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servants’ bare feet, the tinkle of feminine laughter from the zenana, and the chirping melodies of the birds in the garden, being wafted indoors by the gentle afternoon breeze. And sometimes, when my ageing but still exquisite mother forgot herself, another noise could be heard, the high, tinny sound of a gramophone, Hastinapur’s only one, scratching out an incongruous waltz as a lonely head swayed silently in tune with the music.
    At night there was stillness where once there was sound, and new sounds emerged where silence had reigned during the day. Raucous laughter from behind closed doors broadcast the young king’s pleasure: a fat madam musician played the harmonium while singing of romance through betel-stained lips, and lissom nautch-girls clashed their jingling
payals
with each assertive stamp of their hennaed heels. And Vichitravirya threw his head back in delight, flinging gold and silver coins, sometimes a jewel or a necklace, at the hired houri’s feet, or after a particularly heady mixture of music and ambrosia, tucking his reward into her low-bent cleavage as she pouted her gratitude. Then there followed all the frolic, and all the futility, of intoxication, which ended, eventually, in my princely half-brother’s death.
    It was to this place that I went, and it was here that my mother told me anxiously why she had sent for me. ‘Of course I’ll help, Mother,’ I assured her, ‘provided my royal sisters-in-law are willing. For they have never seen me, and after a lifetime, even a short one, spent as a wandering Brahmin sage and preacher of sedition, I am not a pretty sight.’
    My mother took in my sweat-stained
kurta,
my face burned black with constant exposure to the sun, the cracked heels of my much-walked feet, and the livid scar from a recent political encounter with the lathi-wielders of the Raj. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘But Ganga will take care of them.’
    Between them, my mother and Ganga obtained the widows’ acquiescence - the issue of dynastic succession is, as every television viewer today knows, a powerful aphrodisiac. A few discreet inquiries and my father’s training enabled me to calculate the exact day required for the production of offspring. At the appointed moment Ambika, freshly bathed and richly adorned, was laid out on a canopied bed, and I duly entered the room, and her. But she was so appalled by the sight of her ravisher that she closed her eyes tightly throughout what one might have called, until the Americans confused the issue, the act of congress. Ambalika was more willing, but as afraid, and turned white with fear at my approach. The result, I warned my mother as I went to her to take my leave, was that the products of our union might be born blind and pale, respectively. So, on my last night Satyavati sent Ambika to me again, in the hope of doing better. But Ambika had had enough, and sent me a substitute, a maidservant of hers, bedecked in her mistress’ finery. By the time I discovered the deception it was too late, and a most agreeable deception it had proven, too. But I had made my plans to leave the next morning, and I slipped out as quietly and unobtrusively as I had come, leaving the secret of my visit locked in three wombs.
    From Ambika emerged Dhritarashtra, blind, heir to the Hastinapur throne; from Ambalika, Pandu the pale, his brother; from the servant girl, Vidur the wise, one day counsellor to kings. Of all these I remained the unacknowledged father. Yes, Ganapathi, this is confession time.



The Second Book:
The Duel with The Crown
8

    A re you with me so far, Ganapathi? Got everything? I suppose you must have, or you couldn’t have taken it down, could you? Under our agreement, I mean.
    But you must keep me in check, Ganapathi. I must learn to control my own excesses of phrase. It is all very well, at this stage of my life and career, to let myself go and unleash a few choice and pithy epithets I have been storing up for the purpose.