Shashi Tharoor: The Great Indian Novel

2

I suppose I must begin with myself. I was born with the century, a bastard, but a bastard in a fine tradition, the offspring of a fisherwoman seduced by a travelling sage. Primitive transport system or not, our Brahmins got about a lot in those days, and they didn’t need any hotel bookings then. Any householder was honoured by a visit from a holy man with a sacred thread and no luggage but his learning. He would be offered his host’s hospitality, his food, his bed and often, because they were a lot more understanding then, his daughter as well. And the Brahmin would partake of the offerings, the shelter, the rice, the couch, the girl, and move on, sometimes leaving more than his slippers behind. India is littered with the progeny of these twice-born travelling salesmen of salvation, and I am proud to be one of them.

But fisherfolk weren’t often their style, so the fact of her seduction says something for my mother Satyavati. She was on the river that day, the wet fold of her thin cotton sari flung over one shoulder, its hem riding up her thigh, the odour of perspiration mixing with that of the fish she was heaving into her boat, when a passing sage, Parashar, caught a glimpse of her. He was transfixed, he later told me, by the boldness of her beauty, which transcended any considerations of olfactory inconvenience. ‘Lovely lady,’ he said in his best manner, ‘take my love’, and coming from a Brahmin, especially one as distinguished as he was, that was an offer no woman could refuse.

But my mother wasn’t wanton or foolish, and she had no desire to become known as either. ‘There are people watching from both sides of the river,’ she replied, ‘so how can I give myself to you?’

The Brahmin was no novice in the art of seduction, though; he had spotted a little deserted island some way up the river, whose interior was screened by a thick copse of trees. He motioned her to paddle towards it, and swam to it himself in a few swift, strong strokes.

Satyavati followed, blushing. She had no intention of resisting the sage: a mist around the island, already curtained by the trees, dispelled her modest hesitation. (When she told me the story she claimed Parashar had caused a magic cloud to settle on the island to keep off prying eyes, which I took as evidence of understandable female hyperbole.) Obedience was, of course, a duty, and no maiden wished to invite a saintly curse upon her head. But Satyavati was no fool, and she understood that for an unmarried virgin, there was still a difference between bedding a persuasive Brahmin on her own and being offered to one by her father — which was hardly likely to happen, since sages did not stop at fisherfolk’s huts and Parashar could not be expected. with one of her caste, to go through a form of marriage that would sanctify their coupling. ‘I’ve never done this before,’ she breathed. ‘I’m still a virgin and my father will be furious if I cease to be one. If you take me, what will become of me? How can I show my face amongst my people again? Who will marry me? Please help me,’ she added, fluttering her eyelashes to convey that though her flesh was willing, her spirit was not weak enough.

Parashar smiled in both desire and reassurance. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘virginity isn’t irretrievable. I’ll make sure that no one will doubt your virginity even after you yield to me. That’s nothing to be afraid of.’

And his ardour stifled further conversation.

Even men of the world — and few in this category can equal one who is above this world — feel tenderly for those they have loved. So, afterwards, lying by her side, Parashar asked Satyavati when she had had her time of month. And when he had heard her answer, he did not attempt to evade his responsibility. ‘There will be a child born of our union,’ he said simply, ‘but I will keep my word and ensure that your normal life as a daughter of your people will not be disturbed.’

Refusing to let her panic, Parashar led Satyavati to her father’s hut, where he was received with due deference. ‘Your daughter, whom I have met by the river today, has a spark of grace in her,’ he intoned sententiously. ‘With your permission, I wish her to accompany me for a short period as my maid, so that I may instruct her in higher learning. I shall, of course, return her to you when she is of marriageable age.’

‘How can I be sure that no harm will come to her?’ asked the startled father, who was no village innocent either.

‘You know of me in these parts,’ Parashar responded haughtily. ‘Your daughter will return to you within one year, and she will return a virgin. You have my word.’

It was not often that a fisherman, even a head fisherman, which is what Satyavati’s father was, challenged the word of a Brahmin. He bowed his head and bade his daughter farewell.

Satyavati fared well. Parashar took her far away from the region before her pregnancy began to show. I was born in an old midwife’s home in the forest.

‘We must name the child Dvaipayana, one created on an island,’ said Satyavati rather sentimentally to my father. He nodded, but it wasn’t a name that ever seemed likely to stick. ‘Women,’ he said to me once, years later, shaking his head in amused tolerance. ‘Imagine, a name like that for the son of a wandering Brahmin in British India. No, Ved Vyas is much easier. I’ve always wanted a son named Ved Vyas.’ And so Ved Vyas it was and, since I was a somewhat diminutive fellow, V.V. I became.

After less than a month’s suckling, I was taken away from my mother, who had to begin her journey home. My father had taught her several lessons from the ancient texts, including one or two related to the inscrutabilities of virginity. Upon her return, to quell the rumours in the village, her father had Satyavati examined by the senior midwife. Her hymen was pronounced intact.

Brahmins knew a great deal in those days.

3

It was just as well, for Satyavati the fish-odorous was destined to become the wife of a king. Yes, we had kings in those days, four hundred and thirty-five of them, luxuriating in titles such as Maharaja and Nawab that only airline ads and cricket captains sport any more. The British propped them up and told them what to do, or more often what not to do, but they were real kings for all that, with palaces and principalities and twenty-one-gun salutes; well, at least some of them had twenty-one guns, but the number of cannonballs wasted on you descended in order of importance and the man who was entranced by my mother was, I think, only a fourteen- or even an eleven- gunner. His name was Shantanu and he had had a rather unfortunate marriage in the past to an exquisite Maharani who suffered seven successive miscarriages and disappeared when her eighth pregnancy produced a son.

There were all sorts of stories circulating about the ex-queen, one saying that she was in fact enamoured of Shantanu’s father, the old King Pritapa, and had married the son instead, as a sort of substitute; others casting doubt on her pedigree and claiming that Shantanu had picked her up on the banks of the Ganga; another suggesting that they had what would today be called an ‘open marriage’ which left her free to lead her own life; still others, whispered, that the seven children had died not entirely natural deaths and that the Maharani was not altogether normal. Whatever the truth of the rumours — and there was always enough evidence to suggest that none of them was wholly unfounded — there was no doubting that Shantanu had seemed very happy with his wife until she abruptly left him.