Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
DIYA
I turned sound of a throat being cleared and smiled uneasily at the butler waiting to speak to us. I wondered how much he had heard. After all, I didn’t want my marriage to become the hot topic for the palace gossip.
“Princess, your mother has asked the two of you to join her in the attic,” he said politely.
I followed Isha to the attic that occupied the whole of the fourth floor.
“Promise me there’s no Manjulika hiding in the attic,” I muttered as I wheezed my way up the stairs.
“The only crazy in this house is you, sweetie,” said Isha, shaking her head with disgust. “Throwing away a chance at finding true love.”
“If that chance ever comes my way, I’ll jump at it,” I promised her with a crooked smile. “This isn’t true love, Isha. This is a compromise.”
“But you’re two of my favourite people. I want to see you happy together,” she wailed.
“We don’t need to be together to be happy, honey. For one, I’ll be happy as soon as this nightmare goes away. See? I’m very easy to please.”
“Like I said. Delulu Queen,” she replied, pushing open the heavy double doors of the attic.
I was expecting it to be a dark, dusty space with cobwebs and the promise of ghosts, but the attic at Trikhera Palace was clean and filled with light streaming in through the big floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Bhai Sa had the attic redesigned after Baba Sa passed away,” remarked Isha as she led me all the way to the back.
The room spanned the width of the house and looked like a vintage store with separate sections for furniture, books, artwork, jewellery and clothes.
“I could happily get lost here for hours,” I squealed. “This has to be my favourite room in the house. And look, it’s all so well-organised.”
“Ohmigod! You can take over the space if you like it so much. Bhai Sa pays someone to keep it decluttered and organised, and we rotate all this stuff around the house throughout the year. You can take on that job,” said Isha with a grin.
Decluttering and organising a room full of antiques? I almost swooned in delight at the very thought.
“It could give you some ideas for your home staging business, Diya,” said my mother, examining a kundan choker closely.
She sat inside a huge wall safe full of trunks of jewellery. All palaces had a tijori room that kept their ancestral jewellery safer than a bank locker. Of course, a lot of royal tijoris these days were bare because most royal families had sold their jewels to stay afloat, but we had managed to hold onto our heritage, as had Dheer’s family. And seeing how a lot of the trunks seemed new, it looked like his family had added to the jewellery that they had inherited from their ancestors.
“What business?” asked Isha in surprise.
I rolled my eyes at my mother and began to browse through the ancient poshaks preserved so carefully for years.
“Ma thinks I need a backup plan since I will soon be too old to keep modelling. Her words, not mine,” I said drily.
“There’s no expiry date for a model as long as she looks the way Diya does, Aunty,” said Isha.
“I’m thinking about your future, Diya. You will have to give up your career now anyway, and home staging is a good career option for you,” argued my mother.
I turned to gape at her, wondering what new nonsense this was.
“Why would I give up my career? I’m booked through for the next nine months, Ma.”
“Chee! How can the Maharani of Trikhera prance about half-naked on a stage?” cried my mother, looking at Dheer’s mother for support.
“Ma! I’m a supermodel, not a stripper,” I replied, aghast at her backward thinking.
I might have become a model by accident, but I loved my career. I was famous, I made a lot of money, I got to dress up in gorgeous clothes, and I got to travel all over the world. Why would I want to give all that up?
After Dheer broke my heart, I wanted to get out of the palace before I was entombed in the wall of pity that seemed to have come up around me suddenly.
I was sure I’d lose my mind if someone called me Poor Diya one more time. I’d had modelling offers since I was a teenager, but I hadn’t even considered that as an option because I was going to marry Dheer and live happily ever after. When he announced his engagement to Raksha in public without even giving me the courtesy of a heads-up, I realised that there was nothing to hold me back from exploring new avenues in life.
I was done with being the good girl who lived by the rulebook. I wanted to do something drastic. Something that would shake me out of the numb and miserable existence that was my life.
With my heart in my mouth, I picked up my phone and called one of the model scouts who had slipped me her card when I was summer skiing in Austria at the age of seventeen. I had held on to the card for some reason, and I was glad I did. I didn’t know if she’d even remember me, and maybe she didn’t. Maybe at twenty-one, I was too old to start modelling. But she agreed to video call me immediately, and before I knew it, I was on a flight to New York to have my portfolio created by one of the best photographers in the industry.
Baba overrode all of Ma’s protests and gave me the freedom to explore a career for the first time in my life.
“Look at her, Rajeshwari. Just look at her! There’s no life in her eyes. I want my old Diya back, and if this modelling thing is going to distract her from her pain, then I’m all for it,” he said fiercely when my mother threatened to go on a hunger strike if I got on that plane.
He ran a hand over my head.
“Go and conquer the world, beta, if that’s what you need to do right now. Just promise me you’ll come back to us when you feel better,” he said softly.
“I will, Baba,” I promised tearfully.
As the flight took off, I promised myself that I wouldn’t shed any more tears. Not over Dheer. Not over anyone. The new Diya was going to be cold and hard. I was going to hide my heart away so that no one would ever get a chance to stomp on it like that bastard had done.
And through dint of sheer hard work, I had built a very strong career. I was the face of many international brands and I was one of the few Indian supermodels on the international runway. I wasn’t going to throw it away for a temporary marriage.
I turned to Dheer’s mother worriedly because while I knew that my father was my biggest cheerleader, he wouldn’t be able to support me if my in-laws asked me to stop working. Thankfully, Padmini Aunty was smiling.
“Raji, I’ve seen Diya’s pictures in fashion magazines. They are very tasteful, so I don’t see why she needs to stop working after marriage,” she said, making my mother almost catatonic with shock.
Poor Ma was sure she’d get a lot of support from my future mother-in-law, but she had underestimated her broad-mindedness. Padmini Aunty had never put any restrictions on Isha. She could come and go as she liked, unlike me. I had got my first taste of freedom only when I went to New York to become a model.
My mother bristled angrily but she couldn’t show Padmini Aunty the sharp edge of her tongue, so she changed the topic.
“We’ll see about that. Achha, I will send for Diya’s trousseau tomorrow morning.”
“What trousseau?” I asked, wondering where this trousseau had sprung from.
Ma looked a bit uncomfortable as she explained.
“It’s all the stuff that I had collected nine years ago, beta. I’m glad it’s finally getting used.”
I flushed with embarrassment as I realised that she had put together a trousseau in anticipation of Dheer’s proposal nine years ago. But why had she held onto it for so many years, I wondered. The why didn’t matter. I didn’t want anything that reminded me of the past, including the trousseau.
“I told you I don’t want a big wedding, ma. All I want is a simple varmala ritual.”
“What about the pheras?”
I had no intention of making vows that I did not intend to keep, so the saat pheras were out of the question.
“No pheras. No big fat Indian wedding,” I said sternly.
“You’re marrying the Maharaja of Trikhera, you fool. Not some commoner who can be content with a simple varmala.
“Raji, the child is right. Let’s defer the grand wedding to a time when this mess has been cleared up. Right now, we just need the Goels to back off, and a quick wedding is what we need.”
“But what about all those clothes I bought for you?” grumbled my mother.
“I’ll wear them later,” I insisted.
“Since you like vintage clothes, would you like to browse through the clothes here and see if you want to wear any of them for the wedding? I have Abu and Sandeep on speed dial, so even if you want new outfits, we can have them made immediately.”
“Thank you, Aunty, but I’d rather look through what you have here because I love the idea of wearing an outfit with some history behind it. Something that has been worn by the women of your family because that has way more significance than a brand new outfit.”
Padmini Aunty smiled and cupped my face gently.
“That’s how we preserve our royal heritage, my dear. That is all we have to remind us of our glory days - stories and some old clothes - but when we put them together, they create something very magical. Come, let me show you some of our ancestral fabrics. Isha has worked very hard to restore them and preserve them carefully.”
“And I know just the outfit for you,” squealed my best friend, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me to a row of clothes hanging in muslin garment bags.
She rummaged through the rows of clothes until she found what she was looking for. She pulled a heavy bag off the hanger with a grunt.
“This must be ten kgs at the very least. It’s our great-grandmother’s wedding saree,” she panted as she laid the bag on the carpet and unzipped it slowly.
I gasped at the beauty of the fabric inside. It was a heavily embroidered dark rose-coloured silk saree with real gold zari.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, running a finger over the soft silk.
Isha took it out of the bag and shook the saree gently to open it up, and then she draped it around me loosely. The colour made my skin glow, and the fabric moulded itself to my body lovingly.
“You look so regal,” said Isha. “Do you like it?”
“Love it! I would love to be married in this saree. What do you think, Ma?”
“You don’t want to know what I think,” replied my mother acidly. “But that’s a gorgeous saree, and you will make a lovely bride.”
She burst into tears and I rushed to her side as Isha folded the saree carefully and placed it in its bag again.
“What’s wrong, Ma?”
“Everything about this is wrong! The Sisodia-Shekhawat wedding should be the event of the century instead of a secret affair like this. It’s as if Dheer is ashamed to marry you,” she wailed.
Her words made me think. Was that why Dheer agreed to a small marriage? If that was true, then why did he talk about forever? I shook the thought aside. It didn’t matter if he was ashamed to marry me. It wasn’t as if this marriage meant anything.
“That’s not true, Raji. Dheer wants to give Diya the kind of wedding she wants. If she wants a big wedding, she can have one. This is her choice,” explained Padmini Aunty.
“Fine, but when all this is settled, we’re going to have a big celebration, and you will use the trousseau I put together,” warned my mother sternly. “Now go and put on some face-pack. Your skin looks haggard.”
I rolled my eyes at her but was glad of the excuse to leave the room. I decided to take a quick shower and a nap because I hadn’t slept last night.