by Kota Neelima
Nalan glanced at Sikander, who nodded. They both regarded her, determined. ‘Not until you give us an answer.’
‘Fine.’ She was impatient. ‘In view of your warnings, I promise that I won’t see either of you again. I suggest you respect my wishes and don’t try to contact me or meet me.’
Nalan was decisive. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘And I don’t make false promises,’ Sikander declared.
‘Really?’ Nalan marvelled at his words. ‘What are you going to do in the January elections then?’
Sikander ignored that but was struck by an idea. ‘Let the elections be the deadline,’ he suggested to Nalan, who nodded in agreement.
‘Don’t meet us until the elections,’ he then suggested to Mira.
‘Yes,’ agreed Nalan. ‘It’ll be easy on us. We will be quite busy.’
‘I may need a little more time to forget,’ Mira said dryly. ‘Let’s meet six months after the national elections.’
There was consensus, and the interview resumed.
Author’s Note
Considering the nature of this book, the sources must stay off-the-record in the typical style of political reportage in Delhi. If the words ring true and the incidents trigger a sense of déjà vu, please attribute them to my realistic imagination. I do not write to blame, I write to change. And I hope this is the season for it. It always is.
Two years ago, I had moved away from writing about the way Delhi deals with farmer suicides, the subject of my three previous books, to study procedural and substantive insufficiencies of our democracy. It is at the root of corruption, which exists fearlessly in the name of privilege at high places, behind VIP cordons and guarded gates. We have long waited patiently outside these closed gates of Delhi’s power centres. This is the season to run out of patience, and I am grateful for the tall gates of Delhi that inspire to revolt.
The beneficiaries of status quo may defend the inaccessibility of the powerful. But power is not balanced by the corrupt; it is balanced by the honest. It is also unbalanced by them; by bureaucrats and police who wage personal battles against corruption, by journalists who chase truth wherever it may lead them, by teachers who guide youth to hope and not despair, by professionals who chase ethics and not just success, and by businessmen who look at welfare, not just profit. This is the season to unbalance power and I thank the status quo for this desperation.
For those of us who struggle, I have written truthfully about being a woman in India. The rhetoric of empowerment is shattered on our roads, in our homes and in our minds. Exploitation in the name of tradition is a weak man’s excuse, and modernity may not have all the answers. One half of everyone is woman, and there is a reason we are all incomplete in our happiness. This is the season for being a woman, and I thank the half that demands to remain incomplete.
This book would not have been possible without the brilliant guidance of Milee Ashwarya at Penguin Random House, who nurtured the book with her wisdom and advice. I am grateful to Gaurav Shrinagesh for his faith in this project, and Caroline Newbury for her support. My sincere thanks to Roshini Dadlani for editorial excellence, and Gavin Morris, Neelima Aryan, Gunjan Ahlawat and Neeraj Nath for the poignant cover of the book. For help with my research, losing my papers and finding them, I thank my assistants Shravan Prajapati and Sudhir Kumar. As always, I am indebted to my family for giving me the space and time to write this book and to believe in it.
December 2015
New Delhi
Kota Neelima
Epilogue
New Delhi; July (Six months after the national elections)
That moment stood still on the bridge over river Yamuna. Dawn was still a few horizons away, and the earth was taking its time. It had just begun to rain, the first rain of the season; it was that honest season again. Mira stood at the metal railings, listening to the darkness of the river below, as the ancient waters mixed half-heartedly with the modern times. It was rain too, the river; only that a river had a name and a destiny. Just like people, made of rain but estranged from it by their search for identity, different forms before everything and everyone was rain again. Like a falling drop, blink and die. It was this that drew her to rain, she realized now. It was the same as death, same as life, and same as waiting for rain. She too was made of raindrops, mixed with a whiff of air, a shovel of earth, few slices of flesh and a pint of blood. She came together because she had wanted to wait on that bridge for this dawn; she had wanted a destiny. She saw the greying waters of the river below the bridge. It would just take one step to end this separation, to let the rain dissolve the skin and reclaim the body. Only one step away. That was close, that was reassuring.
Her deadline had ended yesterday. Mira was reminded by two text messages, one each from Sikander and Nalan. There was no space in her life for anything but the constant waiting, and everything she did was a preparation. They both knew that, and they knew they couldn’t change her. But perhaps, she had changed them, and they didn’t want to change back. Mira restlessly glanced up at the lightening skies. She had to decide. She had to answer one of the two messages she had got that morning.
One year, she had believed, would be long enough time to forget, forgive and err again. While she continued to work at the newspaper, both Sikander and Nalan had been busy this year, just as they had predicted. The People’s Party had returned to power with a spectacular victory, which had appeared impossible just a few months ago. Under pressure before elections, the PP government had appointed a commission of inquiry to look into the Parliament tapes to show that it was acting tough against the corrupt, even when they were found among its own ranks. But that wasn’t the message that went out from the daily news of summons being issued to ministers and MPs, the television footage of senior politicians of the PP walking into the commission office. Everyone appeared guilty in voter perception that didn’t wait for verdicts and evidence. To be thus embarrassed by their own government based on evidence provided by one of their own party MP led to deep resentment among the leaders. The PP started bickering like a losing side does before battle. The Opposition NP, it appeared, didn’t have to move an inch. Its popularity increased by default, and appeared as a better choice.
In this turmoil, few noticed the growing influence of Nalan Malik who had been deployed by the PP to contain the damage. He was already in charge of the internal party investigation of the tapes, which now began to collaborate closely with the inquiry commission of the government. Steadily, the commission targeted PP rebel leaders and deadwood, which in turn meant they didn’t get a candidacy for the election. Then, the commission got after the Opposition leadership with evidence so damning that no one could survive—especially on television news channels. It became apparent, though a little late, what Nalan had done. The commission was hailed as impartial when it targeted powerful PP men, leaders belonging to the ruling party. So, when it targeted the Opposition, there could be no protest citing political motivations.
In November, three months before the election, Nalan was promoted to the post of senior general secretary in charge of election strategy. By then, he had ensured that the party was free of the tainted and the restless. Even though he himself was named twice in the tapes, the manner in which Nalan survived made him a star of the adventure sports of Delhi politics. His promotion also pointed to the unlikely coalition with the party president Mahesh Bansi. Nalan couldn’t have been the second most important man in the party unless Mahesh wanted him to be. A similar thaw could be seen in Nalan’s relationship with Sikander, although they remained guarded and polite, as if wary of the secrets they shared.
At the end, while it was tradition to attribute the credit for victory in elections to the party president, Sikander was the first one to openly acknowledge that it would have been impossible without Nalan. In his response, Nalan thanked Sikander for turning a defeat into victory by being the new face of the election campaign.
Sikander had also suffered the brunt of the Parl
iament tapes, more so because of his father’s rivals, who deliberately held Mahesh responsible for his son’s actions. This was especially vicious in the months before the elections when everyone was nervous, and increasingly supported the idea that only a change in leadership could improve the fortunes of the party. Dissent spread rapidly from Delhi to the ranks and the days of Mahesh Bansi as the party president seemed numbered. To add spice to the situation, the news of the tapes remained alive with the Opposition NP determined not to let it be forgotten. So even the few among the party who supported Mahesh couldn’t really speak up in view of the damage being done by Sikander’s tapes. The dissent reached new heights after the interview to Mira, and the party faced a serious threat of breaking into two if Mahesh Bansi didn’t resign.
That was when, once again without consulting his father, Sikander declared that he would not contest the elections. In a brief statement released directly to the press, Sikander mentioned that he was facing severe criticism within his party for exposing the members of Parliament. It was felt that he had betrayed the PP, but Sikander insisted that he would rather betray the PP than his country, and he would rather have the love of the people than their vote. What happened next did not surprise anyone. The Opposition demanded that he immediately leave a party that didn’t value him and offered him the Middle Delhi seat. The PP leadership, realizing how little Mahesh Bansi knew his son, reiterated its support to Sikander’s campaign against corruption and organized pro-demonstrations outside their own party headquarters in his favour. The PP dissenters against Mahesh, who had denounced the tapes, found themselves isolated and the only people in favour of protecting the corrupt. So, they were forced to pledge their support to Sikander and organized their own anti-demonstrations against those who targeted Sikander. In the end, Sikander reluctantly agreed to contest the elections but refused to follow the party stand that was against giving candidacy to dissenters as a way of punishment. That was a direct challenge to his father, and the dissenters found it much easier to support Mahesh Bansi’s rebel son.
Sikander made history by winning the Middle Delhi seat with the maximum number of votes ever polled for a single candidate. He campaigned for the dissenters as well and won them seats across the country. Then he picked half-a-dozen impossible seats, supervised candidate selection process, campaigned vigorously and won those for the party. Finally, after the elections, he refused a ministerial position in the new government and astounded the nation as usual.
It had been Nalan’s conviction and Sikander’s courage that won the election for the PP, and their dependence on each other.
Meanwhile, the Parliament tapes dragged through the inquiry commission like a dead whale in fishing net. No one was interested in them anymore. It had always been difficult to keep the focus on issues that mattered, the things that didn’t matter were always more interesting. Common people couldn’t force politicians to talk about the tapes or force news channels to report about the tapes. And in time, common people were forced, instead, to forget about the Parliament tapes. But it would be wrong to think that this amnesia was easy to achieve or cheap. The tainted politicians were sidelined, the guilty bureaucrats suspended and the investigative agencies were reprimanded, but the tapes had no impact on the one entity that was central to corruption—the money. It funded the national forgetfulness that was necessary for its own survival and multiplication. After a year, end ofpolitical corruption sounded vaguely familiar, like an idyllic station at which the express train doesn’t stop. The job was done.
Dawn was moments away. Mira’s clothes were soaked as she glanced up at the moving sky, the colour of rain. She shivered as a low river breeze passed through her as though she were merely an idea. The rain bleached the colours of the sky and brought the sunrise to the river instead. It was a decision the rain made, a choice, and the waters turned crimson as the dawn mixed slowly with the river. Mira wished she could also leave her decision to the rain. It would know she needed neither the sky nor the river, nor anyone in between. She wanted to meet rain itself, not off ledges or bridges, but in person.
‘Do give me an answer before you jump off the bridge,’ said someone over the sound of water. ‘Have you decided between the two of us?’
Startled, Mira turned and found him standing in the rain, leaning against her blue car.
‘So that I know whether to stop you or push you,’ he remarked.
She smiled. ‘Or jump with me.’
‘To be the river?’ he asked.
‘To be the rain.’
THE BEGINNING
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Published by Random House India in 2016
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Copyright © Kota Neelima 2016
Cover photograph © Getty Images
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN: 978-8-184-00585-1
This digital edition published in 2015.
e-ISBN: 978-8-184-00766-4