UNSAVORED

"Princess", "Your majesty", "Yes, master", "Your honour", "Your lordship", ...yuk, yuk, yuk!!! ", felt Sunaina , "how disgusting , unpalatable feel these words, clipping the wings of independence of everyone belonging to this family in the name of "legend", "custom", tradition", blah! blah!!blah!!!"

Such had been the attitude of the last princess, in fact the last heir of the Mohangiri Rajwada Khandaan( Royal family) of Rajasthan , stretched along the heart of the desert province of Rajasthan, the proverbial rebel, since her very childhood, her craving for a life filled with normalcy, as far deviated from this old-fashioned monarchy lifestyle as possible.

She had been summoned by the courtiers to claim her right to the throne when the king had succumbed to depression of not having a son as a successor and had faded away to death. Her mother been the prey of mediaeval mentality that 'without giving a male heir to a family , the life of a woman is a pure waste '. A number of miscarriages and still births had snatched her away long before Sunaina had even reached high school level .

Her father's disapproval of her had resulted in sending her to a high profile board schools situated in the a renowned hill station in the lap of the Himalayas. As the years went by a love for music bloomed in the heart of the princess which led to step by step learning and practicing as a musician in small stages , restaurants and hotels. Maybe this was the last straw of frustration for her old fashioned father to be pushed into his grave.

In the days that followed Sunaina's arrival in the castle , her heart was bubbling with revolt seeing the amount of time , manpower and money spent for this maintenance of unnecessary grandeur in a poor country like ours.

Another phenomenon also happened with her on daily basis. Nightmares...Yes , she saw surreal looking , inconspicuous apparitions of gaudily clad women in her dreams , always looking sorrowful, weeping or beckoning her to follow them or crying out for help and so on...

After almost 1 week of horrifying sleepless nights which provoked her to run the hell away from those God forbidden mansions, a strange sense of curiosity erupted in her heart to know who were these women and what was the reason of se nightmares.

She took the oldest butler into confidence and asked these questions. He led her to the royal museum and showed her the portraits of her ancestors and narrated a story heard from his great grandfathers.

In those days there was the tradition of acquiring of different chunks of lands from the surrounding zamindars( landlords) and weak kings by marrying their beautiful daughters , to enlarge the domain far and wide in this process. But most of the queens had vanished mysteriously in those days...

Sunaina felt compassion for these helpless women used as pawns in the politics and that night she sat wide awake drinking gallons of coffee to confirm the fact , whether these apparitions were restless souls in real or the products of her over imaginative subconscious mind .

When the corridors became deserted and her eyelids tended to droop as night seeped in , she felt a cold inhuman touch on her shoulder. She felt herself being led by the spectre along the unknown subways to the eerie woods beyond the backyard . She jolted back to alertness when she saw the shadow of the uncanny woman vanish into a well in that backyard which was almost buried hardly meeting the regular eyes.

Next morning she summoned some workers to dig the well. She uttered a cry of disgust when a number of skeletons and deadbodies in different stages of decomposition , clad in gorgeous apparel and heavy jewellery were recovered from the navel of the lost well.

She found this feeling being ultimately unsavoury that her family fortune was tainted with the blood of innocent women. She arranged for the proper crematorial rituals of all her ancestral women.

Finally she gave away all her property to the government and escaped into obscurity to pursue her passion in music and make it her livelihood as well.

The government converted the mansion into a five-star hotel which attracted tourists and brought in good amount of revenue for the use of the poor and needy and no-one has ever complained of any unnatural sightings in that fort ever again....