This book imagines the life of Queen Ruupmati of Malwa, in (supposedly) her own words

I have no memory of how that previous life of mine ended. After the images of the maulshri mansion, the only scene that still flashes through my mind occasionally is that of an unknown rider on horseback stifling the scream of a little girl and the dark night reverberating with the sounds of galloping hooves. Later, an angry male voice crying out in pain and someone swearing out loud.

Did the struggling little creature bite into his fist? Then, that impenetrable darkness of ice-cold water, stamping out consciousness follows. Was I playing the role of that little girl on the last night of my previous life?

No one ever gave me the details of exactly what took place that night; neither Jaddu Baba nor Ketki or anyone else. Pandijju did drop a hint once, in a roundabout manner: “Ruup, you’re truly the daughter of Reva Maiyaa, she’s the one who gave you a new life.” Then his gaze suddenly turned inward, as though whatever he had intended to add was best left unsaid.

It wasn’t that I did not try to find out about the cataclysmic change in my circumstances. I did, but no one seemed willing to discuss it.

Eight years have passed since I was discovered floating unconscious at the riverside near Garh Dharmapuri. The Garh and the little hamlet around it are located on a small island between two streams of the river Reva, with the massive ramparts of Mandavgarh Fort rising up to merge with the steep hillside in the distance across the shallower of the two streams.

I had no better way of keeping a count of the passing years than the Navraatras, because the festival days were unforgettable. Pandijju would be on a fast without any food or water for all the nine days. He would only take a frugal repast of fruits and water after sundown, just enough to keep body and soul together. His eyes would sink deep into their sockets and lips crack of dehydration. Even then, he would keep chanting the Durga Saptashati from memory through the nine days.

I would be scared: is the old man going to die! O Krishna, is the lone star of my solitary existence about to fade out? I would shut my eyes and pray for his life. He’s the only support for my intellectual growth, for my literacy even. If he were to disappear, what would become of me, my Lord?

But I needn’t have worried. Pandijju’s ageing frame still had a lot going for it. On the Maha-ashtami day he would himself offer an animal sacrifice to Goddess Durga. The heavy sword in his seemingly frail hands would come down with a whistle and sever the goat-kid’s head in a single stroke. The floor of the Devi temple in the rocky basement of the Garh would be spattered with blood. Even his large wooden chest of books, grey with age, would be sprayed with tiny red droplets.

The first time it happened, I shut my eyes in anticipated horror but Pandijju remained unaffected. After all, what did an animal’s life matter to him? He had seen his own father’s severed head rolling on the ground! Pandijju himself never mentioned the incident. I only learnt of his father’s tragic end from someone else but more on that later.

On the last day of Navraatra, Pandijju would wipe the floor of the underground temple with his own hands, and serve me a sumptuous meal as reverently as though he were feeding the Devi herself. After I had finished eating, he would put a silver coin on my palm as dakshina, and even touch my feet in a symbolic obeisance to the Devi. I could never forget the day, and no sooner was it over than I began to count days until the next Navraatra.

The lean frame of Pandijju must have borne the rigour of at least fifty odd Navraatras. He never wore anything more than a dhoti and anga-vastra, a muslin wraparound for the upper body, and the sacred thread with pavitri, a silver ring to keep it from impurities. His head was always shaved, a thick Chanakya-like choti, a tuft of hair dangling behind from the back of his head. His eyebrows were stitched together in a perpetual frown on his fair-skinned forehead as though he was forever immersed in deep thought.

But the sandal-paste tilak in the middle of the frown seemed to reflect an inner calm and the deeply humane streak of his persona that was dearer to him than any social understanding of dharma, regardless of the fact that he religiously observed all the brahmin rituals. Had it not been so, he might well have readily given a nod of assent to Rao’s execution orders, and I might not have lived to be even fifteen!

Whatever education I had was a gift from Pandijju, ranging from history, geography, arithmetic to mythology and the epics – the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. His dusty wooden chest of books was an inexhaustible treasure trove of hand- written books and calligraphies, some on taal-patra so ancient that they seemed on the verge of crumbling to pieces.

The chest had books to do with not only mythology and religion but also poetry, aesthetics and musicology. Anthologies and epics and the classics, such as the works of Kalidasa, Kalhana, Banabhatta, Chand Bardai to the verse of Amir Khusro and Vallabhacharya, were all in there. But to begin with, Pandijju was rather miserly in letting me look at the poetry volumes. He would gently try to reason with me, “Ruup, you have to first learn to comprehend the serious realities of life, you can indulge yourself in aesthetics later.”

Look at me, going on and on about Pandijju! But he is so dear to me that once I start talking of him, there’s no end to it. And then again, I don’t have any previous experience of storytelling. I have to tell you my story in whatever order I can recall events and people, as if I were taking dips in a pool of memories and coming up with whatever I can find at a given moment.

Excerpted with permission from Padmini of Malwa: The Autobiography of Rani Ruupmati, as told to Priyadarshi Thakur ‘Khayal’, Speaking Tiger.