The Queen's Play Read online

  They are taught to repel attacks and strengthen defences. Finally, having been taken into the king’s employ, simply by making them bow to a silhouette on one of the high terraces of the palace, so far up he must surely be in confidence of the gods, use must be found for them, for all the rage and ruthlessness that has been carefully crammed into their hearts. Soon armies are being drawn up regularly against each other, attacking and defending by turn, mostly at war, or else restless for war, a vast clumsy monster, bent on slaying, destroying, pillaging, dying on its way to everlasting peace.

  But amid all this how do melancholy kings grown weary and indifferent to their own wars distract themselves on leisurely evenings? How do they sublimate into a harmless pastime their horrid past forever thrusting itself into the present? What is it that keeps them utterly engrossed in their terraced gardens and filigree palaces as they await despatches that will tell them nothing but the ruin of this or that enemy’s troops at the hands of their savage warriors, long ago loosed on distant, unsuspecting lands?

  Whose ingenious idea could it have been? Or did successive monarchs, logicians, artists, add to their ancestors’ collective labours to devise this game played on a field which holds light and dark together, entire nights and days, change, choice, difference? Very like this earth of ours, spinning eternally in the shadow and fire of stars, taking us along while we draw our tiny wills against each other to create the play of life, to divert ourselves as we move from day to night, from night to day. For what else is the sublime and the ordinary, indeed the heart and the frontier of consciousness, but play?

  Observe, then, the sixty-four squares, the thirty-two pieces, the four teams restless to clash, bands of elephants, chariots, horses, and footmen ready to defend their kings, complete chaos and carnage waiting to erupt at a roll of the dice.

  VI

  THE PLANT, its roots buried in a lump of soil, which Misa carried among her few belongings from those distant lands, has taken root beautifully, higher up, in the interior of the island, there a small section of the royal estate has been given over to its cultivation, the climate being suitable, sun tempered with cloud. Misa, the king’s young companion throughout the long, arduous journey back to the island, little Misa from the roof of the world, the land of gods, godly land, godsland. The place, blue, white, and brown its dominant colours, so distant it begins to seem unreal only after a day’s walk, a place shielded by the mighty Himalaya and the immensity of the lands they stare upon, lands of mythic rivers and lush jungles. Himalaya, the laughter of Rudra. Sparkling sheet upon sheet of snow suspended from the sky like a white illusion. What could lie past it? The king, staff in hand, pack on back, always two steps ahead of Misa, one shoulder bare, from the other hanging the hide of a leopard right down to the thighs, held tight by a cord round the waist, treading past everlasting snows, along flimsy passes that skirt unthinkable chasms. Two black dots in the vast terrain, here inching toward the white crest of a mountain, there descending into a vale of mist, beyond which lies nothing but more snow, more scree, bare jagged rocks piercing a thick coat of ice where not even eagles perch. The queen, awaiting the king’s arrival on the hither side of this white wall against which even the sea winds are helpless, unable to cross, they fold and collapse into heavy showers over the forested plains. Green, white, and then beige, this is what the creator ordains, for this is what he saw, dreaming for a billion years while earth and wind went about his bidding. Prehistoric glaciers that glint like nickel in the noon air, rising from pinched crevices to sprawl along entire mountain sides, face to face in majestic solitude, past a thousand suns, with the celestial night. The plant, the only symbol, perhaps the last reminiscence of the land. The land, forbidden to all but the fiercest of adepts, where the king roamed for years, an ascetic. The queen, seeing at last the bluish black summits with such clarity it could only be a vision, pure and undiminished by distance. The plant, glowing green in the morning sun above a circle of cloud, its leaves plucked and rolled, then passed through pine smoke, brewing in a spouted urn. The hot, amber liquid with a delicious smoky aroma falling into the queen’s bowl. The board, set for a match, armies drawn close in its four corners, each commanded by a king, complete with his quadripartite force, the elephant, the chariot, the horse, the infantry. The queen, having become addicted to the brew, sipping from the bowl before her. The scent, never failing to uncork the past, which makes the sun melt and sizzle all over it before pouring its molten light into the blackening vast like a waterfall. Maybe this is what makes her an addict, the wish to live this grand sight again and again. The sea breeze, moving blue and white triangular flags high up on the turrets and bastions. The sentries, spears and escutcheons in hand, stiff and silent under the fluttering flags, staring at the frozen landscape before them. Sand, stars, sun, waves. Wind forever churning the sea’s face white and green, bending the trees, rustling the leaves, drawing a dry crackle from the cloth turning on itself above their ears, the only proper sound for a sentry’s ears, a sound which tells him that peace reigns in the land, that he performs his task well simply by feeling the wind on his hardened face. Wind in the flags, flags in the wind, at once near and far from the world, pure phenomena inviting you to see its plain truth, that it is just this, a mind observing its own nature, a mind capable of observing its own nature, a mind which moves the flag, a flag which unleashes the wind, and thus, everything, nothing. The boats in the docks, bumping into one another, producing a delicious wooden sound, sound made all the more delicious by the water. The lion heads on the trapdoors at the bottom of the towers, imitating the inscrutable expression of the sentries above, gold rings hanging from their jaws, which so many hands have pushed and pulled to open or close a passage of thick stone steps, weathered and shining from the weight of countless hurrying bodies over the years, to the ramparts above. The king, lost in a brown, cold immensity, growing less and less mortal with each day, for he is fast losing the sense of time and self, was this not why he came here?, this seeker of immortality, now fording the river on his way back to the cave from collecting twigs for firewood and nettles and berries, the only food which can be found anywhere for miles. But today he also has a gazelle hanging about his shoulders, its eyes open and lifeless, as if staring across the king’s nape, awed and stupefied, into the gold and russet landscape. The river, its water ice cold and fast flowing, making its long, winding passage through the stark panorama of the desert, leaving a thin deposit of gold between the king’s toes as he wades through it. The king, an ascetic. The ascetic, a sage. The sun’s rays, slicing the chill air swishing past his shoulders as it forms and deforms dust into rock and rock into rubble to enter and tinge the skin a deep copper. The two travellers, huddled round the small fire they have kindled in a cave just above the pine forests, which at last rise up sharply along the mountain sides to reach them. The king, thoughtfully chewing the hard crusted bread while the child prepares the stew over the low blue flames that hiss and groan, starved for air that they are, and project dancing shadows on the black slate walls of the cave. The cave! This narrow, gloomy space, where light and dark interact in a thousand ways and the most complete manner, here the opposites merge and are made whole, here the inexplicable finds silent expression, here, in its warm depths, lions, thinkers, and seekers make their refuge. Misa, now almost a woman, the queen’s daughter, friend, and confidante from the moment she reached the island and gave into the queen’s open hands her own little hands clutching the small red pot with slim, pointed animals moving round it in the finest brushwork of black she has ever seen, raising the bowl of tea to her lips as she watches from across the board the queen feel the dice protractedly between her curled fingers. The queen, wishing for the throw to be a five or at least a three so she may begin the game at once, if not the pawn, then surely the horse may be leapfrogged into battle, for no more can she tolerate this painful matter with the dice, this tiny cuboid making the will hostage to chance at every step of the game, taking it away from its natur
al, intelligent course to strange, unforeseen ends. The dice, reducing the incorporeal to matter by way of a clever and simple association, what will we not do to make tangible, to see, touch, and grasp even the most ethereal and therefore the most significant of symbols. The spy, despatched by the exiled prince to take the message of imminent freedom to his wife enduring captivity in the heart of the enemy’s kingdom, furtively jumping the fence into the palace courtyard. The travellers deep in the forest, turning back to look above the serrated line of the pines at the mountain peak which just yesterday was a never ending ocean of mist, and today is all but the tatters of a cloud flying from it, what better proof of the eye’s deceit, of our smallness in the vastness of the world? The king, walking once more under the dense cover of trees after what seems a lifetime, is a lifetime. The child, unable to believe her eyes, for she has seen nothing like this before, not just a tree, which in itself would have been too much to take in, but an entire evergreen forest rising rapidly in every direction to claw the glistening snows of great massifs. The woman on the bridge, looking at the boats in the dock, shivering in the scarlet light of the setting sun, thinking of a man long dead. The cartload of grain, wheels clacking across the flagstones on its passage from the granaries to the bazaar, accompanied by the joyous shouts and jumping of children. The tall white stallion, grey veins visible across its full round belly, galloping away with its cloaked rider through the wet morning air of the forest, which mixing with the hot, excited breath of the animal forms a pale, flowing ring around them, joining the two in pursuit of a lasting, noble silence. The queen, standing in the balcony, watching the darkness which is the sea. The sage, eyes fiery, frame tall and bony, of an unkempt and matted mane, tufts of beard curling under the chin, skin dark and leathery, covered in dust and wood smoke of sacred fires, fording the icy river with a gazelle in the crook of his arm. The gazelle, bending in submission before the sage, and then up close, swiftly jumping into his open arms to lick the droplets off his chest and face. The gleaming blade, slowly sinking through the flesh of a supine figure, somewhere in the maze of the gold city.

  VII

  HOME AT last, and yet terribly homesick. This island, this city of gold, cleverly wrested from his stepbrother after long planning and a fierce political, even a brief physical, battle, this seat of his vast empire, which extended out to include faraway continents at the end of the ocean, as also large parts of the peninsula in the north, where after years of quashing rebellions and forging multiple alliances, the king had been able to gain control of territories as far up as the mouth of the Indus to the left, near which he had seen and fallen in love with the queen, and the delta of the Ganga to the right, whence it sprawled out into marshlands and forests before meeting the sea, this island where winds from all directions, carrying a variety of scents and climates, converged to ruffle the flags of his rule high above the palace, this land of his birth and triumph, of his education and wandering, where in times past he moved now like a philan- derer, now like a sage, this earth of lush forests and groves where he first received the words of the holy scriptures from his father, the sage Visravas, descended from the great Pulastya himself, one of the ten mind-born sons of Prajāpati, the Progenitor, the First Born and the First Sacrificed, the Absent-Present One, and poured oblations into the sacred fire for the gods, was this home? Or was home in the forever changing flow of notes, of the myriad nuances and pitch oscillations, that rose up to enliven the air from his lightning-fast fingers holding the strings to the frets of the long, heavy lute resting across his chest, it seemed, in several places all at once? Nor was home in the hymns of the Sāma Veda, carefully selected and calibrated to recall the sound that created the universe, which, if one was attentive, could easily be heard in the vibrations of a bowstring. And what of the sacred rituals and sacrifices, which he had patiently learnt over the years only to later unlearn with ever more persis- tence and fortitude? Surely, home was not the queen, consort, or the child, nor the dice that moved one through night and day to victory or doom. Home was something else entirely, a tiny transparent spot somewhere behind the eye past which one entered into unending space shining with light. Home was the desert, the lake, the mountain. A land of few shadows. Home was where the wanderer felt the cold, crackling wind without judgment, where he saw, forgot, remembered again, ancient rocks becoming ever harder in their losing tussle with the elements, where the light filled wings of black-necked cranes against the chain of the peaks, the indifferent stare of the eagle swooping down on its prey, the leopard’s sprint along the river, the red outline of an ibex balanced on a cliff edge caught in a flaming full moon, the tinkling of distant bells, crystalline constellations that stood out sharply one moment and were cosmic dust the next were the impressions that washed over him, filled him with a feeling he had not known before, of a joyous vertigo, if it could be described thus, of falling into the swirling flux and recovering anew to pure breath, pure movement. This perhaps was home then, which each passing moment was now fast taking away.

  Within hours of his arrival, the news had spread throughout the capital, and from then on the gaiety could not be checked, whether in the palace or the market square a wave of expectancy and happiness made people delirious. For the moment, squabbles, spats, vendettas were forgotten and all rejoiced in a feeling of pride, camaraderie, and, if one looked deeper, stupidity. The king had returned to his subjects after a long absence, having achieved whatever it was he had set out to achieve. The most powerful of empires had the most powerful of men back on the throne. This was what made the citizens elated, an elation at whose bottom lay conceit, a conceit that stemmed from a certain misplaced conviction in one’s superiority as a people, a belief toward which each of them had contributed by way of being ignorant, dogmatic, brave or cowardly in life or battle.

  In the festivities that broke over the isle, the king was the most distracted of participants. And because he was distracted, he rarely grew impatient. Scarcely had he stepped out of a long bath than the royal priests were upon him, covering him up in a heady mixture of incense smoke, flower rings, and ceaseless chanting. And then, even before the queen could intercede, someone among the courtiers, with a love of ceremonies, had suggested a second coronation to mark the homecoming. Others in the group leapt at the suggestion, loudly affirming their support, only if to quell the ennui that is second nature to those who don’t have to earn their bread out in the open. But by now the king had grown distant and deaf to everything. And because this was so, the proposed coronation went ahead. Again the tiger skin was laid on the ground before the throne, again the sovereign walked across it in three measured steps in a rite recalling the three steps of the Deity incarnate traversing earth, heaven, and hell, as if with such a trivial performance alone one came to resemble the Lord of three worlds. One by one, the sparkling, colourful rings were slipped back on his fingers, which had not yet lost the harshness of his roving, ascetic days. Where not in the so distant past was only his topknot of tangled hair, there now came to rest the heavy, bejewelled gold crown. Evil lurked beneath this opulence everywhere, glittered through this cornucopia of colour, the useless bounty of riches, madness of ages, revealed itself in the elegance of the damasks and draperies, in the tip of the priest’s finger marking his forehead with a daub of vermilion, in the finely carved cornices, in paintings and tapestries that covered the long, shadowy walls, in the form-drenched pilasters projecting into the assembly hall from eight directions, in the din of tom-toms and clarinets, in every whiff of smoke that rose from repeated offerings into the sacred fire, in the perfume of flowers, casual smiles, ebullient voices, above all, in this velvety air of the make-believe. Home at last yet terribly homesick, the king felt like a monster trapped in a gilded maze of his own making.

  And yet he had come back. But why? Because we never stop to think. Because we are incapable of stopping at all. Because we are obliged to move fast. Because endless possibilities confound us at each turn. Because our curiosity remains in
satiable nevertheless. Because the trace can never be erased. Because life is a storm, a whirlwind, a lammergeier spreading its mammoth wings, coming at us at breakneck speed, and even when we run away from it, we run straight into it, tumbling down we go into the dark mouth opening to swallow us.

  The queen watched silently from the side. The queen saw the proud bearing as before, the aloof pose monarchs affect to grace occasions such as these, for this, too, is one of their tasks, to please gods and subjects alike at the slightest opportunity, to regale them with food and drink, and in return receive the favour of one and the veneration of the other. That is the prescript of the ancients to the exalted one, which he is well advised to observe from time to time. But the queen saw something else too, which no one had seen. The queen saw the child she had never known, serene, innocent, supreme in his solitude, the watcher who could lose himself in the crush of cross currents of thought and action and not know it, who had somehow grown up to become his diametrical opposite, a fiercely astute and ambitious young ruler, bent on accumulating land and riches, more and more matter, anything that could be touched, controlled, consumed, enjoyed. The queen saw much more, but the queen still did not see all.

  Then it happened suddenly. The king cast a glance at her, and the suspicion was confirmed. There was in that look something utterly alien to the gay surroundings, at first instance, merely a trifle bored, a trifle unsettled, but because the angle was right, and because in the complex geometry of shifting planes, the angle alone is the pathway to truth, she saw in those eyes a stirring that bespoke of events to come, events of which even the king was unaware, events that would change everything and reveal the past in a different light.