Skip to main content

Padmavati


Fiction

I am Rani Padmavati, the Queen of Chittor.  People call me the Queen of Beauty.  I have never understood why our men bother about beauty at all.  They are warriors and love fighting. Bravery, physical strength and honour are the values they really cherish and want all of us to possess.  We cherish beauty too.  But we’d prefer to keep beauty veiled behind the purdah.  If anyone other than the husband dares to raise the purdah, he will be killed.  Beauty is a private property among us.  We, the women, are our men’s private properties.

Private.  So private that we, the women, can’t even go to the temple to worship our gods, let alone enjoy the public festivals.  We are like the precious stones and gold ornaments to be stored away in the darkness of secret chambers. 

The King, my husband, Rawal Ratan Sing, braver and nobler than any Rajput, is also an admirer of beauty.  He loves me just as he loves music and the arts.  Music was the reason why this man Raghav Chetan gained entry into the Palace.  Raghav was a musician par excellence.  He knew magic too.  Using his magic he gained entry to my dark, secret chamber.  I invited him to teach me magic. 

He taught me to listen to the music of the stars.  His magic took me to worlds beyond, far beyond, the dark chamber where I lived like a prisoner.  Music and magic – they intoxicate the soul.  The intoxication stripped me of my inhibitions and I made passionate love with my husband the King.  The King enjoyed the love making.  But his soul was caught in a dilemma.  How did this Rajput woman lose the inhibitions that her culture had put on her like inflexible chains of steel?

The suspicion cost Raghav Chetan his job. 

“Paint his face black,” the King ordered to the soldiers who had brought Raghav Chetan bound with steel chains. “Then put him on a donkey’s back and take him through the city streets.  Let the people jeer him for defiling sacred music with black magic.”

Raghav Chetan’s magic failed to save him.  My magic died the moment I peered through the veils to see my magic man in chains.  Magic is the music of the soul.  Veiled souls cannot produce magic.

Raghav Chetan was exiled after the humiliation.  He went to Delhi and made friends with the Sultan Alauddin Khilji.

“Is she really as beautiful as you describe?”  The Sultan asked Raghav Chetan.  I heard it in the magic of my soul whose veils were lifted by the post-coital stupor when the King my husband lay beside me exhausted unlike a Rajput warrior. 

“She is the finest mist that descends from the highest heaven, my Lord,” crooned Raghav Chetan.  “She is the moonbeam that can elevate you to the seventh heaven.  She is the queen of the houris in Paradise...”

Raghav Chetan’s black magic transmuted the Sultan’s soul.  The soul acquired a veil.  The veiled soul drove the Sultan to Mewar.  He entered the Chittor Palace with his veiled soul. 

“I want to see Queen Padmavati,” he demanded imperiously. As if I was his Queen.

Rawal Ratan Singh trembled.  In spite of the bravery and nobility fed into his veins by the Rajput tradition, Rawal Ratan Singh trembled.  My soul could sense the stirrings in Rawal Ratan Singh’s veins. 

“He is too powerful for us,” my husband pleaded with me in the dark secret chamber where we used to make love night after night, unveiling my soul.

“He can see me,” I said to my husband’s visible relief.  “But on a condition.”

My husband looked at me anxiously.

“He can see my reflection in a mirror.  That too with you standing near him and a hundred of my maids standing around me in a semicircle.”

My husband, the Rajput warrior, mustered the courage to convince the Sultan. 

My soul sensed the terror that was to come soon.

“I want her,” pronounced the Sultan.  “For myself.”

Private property.  His private property.  That’s what I would be unless my present owner killed him in a war.

The horses neighed.  Swords clashed.  Brave and noble Rajput warriors gave up their lives for the honour of their Beauty Queen. 

How could the Queen ignore those sacrifices?  Thousands of men sacrificed themselves for my honour?  I had no other way but defend that same honour.  The honour of the most beautiful property of the kingdom. 

“Maids,” I called.  “Let the flames guard the Rajput honour.”

Raghav Chetan’s music descended like the finest mist on my soul, that would put on no more veils, as the flames rose all around me and my maids.



Labels:

Comments

  1. Rekha'sJanuary 29, 2017 at 3:36 PM

    very interesting post .

    ReplyDelete
  2. Manisha SharmaJanuary 29, 2017 at 4:18 PM

    Vranda, Ahelya, Sita, Dropadi or the Queens. Tomichan, people are fighting in their name, and are always ready to cause riots, to save the "Honor" of these females.

    In today's date, Mulayam Singh Yadav, a person who is alive, says "If boy commits rape, then its a mistake." Sharad Yadav says, "The honor of a daughter does not have as much value as a single vote."

    Not a single "Sena" or "Dal" came forward against these comments, not a single person from such groups caused havoc.

    Now, who is to be blamed for this? Men or women? I believe, that both are equally committed to this. Because, even women are thinking that they are the honor of the house. Why? Why does she believes so?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 29, 2017 at 4:25 PM

      That last question of yours is one of the questions I raise in the story, Manisha. But subtly. Subtlety is the soul of literature (and all arts, I guess). It's the result of a social system made by men. When my protagonist says, "I had no other way but defend that same honour," she is implying that she is very much a part of that system. Or the system is an inalienable part of her. Would she be anything better than a precious "private property" in the harem of the Sultan even if she chooses to go with the victor? Does she want to continue as a property? That's one of the questions I'm raising.

      Delete
    2. Jyotirmoy SarkarJanuary 30, 2017 at 8:48 AM

      I think the reason is "beauty" and simultaneously the physical weakness(than men)...biological reasons.
      There are different types of worshipers of beauty...some are defensive,calm and some are aggressive and arrogant.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 30, 2017 at 12:14 PM

      I don't like to interpret my own stories. But I must say that I have tried to dramatise the complexity including the role played by beauty in men's affairs.

      Delete
  3. Jyotirmoy SarkarJanuary 30, 2017 at 8:45 AM

    Interesting post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Amit AgarwalJanuary 30, 2017 at 1:14 PM

    This dramatized version makes perfect sense to me. It stimulates and satisfies intellectually and does not twist the 'surface' facts..leaving no room for a controversy. I liked it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 30, 2017 at 2:06 PM

      Probably Kashyap's version isn't as controversial as people make it out to be. Dreams can be a means of showing people's inner motives and yearnings. And the inside can be extremely complex.

      Delete
  5. ekta khetanJanuary 31, 2017 at 12:38 PM

    spellbinding..

    www.numerounity.com
    www.hautekutir.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. Rajeev MoothedathJanuary 31, 2017 at 6:48 PM

    You have put it so beautifully- the pathos, the satire and the living conditions of the times! Bhansali can use this as the story and escape from the wrath of the conservatives...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 31, 2017 at 9:49 PM

      Thanks for the compliment, Rajeev ji. But even this can be kicked up into a controversy by those who have vested interests.

      Delete
  7. negiFebruary 5, 2017 at 9:52 PM

    interesting post regards http://www.kidsfront.com/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Dopamine

Fiction Mathai went to the kitchen and picked up a glass. The TV was screening a program called Ask the Doctor . “Dopamine is a sort of hormone that gives us a feeling of happiness or pleasure,” the doc said. “But the problem with it is that it makes us want more of the same thing. You feel happy with one drink and you obviously want more of it. More drink means more happiness…” That’s when Mathai went to pick up his glass and the brandy bottle. It was only morning still. Annamma, his wife, had gone to school as usual to teach Gen Z, an intractable generation. Mathai had retired from a cooperative bank where he was manager in the last few years of his service. Now, as a retired man, he took to watching the TV. It will be more correct to say that he took to flicking channels. He wanted entertainment, but the films and serial programs failed to make sense to him, let alone entertain. The news channels were more entertaining. Our politicians are like the clowns in a circus, he thought...
11 comments
Read more

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
6 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more