary dust off her hands. ‘Now I’d like to see a bit of the countryside. The river couldn’t be very far from here.’
‘A brisk hour’s walk.’
‘Let’s go.’
We set our course eastwards. We go through the palm grove and out into open country. We skirt a swamp. We wade through water courses. The ground becomes sandy. Stunted
thuja
and casuarina. A herd of deer come bouncing into view and bounce away towards Tilpat. A black buck, its antlers spiralling into the air, comes to a stop a few yards ahead of us. Hoity-Toity raises her arms, takes aim and says ‘Bang.’ The buck turns its back on us. It has been hit; blood trickles down its rump. It ambles away slowly and sinks exhausted behind a cluster of dark casuarinas. A jeepload of Sikhs armed with rifles and shotguns comes zig-zagging through the bushes. ‘Sardarji, did you see a herd of deer go by?’ one asks me in Punjabi. He sees the white woman and adds in English, ‘And a big black buck. I am sure I hit it.’
I point towards the river: ‘Just this moment. It cannot have gone very far.’
‘Thanks, thanks.’ The jeep races on towards the river.
‘I’d put those bloody
shikaris
against the wall...’
Hoity-Toity smiles. Her blue eyes sparkle. ‘No bang, bang.’ She gives me a patronizing pat on my beard.
‘When I was a boy there were herds of blue bull and wild pig within a mile of the city walls. Tigers were seen on the Ridge behind Rashtrapati Bhavan where Your Ladyship is staying. There were hares, partridges, and peacocks in our parks. As for deer, I remember seeing herds fifty strong not twenty miles from here. Today you can’t see anything within a hundred miles of Delhi. These foreign bastards with diplomatic privileges have shot all our game. If I had my way, I would shoot the bloody lot.’
‘Those chaps in the jeep looked more like your own kind than foreign bastards,’ she says.
‘I’d shoot them too.’
We trudge along. Scrub gives way to cultivated fields; wheat turning from green to light yellow. A skylark pouring down song on us plummets down into the wheat. Another rises skyward, flutters at one spot and trills away. Then another. And another. The cultivated land ends. Our feet sink in sand. We come to a small pond. A flock of whistling teal rise and whistle past over our heads. I raise my arms, take aim and say, ‘Bang, bang... Good shot Lady Hoity-Toity. Six birds down!’ She laughs, ‘You are making fun of me.’
We skirt the pond. Our feet are now ankle deep in powdery soil. Suddenly the river bursts into view.
We are on a high bank. Below us stretches the Jamna coiled like a three-mile-long grey python. She seems lifeless but for a red shroud entangled in marigolds that floats lazily downstream. Three turtles scamper down and slosh into the water. On the sandbank on the other side thousands of waterfowl bask in the sun. Terns slice the air. A white-headed fishing eagle flies over the stream scanning its surface.
Lady Hoity-Toity spreads out her arms in wonder: ‘It’s like a pre-historic reptile! All those bends and curves!’ She takes my elbow and lowers herself on to the sand. I sit down beside her. Our feet dangle over the ledge perforated with the nest holes of bank mynahs. She lights a cigarette.
‘That’s because of Krishna’s brother Balaram. Jamna would not yield to his lust so he got drunk and dragged her by the hair zig-zag across the plains of Hindustan.’
A fish takes a somersault on the surface of the stream.
From far away come the thuds of the
shikaris
’ guns. Waterfowl on the opposite bank rise skyward. They pass overhead in a great whoosh honking and squawking as they go: geese, mallard, brahminy ducks, pintails, pochards... They fly along the river and back again to land on the stream a hundred yards from us. Peace returns to the Jamna. Once again terns slice the air and the white-headed eagle looks for fish in its heavy, purposeful way.
After a while Hoity-Toity puts her hand on my knee and asks: ‘Is this one of your sacred rivers?’
‘Only a fraction less holy than the Ganga! She is Sarjuga, daughter of the Sun; she is also Triyama, sister of Yama the ruler of the dead. And since she was born on Mount Kalinda, she has yet another name, Kalinda-Nandini, daughter of the black mountain. The
Vedas
were washed up by its flood; Krishna bathed in her waters. Madam, the Jamna is so holy that one dip in it washes away the sins of a lifetime. As a matter of fact if I were to push you down the bank, I would be doing Your Ladyship a great favour.’ I put my hand on hers.
She extricates her hand. The gold coins on her bracelet jingle. She throws away the stub of her cigarette and digs out a packet of Caporals from her hip-pocket. She hands me the lighter and puts a cigarette in her lips.
I cup my palms to shelter the flame and take the lighter to her lips. I look up. She looks up. Our eyes meet. Her’s are as blue as the Bay of Bengal under an aquamarine sky. She knows how to use them. I feel their rapier-like stab through my eyes down to my gullet. I lower my gaze. She blows a mouthful of roasted tobacco smoke into my face. ‘Thanks,’ she says taking back her lighter. Her hand again comes to rest on my knee.
I play with the coins on her bracelet. They bear masculine names: Jim, Freddy, Dennis, Jacques. ‘Boy-friends,’ she explains. She bares her yellowing teeth, cough-laughs and spits phlegm on the other side.
‘Rich and of all nationalities,’ I remark holding the gold coin inscribed Ali. She laughs again. ‘Not all rich; I had some made at my own expense. And not of all nations. India is missing. Perhaps I’ll add an Indian this time,’ she says giving me a meaningful leer. She buries her half-smoked Caporal in the sand. ‘I really must have a quick
dekho
at the Tilpat excavations and then this other place Suraj ... Suraj ... and some four letter obscenity.’
‘Kund.’
The obscenity dawns on me. I blush.
‘I am an awful tease!’ she says patting me on my beard. She stands up and brushes the sand off her little bottom. ‘Come along,’ she commands hauling me up by the shoulder.
She is rejuvenated. She strides on ahead. I trudge behind her. I can’t make anything of her. I cannot affix any labels to this diminutive yet strong, sexless yet bawdy woman.
We see a small cloud of mobile dust over the bushes. It is the jeep with the
shikaris
. No black buck in the jeep. They see us. Lady Hoity-Toity bares her teeth and turns a victorious smile on me. They understand. One fellow clenches his fist, shakes his right arm from its elbow and yells abuse.
‘What’s he saying?’ asks Hoity-Toity.
‘He’s telling me to go and bugger myself.’
‘An Oriental accomplishment, no doubt! One of the yogic postures designed to make the ends meet,’ she says.
The masterful female leads the way through the palm grove back to the Rolls-Royce beside the temple. A crowd of inquisitive rustics has again collected round the car. They disperse as soon as we arrive. We have coffee. And drive into Tilpat.
Word has gone around about how the memsahib dealt with the village lad. The state emblem on the car and the liveried flunkies do the rest. The village headman and his cronies welcome us with a mixture of
namaskars, Jai Hinds and salaams
to the memsahibji. Hoity-Toity nods at them. A
charpoy
is laid out. A woman with her face veiled brings a trayful of
chai
in glass tumblers. Hoity-Toity peers into the woman’s veil and makes everyone laugh. She refuses to drink the
chai
but grabs the pipe of a
hookah
from the hand of a peasant and takes a couple of puffs. They clap their hands and laugh like children. Through me they inform her that the excavated sites have been covered over. ‘Have any of you found any strange objects while ploughing or digging foundations for new houses?’ They waggle their heads. ‘No.’