On the day Anuradha Patwardhan was leaving Udaipur for Bombay to marry a man she had not even met in the twenty-one years of her existence, her mother clutched her lovely hand through the window of the black Victoria and whispered: “In this life, my darling, there is no mercy.” Anuradha nodded respectfully and ached to ask her what exactly she meant by that. But even before she could articulate her question, Mrs Patwardhan’s large, oval eyes, the hue of liquid soot, misted over and she shut them with gracious restraint. At that moment, young Anuradha decided that her mother had never looked lovelier: robed in a cobalt-blue sari with a gold-leaf border, she was a woman of altitude although not imposing, slim but with pertinent parts of her biology eye-catchingly endowed, and a certain gift of Song that was, to say the least, a legend in Udaipur.
It was this same simple but inexplicably alluring beauty which her daughter had inherited. Indeed, Anuradha Patwardhan’s looks were so fabled that more than a few young Romeos of the Udaipur Sonnets Society categorically claimed her as their Muse. Was it her hair, that dense, fierce swathe of it – a poem in itself? Was it Anuradha’s red bow lips, as thin and stencilled as Urvashi’s – the Seductress to the Gods? Or was it her presence itself: assured, controlled and elegant, as though a hymn wrapped in a sari – which, this January morning, in the deep spleen of Rajasthan, was an easy pearl white. It duly complemented the pale yellow duranta flowers billeted in her thick chignon, flowers with such an aptitude for the fragrance that several bees grew dizzy and promptly fainted in mid-air.
“Maa… I will always cherish all that you have given…” she blurted as the horseman belted the black stallions with a whip made of carefully twined camel’s eyelashes.
“Never forget the songs,” Mrs Patwardhan counselled as the stylish Victoria kick-started with a jolt.
In the carriage, Anuradha sat opposite her father, a man she loved but did not like. A tiny rotund creature with thinning grey hair and a nose curved like a macaw’s beak (Anuradha frequently thanked the Lord Shreenathji that she had been spared her father’s awkward lineaments), Mr Patwardhan grinned at her with a politesse bereft of all warmth. In any case, she cared not two bits for the clumsy, hollow manoeuvres of masculine sympathy and hurriedly turned to notch up the fading sight of her mother. Mrs Patwardhan was standing on the last step of the marble portico, erect as an obelisk but with the grace of a swan, the silken pallo of her sari drawn over her head: a sigh of sartorial grace. As the carriage trotted down the snaking drive, the wind picked up pace and crumpled into dust the image Anuradha was taking in with the fervency of a cyclone on the rampage: snatching every detail into the centre of her. She recorded the regality of the house, its scrollwork windows, the shaded long veranda as consoling as a paragraph from one’s favourite novel. She recorded the glistening belly of Lake Pichola which hemmed their estate, the pergola she used to sit under to watch the dazzling saffron strokes of the sunsets of winter. She recorded the texture of air, its depth of character, the songs that the women of her family had sung inside it.
A weep gathered in her chest like the white crest of a wave.
The grand old Marwar Express, painted black with gold accoutrements, would bring them to Bombay inside two days. The platform itself was narrow, long and littered with an assortment of corpse-like beggars and lifeless Britishers. Several travellers stopped in their tracks to nail glances at Anuradha, at the animal fluidity of her movements, her noble stride, the carriage of her lovely head, all various aspects of one mesmerizing concerto. Her neat leather luggage stood by her side; her father had fallen into conversation with an acquaintance. She crossed her arms and thought about how her mother had promised to come to Bombay as soon as she had conducted the delivery of her youngest daughter-in-law – her due date and Anuradha’s leaving had crossed like the tributaries of two rivers: unknowingly, ferociously.
Mrs Patwardhan had assured her that no matter what (“I shall grow wings and fly, if need be”), she would be in Bombay if Anuradha’s marriage was decided, which, of course, seemed most likely: only a monumental fool would ever turn down someone like her. The irony, of course, was that Anuradha had a scant idea of her own charms: she was under the impression that all women inspired sonnets; all women had received marriage proposals since they were four years and thirty-nine days old. As a result, modesty trailed her as the most dignified of chaperones in her candlelight tryst with Destiny, and it was this unassuming humility, an ingenuous unpretentiousness, which elevated her from merely being attractive to being – yes, let us bow our heads and admit it—downright irresistible.
A little ahead of her, she noticed someone feed coal into the throat of the train and a minute later a swaggering cockade of smoke billowed over its haughty metal head. Behind the iron paling of the station was a cluster of resilient acacia trees, hammered by the sun, bitten by wandering camels. Now, just after she and her father had boarded the train, and as they were arranging their luggage under the seat, everyone on the platform started whispering and pointing towards the clutch of trees: naturally, even Anuradha rose to see what the hullabaloo was all about. Her eyes fell again on the acacias behind the station, where peacocks had gathered—and not one or two, mind you, but dozens of them. An ostentation of peacocks that, just as the Marwar Express snorted its way out of Udaipur, unleashed their rain-beckoning cries of Megh-awuu, Megh-awuu, Meghawuu … bit by bit, sounds of the train, its metal rancour and romantic whistle, the awed gasps of passengers, the sweet traces of the roving flute-caller – in fact, all sounds – were doused by peacocks unfurling a melody one would not normally associate with such pavonine braggarts.
Anuradha’s father looked at her with slanted eyes; his daughter had fed these birds from the high balcony of her bedroom for the last sixteen years.
“I suppose they have come to say their farewell?” he said before opening the Times of India.
“Actually,” she clarified, her hand on her breastbone, “I called them.”
It was much later, after a horrendous twist in Anuradha Patwardhan’s kismet, when she would return to Udaipur with a splintered heart and sullen despair, that the peacocks would seek her audience again. But then, as if to honour the anguish she had tripped into like an animal walking into the metal fangs of a poacher’s trap, they were unsettlingly silent in her presence.
Excerpted with permission from The Last Song of Dusk, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, HarperCollins India.
