1875

Prince of Wales visits India. Telephone.

Neelkanth is all legs about the room, running, jumping, clambering on, clambering off, fast, faster, phut. he falls and he starts again.

Dada:

I was five( Dada's hand falls on Neelkanth's head, who looks up) when I first heard of Sayaji Gaekwad, the wonderful boy of twelve who was being made King in Baroda. One summer day, three brothers, anand, 18, gopal,12, and sampat, 10 along with their father, left Kanvala and walked like a dusty cloud on the horizon, under the canopy made by the arc of the sun- all the way to the city of Vadodara. A pair of eyes looked up from the stillness of Queen Jamnabai. She asked them why they thought they had been brought all the way. "To rule" said Gopal, and the shadow became Sayaji, the Gaekwad of Vadodara. Baba, he was your age, this boy..

Babaraya's giant pupil flashes and retreats, floats away from parental exhortation, to wander among shadows that are gathered around him like hanging roots of the banyan

Dada:

Nasik was bursting with coronation stories,each pearl wanting to outshine the other. We heard of children drowning in the deep carpets of the palace, of trapped sunlight, struggling to free itself from every gem that blazed in the crown, of horses that danced in the fields, of white people in shock at the glory..there were many stories about the whites .. the generals and tutors and officers in dress that surrounded the boy like the pulp of fruit. But two men really tutored him.. Dewan Madhav Rao and a white man. Two teachers, day and night, one pale one dark, moving about him always.

Prabhakar leans over Sarasvati's shoulder staring at the baby, Neelkanth has moved away from where he was sitting by Dada's large hand, instead he plays with her mother's toe. Mandakini stands mid ground, between her parents, still, considering her father as he speaks.

Dada: Such a young mind,

Saraswati strokes the head of the baby in her lap

Dada: it would soon be made tensile. In the maidan horses are made to run, repeated laps.

Baba, at your age, I was not Sayaji, but I was curious, I was in a new city, I was learning so many things, asking so many questions. Sometimes I wonder how it is, that despite being my son, you have little curiosity? Ask me a question.

The giant pupils turn. Sarasvati stares at the windows, trying to look reassuring to her child, but is conscious that to him, an expression will barely flicker in her tiny face, She cannot look long at him either- the anxiety of her child looks too magnified. She lifts up Srikrishna, and with the rest of her brood clinging to different parts of her, moves to cover one window.

Sarasvati: How could they decide to make such a boy the king?

Dada is distracted, he begins to think.