‘The beatings must stop. My father is a supercop, and if you continue your ways we will make sure you get arrested. You will spend the rest of your days in Tihar jail. She doesn’t owe you anything. She doesn’t owe anyone anything. Understand? She is the one who decides. You will break all contact with her. Now, where is the Kindle?’
Benazir’s father, beyond a shadow of doubt, was not the ‘saviour’. I was on the wrong track. My aversion to right-wingers made me commit a serious error. Right-wingers do not just screw the world, they screw logic, common sense and imagination. And: I was not myself then. Something was wrong with my state of mind in Shimla, everyone around me seemed to be a suspect. The world I inhabited consisted of no fixed laws, everything looked more confused and complex than it normally is.
Slowly I was walking, and someone was following me.
On the Mall Road, rather late in the chilly evening, when I turned back for a brief second I noticed a mangy dog. With its cracked skin and diseases it came very close. Foul odour. I changed my pace. The dog continued to stalk, adjusting quickly to my speed. From a certain angle it resembled Goya’s dog, and when I heard the whimpering sound I was reminded of the dog in the Russian film, Stalker. Although not completely black, the resemblance was astounding and so was its mysterious appearance, as if Tarkovsky’s dog had moved to Shimla after surviving Chernobyl. From another angle it revealed large protruding eyes, and disproportionately large ears. I could smell its gutter smell. The creature following me was more or less a blackish mound of shovelled snow. Yet, it was grotesquely beautiful. I stopped at the chemist’s shop; the dog stopped, I stopped at the newspaper kiosk; the dog trotted a little ahead, and stopped. Just then a couple overtook me. I sensed a tense quarrel, the woman kept saying na, na, na, and the man alternated between foul words and charm-coated words of gentle persuasion.
I followed them for a while, but the gluey dog walked next to me. The couple stepped inside a cafe. It was basically to get rid of the dog that I, too, took refuge in the cafe, planting myself close to the window. From a high stool I observed people passing by. I read local papers. Especially the ones in Hindi. A police jeep passed by. In the wake of that sarkari automobile there was a familiar figure. Slowly she was approaching the cafe.
At first I thought the man walking beside Nelly was not with her at all. But they were together. No loud quarrel ensuing, and they walked in intimate silence and that silent intimacy, at least to me, revealed enormous tension. With a newspaper I shielded my face. By the time I stepped out of the cafe they had already melted away in the crowd.
The man walking beside Nelly was the one I was after. The way to resolve this mystery was to have a direct word with Nelly. But I wanted to respect her privacy. I had already gone overboard the previous time.
On Monday I planted myself behind the tall oak trees outside Nelly’s apartment. Serrated oak leaves, still and silent. Unshaking. I had no idea about her new schedule. She stepped out at around nine, and that is when I thought it was safe to enter. The keys were still with me. She had not asked me to return the keys to her apartment. Soon I dashed inside like a thief. Everything looked the way it was. I checked her landline, the answering machine. No new messages. Something she had said about the saviour kept coming to me. I sat at the kitchen table. No handwritten messages on yellow legal paper. But she had forgotten a significant object I was not even looking for. Her cellphone on the table. I hesitated for a minute. The phone: unlocked. I went through the text messages. They convinced me beyond doubt that someone else was the saviour, the man walking intimately beside her. The nagging feeling within me was correct. I had his phone number now and this simplified the job. Human problems, just like engineering problems, are amply simplified by numbers. Sitting at the kitchen table I was afraid, though; she may return sooner than expected. If she returns to pick up the mobile, I will simply surrender, no, I will not hide in the closet or under the bed, I said to myself. She didn’t return. Although I felt the neighbour’s eyes on me, the skinny man packing a duffel bag. I used the bathroom and left the cellphone at its original location. Then I locked the apartment.
The real saviour also lived in Shimla. Not far from the Railway Board Building. I called him. To get advice on books on Hindutava. How to save and defend ‘our religion’. How to publicise and spread our cause in North America. He said there were already agents in both America and Canada involved with the diasporics. Of course he was gauging me. Our phone conversation dragged on; he mentioned briefly our national ‘traitors’ and invited me to his place during the weekend. Before I met him I thought it prudent to call Nelly. I apologised for having forgotten to return her keys. She met me briefly at the Mall. She looked more calm and collected than I had expected. In her hand a book as usual. She had just finished reading. She was carrying it around because ‘a part of me is still stuck inside’. This is the way she put it.
That is how I came to borrow The Fall of a Sparrow, which Nelly received as her retirement gift. While going through those pages I found myself looking for birds, and I found them everywhere.
Saturday, I decided to visit the real saviour. But the moment I stepped out I had a distinct feeling that I was being followed. Someone was keeping a watch on me. On the way to the Railway Board Building (for he lived in the vicinity) I mailed a postcard to my daughters. If something happens this would be their last gift, I thought. Instead of reporting my well-being I wrote in capital letters how much I loved them, and sketched a small flame-throated bulbul for Urvashi and a hornbill for Ursula.
The saviour’s house had a sentry posted outside. The place itself was modest compared to that cottage in Mashobra.
I was led to a special room. For five minutes I sat alone before he appeared. The man was not as tall or youthful as the oncologist. The tartan silk scarf on his accordion neck could have belonged to a Scotsman. My visit lasted no longer than thirty minutes. He didn’t offer tea. I didn’t tie his hands with a rope. But being in the same room with that man stirred a storm within me and made my pulse go quicker. The beatings must stop, I warned him. This one more forceful than the previous; at the same time it carried the air of theatre. Air of repetition. He denied any wrongdoing more or less like the oncologist. But he also tried to play a dirty game. Our conversation ended with three questions, and an answer.
‘Your father. What is his good name?’
‘That man, your father?’
‘Do you know what you have just revealed?’
‘You, sir, are the unfortunate son of a mass murderer.’
Second time in my life I felt like spitting in someone’s face because of a dirty game. But my mouth was dry. I slapped his shoulder. He lost his balance, but recovered quickly, the way mediocre singers do.
The path from the saviour’s front door to the main road was very slippery. As I walked to my hotel room I felt an immense need to hear the madwoman’s chandrayan chants. Go to the moon and tell them about you. But she was nowhere around. The one question on the tip of my tongue, the one I didn’t ask the saviour, was the question about his transformation. How come after saving Nelly in 1984 he beat her up in 2009? How come after saving lives during November 1984’s Bigger-Than-Kristallnacht-Barbarity he supported the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat? I had left this question for the very end, but the way our meeting ended, I felt he simply snatched away my right to pose these questions. He played real dirty.
Don’t worry, he said as I was leaving. I have not told her about your father.
Back in my hotel room I tried to read the book I’d borrowed from Nelly: The Fall of a Sparrow. But I could not focus. So I tried to think about Father. But I could not. I returned again to the book. Instead of birds or the ornithologist, Salim Ali, my mind drifted towards tigers and jungles and young Orwell, a colonial police officer in Burma, and I thought about his essay ‘Shooting an Elephant’, and I thought again about Father. I could not focus no matter how hard I tried, so I thought again about Nelly. Seeking clarity I waded into dense
fog, and waited. When I recovered consciousness I found myself skating on memories. No ice. Sand and soil and grit and green grass. That day Nelly and I, after a game of badminton, had taken the bus to Jantar Mantar. All along I had a feeling someone was following us. Jantar Mantar, the eighteenth-century observatory, reminded her of a painting by de Chirico. Giant stone machines built by the Maharajah to forecast eclipses accurately. We stood by the sundial. A police jeep passed by. Slowly it was making its way towards the Imperial Hotel. It was Father’s jeep.
She had watched me watching the jeep longer than necessary, but ignored it. What is wrong with you? Tell me what is troubling you. You will feel better. I was about to tell her a few facts, but changed my mind. There, leaning against one of the measuring instruments, she took it upon herself to cheer me up, and told me she was a Pisces. What sign are you? The red disc of the sun was about to set, we also saw a flock of birds, a murmuration, although I didn’t know the word ‘murmuration’ then. Standing so close to each other our lips quivered. My hands remember still the warmth, the texture of her skin. Dark and soft, which produced a burning sensation. I have my period, she told me, and the lights that night were dim and low and yellow. Back in the campus we walked all the way to her place. Professor Singh’s Fiat, I see it still, parked outside the garage. She didn’t invite me in. The door slammed shut, and I stood by the gnarled bougainvillea hedge for a long time hearing voices. About to leave I heard the voices grow louder. I froze and listened. Neither Punjabi, nor Hindi, nor English, as if the two of them had invented a private lingo.
Back in the hostel I imagined a major quarrel brewing between the two of them. Unable to study or sleep in my room I decide to jog towards the Wind Tunnel, and when I was done with jogging and sweating I started worrying for her and a couple of hours later drove to their place. (Those days I used to take lessons from one of my father’s drivers. The chap would show up every alternate evening, and after the lesson he would park Father’s black Ambassador outside the hostel.) Carefully I drove the car with the big Learner’s sign, although there was no need for a car; slowly in the mottled night towards the faculty residences beyond the Solar Building. I turned off the headlights long before I arrived. All the lights of their house were on, and as I walked closer to the thorny bougainvillea, I heard a crackling sound. The living-room windows were open, curtains flapping, a stack of vinyl records by the turntable. The song is still embedded somewhere deep inside me.
Frank Sinatra’s ‘September’. Warm September of my years. A man is in step with the song. He is alone, wet in his sweat. I would like to believe him ‘sad’, I would like to see him alone, but he is neither sad nor alone. Nelly is is is with him. Extremely close. Entangled, in slow step. Not bhangra, not gidda. But another private invention. The man is exuding the kind of tenderness I had not associated with him. The kind that comes when one feels absolutely secure. His loose blue jeans rolled up to his knees, nothing on his chest, only long hair, curly and wavy, which had tumbled down from his head. She is bonded to his body and mind via a mechanism I understood (and yet I didn’t and still don’t). The slow, crackling September fills the space around them. For a second I felt and still feel Nelly was aware of my presence that night. But the second melts away. And the slow, non-bombastic, melancholic melody continues on and on and on tearing my eyes.
I called Nelly. She was pleased to hear from me. But expressed reluctance to send me to the institute director. Why do you need to take a look at the archives? All you need is in these disks. You don’t really need to go, I have digitised everything.
She had ‘everything’ on disks. I insisted on consulting the originals anyway. Something real about holding a twenty-year-old sheet of paper. Yellow and brittle, I wanted to hold the documents of crime. Smell the micro-organisms. Touch the coffee stains, and wipe the dust that might have settled on them.
The director, an enlightened squire of a man, had no problems with me going through the files. His well-preserved face seemed to say, Look, I am an important man. So don’t waste my precious time. Did he suspect I was gathering evidence? He had too many things on his plate. His grand second-floor office, adjacent to the curious turret, used to be the Viceroy’s opulent study (his residence was still called the ‘Squire’s House’). He offered me a cushioned chair and a glass of water, but all along I felt a fine mix of suspicion and hyper-alertness directed towards me. His tone gave one the impression that the man’s sole job was to protect the dusty archives from any human activity. Why would someone with your background need our services? Because I am researching colonial science. The moment I used the word ‘colonial’ he decided I was safe and became friendly. He offered me tea and asked hundreds of questions about Cornell. ‘My daughter is applying for admissions abroad.’ After tea he beckoned the clerks to make a temporary card. The babus could barely operate in English, but they used the language anyway. I spoke in Hindi, they responded in English. Finally, after a couple of hours, I received the typed permission. With reference to your letter on the subject cited above, you, Dr R. Kumar, US passport holder, and university ID card bearing number 250111/95, is hereby allowed to consult the material inside. No borrowing outside premises. The new archivist, however, was unable to locate the information I was after. We possess nothing on 1984, she clarified. The only listed files are connected to a mini crisis within the Institute of Advanced Studies. ‘Yesterday when I took charge from the director,’ she said, ‘I was made aware of the details. In ’84, a group of people signed a petition to shut this institute, and another group tried their level best to keep it running. It is a miracle that this place is still running.’
So where were Nelly’s original files, the ones she had digitised?
The new archivist checked boxes and thick rotting files connected to Indira Gandhi and her sons, Shree Sanjay and Shree Rajiv. Nothing.
I understood then. Nelly had either destroyed or hidden the files. She had started assembling material long before she had access to new technologies. Did she destroy the files recently after creating the CDs? But where were the files before she started digitising them? She must have hidden them somewhere in the building. But where?
Where would I hide the material?
A man in khaki entered with a note. The new archivist walked out of the room as if it was an emergency. The man stared at me. Then he too was gone. Waiting, I paced up and down and counted the number of handcarts. I don’t know why. I started a brief conversation with two other fellows in the room. One of them, a young chap, was collecting material on Lady Curzon’s boudoir, the Bengal famine, the colonial census, and Dalit literature (topics so disparate), and the other on Hume, Allan Octavian, the selfsame founder of the Congress Party. The researcher, however, was focusing on records connected to Hume’s work as an ornithologist. In 1885 some twenty thousand stuffed birds, part of the prodigious collection, were destroyed in Shimla. ‘Twenty thousand birds,’ he exclaimed. Something I didn’t know.
Hume Papers
Box I, Box II . . . Box XX.
Box XIX had many files labelled ‘84’. The year 1884 had been shortened to 84. Box XIX had twenty-seven files that had never been touched. And that is where I found Nelly’s 1984 papers. She had taken precautions.
Papers, diaries, letters, postcards, photographs, children’s sketchbooks, ration cards, passports, fragile clippings, cuttings of interviews with a few survivors (and the injured and the displaced), lists of the guilty citizens, bureaucrats, diplomats, judges, cabinet ministers, industrialists, politicians, media personalities and senior IPS police officers. The Prime Minister. Then it dawned on me: the Congress Party had conducted its first major genocidal pogrom exactly ninety-nine years after it was formed, and exactly one hundred years after it was conceived in the hill station of Shimla.
Father’s name was not on the nefarious list. Only his rank. He was involved. Beyond doubt. He enabled the pogrom, I thought. Father was one of the most senior IPS officers then. Part of Delhi Police. Unable to
deal with the shock, I booked a cab. Towards Delhi. I knew it was time to confront him.
The traffic moved slowly that day. Now and then I saw hawks and vultures hovering over deep ravines and burning garbage. An unknown bird, perched on a pile of asbestos sheets, looked at me with large perplexed eyes. Another with a long tail flew wave-like from branch to branch until it disappeared in the mist along sharp, faintly metallic sounds. Just outside Solan, workers were widening the highway, and the air smelled of molten tar. Mile after mile of excess. Mindless construction by so-called developers. On the way to Delhi we stopped in Le Corbusier’s city of concrete: Chandigarh. I asked the cabbie to make a detour to Sector XIV, and he drove slowly inside the university campus.
This is where my father studied anthropology, and this is where he was based when he applied for higher studies at Harvard. (He always avoids the topic. His move from Chandigarh to the US and back. Father never finished his grad work at Harvard. I don’t know why he discontinued.)
The cabbie drove me slowly to the Gandhi Bhavan, then around the city, and for some unknown reason I started taking pictures of all the concrete buildings designed by the architect who had erased the past. The grids, the modules, the ramps. Massive spatial and formal disconnection. Le Corbusier’s architecture produced my father. This new vision, this idea of modern India, produced him.
From Chandigarh I called Nelly. And apologised for my abrupt departure. ‘Is your father all right?’ she asked in a heavy voice. No, I think I am the one who is not all right. This I didn’t tell her. I could not.
Soon the cabbie parked in front of the Rock Garden. I wandered through the surreal ‘outsider art’ garden for a long time. Then I sat down on a bench and gazed at the objects and figures Nek Chand, the designer, had assembled out of shards. Broken bangles, broken plates, broken china, pottery, old tyres, scrap metal – he had filled them with a new meaning without destroying the old. Nek Chand’s dialogue with the past was a perfect counterpoint to Le Corbusier’s architectural cleansing, I thought. Le Corbusier’s ‘open hand’ tried to ‘purify’ the past; Nek Chand, on the other hand, celebrated ‘impurity’. Le Corbusier considered ‘past’ as waste; Nek Chand embraced ‘waste’. Broken washbasins, urinals, electrical sockets, tar drums, limestone. Nek Chand connected the modern with Harappa, with Mohenjo-daro. Man is a collector, and man is a builder of ruins, and man is a teller of tales. Man is not modular. Man is not a machine, and his house is not a machine, and his city is not a machine. By constructing the Rock Garden ‘illegally’ Nek Chand subverted Le Corbusier’s vision, I thought. As if a bomb had been dropped overnight over that arrogant vision. It was like saying: No head=No heart=No balls=Le Corbusier.
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