The Theft 

    Through the foliage of an enormous Peepul tree, whose crown rose up before him, he could see some thirty people, mostly women in bright colors. Before them stood a priest conducting a pooja. Behind the priest there rose an imposing array of divine statues, carved in relief on the gray-black stone of the hillside.

    The priest waved a few sticks of incense while smearing a statue with turmeric and vermilion. Dhyan could see his careworn face when the priest turned from time to time to face the worshippers, but everyone else faced away from Dhyan. They were all looking at the priest and at the divine images.

    By and by Dhyan became aware of someone else, closer to him, right at the base of the tree that stood before him. It was a little girl, some six or seven years old, playing with her doll. She was scolding it, it appeared, even though her words were not quite audible. Then she sang her doll a little song and danced around with it, grinning happily from ear to ear.

    Something else gradually took shape in Dhyan’s line of sight as he watched the little girl. There was an object lodged in a fork between three branches. It couldn’t possibly have grown from the tree. Its material was much darker than that of the branches. Was it wood? Or was it stone? It looked like a carving. But what was it doing up there?

    He would have to go down that tree, Dhyan knew, in order to ask where he was. Where he might find a place to stay the night. And to ask help for the predicament he found himself in. There appeared to be no easier way down to where the people were. Dhyan wondered what his chances were of climbing down without breaking a limb or two.

    While he stood there making up his mind about launching himself into the tree, Dhyan’s eye was caught repeatedly by that carved bit of stone. It intrigued him. It wasn’t clearly visible, but it might be a thing of beauty. “Could it be,” Dhyan wondered, “that it was carved by those same masters that labored so diligently at the sacred stories sculpted on these cliffs?”

    Since he was going into the tree anyhow, should he not also try and retrieve that carving? That would take some doing though. He’d have to climb down, then up a little way again.

    On the other hand it would be a shame to leave it there. He must have it, he decided.

    Dhyan tested the stoutest branch in his reach. He grasped it with both hands and, apprehensive, gave himself up to the tree. The little girl with the doll heard the noise above, and looked up at Dhyan. She was quiet.

    When Dhyan’s feet were no longer dangling in mid-air, he found himself trembling. Was it excitement? Or fatigue? Or was it only relief at having made it into the tree without falling? Slowly he gathered his strength. Carefully he clambered from branch to branch, and reached a place right below the spot where he knew the carving to be. But there appeared no good way to climb up to it. In any case it may not be worth his while. He was ready to forget the carving and go on down, when it occurred to him that he had already debated this with himself, and had decided to go get it.

    You must never let a little difficulty stand between you and that which you desire, Dhyan told himself in his head. They say that if you go even half way towards that which you want, it will come to you of itself all the rest of the way. And that is the absolute truth.

    There was no good hold above him. The limb was almost vertically disposed. Dhyan would have to manage with whatever little grip the bark would allow his finger-tips and toes. He kicked off his shoes. He went up part way, and slipped. His palms were lacerated by the bark. After pressing some torn skin back in place as best as he could, and having bathed it in saliva for good measure, he inched up again. As he reached out above him into the crook to feel for the carving, a cheel rose suddenly, screaming, in the air above him. Both Dhyan and the little girl standing under the tree were startled.

    When he finally lifted it, Dhyan found the object lighter than he had expected, but somewhat larger than he had thought. It was wood, not stone. And very good wood too. Dark, hard, and heavy. The carving was extraordinary. Dhyan thought that he could never ever have imagined that wood could be carved with such art and delicacy. This was only a fragment of a larger work that must have been a woman’s head. The hair was elegantly coifed, and studded with many ornaments and a gajra --- just like the head of a bride.

    Dhyan sat straddling a branch. He wiped the blood off the wood. He polished the wood against his shirt. The shirt was soaked through with perspiration. Still the wood responded. It glowed out with a deep dark luster, as fine wood will.

    But what violence must it have been that had torn this piece from the whole! It looked like it had been gouged out by superhuman strength. Surely it was not in the character of this wood to splinter and tear --- and it had not done that --- but the surface where it had joined the larger work was rough and rude and most irregular.

    He could not climb down with this thing in his hands. And dropping it down was quite out of the question. Dhyan beckoned the little girl closer. “What’s your name?” he asked.

    “Malini,” she whispered.

    “Will you hold this for me Malini?” he asked, also in a whisper. She nodded.

    “Careful. It’s heavy. Don’t drop it now,” Dhyan cautioned.

    Dhyan threw the piece down to her and she caught it deftly, even though it took her effort to not let it fall through her hands. Her doll lay twisted in the dust.

    While Dhyan was still carefully making his way down the tree --- it was no easy task --- he saw two young ladies come running towards Malini. “What do you have there Mali?” the one in the green lahnga asked, “Show me. Show me. Let me see.”

    The second young lady picked up Malini’s doll, gave it a good dusting, and handed it back to Malini with a smile and a pat on her head. “You dropped your little doll silly,” she said.

    “Can I keep this Mali, please?” asked the lady in the green lahnga.

    “No,” Malini shook her head. “It’s his,” she said, pointing at Dhyan.

    “It’s mine,” Dhyan said, as he sped up his descent, in a voice that sounded not quite his own.

    “I must have it,” said the lady in the green lahnga, as if she hadn't heard Dhyan at all, “Here I’ll give you a rupee for it.”

    Malini looked at the rupee in her hand while the lady in green and her friend, without waiting to hear back from her, ran back in the direction they had come from, carrying the carving away with them.

    Dhyan was very angry. He picked up his shoes and put them on in great haste. He snatched the rupee roughly from Malini’s hand and threw it down on the ground. He tied his laces and sprinted off after the thieves.

    Malini picked up the rupee, and with that in one hand, and her doll in the other, she turned, and quietly walked away.

    The thieves were nowhere to be seen. But Dhyan ran on as fast as he could, limping just a little. His anger at peoples’ deceit gave him a fresh lease of strength.

    They couldn’t have gone any way but this. The trees and the scrub were too thickly placed on either side of him. Soon Dhyan came up against the cliff that ringed the hollow; and there was only one way to go. To the right.

    The trail dipped and turned and Dhyan found himself in a little courtyard paved with stone. The courtyard led him to a low ornate gateway carved into the cliff. It was getting late. The Sun no longer shone down in the hollow, but only skimmed the treetops. A little chill was beginning to take hold.

    It was pitch dark inside the stone chamber. Dhyan couldn’t see anything at all, when suddenly he was startled by the sound of a match struck some ten or fifteen feet ahead of him. The sound reverberated. The thick and turbid darkness menaced the wavering flame. The pungent odor of Sulfur filled the room. The two thieves were lighting a diya. Their shadows reached out to probe and stab at Dhyan.

    The light from the clay lamp in its alcove was too weak to pierce its way through to much anywhere in the chamber, but it did show up a stairway ahead of the girls. They started to flee swiftly up those. But Dhyan, too quick for the second girl, grabbed roughly at her foot. When he did that her silver anklet caught at her flesh and she let out a little scream of pain and dismay.

    She sat down on a step with her injured foot on her other knee. Her friend stopped also and came down to sit by her. “Look what you’ve done,” the injured lady said as she unclasped her anklet and rubbed her foot.

    “I’m sorry,” said Dhyan, surprised at her tone. He stood a little guiltily before her. In her voice he had heard no trace of remorse, it occurred to him. No sense of having done him any wrong. Just reproach at his lack of care.

    “I’m sorry. Let me see,” said Dhyan as he brought the lamp close to her foot.

    “And look at you!” she exclaimed when she saw his hands.

    “How did this happen?” she asked.

    “I was trying to get at that carving in the tree,” he said, “When I lost my grip. The bark cut into my palms.”

    "It's nothing," he said.

    She held his hand and kissed it in a rapid flowing motion. “Don’t worry. It will heal. Show me the other,” she said. Her friend put the carved piece carefully down on a step, took off her dupatta, and tore a strip of cloth from it lengthwise.

    Dhyan was touched. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

    “Hush,” she said.

    The girls wrapped up his hands as best as they could. The moist fragrance of their bodies enveloped Dhyan. His mind still savored the unexpected kiss.

    “So you found it up in that tree?”

    “Yes,” Dhyan said, “I was coming down that tree, and it looked like something I had to have. It belongs to me, you know, and you must restore it.”

    “What’s your name?”

    “Dhyan. And you?”

    “I’m Bela,” said the one in the green lahnga.

    “I’m Rupa,” said the other.

    “How do you say this belongs to you?” Bela asked fastening her anklet back on. The lamp illuminated her figure softly. It lit up a halo round her head. Her skin wasn’t broken after all. Her soles were grimy with dust, but Dhyan could see that they were lined neatly with henna.

    “I found it in the tree,” said Dhyan.

    “And we found it with the little girl and she sold it to us,” Rupa said.

    “She didn’t,” Dhyan said, “It wasn’t hers to sell. Look I don’t want to play games. You know very well what the truth is.”

    “The truth!” Bela said looking closely at Dhyan, “The truth is a difficult thing Dhyan. The truth is a very slippery thing. Who is to know what the truth is? However, since you ask, let me tell you a story.”

    “Sit down,” she said, and motioned imperially at the step below her. Dhyan was glad enough to sit by her --- and not just because he was tired and needed a rest.

    “Did I really ask her to tell me a story?” he wondered in his head.

    “There is something about her,” he thought, as he leaned back against the wall and gave her his attention.
 

    Satyabhama, the Queen of Bundi, was in the habit of strolling through the bazaars of the capital disguised as an ordinary citizen. She would doff her fine clothes and ornaments. She would put on instead a lahnga of coarse and heavy cloth, slightly frayed on the flounce, and  printed all over with a wood-block paisley. She'd wear a blouse with sleeves to her elbows. Choosing on purpose one embroidered to excess, and embroidered coarsely, quite like one a village girl might choose. She enjoyed dressing up as a country girl. But however she might dress, there was no disguising her fragrance, her fine hair, and the life of wealth and privilege that shows in a woman's gait and attitude. She'd walk to the temple of Gauri Mata to pray like an ordinary woman, but the priests knew who she was.

    One day in the bazaar Satyabhama came across a man selling a chair. On the back of the chair, on top of the posts on either side, there were carved a totaa and a mynah. The chair was well designed, it is true, but what made it extraordinary was those birds. They were startlingly life-like, carved to absolute perfection.

    Satyabhama walked back to her palace and asked her maid Lakshmi to go summon the man who was selling the chair. “Ask him to bring the chair with him,” she said, “Tell him that we so desire.”

    “What do they call you baba ji?,” Satyabhama asked of the man.

    “Rani sahiba,” the old man said, “Your servant is called Gobinda. I live in Benaras, and that is where my father and forefathers lived before me."

    "Who is the craftsman Gobinda ji that made this chair for you?"

    "One day," said Gobinda, "I was on my way to the temple when I chanced upon a young man, hardly more than a boy, on a street-corner. He sat carving a little piece of wood, and I was struck immediately by his art. I have dealt all my life, mind you Rani sahiba, with wood-workers. With craftsmen and artists. Even some of the very highest ability. I know hunur when I see it, Rani sahiba, if you will take my poor word for it. I asked him who he was. I asked him how he came to be so raggedly dressed even though he was so clearly possessed of high art.”

    "That young man had traveled a long way to Benaras --- all the way from a place called Shahrukhiyya, on the banks of the Syr Dariya in Fergana, he said. He had come to see Hindustan, drawn by the stories he had heard of us. He came to learn something of our art, and to teach something of his own. His things and his money were all stolen at a serai one night, and he had begged his way through the last lap to Benaras."

    “His name is Kemal Khusrow, Rani Sahiba. I helped him set up a little shop,” Gobinda said, “and out of his gratitude, and out of the love and respect he bears this old man, he will sometimes make me a piece as extraordinary as this one you see.”

    Satyabhama said, “We thank you Gobinda ji for telling us his name. It would do us no shame to admit that we have never seen the equal of his craft. It would do us great honor, in fact, to have Kemal Khusrow visit us here in Bundi --- if you might so arrange. And it shall be our privilege to compensate you sufficiently for the project.”

    “We should make it clear Gobinda ji,” said the Queen, “that we do not make this offer lightly. We will welcome Kemal Khusrow, his family, and his students. We will arrange to set up his home and his studios. Even a college, if he so desires. Let him teach his art to our young people. And we shall issue you a firmaan under the royal seal that you may present to Kemal --- even as you convey to him our request by word of mouth.”

    When Gobinda had accepted the commission bestowed upon him by the Queen, she dictated a firmaan, sealed it with her signet, and duly presented to Gobinda the firmaan together with a bag of five hundred and one rupees by way of earnest money. One of her own personal guards was assigned to escort him all the way to Benaras.

    “Before you ask our leave Sir,” said the Queen to Gobinda, “Will you please tell us the price you ask for this chair.”

    “Rani sahiba,” the old man said, “Your appreciation of art --- and so rare that is in this day and age. The honor you have bestowed upon this servant and, not to mention, the artist. What price can I ask you? I beg you to accept this chair as a humble gift from Kemal Khusrow. As for myself, I am blessed enough to serve as an instrument for the promotion of an extraordinary talent.”

    “You are as gracious, Sir, as you are generous. We accept your gift with the greatest respect. We are more grateful than we can say,” Satyabhama said.

    “It would give us great pleasure also," Satyabhama said slipping off one of her bracelets, "if you will accept this for yourself. Not by way of recompense --- for that is not within our means --- but by way of a token of our gratitude.”

    Satyabhama had Kemal's chair placed by a little window in her sitting room. She'd sit across from it, and look at it every day for minutes and hours at a time, admiring the totaa and the mynah. She waited impatiently for word of Kemal Khusrow’s arrival. What sort of a young man must he be. She tried to picture him in her mind. An artist, she thought, is always larger than his art.
 
 

    "It's very late," said Bela standing up. She smoothed and gathered up her skirts and stamped her feet. "We had better get going."

    "Mind you take care of your hand," she said, "Soak it in salt water for half an hour before you go to bed.  And if it still hurts tomorrow go show it to the vaid."

    "But what about the rest of the story?" asked Dhyan, "Aren't you going to tell me if Kemal Khusrow accepted Satyabhama's invitation? If he really showed up in Bundi?"

    "You don't want to hear more about that!" Bela said.

    "Some stories are better left untold," she said, and Dhyan saw a shadow pass across her face.

    "No please," Dhyan said, "You must tell me more. I won't let you say no."

    "Well if I must, I must," Bela laughed.

    "Tell you what," she said, "Meet us here again tomorrow. Same time. And I'll tell you the story of Kemal Khusrow. We give you our word."

    Rupa tied up the carving in her torn dupatta, and joined the two ends with a knot for Dhyan to sling across his shoulder. "There, that should be easier to carry," she said, "And mind you bring it back tomorrow. Else I'll ask my sister to not tell you a word about Kemal Khusrow."

    "Where shall I go?" asked Dhyan, "My car broke down on the road. I'm a stranger in these parts."

    "You have a car! We've never ever been in a car!" Rupa said.

    "When my car is fixed, I'll take you for a ride."

    "You will! You will!" said Rupa, very excited, "I would really really love that."

    "And I would love to see what makes it move. I would like to see the engine." Bela said.

    "I'll show you the engine under the hood, in the front," said Dhyan, "I can also tell you a little about how it works."

    "You'll have to find someone to let you sleep in their house," Bela said, "Down in the village. Ask for the house of Giriraj, the master ji."

    "Couldn't you let me stay at your house?" Dhyan asked hopefully.

    "Not at all," said Bela, frowning, "We live in the jungle, up on a hill. Our parents won't approve."

    Down in the village Dhyan was quickly directed to master ji's house. "I need a place to stay the night Master ji. My car broke down on the road."

    "You are welcome son," said Giriraj, with the easy hospitality of the village folk, "I'll set up a charpai for you. But tell me, have you eaten? And tell me what you did to your hands!"

    "Bhagwati, we have a guest," Giriraj called out, lighting a lantern, "What can we give him to eat?"

    "Bhagwati, we have a guest," came Bhagwati's mocking voice from within, "No one can rest in this house. Which idiot entertains guests this hour of the night." 

    "Don't mind her son," said Giriraj, "I was like you when I married her. I had hoped she'd shake a leg like Helen. But she grows more like Lalita Pawar every year. What is one to do! It's written in the stars my son. It's all written in the stars."

    Giriraj fetched Dhyan an earthen bowl full of steaming salt water for him to soak his hands in.

    "Hey Ram!" he said, settling down, "Old bones... Come sit down. Tell me how you found your way. Tell me what brings you to this remote place."

    Dhyan told him about Bela and Rupa.

    "Oho, so you met those witches! He met those churails, Bhagwati."

    "They are no churails Master ji."

    "They are churails all right. Did you not see their feet turned around?" Giriraj laughed.

    "Why do their parents live up there Master ji? Why do they live so far from the village?"

    "They have no parents, beta. They are poor unfortunates. God has abandoned them. Sometimes you wonder if He's there at all. Sometimes you wonder if He can hear. Sometimes you wonder if He can see. Some people he strikes down like you won't even strike a dog. Bhagwati, bhagyawan, is this poor man to starve to death?"

    The next morning Giriraj took Dhyan to meet Colonel Rathore, retired, of the Rajputana Rifles. Colonel Rathore fixed Dhyan a neat tot of rum on a veranda fringed with coral bougainvillea ("It'll do your hands good," he said), and promised to summon a mechanic from Mehsana.

    "But you have to have some patience young man," the Colonel spoke in English, standing before a tray-table placed right under the mounted head of a sambhar, "Stand straight. Chest out. Good! Good! These things take time, you know. What's a few days here or there. Here's to your very good health."

    "You are welcome to stay here in my guest room. I can offer you a better bed than Giriraj's charpai. But as you wish. As you wish. In any case feel free to drop by for a drink. Anytime. Anytime at all. It's very good to have someone to drink with. Someone to talk to, you know. My old lady kicked the bucket two years ago." he said, twisting his enormous snow-white moustache, a faraway look in his eyes.

    "I miss her," he said.
 

    Kemal Khusrow had grown to love the city of Benaras. This was a city of craftsmen. In his neat hand, in Turki and in Hindi, he recorded the work of the sculptors, the potters, the stone masons, the weavers, and the jewelers. He made drawings of their tools and listed their ingredients and their methods. He sketched the temples, the streets, the houses. No detail was too insignificant for him to record.

    Kemal even designed and built a new kind of loom with a pair of automatic gravity-driven heddles, and an automatic comb --- much to the delight of his friends in the weavers' mohalla. A weaver could regulate the reciprocation period of the heddles by means of a lever, and synchronize them with the pace of the shuttle's flight.

    One disadvantage of the Khusrow loom, and the reason why it was never widely-adopted, was that a chokkra had to be employed alongside the weaver. And the chokkra's only job was to keep hoisting a series of weights, once spent, in sequence. In practice the chokkra would get bored out of his mind, would stop paying attention, and when that happened, the weaver would suddenly find his heddles grind to a most unexpected halt. Nothing can be more devastating to a weaver's concentration and equanimity.

    The mechanism that switched the drive of the heddles and the comb from one falling weight to the next was the most exquisite piece of engineering anyone had ever seen. And the switchover was accomplished without the least variation in rhythm. A weaver could not have said, without looking up at the ropes and the pulleys overhead, that the switch took place between such and such a stroke.

    Kemal wasn't at all inclined to move from Benaras. Benaras was where he belonged. There he felt at home. But the urge to start his very own school ultimately prevailed, and sadly, with a heavy heart, he bid goodbye to Benaras.

    Kemal and Gobinda packed up his tools, his library, and his half-finished works, loaded everything on two bullock carts, and set out on a long slow journey that took them West, across Uttar Pradesh --- the land of soul-stirring song and exquisite poetry. The land of the sweetest tongues: Bhojpuri, Urdu, Maithili, and Braj. And it took them deep into the heart of Rajasthan: hot, dry, and dirt poor.

    How like a life-within-a-life a long journey is. How it rejuvenates the senses made dormant by the everyday familiarity of a sedentary life. To lie on your back on a jolting cart, to see that same familiar sky above you, you would think that you haven't gotten anywhere at all. And yet everything changes. The people. The places. The language. The smells. And that sky is a sky you never saw before.

    A great storm gathered. The wind raged unchecked by the scant and scrubby vegetation on the flat plains. The dust and the sand made the sky first red, then black. Hot sand stung the travelers' faces. It was in their eyes, their ears, their mouths. They came to a halt in the lee of a Babool. The Babool was little defense against the sand, but it was something. It stood its ground bravely, however the wind might whip it. It was the only thing they could see. The only proof that they were still here on Earth and not in the bowels of Hell.
 

    Suryanarayan Chauhan, the Maharaja of Bundi, Satyabhama's husband, was a man fully given to the pleasure of the senses. He enjoyed his nachaniyas, his music, and his imported whiskey. He had four wives. There were also some comely maidservants that could be summoned to the royal bed, as needed. Sometimes in groups of two or three, or more. They were always raunchier than the Queens, and could invariably be relied upon to perform sexual gymnastics that would have quailed the Queens.

    The Government of the Democratic Republic of India paid Maharaja Suryanarayan the handsome sum of Rupees four lakhs every year to allow him to keep up with his sex, his music, and his other hobbies. It was just a trifling little gift from the well-off people of India.

    For many years before independence, the Royal State of Bundi had been a "protectorate" of the British India empire. To be a protectorate had meant that Maharaja Suryanarayan, and his father and forefathers before him, were maintained by the British as the conduits by means of which London siphoned away the wealth of Bundi. In return for the revenues diligently handed over by the Chauhans, the British permitted them to retain some trifling monies for their own amusement: the wages of continued compliance.

    A large British garrison in nearby Kota served to remind the Chauhans (just in case) who the real power in the region was. It was also incumbent upon the British garrison to come to the aid of the royal troops whenever people created too much lafda about paying the taxes due of them. The troublemakers were shot and bayoneted. Even blown to shreds after being tied to the cannon at Suraj Pol, if indeed that were found necessary. They were stripped and hung upside down from trees. Their body parts were carved out as they screamed and bled to death. Proper examples had to be set before the people in order to ensure that no one got it in his noggin to fuck around with the revenue officers of the Chauhans.

    It would have been sad if it hadn't been such a bloody laugh, to see the ranks of the outlawed Bundi Hasrat Morcha fight Her Majesty's forces with sticks and stones and scythes. The starving, half-naked bastards. To have women hurl their earthen pots out of their miserable hovels at soldiers filing through their streets with fixed bayonets. Yet the bloody goondas fought back every step of the way.  They fought with the courage and the cunning of the desperate, the doomed, the dispossessed. Every six months the British India Army stamped them out and every six months they were back at their usual mischief.

    Brigadier David Saunders of Bengal Rifles, the commander of the Kota garrison, a most regular bird (and "a real peach" as his mother maintained to the day), would often saunter in to the palace at Bundi to see Maharaja Kamalanarayan Chauhan, Suryanarayan's father. Kamalanarayan and Brigadier Saunders were good chums, having been to the same school back Home. It is true that his fellow students at Harrow would often call Kamalanarayan a "black bastard" to his face. But David wasn't like that.

    They would often get drunk together, David and Kamalanarayan, often many nights in a row, assault and rape the maids and the dancers, shout profanities, and sing English songs. Sybil, David's curmudgeon of a wife, the daughter of a General, no less, wouldn't give him the time of the day, let alone a good feel, so he was happy enough to have recourse to his friend's stable of native ladies.

    One day, in their usual disorder, and forgetful of their usual propriety, they had laid hold of Maharani Kalavati. Suryanarayan was the result of the union between Kalavati and David. In him the rage and the looks of his mother mingled with the dastardly and scurrilous character of his father.

    When the British were finally booed out of India they managed nevertheless to persuade the government of independent India to continue to maintain the lap-dogs they had been feeding on the scraps off their table. For Suryanarayan that parting gift was worth four lakhs every year.

    Maharaja Suryanarayan was first married to an eight year old when he was himself twelve. When syphilis and alcohol finally did daddy in, and Suryanarayan inherited the crown, he quickly married three progressively younger women in twice as many years. The youngest of these was Satyabhama of the Sisodias. It was a prudent alliance, politically speaking. It helped also that Satyabhama was well in possession of the famed beauty of the Sisodia women. But it was also true that she was proud and difficult in a way that Suryanarayan had not anticipated. She baffled and enraged him.

    He raped her and beat her up good a few times, but she'd come back scratching. What is it that makes some people foolish and unaccepting? Satyabhama's face and back were scarred. Yet the scar on her face, her husband's loving gift, paradoxically, did not detract from her looks. She had always been the sort of woman men look at with wonder, and covet. Her scar now added a fresh dimension to her face.  It gave her face a depth. It gave her a knowledge that glowed from within her. It was a mark of her own special beauty.

    Suryanarayan began to avoid Satyabhama. She couldn't care less.
 

    One day when Satyabhama had just finished dressing up in her rustic garb, and was ready to start for Gauri Mata's temple, Lakshmi came running to say that there were two people at Chand Pol requesting her audience of the palace guard. Before Satyabhama could get upset, Lakshmi added quickly, that one of them was the old man who had sold her that chair.

    "Go, show them in," said Satyabhama, patting her on her back, and Lakshmi ran off like the wind.

    Satyabhama went and sat across from the chair. But she could not enjoy the carved birds in her usual way. Her eyes moved past them to the window . She knew that while Lakshmi would run all the way to Chand Pol on her swift young legs, Gobinda ji could hardly be expected to cover the distance to her haveli in less than fifteen minutes. 

    She looked out of her window. The morning Sun shone in. Her floor shimmered with rays that had fought their way through the Mango trees. Light littered her room like a million golden coins. And around their halos shook the shadows of a million whispering leaves.

    Satyabhama went and looked in a mirror, smoothing a few stray locks that would never stay in place. She picked up a gajra and carefully pinned it in place. The fragrance of Champa intoxicated her. She stood there staring into the mirror till the mirror went blank  An inky darkness spread out from the mirror to engulf her, to engulf the room, to blot out all the world.

    It is not given to us to see the future.

    Kemal Khusrow was in Bundi, walking up to her door. What was he like? An artist is always greater than his art, he thought.

    "Rani sahiba, namaskar, it is my great pleasure to present Kemal Khusrow," said Gobinda folding his hands.

    "Namaskar Rani ji," said Kemal folding his hands. There was nothing extraordinary about his hands.

    "Namaskar Gobinda ji," said Satyabhama, "Salaam Alekum Kemal sahib. Please do sit down. Could we offer you some water?"

    Satyabhama was full of questions. Where were they put up? Was it comfortable? Was the food to their taste? How was the journey? Have they rested? Is there anything they need? What could she do for them?

    Then she turned to Kemal Khusrow.

    "Tell us about your art.

    "Tell us how you look at things. Tell us what it ... feels like," she asked.

    Kemal laughed. "You ask a difficult question Rani ji. I don't know if I can answer ...

    "I think that when Allah made us and these things around us, you, and me, and everything that moves and does not move, that breathes and does not breathe, he forgot to put in something, I think. He made everything with great love and great diligence, but there was something he forgot."

    "And what did He forget, do you think?" asked Satyabhama.

    "What I think He forgot is ... maybe 'meaning,' I might say. He forgot, I think to tell us what it means. I think he intended to... He must have. Or maybe he did not. What does He want us to do with this? Why is all this given us?" said Kemal, gesturing with his hands to include all the world.

    "What is given us? Do you mean happiness and sorrow?" asked Satyabhama.

    "Yes, I mean happiness and sorrow. But also I mean ... light and dark. And I mean earth and water ... What is art, if you ask. I would say that art is the search for meaning. It is the search for that meaning which was withheld from us. Negligently, perhaps. Perhaps unfairly ... But we need it. We need it like we need the air we draw on. If you ask what I want, I think I want to know what it means.

    "Now you tell me Rani ji, what draws you to art?" asked Kemal, "What pleasure do you find, for example, in those two birds?"

    "When we were young Kemal sahib. Just a little girl we must have been. We remember looking at a dead bird for the first time. We remember very clearly what an occasion for terror that was. It wasn't natural. We had seen birds fly, we had heard them sing ... and hop and skip. To us to be a bird meant to be alive. To be happy. To fly.

    "That bird we saw lying on the ground was not happy, and we asked our father, we said Baba what's the matter with this bird? He said Beta, that bird is dead. To everything that is born there comes a time when it dies, he said. We are made of dust, and to dust we return. That news was a great sorrow for a three-year old. He should not have told us that. He shouldn't have.

    "We thought about that bird for days and months. And we think about it still. Look at these spangles dancing on the floor. What if they were to stop and never move again?

    "What we look for in art, like these birds you have carved. You have created something from nothing ... From dust even. From sorrow you have moved to happiness.

    "You have taken our sorrow away, that our Baba first gave us, that he shouldn't have, and you have given us a gift that even you perhaps don't know the value of.

    "And yet we look at your hands, and we see that they are ordinary hands. Like our own for example. And yet you have created life."

    Kemal laughed. He opened his hands and stretched them out before him. "Art is not of the hand Rani sahiba. It is a thing of the mind. I know that you know that."
 

(Work in progress. To be continued.)

End of The Story of Kemal Khusrow page