1875
Prince of Wales visits India. Telephone.
Dada:
I was five when I first heard of Sayaji Gaekwad, the wonderful boy of twelve who was being made King in Baroda. I heard someone say- "no older than Dhoomil, and a king already". Dhoomilkaka looked unhappy, he was a bit slow at studies, and the adults used this as an opportunity to make endless fun of him. Everyone was in awe of the young boy who had become King.. They would tell stories of the coronation, how the carpets were deep enough to drown a child in, the jewels brighter than the sun, the magician who fell off the palace wall while performing and his body became thin air ...and the British of course. Always the British, especially when they talked of Baroda.
Neelkanth, all of three, and still gathering language, repeats: Br- i- tish
Dada:
the British had deposed Malhar Rao, the rightful Maratha king, packed him off from the throne peremptorily. I still say, so what if he was debauched, so what if he slept with every woman who came his way and even those who did not?
Sarasvati bai looks angrily though she does not look at Dada directly.
Dada: The point is, he was the king. What business did they have throwing him out? And got Gopalrao on the throne. That was Sayaji's name, when they brought him in.
Sarasvati bai: Gopalrao. (smiles) Thinks: not very different from Govind. Maybe names decide your fate. But then, what of mine?
Babaraya:But his name was Dhundi then
Dada: You are almost Gopalrao's age when he became king, Babaraya
Babaraya looks at his father with open eyes, not sure what to do.
Dada: 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 no curiosity, absolutely none? Even your mother has asked me more about the world than you have.
Outside the window, the flying Hanuman, who is Babaraya, watches his own un ease. His large eyes cloud over in the anxiety and confusion that Dada's words sometimes bring him. Sarasvati goes to the windows, and looks sorrowfully at her large child, trying with the expression on her small face, to console him. She cannot stand there long, looking, the pain is magnified in the large Babaraya. She turns back into the interior and stands behind where Dada is speaking to the little Babaraya, the same sad expression in the child's eyes.
Sarasvati: How did they decide to make such a little boy the king?
Dada is distracted, and mindful of his pupil's question:
The house of Baroda had many unknown, unconsidered shadows, Sayaji was one of them. The first Gaekwad had married a woman from a lower caste, maybe for love, maybe for a some power. He only held out his left hand in marriage to hold her right hand in. She and her children were to not have any succession rights.
Now, many years later, when fate throws a right hand his way, Sayaji holds onto it, leaps onto the royal horse and never looks back as he is led away. The 12 year old shadow is going to be more of a king than any king can be.
Sarasvatibai:
A little boy of twelve is lost in the bright ceremonies to announce his ascension, the way I was lost at my marriage. The rituals lead to the palace where bunches of teachers await him. Their words and their books will break open his mind, stretch it, make demands of it. Slowly his mind will become the plain for those hooves, and then, a horse itself.. it will canter, it will run across its own plain. Then he will be king.
or
Advisers of different hues, trainers in different disciplines will stretch the walls of his mind, transforming it, transforming him, till he feels the walls will not hold.
Dada:
The British only want a docile ruler, they send in their teachers to teach docility to the future kings. But there are others too, supporters of Malhar Rao, within the palace. That is what Sayaji must learn, to walk between the two, because power is shared between the two, and he is the face of the power.
Sarasvati Bai:
For a few years more he will still be treated like a child, and he will behave like one too. He will drag his feet on the cool marble floors, he will feel the beings on the carved pillars and stare at their eyes, he will slowly walk around sculptures from all over the world.
My children are nodding sleepily, and Mandakini has even fallen into a peaceful slumber at Dada's feet.
Saraswati:
Meanwhile, far away, Dhoomil kaka has gone to bed. The stars have come out like a perfect magic lantern show. After a rowdy day of battling his friends in the mud, Dhundi lies on the cot in the verandah stares at a sky that is larger than anything else he can see. In the quiet, he waits for sounds that he could hear once. Sounds from another world. ( she caresses her stomach once containing a globe within, a galaxy for a little embryo)
He listens for those sounds, his open eyes staring at the sky seem to anticipate them. He still carries memories from the womb, where he was safest. His eyes are like pieces of night sky, a restless moon shifts beneath their stillness.
Dada: That is also the year that Tanjore Madhav Rao moves from Travancore to Baroda. Ravi Varma's powerful well wisher is travelling. It bodes that Ravi Varma will travel too.
