The Setting Sun (26 page)

There’s time to kill before my appointment at the old palace. Returning to Kulkarni to ask if Phule can pick me up after lunch, I decide to walk round Satara and check out some of the other places Bill might have frequented. Better than hanging around the hotel getting agitated about this afternoon. Along the road back into town, there’s a colonial-era stone post office, doubly grand against the messy concrete buildings which have encroached on either side. Would Bill have come here to pick up his mail? Not far away are the original British garrison quarters from the 1850s, rows of neat, low barracks built of brick and tile. Some boys are playing cricket against the end wall of one block. They offer the ball and laugh when I shake my head.

Further on I stumble on the old British graveyard. Once inside, the stench is overpowering. It’s evidently an open-air jakes now. Headstones poke through unkempt scrub like worn-down molars. A couple of raised tombs remain, plinths cracked, inscriptions too worn to read on the patches of marble no one’s managed to chip away. From one corner comes the thin whine of puppies. The scene is as pathetic as it’s depressing. The best efforts of the conquerors to preserve their memory, effaced by wind and sun and monsoon rains, and those who piss and shit on their monuments.

I catch an auto-rickshaw to the airy, green former British cantonment area. No one can identify the old Inspection bungalow. However, there’s an intriguing church. St Thomas’s is in bad repair. It’s locked, but my driver rustles up a caretaker from the gaggle of huts which have mushroomed in the grounds. The interior’s austere, despite the tinsel Christmas streamers rustling above the hardwood pews. The guardian says the congregation’s healthy, though the Anglican Church of India faces increasing competition from evangelical Protestant sects funded from America. Hindu revivalism isn’t an issue in Satara, he says. Brahminism has always been viewed with
suspicion amongst Mahrattis, who don’t accept their lowly position within orthodox Hinduism. Indeed, the Brahmins of Satara were slaughtered to avenge Gandhi’s assassination by caste fundamentalists. Then the guardian tells me his daughter’s studying public health in Wolverhampton.

‘The Black Country,’ he grins proudly. ‘Do you know, she’s doing missionary work in her spare time, amongst the British themselves.’ I can’t help enjoying the irony.

A brass wall-plaque catches my eye, the engraving just legible:

In Remembrance of Francis Charteris Davidson who joined the service in November 1914 from which time he served as Assistant Collector and Magistrate at Satara. In July 1916 he entered the Indian Reserve of Officers and in March 1917 was appointed to the South Waziristan Militia in which Corps he was serving as Captain and Adjutant when he was killed in action at Sarwakai in Waziristan on the 10
^th
of May 1917 in the 27
^th
year of his age. This tablet was erected by his brother officers of the Indian Civil Service.

South Waziristan. Part of the North-West Frontier Province where Aunt Pat claims Bill also served, an area now pockmarked by US drone strikes. Ninety years on, and the territory is once more an epicentre of rebelliousness. The impotence of Empire, then and now, in the face of a few thousand (hundred?) lightly armed but highly motivated opponents, strikes me forcibly.

Later, the auto-rickshaw drops me at the old palace. It’s a substantial half-timbered building, set on a slope rising to the abrupt bluffs beneath Ajinkya Tara. Like St Thomas’s, the fabric’s in poor condition and it fronts onto a busy square, occupied by a market. The palace was doubtless once some distance from Satara but the town’s grown voraciously up to it. An old man opens the door to my knock, and I’m unsure whether it’s the Rajah’s uncle or a retainer. He dons Gandhi
spectacles to examine my visiting card before ushering me into a dark hall. The klaxon of a passing truck makes me jump. I think of Anders on his scooter. Soon the old man returns with someone in a loose white cheesecloth shirt and what look like pyjama bottoms, matching his bone-white hair and moustache. He’s plump and has the rolling walk of someone with a bad hip. Rajah Udein’s uncle introduces himself in a muffled voice that prevents me catching his name. He ushers me down the corridor into the most extraordinary room.

First glance reminds me of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles: rows of beautiful, badly tarnished mirrors, diminishing in size as they rise twenty feet up on three sides of the cavernous space. At an angle between the ceiling and walls hang portraits, many of European officers and ladies whose costumes and hairstyles come straight from Jane Austen. Indian nobles in traditional dress are interspersed among them. At the far end, twice the size of its companion pieces, is the unmistakable likeness of Shivaji. The ceiling, painted gold, brown and blue in faded geometrical patterns, sprouts enormous, ornate chandeliers. They’re barely visible through grimy plastic sheets, taped top and bottom, wrapping them like surreal mechanical fruit. In the smoky mirrors, they multiply uncannily. Neon tubes pulsate erratically, accompanying the wobbly fans. Judging by an ancient dais on a tattered pink carpet, I assume this was the durbar hall, where guests and petitioners to the Rajah would have waited. There’s an odd, faint, marzipan smell.

The far half of the hall boasts several divans upholstered in tired purple velvet. Chinese vases with rampant dragons fill the alcoves beneath the windows facing the market, shutters closed, perhaps for privacy or to abate the constant noise of traffic. Faded gold brocade bolsters lie scattered on the floor. My host seems strangely nervous, smiling uncertainly at every compliment I pay as we wait for the inevitable tea to come. It’s accompanied by a selection of sweets like those Kulkarni offered me yesterday. These taste like they’re made from
condensed milk. I ask about the history of the old palace. To my surprise, Rajah Udein’s uncle is unsure when it was built. The words rumble from somewhere deep inside him.

‘It was requisitioned by the British when they annexed Satara,’ is about as much as he can muster. ‘My family had to decamp to the new palace until they built the Residency. The district commissioner’s, today.’

‘What were relations like between your family and the British?’

My host shrugs. ‘Good and bad, it changed.’

‘What about in the last war?’

‘We raised troops, of course. Some fought in North Africa.’

I tell him a little about Bill’s time in Satara.

‘A difficult period,’ he mutters non-committally. ‘Probably my father knew him.’ He seems so uncomfortable, pinpricks of perspiration gathering on his brow, that I don’t have the heart to press him.

‘Have things changed very much for your family?’

‘Oh yes.’ He strokes his white moustache mournfully, easing one foot over his opposite thigh into a half-lotus posture. ‘There’s just me and my wife now. We only have ten retainers. In the old days …’ He sighs, before resuming. ‘My grandfather used to tell me about the
dasara
processions every September, with squadrons of mounted cavalry and seventy elephants. There was a nine-day festival with readings of the sacred texts and actors and dancing girls and the British Resident gave twenty-five-gun salutes.’

I feel I’m tumbling into some Kipling fantasy. He was obsessed by the hereditary princely Indian rulers; in his fiction and non-fiction alike, they’re a byword for conspicuous consumption, which he half deplores and is half dazzled by. They also epitomise the conflicts between tradition and modernity which continue to work themselves out in India today. Here, it feels as though tradition is making a feeble last stand.

I wonder if Bill came by and, if so, what he made of it all. Then I notice a series of what look like enamelised tableaux.

‘May I?

Close up, they prove to depict different stages in Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor, executed with exquisite precision of detail. What do they say about how Shivaji’s descendants saw themselves? My host knows no more about them than about the provenance of the palace. He seems increasingly ill at ease, as if disappointing an important visitor. I don’t know how to reassure him, so I’m relieved when he offers to show me outside.

We step into a soothing courtyard garden of tall palms, formally arranged in brick-faced emplacements. Udein’s uncle explains that before they were planted, this was where the
dasara
celebrations began. To one side are several former elephant stalls and at the back a long building with rows of close-set bars.

‘Satara jail,’ he explains, ‘until the British built the one opposite the police station. Their parade ground is where our royal horsemen used to train.’

There’s room for hundreds in this prison – captives of war, I assume, rather than common criminals. We’re almost directly beneath Ajinkya Tara here. The imperturbably enduring fort seems to upbraid the sorry decline of its former owners. I’m gripped by the same melancholy I felt in the graveyard. What am I mourning? Just last night D.Y. Patil reminded me how the British propped up the princes as a counterweight to the agitation for democracy and independence. But there’s something painfully sad about this man who seems to remember so little of his family’s illustrious past. Does he feel it’s not worth hanging on to? The princes are clearly increasingly irrelevant in the booming new India powered by men like Farrokh, the relentless klaxons from the street implacable reminders of how times have changed.

Despite these efforts to distract myself, all morning I’ve had attacks of butterflies. Now I’m too on edge for lunch, and it’s a relief when Phule shows up early. Today’s 4×4 is smaller, a local version of the Suzuki jeep. He explains that with the police
bandobast
, yesterday’s vehicle is needed for other VIPs, and he’ll have to be back by six to pick someone up from the station. He’ll be both chauffeur and interpreter today, since yesterday’s driver is spoken for. After Farrokh’s barb, I feel a stab of conscience about diverting police resources, but if Phule, too, disapproves, it’s impossible to tell through the dark shades he never removes.

My discomfort increases on the stretch of back road we take to the highway. It’s twisty and treacherous, with blind bends, round which goods vehicles and buses hurtle disconcertingly. If the Pune traffic was scary, Phule’s driving threatens even worse. He thinks nothing of sneaking up on the shoulder of a lorry and accompanying it into a right-hand corner, jamming his foot on squealing brakes if something’s coming. I hang onto the handle above my window, retreating ever deeper into the seat. This is hardly ideal preparation for the visit ahead.

‘Can we maybe put the siren on when we overtake?’ I plead, after another crazy manoeuvre.

‘Not necessary, sir,’ he pronounces smugly. ‘No one will hit a police vehicle.’

Even if they can’t see it?

‘Don’t worry about speed, sir, fifth gear’s broken.’

Fourth grinds lugubriously, as if about to follow suit. It’s a relief to get onto the dual carriageway. South of Satara the landscape continues lush and fresh, quite unlike how I’ve imagined the interior of India from the nineteenth-century Anglo-Indian authors I’ve written about, who forever bemoan the dreary dun
mofussil
. Captain Meadows Taylor, H.S. Cunningham, Flora Annie Steel, as well as Kipling – so much of their writing addresses the psychological, as well as physical, challenges of living in upcountry India in the
suffocating hot season. Phule tells me the monsoon season has only finished a few weeks back, and it’ll be a different story by April; come June, most of what I see will indeed be scorched brown. But thanks to an extensive series of dams in this part of Maharashtra, water is much less of a problem than it used to be. Either side of us stretches some of the most expensive agricultural land in India, he goes on, blessed with this new interstate highway and a local authority which prides itself on service to the people. I wonder if that’s a legacy of the influence of the Parallel Government.

It’s lovelier still once we turn onto the Chafal road, the shadows of wayside jacarandas stippling our windscreen, showers of their frail purple bloom settling behind the wipers. The bases of their trunks are painted with red and white stripes, Phule explains, to signify they’re government property and stop people cutting them down. He points to bare hills in the distance as if in corroboration.

‘All was teak forest in British times,’ he comments neutrally.

At a fork in the road shaded by an enormous banyan, Phule slows, asking if I mind him having a cigarette.

‘Smoking in car not allowed. Chafal temple just close.’

I’m grateful to get out and relieve myself one last time behind a cactus hedge, where cream butterflies flicker like falling snow over a puddle. It’s idyllic, but my stomach’s in knots. Bill must have come down this same road when he mounted his notorious raid. Perhaps he stopped under this very tree, gathering his men beneath its vast aerial roots to give final instructions. My notes from Shinde are burning a hole in my knapsack. What am I going to ask in Chafal? Maybe no one wants to revisit the past? Has anyone even survived from that era? Is this the moment to let Phule in on my plan? What if he refuses to proceed? Above all, what if the villagers react badly to my coming? I can’t stop the questions churning.