The setting is the 16th century and the narrator the Maharaj Kumar, eldest son and heir apparent to the throne of the kingdom of Mewar. Across the centuries, he speaks to us—a melancholy, sophisticated prince—in a voice as heartbreakingly vivid as a lover exchanging confidences over the phone. His story is indeed tragic in its particulars, shot through with fratricidal envy; with the ruthless logic of palace intrigue; with plagues, wartime savagery, and above all, with unforgiveable betrayal. It's this betrayal which defines the novel, gives it its name and animates its protagonist's thoughts. Yet for all the pathos and horror it evokes, this is neither a harrowing story, nor a sad one.
It's a particular triumph, I believe, that Nagarkar is able to present his central character as endearing and thoughtful, complete with moral dignity even as he contemplates military massacre. The prince's moral universe is the traditional Hindu one, where the quest is for a personal definition of Truth rather than unquestioning faith in any one doctrine.
We enter the saga of the prince's life shortly after his marriage and remain beside him till just after his disastrous confrontation with Babur in the battle of Khanua.
From the prince's vantage point, we see this and not the famous second battle of Panipat as the decisive battle. The combined forces of Rana Sanga of Mewar and his Muslim and Hindu allies were unable to extinguish the flame of conquest in Babur's eye. The Maharaj Kumar tells us he knows their foe is equipped with field canon and state-of-the-art weaponry. When he shares with us his despair over his father's reluctance to favour new technology we hear the all-too-familiar contemporary tale: the stubborn, suicidal resistance to change makes for monumental failure. In the final analysis, according to this historical prince's fictional ruminations, his father's fear of losing face wasgreater than the fear of losing all of India. Though I personally think of the Mughal invasion as a tremendous asset to the net historical capital of India, it is easy to feel a twinge of retrospective regret on the part of that distant coalition, routed by one wily, but determined conqueror from Kabul.
Thus the title of the book permits itself to be open to several interpretations. From the perspective of territorial conquest, the Indian forces were the cuckolds of fate and technology. From the perspective of prim-ogeniture, the Maharaj Kumar is constantly being cuckolded by his scheming younger brother and his own mother being routinely up-staged by her co-queen, Karmavati. While the intimate lives of all other characters are similarly shown in a state of continuous foment, it is the Maharaj Kumar's own wife who raises the infidelity stakes to another plane altogether. Yet, for all that a cuckold is the butt of every tradition's derision, in this case the prince gradually gains dignity as he struggles to find his footing on the slippery slope of absolute rejection. He settles for a type of vibrant resignation, while following what I believe is a pantheist's understanding of love.
He lives in an era before monotheism and its associated deification of the monogamous bond had become the industry standard against which all human conjugal configurations would be defined. Thus he loves severally but not promiscuously, intensely yet variously. His partners are not flaccid and simpering beauties but highly flavoured individuals, fiercely intelligent, supernaturally gifted and above all, passionate. Since this is primarily a work of vast fiction wrapped around a slender thread of history, we can presume the novel's women are closer to Nagarkar's own cherished fantasies of ideal womanhood than to any living females past or present. But it is a happy conceit. The child Leelawati and her special friendship with the prince is portrayed with great tenderness and delicacy.
Astonishingly for a book of this size, like a young river cutting a gorge through our resistance to facing yet another literary door-stopper, it's both deep and swift. Nagarkar has set a superb precedent in this, his third novel.
