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Decoding the decadence

More than just a murder mystery, Shivani's "The Raja is Dead" lifts the curtains on the inside world of the royals

LIFE BEYOND FABLES Shivani Singh says it's hard for royals to shed the feeling of nostalgia PHOTO: V.V. KRISHNAN

It's always fascinating to saunter into a royal mind. And if it's by invitation it becomes all the more exciting. One took one such walk in the corridors of power with Shivani Singh, whose "The Raja is Dead" has just hit the stands. Released by Harper Collins, the book is a murder mystery, but beyond the premise it's a study of the royal psyche by somebody who has seen the decadence, or "the lifestyle" as Shivani puts it, from close quarters. Shivani, who hails from the royal stock of Madhupur in Orissa, calls the setting a literary device and desists from making any social or political comment. Though Shivani has made herself a part of the proceedings and, very much like in the novel, her mother was the princess of Madhupur, she asserts the plot is fictional, but "there are characters and conversations, some of which have become part of folklore, that sparked my imagination and have made it to the novel."

Set in a period when India was poised to break the colonial shackles and the Indian monarchy was in a mess, her fictional Sirikot is also in Orissa, because Shivani believes though the Rajput royalty all over the country was alike, the pockets in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa seldom find exposure.

The myth

The novel demolishes the myth that royalties were patriarchal. "Inside the patriarchal façade, ultimately it was the women who held control from the zenana. The strength of the raja was judged by the concubines he had. The female folk pampered their masculinity, showed complete modesty, and used the ground conceded to wield power. The ranis had their own land and servants." Shivani says it's wrong to say the British were responsible for the rot. "It was their own doing. They just exploited it."

Having dabbled in documentary filmmaking, Shivani creates visual images in her novel. The pinkness of the Raja's feet, the inability of the prince to walk on his feet at the age of eight, the lament of a prince that the only competition he had during school days was from his sister, the subservience of teachers, bring out a world that existed within a world.

"These have been used as metaphors. The royalty had to grow beyond puberty. As for the lack of education, it was again a way royal ladies used to control their men." She adds,

"The concubine, et al, however, created an entire ecosystem in which everybody was dependent on the raja. The raja was called Vishnu chalantu (the walking God). That's why the artists, the craftsmen, who created the splendour, used to knock at the raja's doors long after he had become a common citizen. It's this sense of nostalgia that prevented many royals from merging with the outside world. It's getting diluted with generations but it is certainly there."

Shivani, who lives in Gurgaon now, reveals that some fellow royals have remarked she has been hard on them. In the same vein, she points out that royalty is still around: just the faces have changed. "The multinationals, the celebrities with their entourage, all behave and reflect in the same way."

ANUJ KUMAR

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