Not all known stories were told in a firm unfaltering voice. Some stories simply floated around: as mere whispers or hints, as oblique newspaper references or gossip. To a young nation discovering itself, stars became family, became people to make one’s own; to worry and speculate about. Mid-20th century India had few celebrities and once talented individuals made it to the limelight, especially in the Bombay film industry, their lives were turned into national exhibits. Where the author of The Prince and The Nightingale triumphs is in extending the vocabulary both of countrywide curiosity and of decades of unsubstantiated speculation into a book that is light, engaging and refreshing. This is a story that has lived in the subconscious minds of Indians over a 75-year span and an unapologetically whole narrative does much to reconstruct what had earlier been mere rumour.
Simple writing that flows naturally as water is often the hardest to pull off. As a chronicler, Abhishek Bhatt achieves this just as he chooses to situate an immortal love story at the heart of this retelling. This also helps bridge that chasm between an old story and its youthful new audience. Yet, this is not an ordinary boy-meets-girl romance. Not only is the story legendary, it unites cricket and filmdom, royalty and the voice which features in the soundtrack of our nation’s aspirations.
A plot in motion
In a way, this theme is too ambitious for a book project. It attempts to compress the lifetimes of two extraordinary achievers and their long-hidden passionate association into just about 260 pages.
In the process of doing justice to the historical backdrop, the author has told other stories too. The primary underlying skein is the creation of independent India. Much despair and chaos went into the process of crafting a republic out of hostile kingdoms ruled by captive royals who served the British Raj. Our protagonist, the prince, is unwittingly trapped in his royal duties and his royal image: even when it damages his career or what he seeks the most out of his life, namely the lady he loves. The foundations of politics and politicking, how families were ripped apart and how elections were fought and lost in the nascent days of India as a democracy — all make for an interesting backstory.
Untold and yet referenced are the stories of Indian Independence and its eclipsed side, Partition. Their relevance on the spheres of arts and the imagination of India has been most visible in the film industry. Music director Sahil Malik and his dream film project Sarhad trace the broken dreams of homelands. Tinsel town Bombay served as a refuge for all creative artistes, even those escaping the ravages of WWII in Europe. It is against this backdrop that the middle-class Meera Apte emerges as the reigning melody queen though not without heartbreak and terrible trials in her personal life.
Also documented, some of it unwittingly, is the history of cricket in India. The prince Abhimanyu Singh Ranakpour was an impassioned player who used the knowledge, skills and understanding of the game to create a legacy, which we see even today as a leading cricketing nation. Despite the legacy of royalty, he understood that the emergence of a national Indian team of reckoning would only be possible if cricket moved out of the elite spaces of royal grounds and members-only clubs for the privileged. Real and raw cricket was being played on dusty pitches of real India. And it is there that he meets the talented Kamal Apte and his sister, Meera. The rest is history.
This is a tale of unconventional love that bats for those whose histories are complicated and who find ways to make their love work despite it all. Yet the feeling lingers that this book ought to have been written not in veiled terms and with false names, but as an unauthorised biography, placing at the very centre the two towering personalities whose stories this book dedicates itself to capturing.