Malkan Singh Of The Central State In India Poem by Rajendran Muthiah

We were scrambling up a hill
towards Thathathri Temple in Mount Abu.
We pushed past many
for we were sleepless tourists
capturing a quarter of India in days ten.

A tall man in Safari suit
with a half-foot length
of unpruned mustache
on each side of his face
was trekking up
with gun-toting guards
preceeding and following him.

“ Shoot”, our Tamil teacher quipped
and screwed up his own
quarter-foot mustache
that made him often venerable.
The tall man turned back.
His fierce eyes of a tiger
shook me to say to comfort,
“ They are strong like Hercules
to climb up with their guns”.
They smiled and kept calm.
A queue above the hill
was crawling into a hollow place.
We skipped some people
and got sooner into it.
But the long mustache builder
was not a snob.
He let some to overtake him
and then he crept into the cave,
prayed in calm, scattered some coins
and came out smearing
sacred ash on his forehead.

We were busy taking photographs.
But he sat quiet on a rock
and watched around the valleys.
We evaded the line
rang the bell and came away.
The scaring mustacher
rang the bell thrice,
listening everytime to the echo
and viewing the distant hills.
Then he got away in silence.
“ Who is he, with this much of saintliness? ”,
when our History teacher asked,
his guard replied with a beaming smile:
“ Oh, he is Malkan Singh,
the murderer of ninety men
and a King-Maker in the Central State.
He reclined his arms before J.P, the Gandhian
and reconciled to be a recluse now”.
We were tight-lipped
and looked at him with awe
and hurried down with a snigger.
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