The Great Indian Novel

by Shashi Tharoor

  His partner laughed, a harsh, guttural sound. ‘Gosh, you really were in a hurry, weren’t you? I’ve never done it this way before.’

  The voice was coarse, and Arjun, realization pouring on him like iced water on a cold morning, reached up to switch on the car light.

  That’ll be forty rupees,’ said a rouged and painted woman, blinking into his face. ‘And my name isn’t Subhadra, it’s Kameswari.’

  She swung thick legs off the back seat. ‘Though you can call me Subhadra if you like, sweetie.’ She shook her head. ‘How impatient you young boys are! Couldn’t you have waited to find a room in a hotel?’

  99

  Crass, Ganapathi? Of course it was. But this is one memoir which will not conceal the crassness of its heroes. No more than it will be embarrassed by their greatness.

  The next morning Krishna gently mocked the shame-faced Arjun. ‘I must take lessons from you,’ he laughed. ‘What subtlety of technique! Your victim didn’t even realize she’d been abducted!’

  ‘Watch me next time,’ said Arjun defiantly. And indeed, when Subhadra was returning one morning from the temple, with the sun’s rays weaving delicate patterns of light and shade in her hair (and doing so brightly enough to leave no doubt as to her identity), Arjun swooped down and swept her, in every sense, off her feet.

  The elders of Gokarnam were furious, and rose with inflamed faces to demand Arjun’s arrest. It was Krishna who calmed them down by pointing out to his father Vasudevan: ‘Subhadra couldn’t have found herself a better husband, and she might easily - you know how women are - have done a lot worse. We had decided long ago we weren’t going to subject my sister to the humiliation of being inspected like a chicken at a market by a succession of prospective fathers-in-law, who would base their final decision on the size of the dowry we could offer them to take her off our hands. In the circumstances, isn’t what Arjun has done the best thing that could have happened, from our own point of view?’

  ‘And what about Subhadra’s?’

  ‘Does any woman of spirit allow herself to be abducted without at least some degree of acquiescence? Had she disliked Arjun, she would have made his life so miserable he would have returned her to us in hours. Let us call them back, and we shall see how happy Subhadra is.’

  They did, and she was. A lavish wedding was quickly arranged, and Arjun spent the remainder of his exile in Gokarnam enjoying his honeymoon and the companionship of Krishna. When it was time for him to return to Delhi, he made one last appeal to his new friend.

  ‘Come back with me, and let me introduce you to the party elders,’ he said. ‘Your future is in Delhi.’

  ‘No, Arjun. I’m sorry, I can’t. Not now, not yet. But I promise to come and visit you before long, and to give you my advice whenever you need it.’ Krishna placed his hands on Arjun’s firm shoulders, and looked intently into his eyes. ‘It is your future that beckons in Delhi, and you must go to it. As for myself, I shall be happy to remain behind the scenes here in Gokarnam and guide you when I can.’

  Wise guidance from a detached distance: that was all that Krishna would offer Arjun, and India. It was maddeningly inadequate, yet it seemed impossible to change his mind. Just as well, perhaps, Arjun thought: it might have been worse to try to confine this gloriously free spirit in the concrete chrysalis of the capital.

  And so the friends parted, and Arjun returned home with Subhadra. How would she be welcomed into the home from which he had been exiled, twelve long months earlier? Despite himself, Arjun worried about this. He had, quite simply, lied to Draupadi, with an inland letter-card telling her he was bringing her a new maid. He knew she would not believe him, and it almost did not matter that she would not. What he wanted was for the lie to hold until the women met, when he knew it would all resolve itself, one way or another.

  Do not rush to condemn our bigamist hero, Ganapathi. He was faithful to Draupadi in his fashion, but fidelity was not the touchstone of their relationship. Arjun was bound to Draupadi by the very essence of their complementary natures, by the inexorabilities of destiny, par la force des chases. His relationship with Subhadra was of a totally different texture, one of lightness and joy; within it he had a sense of responsibility for his choice and for his love, an awareness that the bonds were willed by him and not by events over which he had no control. He needed her, whereas he and Draupadi responded to a need that was greater than themselves.

  After anxiety, bathos. When she had touched Kunti’s feet and been embraced in welcome by her mother-in-law, Subhadra turned to Draupadi Mok-rasi.

  ‘I’ve really been looking forward to meeting you,’ she said, the sincerity glowing in her eyes. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’

  ‘I wish I could say the same,’ Draupadi replied.

  The situation was, in a word, fraught. The two women eyed each other for a moment in - Ganapathi, I cannot resist the phrase - a pregnant silence. Then, almost simultaneously, they both rushed to the kitchen sink and were sick.

  Subhadra’s son Abhimanyu and Yudhishtir’s heir Prativindhya were born less than nine months later. And from the moment their foreheads met painfully over the kitchen sink, the two women became the best of friends. It was, in its own way, only natural; for they shared more, Ganapathi, than the closest of sisters ever could.

  And it was no accident, after all, that Sunda and Upasunda had been men. It would have taken the gods a good deal more than a male Tilottama to break the elemental bonds of sisterhood.

  The Sixteenth Book:

  The Bungle Book - Or, The Reign of Error

  100

  And as with our heroes and heroines, so too our nation’s politics were subject to the confusion, the misunderstandings, the casual couplings and startling intimacies of our story. After an undistinguished and diffident first year in office - during which Priya Duryodhani seemed far more conscious of what she did not know than of what she could find out - the country went to the polls in its fourth general elections. We should not have been surprised at what happened, but we were: though the Kaurava Party retained power thanks to the absence of any real alternative, we lost seats all over the country to a motley array of opposition groups. In half a dozen states non-Kaurava majorities had a chance to form governments, something which had not occurred since Karna took his Muslim Group out of the country. They seized their chance as best they could, cobbling together opposition coalitions based more on arithmetic than principle. From the first day it was apparent that their political miscegenation could not last, but the very fact that these parties had got into bed together at all, and penetrated so far into our citadels of power, was deeply galling.

  ‘If we had stronger leadership,’ said Yudhishtir bluntly at the post-election meeting of the Kaurava Working Committee, ‘this would not have happened.’

  He had grown into a severe, almost ascetic figure, his thinness and baldness reminiscent of Gangaji’s. He was beginning, too, to be known for fads that rivalled the Mahaguru’s, his interest in micturition mirroring Gangaji’s obsession with enemas. But there the resemblance ended. For Yudhishtir’s self-denial did not extend to his conjugal entitlements with Draupadi; his vegetarianism, which included a taste for walnuts, pistachios and Swiss chocolate, could hardly be considered Spartan; and his sense of righteousness gave him a look of perpetual self-satisfaction which contrasted sharply with the doubt-lined wisdom of the Mahaguru’s face.

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Duryodhani asked sharply.

  I’m not suggesting anything, I’m saying it quite clearly,’ Yudhishtir retorted. ‘I think this party needs to be led from the front if it is not to go on losing elections and state governments.’ He glared at her balefully. Yudhishtir had won his own re-election from Hastinapur quite easily; Priya Duryodhani, though standing in the safe seat her father had arranged for her in his electoral heyday, had witnessed an erosion of her majority.

  ‘I think that if the elections have shown anything, it is that the people want a change,’ Priya Duryodha
ni said. ‘I represent that change. The Kaurava Party can’t do without me.’

  ‘I’m willing to put that to the test,’ Yudhishtir responded.

  ‘Now, now, calm down, we can’t go on like this,’ I intervened. My own position as the party’s elder statesman had taken a bit of a knock in the elections, for I had been comprehensively defenestrated by a firebrand trade unionist who must have been in short trousers when I first became a minister. But then I was not the only one to have lost his seat by having it pulled out from under a complacent behind. And I had a duty to prevent the party tearing itself apart. ‘There is merit in what both of you are saying.’ I was rewarded by resentful glances from both. ‘We have lost seats, that is an undeniable fact; and as a member of the party’s leadership, it is clear to me that the leadership should accept its responsibility for the defeat.’ I directed these words at Yudhishtir, knowing that steam was issuing from Duryodhani’s ears. ‘At the same time’ - now I turned to our Prime Minister - ‘it is equally true that most of us who have lost are those who have come to be known as the Kaurava Old Guard. Priya Duryodhani is certainly not part of this Old Guard and cannot be associated with its seeming unpopularity.’

  ‘I should think not,’ the Prime Minister concurred. Scant thanks for my deliberately having omitted to point out that she was, instead, widely regarded as our creation.

  ‘Dhritarashtra taught us,’ Yudhishtir said self-servingly, ‘to respect the institutions of democracy and the will of the majority. I suggest that we follow the same precepts within the party. It is time we really elected the party leader, instead of leaving it to a small group of elders.’

  ‘What are you saying, Yudhishtir?’ I was frankly aghast. ‘Are we now to parade our internal differences before the world? Democracy, as you put it, if carried too far in the wrong places, can only jeopardize democracy where it ought to exist. If we reveal dissension in our choice of a leader we shall only strengthen the hands of our enemies. A political party is like a family, Yudhishtir. A family does not decide in the street who will cook its dinner tonight.’

  ‘So democracy, unlike charity, does not begin at home?’ Yudhishtir asked, his lip curling.

  ‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’

  ‘But it’s you who put it that way, VVji.’ Yudhishtir took care to keep his tone mild. ‘And yet, you couldn’t really know, could you, never having had a family yourself?’

  That hurt, Ganapathi, I don’t mind telling you. And yet, my pale son’s enforced celibacy had effectively removed the direct genealogical link between Pandu’s heirs and me. Yudhishtir was less my family than Priya Duryodhani was.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Duryodhani said. ‘Let us by all means elect a Prime Minister. It may not be such a bad thing to free the Prime Minister from dependence on a small group of unelected elders.’

  Her words sent a shiver through me. I heard in them a portent of all that was to come.

  ‘Yudhishtir, Duryodhani, listen to an old man and be reasonable,’ I pleaded. ‘This is not the time for the Kaurava Party to tear itself apart over an election, whatever be the merits of the argument in favour of one. When we are weak, when we are reeling in pain from the body blows of our opponents, we cannot take a step that might bring us crashing to the ground. There is a compromise possible, and I plead with you both to accept it.’

  ‘What is your compromise?’ Priya Duryodhani asked suspiciously.

  ‘There will be no change of Prime Minister,’ I said, ‘because at this time it is imperative we show complete loyalty to Duryodhani and faith in our original choice of her.’ I raised a hand to forestall Yudhishtir, who already seemed about to speak. ‘But, in order to accommodate those of a contrary view, I propose that a new post be created, that of Deputy Prime Minister - and that it be offered to Yudhishtir.’

  Once again, Ganapathi, I had acted for the greater national interest. But this time I was only to delay the inevitable course of history, not to facilitate it.

  Both putative parties to the compromise demurred. But after many hours of argument, everyone else in the room came to the conclusion that the arrangement I had proposed was the least undesirable of the available options. In the end, Duryodhani and Yudhishtir had no choice but to agree. They did so like actors obliged to perform what our Bombay film-wallahs call a love- scene, concealing their mutual detestation only when the cameras roll. At the press conference held afterwards to defuse the prevalent rumours of internecine conflict, Yudhishtir was his unsmiling but correct self. A journalist asked him what exactly his new and unprecedented designation meant. Would he be a sort of functioning chief executive while the Prime Minister presided over the Cabinet like a Chairman of the Board?

  ‘You can look it up in the dictionary,’ Yudhishtir said humourlessly. ‘A Deputy is a deputy.’

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ concurred Duryodhani, relieved.

  And Draupadi Mokrasi, still beautiful, began to appear plump, her instinctive smile creasing the flesh of her face in the slightest suggestion of a double chin . . .

  101

  Of course it could not last. Priya Duryodhani, confirmed in power with the next elections five years away, decided never again to endure the humiliation of having her position determined by others in this manner. She had seen and learned too much over the years to need to be subjected to this.

  And she realized, too, that having reconfirmed her as the Prime Minister, the party elders would not proceed against her in a hurry. Her task would be to shore up her position so that by the time they did, she would be ready for them.

  Determination had always been Priya Duryodhani’s greatest asset. Once she had made up her mind and realized the strength of her post-election position - there was, after all, only one Prime Minister, and she was it - the change in her style was dramatic. She shook off her uncertainty as a palm tree casts off its fronds. Her public diffidence turned into assertiveness; her insecurity she converted into arrogance.

  I saw how my mother was hurt,’ she said once to a foreign interviewer, ‘and I was determined not to let that happen to me.’ She allowed no one to acquire enough power or influence over her to be able to hurt her one day. Strange, Ganapathi, is it not, how the lessons learned by little girls so often go on to defeat the biggest of men.

  With the party elders, whose compromise had both saved and embarrassed her, she was increasingly cold and distant. She began to let it be known that she believed it was our traditionalism and conservatism that had reduced the party to its present state.

  As for her Deputy Prime Minister, the stiff and straight-backed Yudhishtir, she simply ignored him.

  ‘I can’t take this much longer,’ he confided to me one monsoon day, as the rain stormed down on to the streets like liquid buckshot. ‘She treats me like a stranger, disdains to respond to my every suggestion. The most I can get out of her is one raised eyebrow, like this.’ He attempted to imitate the arched facial gesture for which Duryodhani was already famous, and succeeded only in giving himself a twitch. ‘I’m Deputy Prime Minister but I know less about what’s going on than my own chaprassi. Hardly any files reach me, and my annotations on the ones that do are never acted upon. What a wonderful “compromise” you got me to agree to, VVji.’

  And then one day Yudhishtir found out a Cabinet meeting had been held without his even being aware of it. The Prime Minister’s Office said the usual notification had been sent; his staff swore they had never received one. He demanded an appointment with the Prime Minister to discuss the matter. When after three days she had still failed to grant him one, he did the only honourable thing open to him: he resigned.

  ‘You’re a fool,’ I told him, echoing Vidur’s advice to Dhritarashtra at the beginning of the global war, advice which if heeded then might have prevented the partition of the country. ‘An empty seat never benefits the one who has vacated it.’

  ‘It was a question of honour, VVji,’ Yudhishtir said stodgily. They say Priya Duryodhani opened a bo
ttle of champagne at home that night. But these days, Ganapathi, you can never rely on the servants’ gossip as you could when their masters were British.

  *

  And Draupadi Mokrasi, running a fever, took to bed, complaining of alternating hot flushes and chills . . .

  102

  With her most visible rival out of the way, Duryodhani began openly to promote her own cause within the party. She made speeches about the immense sacrifices made by her father and family for the cause of national independence. She spoke of Dhritarashtra’s socialist ideals, and how they had been betrayed by the ‘reactionary’ elements among the Kauravas. The Kaurava Party, she averred, had to find itself again under her leadership. She appealed to all ‘progressive’ and ‘like-minded’ people outside the Kaurava Party to join her effort.

  One of the first to heed her appeal was Jayaprakash Drona’s bearded and populist son, Ashwathaman.

  Since their days in the countryside agitating for rural reform with the Pandavas, Drona and his son had disappeared from political prominence. The sage himself had retreated into the honourable obscurity that our country accords to those who have performed their good deeds and voluntarily retired from the fray. Whether it was disillusionment with the slow pace of change that demotivated him, or a simple reluctance to attempt to repeat his unhappy experience in government, Drona set himself up in an ashram with very few followers and devoted himself to detached reflection on the nation’s ills. Though he was still fit and well and his ‘special skills’ had not entirely rusted with disuse, his was a respectable and singularly unthreatening activity. So Drona was left in peace by everyone, surfacing occasionally - very occasionally - in the press with a pious utterance about peace, Gangaism (Drona was a post-Independence convert to the Mahaguru’s dogma of nonviolence) or land reform. Every year in May there would also be a small, three-line item buried on the inside pages of the newspapers, sometimes under the rubric ‘news in brief’ and sometimes, if space was available, under the heading ‘jd celebrates -th birthday’. It was a dutiful acknowledgement of the historical stature of a man who had not yet passed into history, precisely the sort of treatment, Ganapathi, that I am accorded today. And it served then, as it serves now, as an annual reminder to the politicians and the editorialists to brush up their elegies for the day when Yama’s inexorable countdown reaches its predictable end.