35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

242
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
memories of times he’d barely known himself. With all his retainers,
relatives, hangers-on, and the antique deaf-mute – who even
squeezed the toothpaste onto his master’s brush for him twice a day
– the rajkumar now lived scarcely better than the least of his subjects.
He did have a kind of power, true, largely owing to Venkatagiri’s
remoteness from the authority of central government, but it was really
just the power to solve problems at his own expense.
On the far side of the palace was a small free-standing structure
with steps leading up several feet to its only entrance.
‘Bhagwan Baba used to stay here when he was just a boy,’ the
rajkumar told me mournfully, presumably suffering another twinge
of remorse about the starlet. ‘My father was his devotee since the
very early days. Many miracles we saw Baba perform here. Many
miracles.’
His father had even been given one of the lingams Baba
materialised during a Sivarathri festival. I asked where it was now.
The rajkumar wasn’t sure, didn’t seem concerned.
‘Bhagwan’s room has been kept just as it was when he left it,’ he
told me with a measure of pride.
Since everything in the palace had been left untouched since it
was built, as far as l could see, I wondered why he found this so
unusual. I asked if I could look inside the room, but he said the key
had been lost years before. I peered through dusty windows – the
only ones I’d come across here that were actually glazed – seeing a
tidy and thoroughly unremarkable room: one small bed with a
white cover and tangled skeins of mosquito netting hanging like
sails from a frame, a side table, a desk. Considering that Sai Baba
had last stayed there in 1943, the place was in remarkably good
repair, and still a definite improvement on the rotting cavern where
the rajkumar currently slept, held court, and spent most of his time.
I never saw the Madras house where he spent the rest of his time.
Crossing a nearby courtyard, l noticed the man I had first
encountered on arriving at the palace, the one who’d run off when
I announced my business. Seeing us now, he dodged behind a column,
peering round it with mad, furtive eyes. Who was he?
‘He is cousin,’ the rajkumar confessed, adding that the fellow
had ‘some mental sickness.’ This ‘sickness’ necessitated his