Victory City(29)
Pampa Kampana did not try to force them to marry. She had always let her girls run free and grow into themselves in their own way. And now that they were women, not children, she proposed to Bukka her latest radical idea. When the goddess had spoken through her mouth she had urged Pampa to fight for a world in which men would start considering women in new ways, and this would be the most powerful novelty of all. Women, she said, should have the same rights of succession to the throne as men, and that if he agreed and the appropriate proclamation could be devised and approved by the royal council, it would then be necessary for a decision to be made as to whether the bloodline of Hukka or Bukka should determine the future of the dynasty. If she knew that this proposal would divide her family, setting her boys against her girls, she gave no sign of it, saying only that she was in favor of equality, and hoped that everyone she loved would feel the same way.
“In the Bisnaga Empire,” she said in her address to the council, “women are not treated as second-class. We are neither veiled nor hidden. Many of our ladies are persons of high education and culture. Consider the marvelous poet Tallapalka T. Consider the exceptional poet Ramabhadramba. Also, women take part in every action of the state. Consider our beloved friend the noblewoman Lady Akkadevi, who administers a province on our southern border and has even led our armed forces into battle during more than one siege of an enemy fort.
“You see around you the formidable women of the palace guard. And you must know that we have women medicos, women accountants, women judges, and women bailiffs too. We believe in our women. In Bisnaga City there are twenty-four schools for boys and thirteen schools for girls, which is not equality, or not yet, but it is better than you will find anywhere beyond the borders of the empire. Why then should we not allow a woman to rule over us? To deny this possibility is an untenable position. It must be rethought.”
At the time of the equality proposition the three sons of Pampa Kampana and Bukka Raya I were just eight, seven, and six years old. Their names, which Bukka himself had insisted on choosing, were Erapalli, Bhagwat, and Gundappa. According to Vidyasagar’s astrological charts, Gundappa meant the child would be generous and high-minded; while Bhagwat meant he would be a dedicated servant of God; and Erapalli suggested an idealistic dreamer with much imagination. Bukka conceded to Pampa Kampana in private that the boys’ actual characters largely disproved the value of the astrologer’s predictions, for Erapalli possessed no imagination whatsoever and was in fact the most literal of young fellows, and Gundappa showed not the slightest interest in the higher things, and was, if the truth be told, more than a little mean-spirited as a child, and, later, as an adult as well. Bhagwat, it was true, was a deeply religious infant, bordering, Bukka admitted sadly, on fanaticism, so that was one correct astrological prediction out of three, which was not a good score, a lower percentage, even, than Haleya Kote’s two out of five.
Motherhood never came easily to Pampa Kampana. She tried not to blame her mother Radha for that, but there was always a bubble of anger that welled up whenever the image of Radha’s self-immolation swam before her eyes. Her mother hadn’t cared enough about her to live. Pampa’s was the opposite problem. She would outlive everyone. Whatever kind of mother she might be, she would still have to watch her children die.
Pampa Kampana did the best she could with her sons, in whom she was, to tell the truth, considerably disappointed. She brought them up to have perfect manners and to wear charming smiles on their faces. But these likable attributes only served to conceal their true natures, which were, to be frank, brattish. And when word got out that the king and his council were giving serious consideration to the queen’s proposition, those natures—arrogant, entitled, perhaps even bullying—asserted themselves.
The three brothers—just eight, seven, and six years old!—stormed into the council chamber to make their feelings known, pursued by hand-flapping tutors and governesses, who were trying to calm them down.
“If a woman wears a crown,” Bhagwat cried, “the gods will call us their bad children, and punish us.”
Erapalli added, shaking his head, “When I’m a man, must I stay home and cook? And wear women’s clothes, and learn to sew, and have babies? It’s…stupid.”
Finally little Gundappa made what he clearly believed was a conclusive, clinching argument. “I won’t stand for it,” he stated, stamping his foot. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. We are the princes. Princesses are just girls.”
Pampa Kampana was seated on the dais next to her husband. Her sons’ behavior appalled her, and it was at this point that she made the shocking choice that would alter the history of Bisnaga and dramatically change the course of her own life as well.
“I do not recognize my own blood in these noisy little barbarians,” she stated. “Therefore, with a heavy heart, I disown them, now and forever, and I ask the king and council to strip them of their royal titles. The three of them should be exiled from Bisnaga City and placed under armed guard in a remote corner of the empire. They can take their governesses and tutors with them. Obviously. In time a good education may improve their bad natures.”
Bukka was shocked. “But they are little children only,” he blurted out. “How can their mother speak of them in such a way?”
“They are monsters,” Pampa Kampana said. “They are no children of mine. They should not be yours, either.”