My dearest Lashykanna,
Here I am again , with my plans to cover this episode on Monday having had to be put off due to domestic travails. But here goes now, pointwise, as in my last review.
1. The James Hadley Chase atmosphere persists, though slightly diluted, enveloping the first section concerning the badly injured Sayyid. There is also, as a leavening factor, the generous, courageous and above all compassionate Vaid Babu, who is prepared to risk imprisonment and possible death in order to save a seriously hurt Muslim. He does this, sans any bravado, out of a purely humanitarian impulse, just because the semi-conscious man mumbled something about needing to save lives. The Vaid Babu, though I am sure he would never have heard of Hippocratus, is the living embodiment of the Hippocratic devotion to preserving life and healing the sick and injured.
To return to Mr.Chase, consider the following passages:
Branches and vines whizzed painfully past his face throughout - as if nature was also awaiting an opportunity to catch him off-guard and knock him off balance...
'If you must hide, hide where the common man would fear to tread' was the Ustaad's often-given advice...
And before he could put his thoughts into action, two of the dastardly arrows had found their mark on his back - one after another, slicing through moving flesh... Pulling out the embedded blades with his left hand, he'd deflected his steed onwards and right - his bloodied perseverance against the paralysing spasms, a war in itself. For, however crudely the fibres of his muscle tore from the flight, however wet his clothes got from blood wasted, he had to continue fleeing his thousand enemies - a thousand other lives depended on it. 'I HAVE to stay alive...'
I could practically smell the blood from the flesh torn apart by the arrows, and I held my breath as Sayyid struggled to master his body and make it do his will in his desperate struggle to outwit the pursuers and stay alive. Stay alive so that he could get to his Sahib and alert him to the deadly danger threatening him before it was too late.
The way in which he evades capture is as clever as something out of The Three Musketeers, or perhaps Edgar Allan Poe's The Purloined Letter. For Sayyid, crouching flat on the back of his obediently silent mount, his purple shawl and the grey horse merging into the dark background, was literally hiding in plain sight!
When he regains consciousness at long last, after fully four nights, there is another smell, that of blood and the vaid's medicines, all soaking thru the bandages on his torn chest.
The passage that follows, between him and the vaid, marks the dawning of Sayyid's trust in a stranger who risked death to save him, and his profound, if unspoken gratitude for that. Trust that overcomes his reluctance to accept food from strangers, and gratitude that makes him part with half of his meagre resources as a token of appreciation.
As he sets out again on the last lap of his dangerous journey back to his mentor, I could not find words to laud Sayyid's cold courage, and his unshakeable dedication to the task at hand. This is the real Right Stuff!
2. Now this is pure, undiluted noir. It looks and sounds like a Gestapo interrogation, with the same, sickening smell of a Nazi prison, a mixture of fear and blood, permeating the area. One can see the Ustaad, pretending to be one of his own men, ratcheting up the pressure on the captive - a problem that was tied-up, yet tight-lipped- stage by excruciating stage.
I wish I could have been there, to witness the unerring, phenomenal skill with which Akbar pins the man down with a succession of knife throws, the weapon, in each case, just a hair's breadth away from his quivering flesh.
And almost, if not more frightening than the acts themselves are the languid casualness, the deliberate delays, the steadily escalating psychological pressure on the cowering wretch who is hanging on to the last, tattered remnants of his pride.
Till this pressure reaches its crescendo, with the display of the clothes of his son and daughter, a hint of the terrible fate that he first fears has befallen them, and later is sure would befall them if he continued to hold out. As Akbar's men make a mock start for the man's house, I could practically hear his will snap, like a green twig bent too far, as he calls out to them to stop.
Mission accomplished. Accomplished without having had to resort to the slightest brutality towards the man's innocent family, or even to inflict any physical injury on the captive himself. This, of course, is what distinguishes the Ustaad from a Gestapo man or, though it would be sacrilege to mention the two of them in the same breath, Khalil.
One last point regarding this section. Oddly enough, or perhaps not so oddly at all, I was entranced by the opening passage. It is not just beautiful, but though at first sight it seems somewhat irrelevant, it contains, in the last line, a very deep and pertinent truth.
Covering its many ridges and imperfections, the trunk chose to be clad in a simple bark of brown. And yet its branches above sheltered a world in itself - the green of moss, the bustle of bees and the lively hum of several families of birds.
Its roots were as firmly grounded as could be, asking very little of the soil. And yet it was powerful enough to face any raging storm that nature hurled its way.
However; if a disease were to worm its way within, eating away at its vulnerable core, all that would be left of this once powerful entity would be a hollow shell.
3. I am sure that by now you had realised, Lashykanna, that after all this grimness, some light relief was called for. This is amply provided by Heera's giggling maids and their quips about a "half nod, and that if we are lucky!" from the Mansabdar Sahib, which lightens the heart of their mistress, already enormously relieved by her experiment having worked miraculously on Mohan Banna, who is now, after ages, able to walk once more without pain, though on crutches.
Nothing could have been more apt, in this context, than the reference to the quiet sunny smile of the baisa of Parnagarh. An unsurpassable smile. A mother's smile... the happiness a mother would feel when finally letting go of her child's hand, confident it would walk without support. For age has nothing to do with her affection for Mohan Banna, an affection that is protective and warmly nurturing, which is the very essence of motherhood.
4. Now we switch back, if not to grimness, to the agony of the revelations that crush Heera body and soul, at least for a while. It is not just the reopening of horrors that she had suppressed with enormous difficulty, it is also the realization that her beloved sister had been, all along, used as a pawn by a scheming, grasping fraud of a man who had pretended to love her only to get at Parnagarh.
But worst of all is the bitter truth that it was her mistake, however unintended, which had now made her Khan Sahib vulnerable to the machinations of the vengeful Kunwar Mahendar.
I loved the passage that brings alive the desolation that grips Heera, and wracks her innermost being:
'Will this ever stop, Khan Sahib?' Heera slumped forth, her face buried, her body shaking vulnerably in his embrace like a child orphaned all over again, bawling louder than she'd bawled at the sight of her sister's death. 'Will we ever live worry-free?'
And Akbar, realizing that she was grieving the past and afraid for the future in a true sense now, lets her cry her heart out till it becomes lighter.
Still, he knows that he needs to do a bit more to restore her mental and psychological strength for the battle ahead. I absolutely loved the passage where he literally moulds her - who had surely never held a bow in her life into a true archer. An archer who has mastered the taraka mantra of a dhanurdhar, to make herself one with the arrow and an extension of the bow.
But what an exceptional pupil she made, relinquishing control of herself to mould into his charge as he deemed fit...Her pose was tranquil as the thickets - with not a flicker of movement on her
And she hits the bullseye. 'Open your eyes and see what we've achieved...'
Thus might Dronacharya have exulted when Arjuna pierced the eye of the bird!
'Use me as a prop to fight life's battles' What an interesting lesson he'd taught - one she'd never forget!
He has pulled her back from the edge of a bottomless pit of grief and guilt, back to being his partner, his strength, his BIGGEST bolster. She is still and attentive as he discusses his new hope, Kunwar Tejraj Singh, and shares with her his worries about Sayyid and about the Aidabad safehouse, of which he had so far received no update at all.
I loved this passage which shows how much Heera cares, not just for her Khan Sahib, but to be able to wipe away every line of worry and strain from his brow.
He'd smiled. But all Heera noticed were the worry-lines around it that refused to disappear. Stirred her soul, it did. Making her heart flutter, like that cherished little chrysanthemum earlier, from a sudden drift of longing. A longing to spoil him with laughter and love - even if only for a few moments - without a care for what'd happened or what was to come.
In every true beloved, there lies hidden a mother who wants to pamper her man as if he were her child.
5. Lashykanna, I have to go off now for a while, so I shall post this on the relevant thread, and come back and add the final part about the Kunwar and the Shehzaade later tonight. I hope you enjoy what I have done so far.
OK, here I am, and it is really tomorrow, not tonight. But I do want to finish this one, so here goes!
I see this as a mood piece, not an actioner. For it stops at a tantalizing point, and till then, nothing has actually happened. What stands out here is the mutual naapna tolna, the assessment by each of his interlocutor, part of the process, especially in the case of the Shehzaade, of deciding how best to deal with the other.
It is like the preliminaries in a fencing match, and the two are well matched in cunning, amorality and deviousness, though the Shehzaade perhaps has a slight edge. Not just because of his overwhelming power, or because he can think in several directions at the same time, and also because, all said and done, he is the better man of the two, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the less evil of the two. And this makes him a better judge of those, like Akbar, who are really good.
The Shehzaade's initial impression of Mahendar is decidedly negative, and it is a pity he does not stick to that and send the creep off with a flea in his ear. He comes close to doing that when he finds him less enraged, or even concerned, about the horrors perpetrated on his fiance, and more interested in another man's wife, viz Akbar Mahmoud Khan's Begum, and this is something that riles the morally strict Shehzaade.
Unfortunately, like the hook that gets caught in the mouth of the fish, and will not let it go, the mention of Harka Bai stirs his curiosity, which then holds him in thrall as Mahendar pours his poison, drop by drop, into is unwilling ear. Add to this the dismaying mystery of how this Rajput prince had found out that Akbar Mahmoud Khan was the Ustaad, and the Shehzaade is, to continue with the angling metaphor, well and truly hooked.
At this point, when I was breathlessly waiting for the copy of the scroll to be read out by Mahendar, and especially to know with how much of a deadpan face the Shehzaade took it, you, my dear girl, abruptly shut up shop. One of these days, some reader is going to sue for inflicting heartburn on her/him, so watch out!š
6. I really liked the little bit at the very end, about the modus operandi of Akbar's intelligence scouts. So very casual, so very normal, and thus very likely to be unsuspected. So much cleverer than the elaborate drop systems beloved of both intelligence agencies and spy novelists, usually of two strangers seated back to back on park benches, and one leaving behind a newspaper that the other unostentatiously picks up! So the little chap who barges in with the Marwari snacks for Mahendar is Akbar's mole in his Huzoor's palace? Lovely!!
Affectionately,
Shyamala Periyamma
Edited by sashashyam - 7 years ago
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