Radha, the dancer, was for the moment in a happy mood. It was the day of the Diwali festival and she hoped to have a bigger audience for her dance than ever before. There were prospects of good custom and she had created an entirely new puja dance for the occasion. As she tied her little ghungroo round her shapely ankles, she hummed the song she was to sing that night and her feet instinctively responded to the strains of music that came from the next room, where the musicians were rehearsing.
‘Radha, Radha,’ the agitated Ustadji entered, panting for breath. Evidently, the old man had been taking the stairs two at a stride.
‘What is it, Ustadji?’ Radha smiled. She liked the old musician who, in her childhood, had put her through the paces in dance and song and ever since had acted as friend, philosopher – and pimp.
‘Radha,’ replied the Ustadji, trying to control his breathing, ‘we are fortunate. We are honoured. The Raja Sahib of Jalpur is coming here in person to witness your dance.’ Then, rubbing his hands in ecstatic glee, he added, ‘We are in luck today, my dear.’
‘Oh,’ said Radha, greatly impressed with the importance of the occasion. ‘But tell me something about this Raja Sahib of yours. Is he very old?’
‘Old?’ replied the old man contemptuously, as if age was his exclusive monopoly, ‘Why, I remember the dance party that his father, the late Raja Sahib, gave on his son’s birthday as if it were only yesterday. He must be twenty-five, at the most. It was only five years ago that he got married. Ah, now, that was a marriage.’ There was a gleam of reminiscence in the old man’s eyes. ‘Not less than a dozen tohfas. Your poor mother too had gone there to dance. But, of course, you were too young…’
The Ustadji stopped in the middle of the sentence, realizing his mistake. He ought not to have mentioned her mother. It had taken Radha over a year to get over the grief of her mother’s death and even now the slightest reference to her was sufficient to send the girl into tears.
‘Now, now, d-d-don’t cry, my dear,’ stammered the old man confusedly, ‘I should not have mentioned it on a night like this. Now, wipe off your tears and finish the make-up.’
One of the musicians poked his head into the room and announced in a loud whisper, ‘Hurry up. The Raja Sahib is coming.’ Radha choked back her sobs and wiped her tears. This was no time to weep for her mother. ‘A dancer and prostitute has no right to give way to her emotions,’ she said to herself, smiling sardonically at her comely reflection in the mirror.
The Raja Sahib of Jalpur was a handsome young man, scion of a noble Rajput family, aristocratic of bearing, and chivalrous of conduct. As he sat on the masnad in the centre of the assemblage, ecstatically watching Radha go through the graceful dance, he drank in her beauty with a telltale expression in his eyes which members of the audience were not slow to notice. The room began to empty and, by the time Radha had finished her dance, no one else was there.
‘Wah, wah! Beautiful!’ exclaimed the Raja Sahib when Radha finally took her seat. Now at last he could have a good look at her.
He had seen many beautiful girls during his stay in England. In fact, they occupied the larger part of his time and constituted the most expensive item in his monthly budget. His wife, they said, was quite beautiful too. But as he sat there, he felt that he had seldom set eyes upon a lovelier face than Radha’s. And then, such life, such beauty of movement, such grace as he had never before seen in a girl. At least, that is what he thought at that moment.
‘What is your name, sweet one?’ asked the infatuated young aristocrat in his most courtly tones.
‘Radha,’ she replied simply with a shy smile.
‘What a beautiful voice too!’ thought the Raja.
In accordance with the usual custom, Radha prepared some paan and offered them, in a silver tray, to the Raja who accepted one and, eager to impress the girl with his wealth, placed a hundred-rupee note in the tray. Radha accepted it with a salaam in a respectful bow, and dutifully handed it to the Ustadji.
‘Do you like me, sweet one?’ asked the Raja, as Radha took her seat, with that directness which he knew he could confidently employ in dealing with women of her class.
The musicians shuffled out of the room, knowing the moment for exit like actors well versed in their parts.
‘Why not?’ replied Radha with non-committal naivety and the modest blush which she had been trained to register when such questions were asked by wealthy clients. For the humbler folk who were not affluent enough to pay for her attentions, she was taught to use a more curt technique.
‘Will you come and live with me?’ the Raja eagerly asked the next question. To this, Radha was not to reply. In accordance with the rules of her trade she simply blushed, looked at the Ustadji for help and guidance and, finally, left the room.
‘Why not, why not?’ said the old Ustadji with the eagerness of a salesman who wished to take no chances with a promising customer. ‘It will be a great honour for her, Raja Sahib.’
The Raja held a brief low-voiced consultation with his secretary and then, calling out farewell to Radha, he departed, leaving the secretary to settle more practical details of the bargain.
An hour later, when Radha learnt that she had been ‘sold’ to the Raja for five hundred rupees a month, she took the news philosophically. The Raja, at least, was not ugly – like the fat zamindar who had been her first ‘purchaser’.
Next day, the whole entourage shifted to the Raja’s palace. That night there was no dancing in Radha’s house. Three months later, Radha sat lost in thought in a luxuriously appointed suite which the Raja had set apart for her in the upper precincts of his palace. The sun was setting behind the low-lying hills and gloom had spread its wings over the landscape. Depressing shadows of the twilight hour filled the room and were reflected in Radha’s serious face.
For the first time in three months, Radha was thinking, taking stock of her present position, debating the vital issues of her life. Like every other girl born in her circumstances, she was, before everything else, a realist and a fatalist. She had few illusions and was completely resigned to her fate. She knew the implications of her origin and had no wish to quarrel with society over them. The daughter of a prostitute, even if she were the prettiest and the best dancer in town, remained a prostitute. To be kept as the permanent mistress of a rich, young, handsome zamindar, who was a past master in the art of making love, was certainly better than retailing herself in the open market to anyone who came along with five rupees in his pocket. But it did not, in any way, improve her status. She also knew that love, domesticity and children were luxuries which women of her class could never afford. And yet today, her stolid realism was shaken, a wild desire for the might-have-beens of life assailed her. She wanted to be a wife, a mother, to have a niche in the established order of society. The instincts of a woman, which are deeper even than the circumstances of her birth, were reasserting themselves.
The cause of this transformation of Radha, the realist, was the Rani of Jalpur.
Ever since she had joined the Raja’s establishment, Radha had heard of the incomparable beauty of the Rani and, wondering why the husband of such a beautiful creature should crave satisfaction elsewhere, she had wanted to see her. On more than one occasion, she asked the Raja if she could be allowed to go to the zenana but he had always evaded the question, drowning Radha’s request in an orgy of passionate love-making. ‘We were born to love each other, my darling,’ he would say, ‘and I won’t allow anyone to come between us.’ But her curiosity had remained as keen as ever and she had at last confided her wish to Lachmi, the wrinkled old hag of a woman who had been appointed by the Raja to wait on her. And that day, taking advantage of the Raja’s absence after he had gone for shikar, she had persuaded Lachmi to take her along to the zenana, disguised as a maid. The Rani – beautiful, proud and aristocratic of bearing – was holding court in the big hall where she sat in the centre on a raised dais surrounded by her friends and servants. Lurking in a dark corner, Radha was both surprised and amused to discover that she herself was the subject under discussion.
‘Rani-ji,’ one of the senior maidservants was saying in disgustingly obsequious tones, ‘why don’t you do something about this street woman that Raja Sahib has brought here?’
‘I am told she is quite beautiful,’ the Rani replied casually with an air of supreme unconcern.
‘But,’ interjected one of the Rani’s privileged friends, the buxom wife of a neighbouring landlord, ‘aren’t you jealous of her for stealing your husband’s love?’
The Rani’s reply cut Radha to the quick. It was like a slap on her face. With cold and calculated contempt, the beautiful aristocrat said, ‘It is below my dignity to feel jealous of such a woman. Besides, it is not unusual for a Raja to keep a few women for his amusement. A mistress and a wife can never be equals.’
Radha could bear to hear no more. Shame-facedly, she slunk out of the house. Lachmi, when she came back, started a long-winded apology, emphasizing that it had been Radha’s idea to go to the zenana. ‘Yes, yes,’ the unhappy girl cried, ‘but leave me alone for the present.’ She wanted to think. ‘A wife and a mistress can never be equals.’ The Rani’s words were still ringing in her ears. They irritated and tormented her because they were so true. In those words, the Rani, as it were, had shown a mirror to Radha. And she shuddered at the reflection she saw.
If Radha had possessed a logical mind, she would have pondered over her position. But she was, at that moment, a woman with her elemental passions aroused. All she knew was: ‘A mistress and a wife can never be equals.’ And she desperately desired the impossible – to be a wife! Yet out of the very depths of her hopelessness gleamed a faint ray of hope. Hadn’t the Raja assured her – several times a day since she had been there – that he loved her more than anything else in the world? Radha was used to such declarations of passion and suffered them with sardonic good humour. She had no illusions about such ‘love’. But the young Raja was so ardent in his wooing, so persistent in his declarations that, at moments, she could actually believe that he loved her not as a mistress but as a sweetheart.
In this moment of optimism and weakness she once again took refuge in that frail belief. If he really loved her, she thought, maybe he would also consent to marry her. Her face brightened at the thought and her imagination toyed with the prospects of a married existence. It was a pleasing anticipation – a secure life, a definite and respected status in society, a home, children. There was only one thing which rather spoilt the picture. As a respectable married woman she would not be allowed to dance. And dancing was her life. It was in her blood and bones. It was the only mode of self-expression she knew. She could never be happy without an opportunity to dance. It was bad enough to live as the Raja’s mistress and to dance, when she did, before an audience of one (how she pined for the boisterous encores of the crowd who came to see her dance at her house!) but to reconcile herself to a life without dancing at all was terrible.
The artist in Radha shuddered at the idea. But, she reflected, sacrifices have to be made for a rise in the social scale and if she wanted to be a wife and a mother, she would have to forego her passion for dance. The artist was vanquished by the woman.
Radha was awakened from her reverie by familiar footsteps on the veranda. The Raja, flushed with the shikari’s pride in a good day’s shoot, walked in bubbling with gaiety and good humour.
‘Well, well, how is my darling?’ he said, taking Radha in his arms and kissing her with a possessive air. But Radha, in her newborn optimism, was thrilled by what she regarded as a demonstration of genuine love.
‘Did you miss me much?’ the Raja asked, settling down on a sofa and lighting a cigarette.
Radha coyly nodded her head. Now was the time, she thought, to broach the subject which was troubling her heart.
Noticing a cloud on Radha’s face the Raja asked, ‘What is troubling you, my dear? Won’t you tell me – your devoted lover?’
Summoning up all her native courage, Radha blurted out in one breathless sentence, ‘Raja Sahib, I love you so much – if only we could be husband and wife!’
The Raja of Jalpur was not surprised by Radha’s demand. Indeed, he had been expecting it ever since she had come to live with him. ‘They are all alike,’ he reflected. Every one of his mistresses had ended by making herself a bore with her matrimonial ambitions. Radha too had ultimately proved no exception. And yet he had once hoped that she at least would have more sense! ‘What are you thinking of, Raja Sahib?’ she persisted, throwing her arms round his neck. ‘Don’t you love me sufficiently to marry me?’
‘Oh brother,’ the ex-Oxonian thought, ‘this woman is becoming a bore.’ But she was beautiful and he had not yet tired of her. She must be honoured.
‘My darling,’ he said and, taking her in his arms, smothered her with kisses. ‘So you too believe in all this conventional claptrap of marriage! I believe, my dear, in something more sublime and eternal – Love. What difference does it make to us, I ask you, if a priest blesses our union with some hocus-pocus of incantations? It is sacrilegious to fetter love in bonds of convention.’
Radha, snuggling up to him, was sceptical. ‘But, my dear, after all we have to live in this world. And the world does not approve of free love. I want to be yours – now and always.’
‘That you will be, Radha,’ the Raja replied. ‘Never had there been a girl like you in my life – and never again shall there be one. I swear I shall always love you. Isn’t that enough? Why should we worry about what the world says? I am under no one’s obligation and as long as I am alive you will be the same. Rid yourself of this superstitious belief in moth-eaten customs like marriage. I have been to Vilayat – to England and France and America – and I tell you, there no one cares about marriage. They are all free. They only believe in love.’
The Raja had a glib tongue and this was not the first time he had cured the matrimonial mania of a mistress by giving her a lecture on the rational basis of sex and love. Radha, who had less than an average woman’s regard for convention, was soon wavering in her recently acquired belief in marriage. And whatever doubts remained were swept away by the Raja’s expert petting and passionate words of love.
There was a knock at the door and a maidservant appeared. ‘The Rani-ji wants you, Raja Sahib,’ she announced and the Raja left for the zenana, promising to return soon.
Radha’s emotions, at the moment, were complex, indescribable. She did not know whether to be happy that she possessed such an ardent lover or to be sorry for the blighted Lachmi who had quietly entered and sat down in a corner. The old woman was weeping.
‘Why, Lachmi,’ Radha asked, ‘why are you weeping?’ What was it that troubled this withered creature? Radha had often felt curious about her past, wondered what experiences and emotions she had had.
‘Nothing, Baiji,’ the old woman replied, breaking into hysterical sobs. ‘Only this that one day I too had come here like you and…’ her voice was horse with emotion, ‘his father used to say practically the same things as the Raja Sahib has just said to you.’
The scales seemed to fall from Radha’s eyes. She looked at the wretched old Lachmi and saw the reflection of her own face in the mirror of the maid’s eyes.
That night Radha’s house resonated once again with the festivity of a soiree.