Kings, queens & concubines (My middle in The Tribune today) By Rajbir Deswal Standing on the ramparts of the famous and almost impregnable fort Golkonda near Hyderabad, the guide pointed to a structure down below, more excited than us, telling about the love of one of the Qutub Shahi kings for a notch-girl, for whom he got ‘that’ structure made ,and that he used to frequent her ‘despite rain or hell!’ Nearer home at Hisar, they have a Gujri Mahal which again claims its coming to being there for the king fell in love with a local Gujri tribal girl. Such stories are so common as to baffle a reasonable mind if the Kings had no other occupation than to be so adventurous and dotting on their concubines, although nothing would have stopped them from having their flames in their ‘closer, intimate and safe chambers’—otherwise also very well-lit. I hope you get at it. I remember Nigar Sultana telling Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam, “Mehlon ke kissay kahaniyan tum kya jano—How would you know about the palace intrigues!” Well, they all had the king, queen and the concubines mostly in the plot that always remained thickening and many times got bloody too. Coming back to the Raja-Rani lovey-dovey commitments and near-obeisance, it’s not blasphemous to generally not ascribe royalty to the superiority quotient of ambitious men and women, but giving it an altogether different dimension, of amorous inclination among the differently gendered homo-sapiens, Kings and Queens have existed for one another ever since they swore by their mutual love . And for this very (read emoto-carnal!) reason, even a popper calls his love ‘Rani’, and mutually sustaining, gets addressed as ‘Raja’! Historically speaking, while the Kings might have had large number of queens and concubines in their harem, it generally had never been that a queen might have had more than one king—obviously. If you cite the example of Yudhishthir in Mahabharata where Draupadi had four husbands besides him, then remember that it was only he who was called Raja—Raja Yudhishthir, and none else among the foursome Pandavas. History, tales, gossip and anecdotes in the Indian context confirm queens of various kinds, mostly as per the Kings accreditation and acceptance of them. Well, the senior most could be a Maharani while the most loved one was Patrani; the latter also shared some home truths with the king. The youngest of them all (blue-eyed one sic!) seemed to have everyone’s love and affection besides that of the king who did have blind spot for her capriciousness. The one who did not bear children was the Kaag-Udani—the one who had to scare-away the crows on the palace-parapets. The one who took liberty with the king must have been a silly-blabber-mouth rubbished as the Munh-Lagi—Urdu has a beautiful phrase—Manzoor-e-nazar, for the likes of her. Then there were the dancers and informers generally called ‘Baandi’ or ‘Daasi’ To end it all a legend from a classic. A king was gifted a ‘Fruit of Immortality’ by a sage. The king thought he had grown old enough and that his queen might need it more than him. He gifted it to her. She was in love with the Senapati—Commander of the King’s Forces thinking that he needed it more than anyone else. She gifted the fruit to him. Now, he thought it was best deserved by his ‘keep’ who also was in the harem of the king. As if the fruit was an object to be handed over to the next runner in a relay-race, the fruit landed with the ‘keep’. She thought of her poor predicament and seeking more proximity to the king in the hope of becoming his favorite queen, passed it on to the king. Now please don’t ask me what the king thought of it all but of the kings, queens and the concubines. tribuneindia/2013/20130610/edit.htm#5
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 03:13:10 +0000
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