The King's daughter (ராஜன் மகள்) by Ba. Venkatesan Part - 2

This is an English translation of “Rajan Magal” a short novel written by Ba. Venkatesan. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam. 

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During that time when my great-grandfather was advocating that there was no gender distinction between nature and its tricks, the women across the old city had made their spouses and lovers their private barbers and made them spread all over the country. The barbers were summarily proscribed by the twenty-third generation soon after my great-grandfather declared that the old scriptures, which usually praised one’s inner beauty while denigrating the practice of shaving and growing hair, were in fact all against the barbers. Those treatises, it was said, written on leaves, were burnt down by women while making hot water used for making food. The barbers were enjoying new concessions, fame, and importance with the arrival of my great-grandfather while he was seriously involved in endless research to study the possibility of controlling the sweat secreted through the pores and thus changing the course of dreams caused by the odour of sweat. People used to say that he had spent all his youth just to study the art of penetrating one’s sleep. He had been the most trustworthy disciple of a Kerala Namboothiri during that time. My great-grandfather—a barber by birth—was in search of a tutor who was beyond petty caste considerations to learn the holy scriptures that were denied to his caste ever since the time his voice got broken amidst some years of insults, mistakes, and fears. At last, he could find a Namboothiri ascetic who went out of his city, living a life incognito in the woods after being branded as mad by the mortal human beings who didn’t have the acumen to understand his distinct wisdom. My great-grandfather joined as his third disciple along with his other two Brahmin disciples. The first among the two had the power to assess the mass and weight of things with the help of their light and scent. The second one had the skill to assess what an object was in its past and what it would be in the future on the basis of its speed and direction. On the other hand, my great-grandfather was deeply disturbed to see the art of penetrating others’s dreams being destined to languish in the forest as a secret known only to four persons who were aware of its hidden marvels. At that time, when the Namboothiri, often praised as a saint, wanted to get his upper-caste-born daughter married to my great-grandfather—a low-born barber—before burying himself alive in the mud of misery, the only soul left behind that knew the art of seeing others’ dreams in the entire world was none other than my great-grandfather. He then thoroughly learned the art of Varmam and the Sanskrit language that were said to have been closely associated with the dreams. One of the disciples, wanting to test the art he had learnt along with his two other friends before learning it fully, escaped the forest, went to the city, and tried perkily to enter the dreams of a patient. He was caught in the foul odour of bad dreams and whirls of negativity that caused the disease and became mentally deranged as he couldn’t bear its severity. He ran out of the room, jumped out from the fourth floor of the four-storey building, and killed himself. Another disciple with the same immature and weak mental state faced a similar fate, lost his mental balance, became demented, and found succour in the holy land, Kashi. Some unfounded news was floating around that he had confined himself, obviously never to come out, in the thick forests of Kashi that were inaccessible to dreams. But as bad luck would have it, my great-grandfather met his friend after some years at a doomed place, might be due to his poor wit, and thus invited a steep decline of fortunes in his life.

In spite of all these, the world knew about him as the only learned man who had mastered the art of getting into people’s sleep to see their dreams. When he returned to the old city in the middle of his youth along with his wife, the people could understand his distinction like a dead lamp being understood by its inherent brightness. Although half of the city was speaking about him indirectly, saying that he was also mad like his teacher, and the king—being the head of the twenty-third generation—was also embarrassed at the candid campaigns and actions of my great-grandfather, the aura of the latter obligated the king to place my great-grandfather, who had transcended the distinctions made in the name of gender, society, wealth, caste, and knowledge, equally among other erudite courtiers and honour him. Apart from this, a separate quarter was allotted to my great-grandfather on the palace campus. The king didn’t allow him to do barbering for his sustenance. He was living happily in that small palace-like house along with his Malayala wife and the children he got from her till the day he was expelled from that house due to his master’s curse. He came out of his room only to attend to the barbering needs of the royal family and spent his remaining hours in the house on rereading the treatises he had already learnt, practising them, and researching new ways to understand them. People would say that the seat allotted to him in the court was always lying vacant without his presence. It is very common to see such eccentric men confine themselves in a solitary room. Isn’t it? They never show themselves and their erudition for a public display and make them look silly. Though my great-grandfather had a formidable reputation for having mastered rare skills like them, he never attempted to show off his skills in inappropriate circumstances to gain fame. The ever-shining flame of his skills that was burning in him, and its lustre reflected on his face, were just enough to bring him the fame he would have ever wanted. When the learned men in the court asked the king how a barber who was just confining himself in a room, unable to prove any of the skills with tangible demonstration, could enjoy such a reputation in the court, the king told them, “The time of peace can never be the time of bitterness for any talented swordsman. The healthy people can never be the enemies of a good doctor. An erudite man will always want that no one should fall into such a miserable condition, which might require the skills of the erudite man to help the latter to come out of his misery. But at the same time, the erudite man will always keep his skills sharpened, expecting the worst of such situations. It isn’t my intention to keep Appaiah (my great-grandfather’s name) in my palace permanently. But he, as a rare gem, not easily accessible to all of us, shouldn’t remain absent from this palace when we need him the most. I would like to remind you all that it is not he but we who should be proud of having him in the court. I am also proud of the fact that I am able to run a healthy administration of this country, which doesn’t force him to evoke his skills.”

My great-grandfather used his rare skill of getting into the dreams of others while sleeping only four times in his entire life. Our hereditary narratives indicate that all those four circumstances of its usage actually proved to be the turning points in the life of my great-grandfather. The first instance was that unfortunate incident in which he tried his hands, obviously before gaining adequate mastery in that, in testing that skill with a patient along with his two friends who were also learning it along with him. It was his good luck that when he initiated his skill on the patient, it was already past midnight, and thus the patient’s dreams were found void of vigour and couldn’t be differentiated from his actual sleep. With the god’s blessing, my great-grandfather escaped the biggest danger that awaited him, ostensibly caused by his temerity of being a youth and the pride of education he boasted, like his other two friends. These developments, when brought to his master’s attention, caused a profound despair in him for his other students while making him feel immensely happy for my great-grandfather’s escape, apparently due to his special love for him. He warned my great-grandfather that any such daring attempt to get into someone’s dreams was as felonious as making a hole in the wall of someone with the intent of stealing from his house. It was said that the master forgave my great-grandfather that time and allowed him to continue as his disciple due to his immense love for him. But after many years, he entered his middle age, which is often touted to be the garden of intelligence after the hasty spiral of his youth got over. He was again prompted by a desire that had spoiled his senses to test his skills, totally against the dictum of his master, on our great-grandmother—the master’s daughter cum his wife—when she was sleeping. This audacity resulted in the master’s warning turning into a curse, which snatched his rare skill away from him and rendered him forgetful of it completely. The fourth usage of it had been destined to be the last usage of that rarest of the rare crafts, which he had learnt arduously all through his youth. Being fully aware that the design of his destiny would force him to use his craft a fourth time, which, by all means, would bring him a perpetual disgrace and disrepute, my great-grandfather had no qualms in making this revelation public, giving the least attention to his private predispositions. Interestingly, the unfortunate third usage of the craft, which sowed the seeds of his destruction many years ago, had, in fact, made him enormously famous not only in his place but also overseas without even hinting at a sign of destruction at the time of its usage. It was because of his intelligence and intuitive skills that shone along with the clout of his craft at that time. There were occasions where thousands of students from abroad were lining up to become his disciples. But my great-grandfather didn’t accept any of them as his disciples because he thought he hadn’t yet attained the complete knowledge in his craft. He remained discontented with the limitations of his craft that had allowed him only to be a spectator of the dreams by watching them from outside. He aspired to see his progress in his craft, which would enable him to penetrate not only sleep but also dreams so as to control the wonders of this world as per his wishes. Even his master, Kerala Namboothiri, hadn’t reached that stage. Only after he could conquer such skill in his craft would he become eligible to become a tutor to others, he thought. After he spent his time barbering the king and important people, he just confined himself in the room during the remaining hours, leaving his children under his wife’s custody with all the amenities arranged outside his room. Other than some visible changes in his outer appearance after the third usage, the wealth and fame he earned were still unable to diminish or change the insatiable thirst he had for his craft. The intriguing disease of the king’s daughter did thus have the privilege of making the ‘world famous’ third usage of the craft possible. But the genesis of that disease had its start from the woes of the king of the twenty-third generation.

I told that all the generations of the royal lineage in the old city were, till then, thriving with the male heirs. Didn’t I? The twenty-third generation, which gave my great-grandfather shelter in its palace, had its first-ever female heir to rule over its kingdom. It wasn’t an overstatement to say that that female heir enjoyed a formidable reputation for ruling the kingdom in the later years better than the male heirs born to date, with efficiency and compassion. But the king was deeply worried in the beginning that the “Godhra” chain of his royal lineage would be broken with the entry of the female heir. You can assume that his fear had come true. Later, there were some astrological extrapolations that the skirmishes, bad omens, famine, and ill effects of the Kaliyug that occurred in their respective realms in the capital city were all due to inadequate rectification of the Godhra that was defiled with the birth of a female heir. They are in no way related to our story and hence do not require our attention. The king, because of this fear, was performing ‘yagnas’ in demand of a male child till he got tired of listening to the complaints about the decreasing virility of his youth. His grief slowly tiptoed from his bedroom, went past the corridors of the palace, went down the steps, and spread across the country, making everyone suffocate with it. As the people started performing ‘yagnas’ individually, maybe out of love for their king, seeking a male child for him, we were informed by our grandfather that the old city in which our great-grandfather once lived was now filled with male children born out of the blessings from ‘yagnas’ conducted all over the city. Since the kingdom of the twenty-third generation was destined by the god to have only a female child, the royal family didn’t receive any benefit of yagnas conducted by the king and his people. Perhaps due to this unavoidable certainty, while spending his time and other resources on yagnas and charity, the king carefully made the arrangements to nurture his daughter to possess the power, character, and education of twenty-two men. There were people who complained that the king’s lack of faith was one of the reasons why the yagnas had been ineffective. But the king’s daughter’s successful acquisition of all the skills she was taught made her critics happily regret their impudent, foolish remarks, and, in a way, it did compensate for the griefs of the king as well. People used to say there was no human being alive who had mastered the administrative skills and war tactics that could rival hers. It was so arranged that the girl would learn the art of ‘Varmam’ from my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather refused to impart to her the training on ‘Varmam,’ recusing that it wasn’t meant for women known for their lumpy, firm breasts and flat private parts. Unlike other war tactics, its finer aspects had been designed for a male body known for its flat chest and dangling private parts and its delicate movements as against the women’s body, he argued. The persistent requests of the king and the girl’s undying interest in learning the art rubbed his conscience that he shouldn’t demean their requests anymore. There was one more reason behind it. When she was set to become his disciple ever since she had attained her age, the disease my great-grandfather usually referred to did come out in the form of an eccentric desire from the king’s daughter when she reached her marriageable age. The king, who had already been pestered with the pain of not getting a male child, shivered like a snake under thunder at hearing it. It was at that time his body started growing fragile with sickness. His wife, the queen, was somehow managing the administrative affairs and family issues with remarkable courage and sensibility. It was the queen who first initiated the talk about their daughter’s marriage. When the girl was fourteen, her mother wanted her daughter to be married, as she felt there was nothing left in the lessons of administration, war tactics, and world affairs that her daughter might still want to learn. The king was also not very interested in the beginning in taking a resolute decision about his daughter’s marriage. Even the girl, who was equal to twenty-two men as far as courage and intelligence were concerned, didn’t show any visible interest in her marriage. The king’s wife had a discreet discussion with these two and managed to convince them to accept on the ground that a girl not getting married even after her fifteenth year of age would bring ruin to the royal family. The king, who was already troubled with the astrological findings that his royal Godhra line would be broken by his daughter’s husband, readily accepted this marriage proposal, as he was aware that preventing a girl’s sexual consummation—which was akin to her entering heaven—would be a greater sin than anything else. The king’s daughter didn’t oppose any of the arrangements made for her marriage. She had only one condition: Her would-be husband must be a blind man and stricken with illness. No one could understand why a girl, who could match twenty-two men in intelligence and willpower, spoke such words. It was the eccentric disease that had afflicted the king’s daughter. She was a very beautiful girl. My great-grandfather praised that the luster of her green light-emitting eyes had shaken the foundation of the art of Varmam. She used to travel along with her father to various places of the kingdom to get trained in person in administration. It was said that the parts of the country that received the scent and freshness of her body, which had merged with the wind during such expeditions, would develop a distinctive power to withstand three harvests in a year for three consecutive years without rain. Her portrait was not available in the palace because even the best painter in the world, who once visited the palace, expressed his helplessness in bringing her frame into a picture. It was said that, in the later part of her life when everything had turned normal, the messengers who ventured into different kingdoms in search of suitable suitors for her were, in fact, carrying the light of her eyes and voice in small vials. Any words spoken in praise of her beauty would never be an exaggeration. The messengers sent in sixteen directions to find the suitors for the girl were first sent to the best poets and tutors in the palace to get trained to express her beauty eloquently. Her beauty kept growing brighter, penetrating the time, and mixing up with the imaginary narratives and sensual descriptions. The king’s wife consulted all learned men to find out why her daughter, with such an enviable beauty, wanted to have a blind and diseased man as her husband. The king, on the other hand, stricken with sickness, was whining all the time on the bed that the administration of the old city, which had some possibility of flourishing even at the cost of the broken Godhra chain of royal lineage, was now facing the probability of getting broken without any heir to name. Initially the king’s wife paid the least attention to the meaningless rants of his daughter and brushed them aside as a blunt attempt of young girls with the fresh blood flowing in their youth to create a tension in others and attract their attention. When she met with the same stiff stipulations from her daughter while initiating the talk of marriage for the fourth time, she appointed some men to keep a watch on her daughter’s activities. The king’s daughter was closely watched till she retired to her bed at the top of the palace to sleep. The close confidant of the king’s daughter, who would sleep in the adjacent room, pledged her heart that she hadn’t seen any unknown man at any time of the midnight. The king’s wife comforted herself that the dangerous part of her daughter’s youth was not affected by any secret that could possibly be the cause of postponing the marriage. But when she grew confident about it, she was afraid that the sickness that had affected her husband would affect her daughter as well. When they talked about the marriage the eleventh time, our damsel again placed her stipulations without any qualms that forced the king, whining on the bed, to get up, run out, put his hands around her neck, and strangle it to kill her. The girl helplessly cried that she was innocent and ready to accept anyone blind and disease-stricken, picked by her parents, as her husband. She said that she felt a bizarre puke coming out of her abdomen uncontrollably at once when she happened to see handsome men, and she didn’t know why it happened. She shed tears as she had become completely broke. There hadn’t been anyone in the whole twenty-three generations who could have cried like that. Before this matter reached my great-grandfather, her most affectionate male, the king’s wife had exhausted trying all her tricks on her daughter. The stars at the time of her birth and the stars at the time she had attained her age were revisited and deeply scrutinised once again. A passing word of a passenger that the splendid horoscope of the king’s daughter had some ‘dosha’ in it did actually ignite the fire of yagna towards absolving the dosha and kept its flame alive along with the fire of yagnas that were burning perpetually in search of a male child. When everyone turned to my great-grandfather at last, seeking his help to solve this issue—after all the physicians brought from various countries who had no intuitive skills to find out the reason that was actually lying frozen in white amidst the thick, curly pubic hairs of her vulva, coupled with their inability to see any visible sign of disease on her body—the king’s daughter had already completed her sixteenth year as the king’s wife feared.

...To be continued.