Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

‘For? Dear girl.’ Janda clapped yts soft hands together. ‘For love. For making love. Why else would we bear these nasty, ugly little goose-bumps? Each one generates a different chemical response in our brains. We touch, darling. We play each other like instruments. We feel… things you cannot. Emotions for which you have no name, for which the only name is to experience them. We step away to somewhere not woman, not man; to the nute place.’

Yt turned yts arm wrist-upward to me so that yts wide sleeve fell away. The two rows of mosquito-bite mounds were clear and sharp in the yellow light. I thought of the harmonium the musicians would play in the old Jodhra Palace, fingers running up and down the buttons, the other hand squeezing the bellows. Play any tune on it. I shuddered. Janda saw the look on my face and snatched yts arm back into yts sleeve. And then, laid on in the newspaper in front of me, was an emotion for which I had no name, which I could only know by experiencing it. I thought no one knew more than I about Salim Azad, but here was a double-page spread of him pushing open the brass-studded gates of the Jodhra Mahal, my old home, where his family annihilated mine, under the screaming headline: AZAD BURIES PAST, BUYS PALACE OF RIVALS. Below that, Salim Azad standing by the pillars of the diwan, shading his eyes against the sun, as his staff ran our burning sun-man-bird kite up above the turrets and battlements into the hot yellow sky.

In the costume and make-up of Radha, divine wife of Krishna, I rode the painted elephant through the pink streets of Jaipur. Before me the band swung and swayed, its clarinets and horns rebounding from the buildings. Around and through the players danced Leel and the male dancer in red, swords flashing and clashing, skirts whirling, bells ringing. Behind me came another twenty elephants, foreheads patterned with the colours of Holi, howdahs streaming pennons and gold umbrellas. Above me robot aircraft trailed vast, gossamer-light banners bearing portraits of the Holy Pair and divine blessings. Youths and children in red wove crimson patterns with smoke-sticks and threw handfuls of coloured powder into the crowd. Holi hai! Holi hai! Reclining beside me on the golden howdah, Suleyra waved yts flute to the crowd. Jaipur was an endless tunnel of sound; people cheering, holiday shouts, the hooting of phatphat horns.

‘Didn’t I tell you you needed to get out of that place, cho chweet?’

In the blur of days inside the Hijra Mahal, I had not known that a year had passed without me setting foot outside its walls. Then Suleyra, the fixer, the jester, the party-maker, had come skipping into my room, pointed yts flute at me and said, ‘Darling, you simply must be my wife,’ and I had realised that it was Holi, the Elephant Festival. I had always loved Holi, the brightest, maddest of festivals.

‘But someone might see me…’

‘Baba, you’ll be blue all over. And anyway, no one can touch the bride of a god on her wedding day.’

And so, blue from head to toe, I reclined on gilded cushions beside Suleyra, who had been planning this public festival for six months, equally blue and not remotely recognisable as anything human, man, woman or nute. The city was clogged with people, the streets stifling hot, the air was so thick with hydrocarbon fumes the elephants wore smog goggles and I loved every bit of it. I was set free from the Hijra Mahal.

A wave of Suleyra/Krishna’s blue hand activated the chips in the elephant’s skull and turned it left through the arched gateway to the Old City, behind the boogieing band and the leaping, sword-wielding dancers. The crowds spilled off the arcades onto the street, ten, twenty deep. Every balcony was lined; women and children threw handfuls of colour down on us. Ahead I could see a platform and a canopy. The band was already marching in place while Leel and yts partner traded mock blows.

‘Who is up there?’ I asked, suddenly apprehensive.

‘A most important dignitary,’ said Suleyra, taking the praise of the spectators. ‘A very rich and powerful man.’

‘Who is he, Suleyra?’ I asked. Suddenly, I was cold in the stinking heat of Jaipur. ‘ Who is he? ’

But the dancers and the band had moved on and now our elephant took its place in front of the podium. A tap from Suleyra’s Krishna-flute: the elephant wheeled to face the dais and bent its front knees in a curtsey. A tall, young man in a Rajput costume with a flame-red turban stood up to applaud, face bright with delight.

I knew that man’s shoe size and star sign. I knew the tailor who had cut his suit and the servant who wound his turban. I knew everything about him, except that he would be here, reviewing the Holi parade. I tensed myself to leap. One blow; Suleyra’s Krishna-flute would suffice as a weapon. But I did nothing, for I saw a thing more incredible. Behind Salim Azad, bending forward, whispering in his ear, eyes black as obsidian behind polarising lenses, was Heer.

Salim Azad clapped his hands in delight.

‘Yes, yes, this is the one! Bring her to me. Bring her to my palace.’

So I returned from the Palace of the Hijras to the Palace of the Jodhras, that was now the Palace of the Azads. I came through the brass gates under the high tower from which I had first looked out across Jaipur on the night of the steel monkey, across the great courtyard. The silver jars of holy Ganga water still stood on either side of the diwan where my father had managed his water empire. Beneath the gaze of the gods and the monkeys on the walls, I was dragged out of the car by Azad jawans and carried, screaming and kicking up the stairs to the zenana. ‘My brother lay there, my mother died there, my father died there,’ I shouted at them as they dragged me along that same corridor down which I had fled a year before. The marble floors were pristine, polished. I could not remember where the blood had been. Women retainers waited for me at the entrance to the zenana, for men could not enter the women’s palace, but I flew and kicked and punched at them with all the skills Leel had taught me. They fled shrieking but all that happened was the soldiers held me at gunpoint until house robots arrived. I could kick and punch all I liked and never lay a scratch on their spun-diamond carapaces.

In the evening I was brought to the Hall of Conversations, an old and lovely room where women could talk and gossip with men across the delicate stone jali that ran the length of the hall. Salim Azad walked the foot-polished marble. He was dressed as a Rajput, in the traditional costume. I thought he looked like a joke. Behind him was Heer. Salim Azad paced up and down for five minutes, studying me. I pressed myself to the jali and tried to stare him down. Finally he said,

‘Do you have everything you want? Is there anything you need?’

‘Your heart on a thali,’ I shouted. Salim Azad took a step back.

‘I’m sorry about the necessity of this… But please understand, you’re not my prisoner. Both of us are the last. There has been enough death. The only way I can see to finish this feud is to unite our two houses. But I won’t force you, that would be… impolite. Meaningless. I have to ask and you have to answer me.’ He came as close to the stonework as was safe to avoid my Silambam punch. ‘Padmini Jodhra, will you marry me?’

It was so ridiculous, so stupid and vain and so impossible that, in my shock, I felt the word yes in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down, drew back my head and spat long and full at him. The spit struck a moulding and ran down the carved sandstone.

‘Understand I have nothing but death for you, murderer.’

‘Even so, I shall ask every day, until you say yes,’ Salim Azad said. With a whisk of robes, he turned and walked away. Heer, hands folded in yts sleeves, eyes pebbles of black, followed.