Gem from Jammu

Recently, it is her youngest daughter Tahira Syed whom we’ve heard singing her mother’s repertoire in Delhi, but as music lovers swear, “Malka Pukhraj ka jawaab nahin!” We may even, if we’ve lived in the north long enough, recall elders gossiping about how Malka Pukhraj nearly became the Maharani of Kashmir, courtesy her patron Maharaja Hari Singh.

There is no such talk in Pukhraj’s account, but her love and attachment to Hari Singh are evident, from the dedication which is addressed to both her late husband Shabbir Shah and “Maharaja Hari Singh, the last ruler of Jammu and Kashmir”, and even in the placement of photographs. In fact Pukhraj writes with such brutal honesty about her own failings as a person, that you cannot resist her.

Born into a poor family in Jammu, the child of a bitterly unhappy marriage, she regrets that she grew up unable to demonstrate affection to anybody, even to her own husband or children. Her talent is noticed at age nine by Hari Singh and she’s made a state employee, with great access to the Maharaja. She travels with him (once, in disguise as a male orderly), outlasts the intrigues of jealous courtiers and finally parts ways in the context of Hindu-Muslim disharmony. She becomes a top concert and radio artiste and at one time has to flee in the dead of the night from the enraged Maharaja of Patiala because she refuses to kiss his foot.

Eventually she opts for marriage with a senior British employee, Shabbir Shah, who pursues her dementedly for six years. They stay on in Pakistan after Partition and thereafter, Puhkraj’s life, between concerts, children and shikar parties, seems to have been marked mostly by failed businesses, betrayal by greedy relatives, the heartbreak of a cheating son and a growing peace in gardening and embroidery.

Tame ending? Not the way she tells her story, with a directness and wealth of detail that vivifies even the simplest encounter. A most attractive persona emerges, not because it is ideal and always well-behaved, but because it seems honest, grown-up and brimming with zest for life. Moreover, to a reader who has a frame of reference, it is delightful to read of her relish for maash-ki-daal, roast partridge and fur-trimmed brocade coats to match her saris, or popular northern sayings like “Chajju ka chaubara na Balkh na Bukhara”.

But even if these regional resonances are missed, it is with horrified fascination that we read of the gross little ways of the Erstwhiles. Pukhraj is unsparing in her description of their misbehaviour. However, while Hari Singh’s name does not remotely inspire huzzas in the contemporary Indian mind, thanks to Pukhraj’s personal prism, he compels our human fellow-feeling. She paints him as a young man with his own dreams of modernity and justice, crushed by overwhelming circumstance, perpetually mourning his first wife ‘Rani Billauran’ who was poisoned in labour by his wicked aunt.

In the end, this remarkable saga is a vivid subcontinental document of interesting people in interesting times, the kind we no longer seem to have. I mean, would you ever want to read the life story of a Kavita Krishnamurti or a Sruti Sadolikar?