‘Well, there is an Indian who almost became the Secretary General in lieu of Ban Ki-moon. The Government of India is well aware that I understand the mechanisms of this new world better. I will not say no if I am offered that important role. Where are you going?’
‘We are going to look at your deeds, Papa, not direct deeds, because your hands didn’t strike a match, your hands don’t know what it means to use a metal rod or a rubber tyre. You didn’t rape the women yourself, no, you didn’t mutilate their genitals. You were not the “mob”, but you made the mob. We are going to look at all that you enabled in ’84. It was your job to protect the people who lived here, and you failed them, you were a disaster.’
I stopped the car next to a handpump.
‘Block 32, Papa. Trilokpuri. Remember? This is the site where the worst massacres took place. The so-called streets and the houses in this resettlement colony, in this slum, have outlasted those who lived here, and they will outlast you. Even if you bulldoze them. Even if you help eliminate the new occupants and build a new sports complex. You see that handpump over there? That handpump knows the details of every single crime you enabled. The water flowing out of the pump is cleaner than your morally pulverised soul. That bicycle there (on top of its faint shadow). It knows each one of your compromises. Do you see the jute cot? Are you listening?’
I made my father read a newspaper article by a witness (Rahul Bedi, Indian Express). He, my unreformed father, refused to read. Look at the aching spectacle you created. I displayed a black-and-white photo. Three Women.
Uneasy silence filled the car.
Most who died in ’84 lived in slums, the wretched of the earth, twice or thrice dispossessed. People with nothing, pushed further to the limits of nothingness. They wove
jute cots or worked as carpenters. It won’t surprise me if I hear that the sons of those dead fathers have grown up to become drug addicts and gang members. Substance abuse. Life goes on. Criminals. Delhi, the city of criminals. Delhi, the city of miles and miles of haze and guiltless criminals. What is sad and infuriatingly tragic is that the instigators and inciters and facilitators of the pogrom and their loyal protectors walk the streets of the criminal city or get driven around (and they get level-Z security from the police) . . . They run our country. My father was shaking and angry. A kind of convulsive shaking. (If they ever make a film, they will make him stare at his hands shaking convulsively, an orgy of shaking.) It was strange. In the past I was the one who would shake in his presence, and now he was, uncontrollably. ‘Have you no shame?’ my father said. He ordered me to drive home. It was then I told him that he was a true ‘scholar’ who needed a bit of extra reading. Of late you have become careless, Papa. Carelessness, you well know, corrodes morals. The library in your study is not up to date. I see you have stopped reading crime stories. Please allow me to give you a bag of essential books. Crime thrillers. The problem with 1984 is definitely not the lack of books: When a Tree Shook Delhi by Manoj Mitta and H. S. Phoolka, The Other Side of Silence by Urvashi Butalia, Who are the Guilty? by People’s Union for Democratic Rights and People’s Union for Civil Liberties, November 84 by Ajit Caur, I Accuse by Jarnail Singh, Scorched White Lilies of ’84 by Reema Anand, Gujarat by Siddharth Varadarajan . . . And the film: Amu (uncensored version), and the documentary: The Widow Colony.
Watch them, read them, Papa. You are a real hero. Let these macabre books act like an axe to break the ice within you. And if you feel like it, translate. Even if you wreck the text, at least you will have read the crimes you co-authored. And if you feel like it, go ahead, use a black marker. Because no matter how hard you try you cannot erase. Strike a match, and the paper won’t ignite. The proof exists in libraries all over the world. In a few years little boys and girls will read about your deeds on Kindle. You have become literature, Papa, a monster. You have become a grand crime story.
Did I call you a hero? Fuck, no. Nothing extraordinary about you, Papa. You are not diabolical. You are not Evil. You are so ordinary. And that is what makes this a bigger crime story.
At home he walked into his study. ‘Bloody fool,’ he said and slammed the door behind him. After a couple of hours he stepped out, unusually quiet and sweaty, and several times climbed up and down the stairs, defying doctor’s orders. Then he strolled in the garden for a long time.
During dinner he didn’t defend himself, sitting in the tall chair with tribal tapestry, he didn’t ask me the dreaded question: What would you have done? I broke the uneasy silence with my ideas of justice and violence and my ideas of India. New India.
‘Father, we all need a little private madness and a little lie in order to live. I shall be the first one to acknowledge this. Normally the little madness and the little lie don’t harm others. The problem is that your madness and your lie harmed so many. Do you understand? Are you listening?’
‘I had no choice.’
‘Some chose differently.’
‘I think it is you who is refusing to listen,’ said Father. ‘What happened THEN cannot be understood from what is happening NOW.’
‘But, Papa, what happened THEN was also illegal THEN.’
Again silence.
‘Answer me, Papa.’
I asked him again, and then I asked him: ‘Now what should I tell the press?’
My father laughed. I have yet to watch a human being laugh like that. In 1984 he would have laughed too, exactly like that. One often forgets that 1984 was also a year of excessive laughter.
I walked to my hotel via Khan Market. The place gleamed like a phosphorescent jewel at night. How could you forget? I heard an echo of my aunt’s anguished voice. Just for a minute we were face to face and she had implored me.
He is after all your father.
On the pavement, not far from Khan Chacha’s kebabs, a magazine-wallah sold me three weeklies. All of them covered news about mass graves found in Hondh-Chillar, fifty kilometres from Gurgaon. Bones of an entire village in what is now the Millennium City . . . Dark spherical objects, some stained by indigo . . . Massacre in Pataudi.
How could you forget?
A court in the United States of America had summoned the astonishing Congress Party. Three separate articles informed me about the Alien Tort Claims Act. Finally some hope.
There is a molecule called alloxan. Primo Levi writes about it in The Periodic Table. In the next few days I reread the chapter on nitrogen, and was particularly struck by alloxan.
It is a pretty structure, isn’t it? (asks Levi). It makes you think of something solid, stable, well-linked. In fact it happens also in chemistry as in architecture, he writes, that ‘beautiful’ edifices, that is, symmetrical and simple, are also the most sturdy: in short, the same thing happens with molecules as with the cupolas of cathedrals or the arches of bridges.
Levi’s alloxan for some strange reason made me think of indigo, the word, the molecule, pronounced by Nelly as if it carried a latent possibility to take her breath away. But as soon as I thought of indigo I tried to forget the painful associations.
How would Nelly describe her perturbed state as a function of that grand independent variable Time without invoking the colonial history of a bird or a molecule? I have often wondered. Driving through Dilli’s Ring Road these thoughts would come to me on their own.
Our next meeting took place three months later. I was admitted to the Trauma Centre of All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Because I slipped into a half-conscious state while driving, my BMW collided with a lorry on National Highway 8. When she heard the news, Nelly immediately took the Volvo bus to Delhi, and a prepaid taxi to the hospital. On the way the driver asked, ‘Memsaab trauma kya hai?’ The beautiful Hindi word ‘sadma’ was on the tip of her tongue, but at that moment no matter how hard she tried it escaped her.
She must have walked straight to the ICU. Only a few traces are lodged in my memory.
‘You see my problem, Mrs Singh?’ I must have detached myself from the pillows. ‘I want to remain
human.’
She must have sensed correctly that I had prepared my words carefully. She looked so delicate and graceful sitting close to me, a dead silkworm. I can never fully imagine what thoughts passed through her.
‘You will be all right.’
‘No matter what I do or don’t I will never be all right.’
Stuttering, I think I spoke about molecules, and after a long awkward pause I recited aloud the names of my daughters, and then felt compelled to talk about the woman who gave birth to me. In the past every time Nelly had expressed curiosity about my mother, I managed to steer the conversation towards the physical and chemical world of objects.
Mother didn’t attend the ceremony. When Father got his gallantry medal in ‘85, she stayed home. She didn’t attend the pompous event, and I had no idea what inner calamities she was going through. She mailed me a letter saying she was unwell. She included a photo of herself submerged in the pool. I never saw it coming.
Mother didn’t see it coming either. She believed in passive resistance. ‘Nelly, are you listening?’ I almost said. The difference between ‘passive resistance’ and ‘passive acceptance’ is like the difference between the value of ‘gravity’ in London and Delhi.
‘Disintegrating’ is the right word. Before Mrs Singh, before Nelly, lay a patient completely disintegrating. Mr Absolute Zero. I try to imagine her thoughts then. Was she thinking about my daughters? Do Raj’s daughters understand even a trace of what their father is going through? But children have a way. They know. They are more resilient than we think. Children understand. They pay for the crimes of the parents. By hiding. By lying. By atoning.
‘Let me tell you,’ I paused. ‘The truth about my father.’
She withdrew her hand.
‘He is faking it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He is faking it.’
My father was faking Alzheimer’s. Clearly and concisely I told her the details. She responded as if it was not the right moment to discuss something so grave.
‘You will be all right,’ she repeated the lie. ‘Time will heal you.’
Then she was speechless. A complete conflagration of words. I am unable to forget the fading colour on her face in the midst of a phase transition. She was absolutely unprepared as my father wandered in.
No longer the man on the railway platform. Different from the man she nearly had tea with. In the past she must have wondered how she might respond if such a human ever entered the same room. What language, what gestures to use in his presence? Dull anger is not enough. Nor a lump in the throat, nor an involuntary drying of the upper mouth. I bit my lips. Nelly’s body shook. Something within her was still crying.
Please don’t leave, Mrs Singh. You are allowed to say anything to this criminal. He is listening. He pretends he doesn’t comprehend any of this . . . Of course, it would have been best for all of us if this man had set himself on fire.
The nurse was listening. Her face beyond a shadow of doubt resembled the younger version of Shabana Azmi. Nervously, she kept moving a metallic object in her hand.
My mother, too, looked like that beautiful actress, whose films have comforted me. I have no idea how to make sense of the fact that Shabana got married in 1984. My mother, when she got married, also resembled the poet Amrita Pritam. I had no idea how to deal with all the traces my mother carried in her.
‘Nelly,’ I said, ‘I have spent long hours of the night listing the various ways to bring an end to his life, an honour killing of sorts . . . Who would have thought this strong physiological and moral need within me to see him dead? Why so much hostility?’
The nurse, repulsed by my words, asked me to be still and ordered Nelly to leave, but I insisted on two more minutes.
‘This man murdered my professor, and by doing so he killed me, and so many who are still “living”. I do not use words loosely here. Several times I have thought of making his body into a work of art – tattoos, all over his body . . . Nazi swastikas . . . To make a tattoo is to write on butter with a toothpick. The pain he will have to endure is minor compared to the pain he gave so many people . . . I have thought of driving Papa again to the slums, to the Widow Colony, where he will ask forgiveness for each individual death.’
‘You think that is absolution?’
I could not respond.
‘The women in the colony are the ones most betrayed,’ she said thoughtfully (and my father was listening). ‘The women die every day, they relive the trauma over and over. Just because they survived, outlasted, they feel the weight, the guilt, they bear the burden of shame, and witness the shamelessness of the conductors of the pogrom. Layers of layers of evidence . . . But not many believe . . . November 1984 never happened. November 1984 is not an Event in our nation’s history. Men don’t talk about sexual violence. Men use women to humiliate ‘‘other’’ men. History has used these women in the worst possible way. The state would like them to live without a past.’
‘Nelly, I understand your anguish, and I, too, would like to stir up the past, and shame this man . . . Perhaps this act will save me . . . As long as he is alive he can’t deny . . . And I would like to shame the entire Indian justice fucking system . . .
‘Father has given a new meaning to shamelessness. He paid his doctor an insane amount of money, the doctor has diagnosed Alzheimer’s, which is really an insult to all those who truly develop Alzheimer’s, and an insult to all the caregivers and family members of those who actually suffer from real Alzheimer’s.’
She grew unusually silent. Her frozen state made me think she was questioning me: but how could you be sure? People in old age develop Alzheimer’s, and the field of trauma is large and complex, both the victim and the victimiser undergo trauma.
‘The doctor has made loads of money, the money that should have gone to the victims of ’84. The doctor called me to his clinic and revealed the ‘‘bad news’’ that my father has Alzheimer’s. ‘‘Dementia is invading his brain. Grey matter has declined dramatically. Aggregates of misfolded proteins are migrating to the key zones of the brain. He talks kachumber and pees in his pants. If you have failed to notice so far, you will soon.’’ On the wall (in the clinic) there was a calendar, Nehru on a polka dot horse. The MD pointed at the calendar, and said your father has forgotten the face of Nehru. Right now he is aware that that man is a human being. Soon he will even forget that. And one day it will be difficult to distinguish the horse from the man riding the horse. Then only the polka dots, and then nothing.’
The nurse reminded us that the time was up. ‘Wait a minute. I am not done yet,’ I protested.
The nurse gestured her to leave. In the parking lot Nelly might have encountered a stranger going through a different crisis. In those two or three seconds the two of them might have done something comforting for each other: a quiet validation.
Where did she go next? I try to imagine the taxi she took. How she released the taxi-walla. The hotel room. Perhaps I will never know if she walked to a friend’s place.
Would this constant note-taking ever create the precise conditions for healing? (asks Nelly.) So far his experiment had failed, in fact writing and words, and language had stirred things up, remembering had left him more wrecked than ever. The past had come like bitter drops of helium, but he didn’t know how to handle it; this helium was neither inert, nor invisible, nor light, and refused to disappear. Was there a better way to handle the incompleteness of history, a milder way to encounter the dead, because no matter how hard one tries the dead keep returning.
On recovery I returned to Ithaca. I promised myself ‘never return home’. Four years kept me going with conferences on rheology. Lab work consumed me. I published thirteen papers, edited an anthology, completed the unfinished monograph on bitumen, shale and tar sands, and got a promotion. For a while I even collaborated with my colleague on carbon fibres, a hot new topic – fibres so strong, a single strand is able to stop a plane on the runway. But my mind was not in i
t, I kept working mechanically because I could think of doing nothing else.
Several times I tried to tell Clara about Nelly, but our divorce proceeded with such bitterness, we never got a chance to talk like humans. She got custody of our daughters.
During those days of discomfort I called Mr Gopal’s daughter, Gul. So much time had passed, a huge gap of years to catch up. She told me that the old man was still around. She was in Connecticut for a year, and, like me, she too was recently single. We decided to meet midway in New York City. The concert at Lincoln Center was her idea, and I drove straight after my morning class. Despite heavy traffic I arrived a little early. After parking my car I wandered around the energetic city. The sun was about to set, and New York looked needlessly beautiful in its last light. Ten minutes before the concert I planted myself close to the ticket window and waited patiently for Gul. No call, no text message, and this got me worried. I stepped out of the hall and waited by the plaza, but she was still not there, nowhere to be seen. Inches away from me thousands of humans condensed and evaporated, and the sounds of sirens did nothing to diminish my anxiety. Waiting, panicking (outside the Alice Tully Hall), my mind went through the most rational (albeit a little absurd) algorithm. Miss the concert and continue to wait for Gul outside the hall, or leave the ticket with the clerk and go in. The first piece was ‘Subito’ (for violin and piano) by Lutoslawski, followed by ‘Sarabande and Toccata for Harp’ by Nino Rota, and the last one Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata in G Minor, Opus 19. South Korean pianist. Chilean cellist. Flawless is the only adjective that comes to my mind. (Flawless apogee of Romanticism. Grand structure. Sublime.) Followed by a standing ovation.
The cello sonata, now that I think about it, resonated with the audience deeply, and comforted me; the slow andante drifted my thoughts into a reverie, and I found myself meditating on the most independent of all variables. Time, I thought, was itself a Brownian motion (like the constant jostling of particles). Bits and pieces moving and mingling randomly, gathering mass, strange coincidences shearing past invisible blows and that includes stuff yet to come. If time is a river, then is it a river of discontinuous ice? Perfect balance between the instruments, the piano, I felt, swirled startingly around the cello. With his big energetic hand the Chilean allowed the bow to linger longer and longer on the strings, unaware of the shadowy figure behind him, who would stand up now and then, take a few steps towards the piano and turn and turn again the page. All the advances in technology had still not made the page-turner redundant, I thought. Once in a while my gaze would fall on the pianist’s ever-replicating hands in the black paint of a mirror, which reminded me of the composer Rachmaninov’s huge hands and the Marfan’s syndrome he suffered from. The duo wrestled with every single note, refusing to play the score in front of them, but struggling to create that score for the first time. There I wished the concert to go on for ever. When the two musicians (in black) walked back to the wings, I remained still for a long time, literally staring at the chair on the stage, solitary and empty, and so was the state of the chair next to me. It remained empty throughout the concert. Gul, I found out later, had lost her phone the previous day, and as a result completely forgot the concert.
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