Chapter 3
MEHER
S hivina let out a low whistle and made big eyes at Isha and Diya.
“I’m sensing a bit of a history here,” she murmured, and the girls nodded in reply.
How the hell did we get on this topic? I had left all of this behind years ago. And still, the mere mention of his name took me straight back to the past. To the day when all my illusions about myself, my place in society, and Samrat’s love for me were shattered for good.
I straightened my spine and dragged myself back to the present. I wasn’t going to spend this weekend brooding over the past. Instead, I was going to build my future.
“Ladies, let’s leave the past where it belongs and focus on the future. It’s time to pop the bubbly,” I said with a smile that I dredged up from the bottom of my empty soul.
At a sign from me, the butler popped the champagne, and we cheered as he handed the glasses around.
“To new beginnings,” said Shivina.
We joined in the toast, but I couldn’t help wonder why it was that my past hounded me like a shadow. Why couldn’t I ever leave it behind? Was this how it was going to be for the rest of my life? Was everything I achieved going to be overshadowed by one episode that wasn’t even my fault?
Later that evening, after a beautiful safari where we spotted a family of jackals hanging out by a watering hole, and saw a leopard skulking in the bushes behind a herd of deer, patiently waiting to make the kill, we wound down on the roof of the palace, looking out at the city of Matta all lit up under us.
Matta Palace was built to be a fortress, so on a clear day, we could see all the way up to Jaipur from our vantage point. Tonight, all we could see was a sea of lights under us, and it looked magical.
“I didn’t know Matta city was laid out in grids,” said Shivina, with a soft sigh as she leaned over the edge of the terrace with a margarita in her hand.
“That was my grandfather’s doing,” I replied. “When we gave up our thrones and titles, my grandfather donated a large chunk of land to the city to widen the roads and lay it out in planned grids. He even paid for a German architect to work with the municipal corporation in planning the layouts.”
“It’s a gorgeous city, for sure. But you’re Meher Rathore, for fuck’s sake. You can’t keep yourself locked up in a medieval palace for the rest of your life,” exclaimed Diya.
“Why not? I’ve done it for the past eight years, and I’ve never been happier,” I replied.
She raised an eyebrow in disbelief.
“Really? You - the woman who struck fear into the hearts of bouncers everywhere when she walked into a club - are happy to be stuck in the middle of nowhere?”
“Yes,” I said bitterly. “Because that life wasn’t real!
Not the clubbing, not the shopping, not the polo matches, not the pre-games, not the after-parties on yachts that drifted into international waters when we passed out after doing too many shots.
None of it was real. But the life I’ve built here is finally real.
It’s meaningful. And the best part is that nobody can snatch it away. ”
“Sweetie, there is no life here,” said Isha softly. “You’ve built yourself a lovely, green, eco-friendly prison. But that’s all it is.”
“No, Isha. I’ve built a business,” I retorted. “And I’m going to make it work.”
“But how? I know you want to turn this into a luxury hotel, but the whole heritage hotel schtick is dead. In this economy, very few people want to pay lakhs for one night in a palace. How are you going to sustain this venture?” asked Diya.
“I have an ace up my sleeve, babe. Matta is not only about a hotel stay. Our USP is our luxury safari. We have the country’s biggest leopard reserve in our backyard.
And this isn’t your usual safari with jeeps full of people crowding the known spots and scaring off the animals.
We own over half of this forest land, and I know every inch of it like the back of my hand.
I’ve come up with immersive safari packages that would put the best of the Masai Mara to shame.
Imagine waking up to a leopard sunning itself in your backyard.
Or watching the sun set from your balcony with a cocktail in your hand and a herd of deer walking home past your cottage.
Or sharing your morning bowl of fruit with a baby langur in your garden. ”
“I draw the line at sharing my bathtub with a snake,” said Diya with a shudder.
“The snakes here are far less venomous than the ones that visit your store every day,” I retorted, and she grinned.
“Speaking of venomous snakes, has anyone met Nilanjana lately?” she asked, and we all shuddered at the very thought of it.
“She’s still hanging around the palace, trying her wiles on poor Samrat,” said Shivina.
“So that hasn’t changed,” I murmured.
“She is his brother’s wife,” said Shivina in disbelief.
“His dead brother’s wife,” corrected Isha. “And if that didn’t stop her when her husband was alive, I don’t think it’s going to stop her now.”
“Ugh! Enough about her. Meher, I, for one, love your idea of doing luxury safaris, and I’d love to help you,” said Shivina, setting her glass down. “Tell me what you need.”
I sighed heavily, for what I really needed was a time machine to go back and erase the past because I could never outrun it. And as long as people remembered the incident, they would never let me back into their circles.
And if the royals of our country did not welcome me back into their circle, they were hardly going to give me their business.
Because that was what I wanted. I needed the very same supercilious, but extremely rich royals who turned their backs on me to come in droves to the wonderful safari experience I was hosting at Matta Palace.
After all, if the royals came to Matta, would the rich and famous of our country be far behind?
When my world came crashing down around me eight years ago, I had driven straight to our ancestral palace in Matta because I knew that was one place the media would never find me.
The roads leading to our palace were practically inaccessible unless you were driving a sturdy off-roader, and the local tribespeople, the clans that had been serving our family for centuries, were fiercely protective of us.
Any outsider who asked too many questions about the royal family was promptly sent on their way.
I hid in my bedroom for days, refusing to speak to my father and brother, who were the only people who cared if I lived and died, while I mourned the death of a relationship that had ended not with a bang, but in complete silence.
All I could see was the shock in Samrat’s eyes that morning, which turned to fury for a few moments, before it was wiped out by a blankness that chilled me to the core.
Before I could open my mouth to defend myself, he turned on his heel and walked out of my life. Just like that.
As if I didn’t matter.
At first, I was too shocked to cope with the fact that my life had turned upside down in a matter of seconds, but a few weeks later, the fog began to clear, and it left behind a wave of fury. Fuck them all, I thought! I was Meher Rathore. I was scandal-proof, thanks to my family’s name and money.
I returned to Jaipur defiantly, ignoring all of Ma’s arguments against the idea, and reached out to my friends.
That’s when I learnt a very hard lesson.
Nobody in our world was scandal-proof. The Teflon coating of wealth and lineage vanished when faced with the collective disapproval and disdain of some of India’s oldest and most powerful families.
I returned to Matta broken, but not beaten. Never beaten. I didn’t need these rich bitches, I told myself. I didn’t need any of them. I was going to build a new life for myself. One that couldn’t be snatched away by a scandal of nuclear proportions.
Shaurya Bhai Sa called it hiding, of course.
But I called it personal growth. When Baba Sa got tired of seeing my grumpy, discontented face across the breakfast table one day, he took me for a drive in the wilderness.
When we had waited for what felt like ages in his jeep with the hot sun beating down on our faces, he pointed to a spot in the bushes right ahead of us, and I saw a pair of bright brown eyes peeking out at me from behind a rock. It was a leopard cub.
I grabbed his arm tightly, too scared to even make a sound. Baba Sa shook my hand off and stepped out of the jeep, and I almost died of shock.
“What are you doing? Get back in the jeep,” I hissed.
“That baby needs my help, beta,” he murmured as he pulled out some minced raw meat from a steel box in the back of the vehicle.
“That baby’s mother is going to mince you like the meat in that dabba, Baba Sa. Get back in the jeep and stop trying to be a hero,” I whispered in desperation.
Leopard mothers were fiercely protective of their cubs, and I was worried my father was going to die just because he pss-pssed the wrong cat.
But he shook his head, and I cursed the streak of stubbornness that tainted my family’s gene pool. All the men in the Matta royal family were obstinate. They called it being strong-willed, but I called it being dumb.
It was this same streak that made my ancestors sign up to wage wars against armies a hundred times bigger than theirs.
It was the same streak that made Bhai Sa try and tame a wild horse when he was twelve.
He broke both his arms when the horse threw him off, but he climbed back onto the beast as soon as the casts came off.
Surprisingly, I was the only one who thought it was a stupid idea.
Everyone else was impressed with his heroism.
Well, that heroism was about to turn my Baba Sa into leopard chow, and I wished I had spent my teen years finding a cure for my family’s stupidity instead of wasting it trying to sneak into Taylor Swift’s shows.
“The mother’s dead, beta,” said Baba Sa softly, and I froze.
“What?”
“One of my men told me they found the mother dead three days ago, but they couldn’t find the cub. They finally spotted it this morning, which is why we’re here. He won’t survive on his own in the wild for too long. We’re going to take him back to the sanctuary.”
Baba Sa had recently opened a small sanctuary for severely injured animals, and I knew the local forest rangers brought their animals there to be treated and cared for until they were fit to go back into the wild.
He lured the little cub out of its hiding place with handfuls of meat, and when it came out, he picked it up gently and set it on my lap.
It looked into my eyes and let out a loud screech of protest. And just like that, I was hooked.
I threw myself wholeheartedly into his conservation program, and over the past eight years, we had rescued many orphaned cubs. They were my little furbabies, and I raised them by hand until they were strong enough to be released back into the wild.
“Baisa, dinner is served,” announced Seema softly, and I dragged myself back to the present.
“There must be something we can do to help you,” insisted Shivina, as she dug into the succulent, melting piece of laal maas on her silver thali.
“There’s plenty you can do,” I replied. “You could help me spread the word about our safari, Royal Trails. If you’re game, I’ll tell Seema to get in touch with all your assistants and come up with a plan.”
“That’s all very well, but you need to be the face of the business,” said Diya.
“And you can’t do that if you’re hiding in your palace,” added Isha.
I gritted my teeth in anger at that word. Why did everyone have to keep saying it? Fine! I was hiding. So what? I had every right to turn my back on the world that rejected me. Sure, I needed royal clientele to make my business work, but I could woo them from a distance, right? Right?
The look on my friends’ faces told me I was wrong. The only way to fish was to get close to the water. And in this case, the only way to fish was to throw a stick of dynamite in the water because those snobbish royal fish weren’t likely to nibble at my bait.
“All right,” I sighed in defeat. “I’ll show my face. But I’m telling you right now that will only drive people away. Nobody wants to be associated with the princess who shamed her whole bloodline in one night. We need to get creative.”
“Let’s first start with a party,” said Shivina gently.
I let out a loud snort of derision.
“Nobody’s coming to any of my parties, babe,” I pointed out.
“No, I don’t mean you should throw a party. I merely want you to attend one. At Mirpur Palace. My mother-in-law is hosting her annual mixer for young royals. You should attend that, Meher.”
“Do you mean the Mirpur Matrimonial Gala?” I asked in horror.
That was just a glorified marketplace for eligible royals to check out potential spouses.
And it sounded like a complete nightmare.
Ugh! I could imagine the snooty princesses whom I used to consider my friends stonewalling me the minute I stepped into the palace.
And I could easily imagine their sleazy brothers and boyfriends trying to lure me into the stables for a quick, clandestine fuck because that’s what they thought of me. Double ugh!
“Well, the thing is…that mixer is for women who are looking for husbands,” I said tactfully. “I’m only looking for new guests for my safari.”
“Sweetie, you’re Meher Rathore. Princess, glam queen, and entrepreneur.
You cannot run your business like Tulsi Travels from a small village in Jaipur.
You’re not going to wait for referrals from your friends and hope someone comes to your safari,” said Shivina with a militant glint in her eyes that scared me a little.
“I’m not?” I asked uneasily.
“Nope! You’re going to face down all the people who shunned you earlier and show them what you’re made of, because you need them to flock to your palace in droves.
Our goal is to make the very women who snubbed you covet an invite to the Royal Trails safari more than they covet the diamond Himalaya Birkin.
You don’t want to beg anyone to come to Matta.
You want them to fight each other for the invite,” replied Shivina.
“And the first step to achieving that goal is to show up.”