The Maharajah’s Ephemera

By Mukesh Williams

There is a painted picture of a mustachioed brigand in a burgundy-and-white turban on the second landing of the staircase in the hallway. His nose has a Muscovite pinch that makes him look gaunt and gritty. The man discloses or, let us say, hides different emotions in his large brown eyes, from condescension and derision to resentment and fear. It depends from which angle you were observing.  He hides his chocolate skin behind his white robe as if hesitating to reveal himself. The faded rust of the chair adds equipoise to his redolence. The oil on the canvas is flaky like fish, accentuating shadows and revealing a new logic to his dark unconscious. His body is vanishing like the Cheshire cat. A thin patina of soot and grime from the medieval kitchen below has covered the patina of wealth in the painting. Or some street painter had callously applied a fresh coat of paint hiding the original details. During his time, not much thought had gone into keeping accurate records for posterity. Over a century has gone by with only intermittent chroniclers who were busy glorifying rather than accurately representing the past. Sometimes history obfuscates the original perpetrators and their ulterior motives. When this happens conjecture emerges as truth. Even the intention of the narrator may be occasionally suspect when he expects his characters to tell the truth but hesitates to do so himself.

Let us return back to the objet petit a in the painting. Though the brigand’s hands and legs have fused with the chair, his face and feet are sharp and alive. It seems that if he had an opportunity he might step out of the painting with just his face and feet and scuttle the marble floors. There is an unattainable desire in the painting that resists description. Well, his feet are shod in Jodhpur cow leather sandals. The leather is umber as if it was dipped in gasoline or mustard oil. He once had a fleet of classic Rolls Royce cars and a pair of white tigers. He always assumed that paintings were the real abode of the rich and mighty if they wished to represent themselves favorably for posterity. Much of the symbolic work was invariably done in stone or ink.

Every time I go past that painting I can smell his sweat and mustard oil. I feel he indignantly wants to strip his skin, écorché it like Leon Battista, flay it to reveal the tendons and muscles hiding in it. He is even so resentful of the artist, who painted him as if telling him, “You used me for your artistic study. And by the time you grew intimate with me I was enclosed in an ebony frame, clamped and left on the wall for dilettantes to evaluate and comment. And let me tell you it’s a lie to call me a brigand. I was a maharajah, though I did a few nefarious things during my time, which the British did not find palatable. Silly fellows with their staid Victorian values! They pulled my brother out of his inheritance by branding him effete and self-abusive. They then arranged a scholastic emollient by sending him to study at Cambridge. When he died in London through neglect and loneliness they called it fratricide.  They also took away my kingdom because they felt I was not managing it well. And they took away my gold-hilted dagger and the close-fitted scabbard. With the dagger you could get to the heart of the matter in no time. There was an umbrella carved on the hilt of the dagger. Well, all rulers aspire to the condition of immortality.”

Only at night the royal brigand is out of his immurement. He steps out of his skin and slides down the rosewood banister, all muscles and bones, into the entrance hall, smelling its corners for a firangi. He occasionally reads a book in a rocking chair. The Bhagvad Gita and Shakespeare are his favorite. He attempts to understand the concept of the dharma and karma from the Gita and the intricacies of human affairs from Macbeth. He writes in his diary, “We do what we do because we do what we do.” He reasons with himself: “This is dharma, the essence of our being which forces us to act the way we do. The dharma of Arjun was to fight; mine to rule! And, they wouldn’t let me rule.”

What does the royal brigand think about karma? Does he feel that his entrapment in the ebony picture frame has to do with his past deeds?  Or is it just the artist to blame?  He remembers how he was maligned, paraded without his turban in the streets of Karampur for his incompetence. Since then he suffered from enuresis. Nobody laughed. Most were distressed. Can a maharajah be incompetent, he inquires? A king rules according to divine will. Even England had the divine rights of kingship not long ago. How can they deny us this prerogative?

I never told you that the painting hangs in a palace that is now being converted into a hotel. It’s large enough for a hotel to both represent and reinvent the past. The scarlet and white of the painting would suit the ambience of the hotel. And from now on the painting would hang in one corner of the huge lobby, which would be called the ‘The Maharajah’s Ephemera.’ Right at the entrance to the lobby would be a white marble sculpture of a tiger. From now on the royal brigand would model in daytime and play the confessional game of the night’s ephemeron. His painting would stand like Ligier Richier’s representation during the day and move around like Leonardo da Vinci’s dismembered écorché at night. He would no longer descend but ascend the rosewood staircase, trailing in clouds of burgandy and white. The shadows would vanish in the white margins of his diary and history would also vanish like the shadows. There would be just the rocking of the chair and the luminosity of electric lights. And let me tell you the rich would have to pay through their noses to see this, whether they drove a Phantom or a Gina.

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Mukesh Williams has been published in Indian, Canadian, Caribbean, and American journals such as Indian Verse, The Journal of Indian Writing in English, Muse India, Centrifugal Eye, The Blue Fog Journal of Poetry, Foliate Oak, Plankton, and Best Poem. His poetry possesses a startling mixture of Japanese minimalism and Foucaldian coups and carries with it an uncanny postmodernist signature. His works have been quoted in reputed journals around the world from The Journal of Commonwealth Literature to The Other Voices International Project, and listed in the World Poetry Directory of UNESCO 2008. Williams has published two books of poems, Nakasendo and Other Poems (2006) and Moving Spaces, Changing Places (2007); and is now working on a third book, The Figural Moment. His latest co-authored book, Representing India: Politics, Identities, and Literatures (January 2008) has been favorably reviewed in many journals and newspapers. He teaches American Studies and South Asia at Keio University-SFC and Soka University, Japan and can be contacted through his blog site.