The Daily - The Jungle Prince, Chapter 2: The Hunting Lodge

Episode Date: November 28, 2019

“Ellen, have you been trying to get in touch with the royal family of Oudh?” Our reporter receives an invitation to the forest.For more information, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

I think it's an untold story. I came to India first in 1995 or something. What happened? What was the experience of removing the nation status of very tiny kingdoms and fiefdoms all across this massive, beautiful country? What was the human cost of taking away hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of incredibly rich kingdoms and cultures and

peoples and families one point in rajasthan we were driving as off the beaten track and i saw that there was an old 13th century fort not dissimilar to nimrana but in ruins and so we somehow went up to there and there was at the top of it the man sat there with a little fire cooking up a little you know thing of chai he was the maharaja's direct descendant oh my god and i just thought if you're a tenacious journalist there's probably 100 cyrus is still there in the regions on their little falling apart temples and fortresses who you just look and you'll see like a eight carat diamond or you'll see a carpet or something like that it's just you know it's the in between the cracks you know um tells a story Chapter 2. The Hunting Lodge So on Monday, between 11 and noon, as dictated to me,

I called the number that Princess Sakina had left. It rang and rang and rang. And then someone picked up. It was not an ordinary conversation. The person on the other end had a kind of quavering voice. I had no idea who I was speaking to. Princess Sakina? Her secretary? This is what they told me.

That I should drive to the very end of the road, into the forest, and stop the car. Get out. Walk away from the car so the driver wasn't near me. And wait there, alone. And someone would come and get me at exactly 5.30. I pondered that for a second as I held the phone up to my ear. A second passed. And I told the person on the other end, of course I would meet them alone in the woods. I said goodbye, and I hung up. Two days later, I asked the driver

to take me into the forest. We left the bustling, honking, sweaty neighborhood of Chanakya Puri and drove until the trees became denser and more tangled, almost enough to block out the light. I asked the driver to stop and got out of the car. He waited at a distance and I stood there awkwardly on the gravel road, holding my notebook, wondering what would come next. To the right and left of me, there were nothing but woods. It was totally quiet. All the sounds of the city, the traffic, the rickshaws, it had all fallen away. All I could hear were birds.

fallen away. All I could hear were birds. And so I stood there and I waited. Suddenly the bushes started rustling and a man appeared. He was an older man, kind of elfin, and his hair stuck out in tufts all over his head. But still handsome. Pale, high cheekboned, with a hawk nose. I instantly recognized him. I'd seen him in pictures. This was Prince Cyrus. He wasn't as imposing as I had expected. He was jumpy.

He seemed nervous. He introduced himself as Cyrus. It was the high-pitched voice I had heard on the phone. Then he turned and led me into the woods. But it was not easy going. There were thorns, vines, rocks under brush. You couldn't say there was a path. I couldn't see a palace.

But he was moving fast. That's all I can do to keep up with him. And I finally reach a clearing. And I look up and see the palace. Huh. It was a big, crumbling old hulk, built with massive stones. It had been built in the 14th century as a retreat for an emperor, with handsome vaulting arches in four directions. But it was crumbling under its own weight. One portico had collapsed,

and I wondered if it was safe to walk inside. When we stepped inside, it was dim but grand. The entrance hall had been carefully arranged with palm trees and elegant brass pots. Hanging on the wall was a portrait of his mother, wearing a sari, gazing off into the distance. From there we walked into a high-ceilinged central atrium, which was empty except for a long marble slab they used as a table. There was an eruption of moist, musty air and high-pitched squealing. Bats.

I could almost feel their wings on my cheek. I was looking for Princess Sakina, but there was no sign of her. Cyrus said she was away, recuperating from an injury. Recuperating where, I wondered. He wanted to take me up to the roof, just as he had done with Nick 15 years before. The roof had become overgrown with grass and trees, and we stood up there, maybe 40 feet off the ground, so that we were looking down on treetops. It was as if we were in the middle of an ocean of green.

And Delhi, swimming in the heat, seemed miles away. Over our heads, there were evening migrations of green parakeets. Cyrus showed it to me with a sweep of his arm, as if it all belonged to him. I told him I felt like I wasn't in Delhi anymore, and he said, no, this isn't Delhi. He called it his seashore. He said people everywhere were jealous of him. They wanted his view. And at that moment, it was hard to argue with him.

It was beautiful. But when we went back down the stairs, I could see how meager his life was. There was no electricity, no running water, no doors or windows, no protection from the weather. In the monsoon season, water would run in rivulets down the walls, and snakes and scorpions would nest between the stones. Clouds of mosquitoes would feed on the royal family in their sleep. Cyrus had carefully laid out a table with platters of apples and nuts, and he offered me wine and vodka and instant coffee,

but I politely declined. I noticed that there were three places set at the table. One was at the head of the table, carefully arranged, with a fine mesh laid over a water glass to keep the bugs out. He told me he set that place every day for his mother. When my eyes rested on him, in the open neck of his shirt, I could see practically every bone in his sternum, and I wondered how much he got to eat.

He told me that he was shrinking, that his sister was shrinking, that we were all shrinking. I left that day without meeting the princess. But Cyrus assured me that I would. He told me this rather formally, that his sister had decided her last interview would be given to Ellen Barry of the New York Times. Sakina seemed to be the keeper of the family history. Cyrus had shown me the leather-bound book

that she had put together after their mother's death. It was an obsessive stream-of-consciousness document that one friend who had seen it compared to Finnegan's wake. I could imagine her writing from morning to night, as imperious and single-minded as her mother. So I left, but I told Cyrus I would be back. I have to do something, don't force anything. Have some peace. And I would be back. And I did come back. One visit turned into two, then three, then four. This is a very unusual selection of fruit.

Usually you just have apples. I kept stopping by, waiting for Princess Sakina to show up. But each time Cyrus would politely explain that she was still in Lucknow. He said her injury was taking longer than usual to heal. So in the absence of the princess, Cyrus and I fell into this kind of rhythm. Well, if you didn't like monotony, you wouldn't have stayed in this place for the last 30 years. Well, that's a different story. Take the knife.

I would ask him questions about his past. When you were in the railway station, were you physically attacked? His answers were animated. Of course! But I found that they were not always enlightening. You see, this big tank, this big tank, this army people... But I found that they were not always enlightening. So I kept asking about the princess.

She seemed to be the boss here. I asked if he could call her, and he said she didn't use a telephone. That if he wanted to communicate with her, he would send a servant on the train up to Lucknow to whisper something in her ear. That seemed pretty strange, even for this family. Is there anything I can bring you from Lucknow? I wasn't sure where this was all going. Where was Sakina? Eventually, I would give up.

So I'll be back on Friday. And leave for the day. This went on for six or seven months. But then, one night, he called me on the phone. He was howling unintelligibly. I remember lying curled up on my daughter's bunk bed listening to him. I couldn't make out what he was saying at first, but then he confessed something. He told me his sister had died months earlier in the lodge before we met each other, and that he'd told no one, and that he'd buried

her alone, and that he was afraid the jackals would eat her. This whole time I had been getting to know him, he'd been living in the lodge, alone. This was the kingdom of Avad. It was on the verge of extinction. I went by a couple days later just to make sure he was okay. I brought him a bag of food from McDonald's, a fillet of fish and a chicken sandwich. After that phone call, something changed in our relationship. We became more familiar.

We talked less about Avad. Am I taller than you? Am I more tall than you? I think you're taller than me. I'm not. Yeah, yeah. Although maybe when you were younger, you were a little bit taller. Okay, I'm taller. He began to ask me for little favors. He liked music. He wanted recordings of Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story. I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen. I like to be in America. Okay, buy me an America.

I ordered him a battery-powered CD player and a recording of the London Symphony Orchestra playing Romeo and Juliet. I bought him a tarpaulin to hang over his cot so that he could stay dry while he slept. Once he asked me to kiss him on the cheek,

and when I did, he said it was the first kiss he had had in 10 years. He said, when you come over here, my heart goes doop-de-doo, Sophia Loren. Why? Because, uh, anyway. You're getting very sentimental, Cyrus. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Some of his ideas were fanciful. He thought, for instance, that he might want to make the hunting lodge into a bed and breakfast. Do something! He wondered if I could fix him up with a nice woman. He asked me for a gun. Please! But I'm not going to kill anybody, isn't it? I told him I couldn't supply it, and offered me his carpets, which I refused. He's really interested in food.

He wanted to know what I had eaten. He wanted to tell me what he had eaten. He liked ovaltine. He really wanted cheese. He liked to say that he fed himself almost entirely on mincemeat and peas. I brought my daughters over to meet him, and he served them bowls of melted chocolate ice cream, purchased for the occasion, and a glass of water which contained a tiny white swimming spiral of a worm.

Why don't you leave this place? And where should I go? Go to a comfortable room. Who will help me? Well, I think you could probably find someone to help you. In India, I don't think. Hmm. In India, I don't think. But any person whom, I really don't know. This is a very big question. If you had a chance to leave, would you?

If I have a very fine female. I will leave this place. I will leave this place. You're not going to find a fine female by sitting here. You have to go out. But where should I go? You say everything is shrinking. Everything we have has shrunk down. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now the cannon is gone. Yeah. Your sister is gone. Yeah. Your mother is gone. Yeah. The dogs are gone. Yeah. So it's close to zero. And the thing between zero and now is you. You are that last thing. Yeah, shrinking last. You've accepted this? I love to be with someone.

Huh. It's very different here during the night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The crickets are very loud. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The crickets are very loud. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, of course. Are they crickets? Yeah, there's some.

Some of them. Some of them. Some of them. I think. That's good. I was feeling more protective of him. But I was also working on a story. He was the last one left.

With Princess Sakina dead, Cyrus no longer seemed bound by the family code. Maybe he could tell me more about his past. So I asked him questions, whenever I could, guiding the conversation back to the kingdom of Avad. You were born in Lucknow. Yeah. And then you lived there. No, I was not born in Lucknow. I was born in England. In?

In England. I told you. Huh. It all just seemed muddled. Where was he born? Who was his father? Didn't they have any living relatives? When I asked him these questions, his response was often to deflect. Leave it, he'd say. For example? But let me tell you this.

Okay. The new topic is... He talked about a house they'd lived in in Kashmir before coming to the train platform. He said someone had burned it down. But he didn't want to say much more about it. Were you in the house when it burned? Yes. And everyone was viewing the smoke as coming out. Nobody came to let us know.

So I don't want to please, for God's sake, do not recall this K-A-S-H-M-I-R again. Please. And forget it. The closer I got to him, the more I thought he was withholding. And the fonder I grew of him, the more I grew skeptical. You're just a very mysterious person because I don't know who you really are. Like, I don't understand who you are. Oh, really? Yes.

Well, anyway, I'm just right sitting before you. Because one thing I tell you, really, I don't... We never got anywhere. And anyway, I had to go. I had a new assignment in London. So listen, when I go, I go in like six weeks. Okay. Would you like someone else to come see you?

six weeks. Okay. Would you like someone else to come see you? You mean to say... When I go, I'll be away. Yeah. Shall I send someone to come visit? Maybe I'll do that. On the night of my flight, I went to see him to say goodbye. And then at 10 o'clock p.m., I'll go to the plane. My flight leaves at 2 a.m. Okay, but you have to be a little early, two hours or three hours before. And he asked me this funny thing. He said, how do I get word to you

if I die? And I asked him if he was planning to commit suicide. No, I will not. But I have some other things. That runs in your family a little bit. But you've never been interested.

I do not know about the next step, but so far I'm going to presume myself. But I'm disturbed that you are, that you think something might happen to you. Yes, of course, of course, of course. But the good that you have told me that about Clara, it's okay, it's okay. Now leave this thing aside. I promised to call him. Well, then I'll see you again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I'm really thankful that you will call me. But don't do anything in a hurry. We said goodbye. But I think you're going to be okay. And so I left. When I turned to look back at him from the path, he was replacing the iron bar that separated him from the outside world. In just under two hours time, we should know if the Brexit deal as it now stands will go

ahead or not. It's also the British Prime Minister Theresa May... Hi Michael, it's Ellen Barry from The New York Times. I actually just wanted to double check something. One other person that I was interviewing said, you know, the way it used to be is Westminster had quite an effective central state, which had enormous influence. We've lost our final call.

This is the last and final call from Mr. Howard and Mr. Ruffin. Months passed before I next heard about Cyrus. I was on assignment interviewing the Swedish foreign minister when someone sent me a message. Cyrus's body had been found in the hunting lodge. I put down my bags and sat down on the floor of the airport. I'd promised to call him. A few months later, I went back to India, back to the hunting lodge to see what was left.

I talked to the guards at a nearby military installation, who sometimes would see Cyrus coming and going. And they said that in the days before he died, Cyrus had been seen shaking violently, apparently feverish, as he tried to ride his bicycle into town. They helped him make his way back to the hunting lodge and asked if he needed anything. He asked for lemonade and ice cream.

When night fell, the guard would call out, Raja, are you okay? And Cyrus would respond, I'm okay. Then one night there was no response. And a few days later, when they went to check on him again, they found him curled on the stone floor, naked, dead. I asked the guard, how can this happen to someone from a royal dynasty? He looked at me and repeated something that he said Cyrus used to say to him,

as if it explained his whole life. A couplet. We used to belong up there in the sky. Then we fell and got stuck in a date tree. Okay, yeah, that's fine. Okay. Okay. When I went into the hunting lodge, Torn cigarettes. When I went into the hunting lodge,

the place was a shambles of discarded papers that had been tipped onto the floor. It's just a litter inside. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. The carefully laid table, it was gone, smashed and upended. Yeah, well, I don't know if there's anything else to see here. It's just an empty cave. It's like none of it ever happened. I sat down on a rolled carpet and began to go through the papers that were piled at my feet,

hoping to find something that shed light on Cyrus's life. What I found were newspaper articles and letters from journalists. Your greatness, beg him to speak. Your Royal Highness. Your Royal Highness. Piles of them, carefully curated, going back to the 1970s. Sunday, August 9th, 1981. On this matter, the family had been meticulous. My editors in New York have learned of your plight and of the circumstances.

The Associated Press. And there was another mess of papers. Not newspaper clippings, but Western Union receipts, going back for maybe 30 years. They were all sent from the same place, Bradford, a city in West Yorkshire in England. And on the part of the form where the sender has to identify the purpose of the transfer, this person, whoever it was, had written family maintenance.

He had identified himself as a brother, or in some cases, a half-brother. I had spent hours with Cyrus asking about his family. He'd never mentioned a brother. In another file, I found a letter. One that was different from all the others. It was written on lightweight airmail notepaper.

And it didn't say anything about your royal highness, about Avad. In fact, it didn't have any greeting at all. It started out, I'm in so much pain that I can't go to the toilet even. It's in my hip bone, in my left thigh top. I can't sleep at night and keep getting up every hour to take pain-killing tablets. The letter went on, griping and grousing and scolding the recipient, presumably Cyrus, giving him information about the latest Western Union transfer.

So for God's sake, try to sort yourself out financially in case anything goes wrong with me. He finished the letter saying, may God help us all. Shahid. Shahid. Shahid. Shahid. This whole time, I thought I was looking at a family completely cut off from the modern world. A vestige of an ancient culture. A brother.

In Yorkshire? I kept digging. And within one of those piles was a clipping with a strange headline that said, When a history is based on errors. And it began, Have you noticed that a factual error appearing in a respected printed form tends to be copied by other researchers in the same field until, inevitably, it competes with the truth for credibility?

Say something often enough, and it may well be believed eventually. Write it down, and copy it once or twice, and it will be quoted forevermore as gospel truth. Your greatness, beg him to... Your royal highness... Your royal highness... Give us for injuring

ourselves. Your Highness is great. I am the representative of the New

Bureau of Justice. This family had been keeping secrets. That night I wrote to my editor,

if we can find Shahid, I think we'll be able to answer all of our questions. So I flew back to London and got on a train and headed to Yorkshire. © transcript Emily Beynon