The Immortal King Rao

1

King Rao left this world as the most influential person ever to have lived. He entered it possessing not even a name.

In the beginning, his mother-to-be stood at the little general store in the center of her village, eyeing the tins of soap piled neatly on the countertop facing the road. It was 1951. Radha had seen this brand before, on excursions to Rajahmundry with her father and sister, but finding a stack of soap tins at their shop, three high and two wide-

PEARS PEARS

PEARS PEARS

PEARS PEARS

-was something else altogether.

Radha was eighteen, and she hated Kothapalli, this hot, wet nothing of a village, nestled in the elbow crook of one of the many canals delivering the Godavari River east to the Bay of Bengal. Its name meant, simply, "new village," the equivalent in Telugu of all the Newtowns scattered around the English-speaking world. Several variations on the name could be found in the region. This particular village was distinguished, if that word could even be used, by the arrangement of its small center around a circle where the roads converged. In the middle of the circle stood a peepal tree, under which men congregated in the shade, sitting on overturned wooden crates borrowed from the general store, while stray mutts made languid tours around them, hoping for food scraps. Around the circle were the government school, the offices of the tax collector and the village council president, the vegetable and fruit vendors with their carts, a shop selling farm tools, and the general store before which Radha stood.

International products such as Pears, a British brand, did not often appear in Kothapalli's store. The shopkeeper, one of the most reviled men in the village, was a mean, eagle-eyed miser when it came to his customers, but sycophantic toward the politicians whose favor he required. He was a fat, sweaty man, with the skin of a dead tamarind tree and big, curling lips, black at their edges and pink inside, which he pressed together in a grotesque way that reminded Radha of a fish. He sat behind the counter, perched on a high stool. When customers weren't around, he passed his time reading or filing his nails with a scrap of sandpaper, his nostrils narrowed in concentration. Behind him was the storehouse where he kept most of the goods: groceries, toiletries, housewares. Under the counter in front of him were the grain and jaggery, in big jute sacks, and the cooking oil, in an aluminum tin.

On the countertop, he displayed items meant to draw the attention of people passing by. He kept his jars of sweets there, for instance, and now that school had ended, children pushed past Radha and lingered in front of the counter, ogling the treats that sat just out of their reach. "Are you going to buy some?" the shopkeeper wheezed at them. He never stopped wheezing, a condition that, because he was a mean man, inspired revulsion rather than compassion. "If not, get out of here!" But a curly-haired boy produced a scarred little coin and asked what he could get for it, and the shopkeeper sighed and began haggling. The rest of the children crowded around, offering their advice about the best use of the coin. And now Radha swiftly grabbed one of the soap tins, stuck it in her armpit, where no one could see it, and ducked around the corner. Once out of the shopkeeper's sight, she ran past her house, which doubled as her father's school for Dalit children, to the Muslim graveyard. The roofed, four-arched stone structure in the center had always been her secret hiding spot.

Most people avoided the graveyard, that deathful place, but Radha feared nothing. She was a wild-haired, big-boned, dark-skinned girl. She intimidated people; she knew this. It was partly because Appayya, her father, was a headmaster, and partly because she had brains and an inborn imperiousness. The village store, with its occasional imports from other lands, was the closest Radha had gotten to a more cosmopolitan life. But soon, she had determined, she would move to Rajahmundry. She had applied to the teacher's college there. For someone like her to be accepted-a girl, a Dalit-would be unusual. But her father had connections, and she was sure that when she told him of her plans, he would help execute them. She would leave him behind, and her sister. They both doted on her, but her father and sister had never understood each other. She imagined them living, after she left, in embarrassed silence, neither able to begin a conversation that wasn't about her. Still, it gave her only a slight pang of guilt. She'd always had the feeling greatness was in store for her. She was, after all, King Rao's mother-to-be.

So the air of death that lingered in the graveyard did not faze Radha. She and her younger sister, Sita, had grown up playing there. Now, crouching in a corner of the structure and making as little noise as she could, Radha unboxed the soap and carefully peeled off its paper wrapping, so she could get a better look and feel. She'd never committed such an act as this, but what had she done, exactly? She didn't consider it stealing, because she planned to return the item. The soap was cool and light in her palm. It had rounded sides and the loveliest color, clear but with a deep amber tint, like an amulet that belonged at the breast of an ancient queen. She turned the soap around in her hand, enthralled. It was the advertisements on the radio and billboards, promising that Pears could turn bad skin good, that had made her so desirous. When she lived in a hostel in Rajahmundry, she decided, she would bathe with one of these.

What Radha wouldn't have realized-but I can't help but remark upon-is that Pears had been selling its soaps across the British Empire for a long time. In 1899, at the height of British colonialism, one advertisement had read, "The first step towards lightening The White Man's Burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness. Pears' soap is a potent factor in brightening the dark corners of the earth as civilization advances." By the time the Lever Brothers, William and James, acquired Pears toward the end of World War I, it had established impressive markets around the world, including in India. Several years later, when Indian soap sales fell, William Lever suspected that Gandhi's Swadeshi movement was to blame, so he purchased a little soap-making plant in Calcutta to help him position his products as just as indigenous as the local stuff. The move proved prescient. Soon afterward, in one of the world's first transnational mergers, Lever Brothers combined with the Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie. When India gained independence and codified its economic nationalism, the Calcutta plant meant Unilever's Indian subsidiaries could operate under the same terms as any Bombayite competitor. At first, the nationalists resisted. But as Radha entered high school, their opposition was fading. Hence the arrival of Pears at Kothapalli's store.

Radha noticed someone coming into the cemetery. She froze. It was Pedda Rao, a boy in her class at school, and he was coming toward where she hid. Pedda's father, the richest Dalit landowner in the village, was a friend of her father's. Pedda had an identical twin brother, Chinna, but their personalities were nothing alike. Chinna was confident, ambitious, and popular, friends with Brahmins and Reddys as well as Dalits; Pedda was bitter, lazy, and friendless. Pedda peered into the structure, then stood looking at Radha as if expecting something. "Hi," she said, standing. She had meant to shoo him off with her tone, but her voice, when it came out, surprised her: wet, soapy.

He must have heard it, too. He didn't answer, but he didn't leave, either, and after a moment he sidled inside and stood facing her. She supposed he had come there for some private business of his own. But she had been there first. He should wait his turn, she thought, and she gave him a look of annoyance meant to convey this. She was holding the soap at her side, feeling its good, cool weight.

"Is that the soap you stole?" Pedda said.

She reddened. "I bought it!"

Pedda laughed bitterly. "That's not what the shopkeeper said. I was walking by and heard him telling the children to run and find you. If they did, they'd get a reward. They're wandering all over town. I thought you'd be in your usual spot."

The atmosphere between them was charged. If they were both boys, someone might have spat. Instead, Pedda moved close and made a completely unexpected move. Taking her by the shoulders, he spun her to face one corner of the structure and stood right behind her, his hot breath wetting her neck. A strange pressure, hard and soft at the same time, pushed into the curve of one of her hips. She, with the soap in her hand and her desire-not for him, but for the soap, for the life she had promised herself-went mute. His hands cupped her hips and pulled her to him, and he bucked against her, while she stood perfectly motionless, holding the bar of soap tight in her fist. At one point she thought he had unzipped his pants. She should scream and flee, that would be the correct thing to do. But there was that desire. She was not herself. She cried out, and he did, too, spurting a warm jet of fluid onto her langa.

From down the road came the shopkeeper's voice. "Hey, who's that in there?" At once, he was at the arch, peering in. "What's this? What's this?" Pedda...