One look convinced me that story of her escape could not be true: the fall from that height would have killed both rider and horse...
Some years ago I spent two days and nights at Orchha in Madhya Pradesh. It is a small town comprising mainly of a fort-palace complex on side of river Betwa and market built round a square with temples and small shops on the other. It is redolent with myth and legend of historic romances, the crystal clear Betwa running through jungles past Jhansi on its way to join the Yamuna.
On my way back I had a whole day to spend in Jhansi before catching the evening train to Delhi. All I knew about Jhansi was that Rani Lakshmi Bai who fought a losing battle against British rapacity ruled over it for many years till the sepoy mutiny of 1857 which Pandit Nehru and other patriots called the “First War of Independence.”
They made Lakshmi Bai its valiant leader in Central India. Netaji Subhas Bose raised a regiment of his National Army named after her. During British rule it became an important cantonment with sizeable community of Anglo-Indians.
I went on a guided tour of the town. The high point was the castle cum-palace on top of a hill in which Lakshmi Bai had spent her married life and as a widow. There is little left of the palace but the walls are intact.
I was shown the spot on the ramparts from where she is said to have jumped on horseback to a mound below and escaped. It gave a splendid bird’s eyeview of the cantonment and cluster of bazaars below.
One look convinced me that story of her escape could not be true: the fall from that height would have killed both rider and horse. I was eager to know how she had eluded the British encirclement to continue the fight for freedom and how she died. I was eager to read what Jaishree Misra had to said about it in her recently published novel Rani (Penguin).
Jaishree Misra lives in London and works for the BBC. She researched material available in England and the National Archives in Delhi. She made several visits to Jhansi and orchha to get a feel of these places.
She takes no liberties with historical facts or personalities but fills in the gaps using her own imagination. She weaves a fascinating tale of fact fiction of the Rani’s life. She describes it a romantic novel.
The Sepoy Mutiny breaks out in 1857 first at Barrackpore, then Meerut. It spreads across the Indo-Genetic plain.
Rulers of erstwhile Indian States including Bahadur Shah Zafar, nominal Mughal Emperor, the Peshwa in Uttar Pradesh, Begum Hazrat Mahal of Avadh in Lucknow, Nana Phadnavis, Tantia Topi and Lakshmi Bai in Jhansi join the rebels. Terrible atrocities take place in which women and children promised safety are butchered in cold blood.
The British do worse by burning down whole villages, bayonetting men and women or hanging men at random.
One thing is clear that motives of the populace who threw in their lot with rebellious sepoys were different from the princelays who joined them. For the latter, it was not patriotism but property.
As others saw us
In 1563 AD Cesare Cederici left her native Venice “very desirious to see East parts of the world”. Four years later he arrived in Vijayanagar. He spent three years in Indian mainly in Portuguese possess in of Goa and Western Coastal towns Mangalore and Cochin. Besides noting lawlessness created by gangs of robbers he gave a vivid account of Sati.
He writes: “When there is any noble man or woman dead, they burn their bodies, and if a married man die, his wife must burn herself alive for the love of her husband and with the body of her husband.
As in other parts of India when this savage custom prevailed, the widow decked herself in bridal attire and was taken in procession to the husband’s funeral pyre.” And when dieth any great man, his wife and his slaves with whom he hath carried population burn themselves together with him.”
(From Beyond the Three Seas, edited by M H Fisher ,Random House.)
Norman Mailer
So farell then Norman Mailer,
Famous for having six wives
And many mistresses.
Your famous back
was The Naked and the Dead
Obviously you spent much of your life being naked
And now you are dead.
