Set in the mythical kingdom of IndraPurba hidden somewhere in the jungles of early 1800s Borneo, this love story takes on epic proportions where customs and traditions, spirituality and superstition rule amidst the splendour of gold and precious stones.
The story begins over twenty-five years earlier. A woman falls in love with a commoner but is forced to give up her relationship to fulfil a prearranged destiny of marrying the future Sultan of IndraPurba. The man is taken away and incarcerated for the duration of his life for daring to court the future ruler’s intended. The man eventually dies of a broken heart. The woman swears that once she becomes Permaisuri, or the Queen, no one will endure the same fate of pre-arranged loveless marriage as her.
But as the years went by, and memories faded to a misty blur, the newly enthroned Sultan and Permaisuri set aside the past they could not control and ruled the kingdom with love and compassion, often lavishing their subjects with grand mass celebrations where gold dust would literally rain from their palace onto the streets below.
Ten years after their ascension to the throne, and after numerous failures to produce a child, the prayers of the soothsayers and the entire kingdom were answered and a beautiful daughter was borne to the Royal Couple. They named her Putri Sakti, appropriate as it literally means Magical Princess, a gift from the Gods.
Putri was indeed a special child, as she seemed to emanate a divine glow previously unseen before. Streams and rivers would sing as they bathed her, jungle creepers would entwine themselves to form shelter wherever she walked beneath them.
The Sultan was so happy that he commissioned a new Palace, a Mahligai to be built in the image of her beauty. It was to be grander than any other palaces past Sultans have built and it would be a monument dedicated to Love. It was an incredible feat of marble and jewels to accomplish but the Sultan insisted that it should be finished by her twenty-first birthday.
As she reached her twentieth year of life, her parents knew that the time would come for her to be married and promptly looked for a suitable partner in the kingdom.
But the coming of a passing traveler, an adventurer who chanced upon the kingdom when he strayed off the path his expedition was on, changed the tide of contentment. John Fenton was a handsome man, a mixed breed of European and Asian blood, a look that was unique if not out of the ordinary in one race, one language, one religion IndraPurba. And for this reason of uniqueness, and for many more, Putri found herself falling in love with this man who stumbled upon her while bathing in a pond filled with flowers.
The love they developed was beautiful and pure. A kind of love that no other could possible imagine nor understand; that is, no one other than Putri’s mother, whom when young too suffered the pleasures and pain of a forbidden love. Her memories returned, this time sharper than if they were to have just happened.
When the Sultan discovered their secret affair, initial sadness turned to anger as the soothsayers told him that the man was not from the kingdom but worse still was a breed lower than the lowest caste in IndraPurba. He therefore deemed the blood that ran in the man’s body to be dirty and impure, unworthy of his daughter’s affection nor the family inheritance and lineage. The anger turned to rage when it was discovered that Putri was with child. New of this was kept within palace walls.
He sent his palace guards to seek him out, in spite of the desperate pleas of both the Permaisuri and Putri. The soothsayers wrongly accused the man to be the illegitimate child of the man the Permaisuri loved as a young woman. A false sense of betrayal set in, as if the past had returned to haunt him for a crime he never committed, the crime of intentionally taking away someone else’s love. Realising that he had never fully gotten the love of his wife, the Sultan turned his anger towards John and ordered him to be impaled and hung outside the palace gates. Putri begged for his life but to no avail. But in deference to his daughter’s tears he chose a seemingly more humane way of killing: death by a cocktail of the combined poisons of the most deadly insects found in all the land, prepared by the ever present soothsayers.
John’s and Putri’s love was strong and they swore that it would survive any cruelty that the world could offer. The Permaisuri decided to use her influence to overturn the Sultan’s orders of barring Putri anywhere near the dungeons, and help her gain access to him. Realising that their time on this world was short, all they could do was to share a moment of bitter silence. Putri then told John that it was not without reason that their love was allowed by the Gods to happen, and it was with purpose that their love was to be subjected to the cruelest test known: forced separation. But even as her tears fell onto John’s cheeks as she held him in her arms, she told him that separation was not eternal for their love would surely show them a way back to each other. In her arms, John died.
When the Sultan heard of his wife’s actions, he cried treachery. And as punishment for disobeying his word, he banished Putri to the highest tower of the Palace.
The Permaisuri, stripped of her powers, swore that true love would conquer all and the Sultan and the soothsayers would not be the true victors. The soothsayers had after all made false claims before. Fearing that the Permaisuri might turn against them, they laid another claim that she often visited the spirit of her former lover in her dreams, something she could not deny as she could not control sometimes dreaming of their youth together. Outraged, the Sultan turned against her and ordered her banished into the outer regions of the kingdom. She was so distraught of her daughter’s fate as well as that of her own that she flung herself over a high waterfall, causing the water to turn white as it mixed with her own blood.
When news of this reached the Kingdom, the subjects were uncertain of how to react. How could water turn white? Did this signify that the Permaisuri was innocent of the accusations? How can their beloved Sultan allow these events to happen? They turned their anger towards the nearly completed Mahligai, for the very symbol of love no longer seemed to retain any meaning.
Much of the monument was destroyed, all the years of toil was put to an end within a day. The Palace guards could do little to stop the destruction. The Sultan managed to appease his people eventually but a gloom had befallen the kingdom.
From the tower, Putri could see what was left of the Mahligai. Her father, unrepentant, refused to allow her to leave the tower until after the child is born, after which he intended to throw it into the same river his wife died in. He wanted a new beginning where his daughter would marry a man of his choice, thereby appeasing his subjects even more. He was in fact so confident of his plan that he chose a handsome man, one of his ministers’ sons who was popular with the people, to be the betrothed.
But Putri no longer had the will to exist. And on her twenty-first birthday, she gave birth. As her daughter emerged, Putri relinquished her life force and her strength to her. Her father could not do anything to stop his own daughter from giving up. For even as he had power over the lives of his subjects, he had no control of human will.
As her life slowly drained from her body, Putri could feel the presence of her mother and her lover. She kissed her newly born daughter and named her Mahligai, as she wanted all to understand that the true Palace of Love was not something made of marble and jewels, but a child that is conceived out of true love. Her daughter bore the combined features of the Permaisuri, John and herself, was thusly the living Mahligai of Love.
Word spread. The kingdom stood still in awe of this child. For her existence marked a new beginning for all.
No one really knew what happened to the Sultan afterwards, nor of the meddlesome soothsayers. All the people of IndraPurba would say, when the colonists finally discovered the isolated kingdom, was “Seindahnya cinta Putri Mahligai!” or “How Great the Love of Princess Mahligai!”.
The End
