Kiran Nagarkar's Cuckold

I am not a history buff. I like to read about ordinary people or of characters who shaped the course of history and created the men in power. But sadly, so few writers want to talk of them.
When I got a chance to read Kiran Nagarkar's Cuckold, I was expecting yet another story of kings and the wars they fought. And on one level it is exactly that. It is the story of the Rajput kingdom of Mewar at the height of its power. There are ongoing wars with the Sultanates of Delhi, Gujarat and Malwa. We hear of the arrival of Babar in India.
But the story is presented through the eyes and voices of a lost generation, the generation that came after Rana Sangha and before the advent of Babur's dynasty. So while feeling a deep desire to throw terms like bringing the margin to the center at you, I shall desist and simply say that the book gives you history as it happened from many different perspectives. For example, Babar is presented through letters he has written, so a distant historical figure becomes more real, more human.
There are stories within stories as well. There is the story of the war of succession between the Rana Sangha's sons. Palace intrigue, manipulation, violence.... Kiran Nagarkar shows it all.
Yet another story and the one that gives the book the name is that of the triangle between the Maharaj Kumar (the Crown Prince) and his wife and her divine lover. This book is also the story of how one of India's most famous saints was created - Meerabai.
As a saint, she is immortalized in every medium but what of her life before attaining sainthood? We read of her husband's frustration at having to compete with a god for his wife's affections, a battle that he is doomed to lose. The ridicule Meera herself is subjected to and her gradual ascent from cuckolding wife to 'little saint' is documented interestingly enough to make this book a page turner.
And what of the Maharaj Kumar himself? A beautiful, young wife whom he is desperately in love with but who refuses to acknowledge him as her husband, the constant skirmishes with his brothers, the actual wars he goes to fight as a representative of his father... and the fact that his ideas are so advanced for the age he is in all make him both heroic and pitiable.
It is difficult to talk of this book without gushing about it. All I can say is that it grabs you by the collar and refuses to let you go till you unwillingly reach the last page...
Kiran Nagarkar had won the Sahitya Akademi award for Cuckold. His other book, 'Ravan and Eddie' is equally amazing. Do read both of them when you get the chance.