Race Course Road: A Novel

by Goswami, Seema

  With that, Asha folded her hands, closed her eyes and bowed her head in prayer. ‘Om Bhur Bhuva Swaha…’ she began, her voice gaining strength with every syllable. The crowd was quiet at first but by the time she began the second repetition, they began to join in. By the third repetition, the ground was reverberating with the sound.

  To Asha, it felt as if her father was right there beside her, praying alongside her, blessing her from beyond the pyre.

  As she opened her eyes to gaze upon the hushed crowd, a single tear escaped down her cheek. Wiping it away discreetly with her pallu, she resumed her speech.

  ‘Today, for the first time since my beloved father, Birendra Pratapji, passed away, I feel that I am not alone. And that is because I am back with my family, my Bharatnagar clan, which has always had my back. I know that the media are projecting this visit of mine as my plea for your support for my political career. But you and I know that that is simply not true. I am here today to grieve with my Bharatnagar family, to share my sorrows with them. I am here because in moments of crisis, everyone comes home. And Bharatnagar has always been my home—and will always remain so, no matter what life throws at me.’

  ‘But,’ added Asha, ‘the media had got one thing right.’ She was here to ask them for something. But that something was their samvedna (sympathy) rather than their samarthan (support). She had come here looking for the healing touch that only Bharatnagar could provide.

  ‘I want to grieve with you for the father we have all lost,’ Asha went on, ‘whose loss can never be made up, whose absence has left us with an immense void in our lives. The only way I can heal, the only way all of us can heal, is to come together and tend to each other’s wounds. That is why I am in Bharatnagar today.’

  Asha waited for the applause to die down before she continued. There was another reason she was here today. Before setting off on a new journey it was customary to come back home and seek the blessings of your elders. It was that aashirwad she was looking for today.

  ‘Baba is no longer with us,’ she continued. ‘And each one of us feels orphaned today. The grief we feel today will live within us forever. But the best way to honour his memory is to work to make his dreams for Bharatnagar come true. And that’s exactly what I mean to do from this day forth.

  ‘I intend to dedicate my life to Bharatnagar and its people, to work tirelessly day and night to make your lives better, to bring new opportunities for your children, to make sure that young people have jobs right here so that they don’t need to migrate to the big cities, that women feel safe and secure on our streets and in their homes, that families can aspire to a better life than they have led so far.’

  ‘But,’ said Asha, striking a cautionary tone, she would not be able to do this on her own. She needed the people of Bharatnagar by her side, supporting her, advising her and yes, when it was necessary, criticizing and upbraiding her.

  ‘I will need all of you to be the pita I have lost, the father figure that I thought would shield and protect me from the vagaries of life. Now that my Baba is no more, I need all of you to take his place in my heart and my home.’

  Asha waited until the applause was over before she turned towards her mother. ‘My mother needs the same kind of support from all of you. Her whole life revolved around my father, her entire being was devoted to looking after him. Society may see her as a widow. But the truth is that she is as much of an orphan as I am.’

  Despite her own heartbreak, however, her Amma would always be a mother to Bharatnagar. She would stand in for her late husband, accomplishing all that he had left unfinished.

  ‘Don’t go by her silence. She is shy. She always has been,’ Asha paused to smile in her mother’s direction. ‘But in her silence lies her strength.’

  You will hear from the media, Asha continued, that she had come here to announce her entry into politics. That was not true. She was here to celebrate her initiation into public service. She didn’t believe in politics, which turned people against one another. But she did believe in public service. She had seen her father and her brothers dedicate their lives to it. And she wanted to follow in their footsteps.

  At her mention of ‘Karan bhaiya’ and ‘Arjun bhaiya’ the crowd had burst into applause yet again. Everybody in the area knew about the strained relations between the first family and the second. So, it was good to see that they had come together in this hour of crisis.

  ‘I already have the blessings of my mother and my brothers as I embark on this daunting enterprise,’ said Asha, as she went into the home stretch of her speech. ‘But I really cannot go any further on this path until I am sure that I have your blessings. So, do I have your “aashirwad” to go ahead?’

  The crowd roared back its approval. The slogan: ‘Desh ki neta kaisi ho; Asha Devi jaisi ho’ began reverberating through the rally grounds again.

  Asha walked out from behind the podium, came centre stage and then bowed low in a namaskar. The cheers grew louder still. Another slogan began to be chanted louder and louder: ‘Asha beti tum sangharsh karo; hum tumhare saath hain.’

  Asha could feel the energy of the crowd rolling over her, energizing her with every chant and cry. Flushed with a sense of triumph she turned back to look at her mother. And came crashing down to earth with a thud as she saw the tears coursing down Sadhana Devi’s cheeks.

  Rushing to her mother, Asha stood behind her chair and leaned down to hug her, showering kisses on her pallu-clad head.

  And suddenly, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

  ▪

  Much to her annoyance, Manisha had begun tearing up towards the end of Asha’s speech. And the mother and daughter tableau on stage at the end had left her weeping discreetly.

  God, who would have thought that she would be such a wuss, Manisha scolded herself as she waited for the studio to cut to her. Surely, she had known politicians long enough to know that this tearjerker of a speech was just a cynical ploy to tug at the heartstrings of the hapless folk of Bharatnagar. So, why was she feeling so genuinely moved by Asha’s words?

  Was it just her naivety at work? Or was Asha really and truly the genuine article?

  The voice in her ear warned Manisha that she was on air. And like the pro that she was, Manisha went straight into political pundit mode.

  ‘We just saw the first major political speech by Asha Devi, the daughter of late Prime Minister Birendra Pratap Singh. And what a brilliant speech it was! As a recently bereaved daughter, she struck completely the right tone, keeping it as personal as possible, referencing the close familial relationship that the Pratap Singh family has had with this constituency.

  ‘There had been some speculation that Asha Devi would use this opportunity to announce that she was standing from her father’s old parliamentary seat. But she didn’t make any specific announcements like that. Instead, she used this opportunity to make a connection with the people of Bharatnagar and to introduce herself to the rest of the country, where she is still a largely untested quantity.’

  The anchor in the studio interjected in her ear: ‘Manisha, why do you think she didn’t make that announcement? Do you think there is some sort of discord in the family? Do her brothers not want her to stand from Bharatnagar? After all, in a feudal family like theirs, girls usually don’t inherit their father’s legacy.’

  Manisha nodded furiously, trying to ignore the out-of-control crowds milling around her, some close enough to jostle her, as she formulated her reply: ‘Well, Ajit, I don’t really think that was the reason. I think the family just decided to keep this personal rather than political because the death is so fresh in everyone’s mind. But there was no doubt given the way she kept referring to Bharatnagar as home that she was trying to prepare the grounds for standing there in due course.’

  ‘So, you don’t think there is any truth to the rumours that there is a power struggle within the family? And that Asha Devi’s brothers—well, stepbrothers, I should say—are opposed to her joining active politics?’ s
aid the voice in Manisha’s ear.

  ‘No, I don’t believe that is the case. If the brothers had been opposed to it, then they would never have allowed her to hold such a rally. And if she had done this in defiance of their wishes, they would have made sure that she had an abysmal turnout. No, the family is on one page on this. And it was probably to scotch all speculation to the contrary that Asha Devi made such a point of mentioning her Karan bhaiya and Arjun bhaiya at the end of her speech. She wanted the world to know that all of Birendra Pratap’s children were on the same side. She wanted to give the message that no matter what had gone on before the family is now united in its grief.’

  ‘And do you think this unity will last?’ the anchor countered.

  Manisha had covered enough family feuds in politics to not commit herself to a position on this one. ‘Well, that remains to be seen. In the long run, anything may happen. But in the short run, as the party readies to fight an election after the assassination of its leader, the family will remain together. They know that that is the best chance for their survival. But a year or so down the line, well, who knows…’

  The one person who knew all the answers was, as always, behind the anchor’s desk in the studios of NTN. But Gaurav Agnihotri didn’t spend too much time getting a ground report from his correspondent on the rally grounds. All his viewers had seen the speech for themselves. They didn’t need a lowly reporter to parse it for them—Saijal Teri’s brief moment in the sun was over.

  Instead, they would get the wisdom of the panel that Gaurav had handpicked himself for this occasion.

  There was Shaila Kaul, the political editor of a national daily, Arindam Dutta Roy, former editor of a newspaper, Dhruv Sahai, the spokesperson of the LJP, and Lokesh Bharadwaj, the spokesperson of the SPP. Every voice from across the political spectrum, Gaurav congratulated himself.

  The moment the feed cut back to the studio, Gaurav launched into the soft-soap opener he had rehearsed the night before and had been determined to deliver no matter how Asha Devi’s speech actually turned out. After all, he needed to score an interview with her. It would not do to needlessly antagonize her from the get-go.

  ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, you have seen, we have all seen, the moving sight of a grieving daughter paying tribute to her departed father in the best way possible: by dedicating herself to the work that he had left unfinished.

  ‘I know what the Lutyens media will say—that she is just pandering to her rural base in a feudal constituency. And that a political novice like her will not succeed in the rest of India, which is now a modern nation. But let me tell you, based on my decades of political reporting, I have no hesitation in saying that a political star has been born today. And we were all privileged to witness that.

  ‘What do you think, Shaila? What did you make of the speech?’

  ‘I thought it was just amazing, Guarav,’ gushed Shaila, sticking close to the party line (as she always did; she depended on her weekly appearances on Gaurav’s show to supplement the grossly unfair salary her paper paid her). ‘I think she hit it out of the park. She kept it personal. She spoke directly to the people of Bharatnagar. But she also managed to work in a universal theme so that people watching from across the country could connect with her.’

  ‘Arindam, do you agree with Shaila? Did you think she pitched it just right?’ asked Gaurav.

  ‘Well, yes, I agree with Shaila on that,’ said Arindam. ‘But what I was really impressed by was her confidence. She has never really addressed such a huge crowd before. Not to mention the fact that the whole nation was watching. But Asha Devi was so confident, so in control. She really had the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand. I was especially moved by the way she got the entire crowd to chant the Gayatri Mantra along with her. That, to my mind, changed the energy of the meeting, making it more meaningful…’

  Lokesh Bharadwaj, spokesperson of the SPP, could stay silent no longer. ‘I am sorry but that bit made me really uncomfortable. I don’t think that that kind of religiosity has any place in politics. There is a place to pray for peace for your dead father’s soul. But to bring religion into politics is really not done.’

  That’s all it took for Dhruv Sahai, the spokesperson of the LJP, to explode into anger. ‘What do you mean?’ he shouted in Bharadwaj’s face. ‘What do you mean by bringing religion into politics? Were you not listening to what Ashaji said? Didn’t you hear her say that she was not there for politics but to mourn with the people of Bharatnagar? These people are her family. They were Birendra Pratapji’s family. If she can’t pray with them for her father then whom can she pray with?’

  The SPP spokesperson remained unmoved by this display of temper. ‘Yes, of course, she can pray with her family,’ he countered mildly. ‘But then, why hold a rally with political posters all around, with the party flag, with cutouts of Asha Devi in a party cap, if all you want to do is pray for your father. And what place do slogans like “Desh ki neta kaisi ho; Asha Devi jaisi ho” have on an occasion like this?’

  Sahai turned red in the face. ‘Who are you to tell us what kind of slogans we should have in our meetings? Who are you to decide what flags will fly? It is our decision. And it is the will of the people. If they want to raise slogans in Asha Devi’s support, then they will do so. You are no one to stop them.’

  Finally, Bharadwaj lost his cool as well. ‘What do you mean “you are no one?” I am a citizen of this country. I have as much right to my opinion as you do…’

  ‘Well, if you have a right to your opinion, then we have a right to recite the Gayatri Mantra wherever we want…’

  And then, they were off, shouting over each other, getting louder and louder, while Gaurav sat back, silently chortling over the ratings this particular show would score.

  EIGHT

  Jayesh Sharma sank down on the beige leather seat of his twelve-seater campaign plane with an audible sigh. It had been a long, long day. And worse, it had been a bad, bad day.

  A political animal at heart, Jayesh could sense the energy of a crowd from a mile off. And at all five meetings he had addressed through the day, he had sensed one common factor. His supporters may have turned up in respectable numbers but their hearts simply weren’t in it.

  He had tried his best to rouse them from their stupor, rising to rhetorical heights, getting them to join in with chants of Jai Hind and Bharat Mata Ki Jai. But no matter how many tricks he pulled out from his bag, the audience remained listless and curiously disengaged. It was almost as if they had decided to give him up as a lost cause but were going through the motions out of a sense of politeness. And, perhaps, for old times’ sake.

  Clearly, the sympathy wave engendered in favour of the LJP after the assassination of its leader was still going strong even two months after Birendra Pratap’s passing. And the momentum would put his party back in power yet again.

  The stewardess came up with a glass of orange juice. Jayesh accepted it with a smile of acknowledgement, his politician’s trick of always making a human connection with people intact despite the pall of gloom that had descended on him. Kalyan Abhyankar, his PS and closest political adviser, who was sprawled in the seat facing him, looked up from his iPad and asked, ‘All okay, boss?’

  Jayesh sighed. ‘You of all people know that it is not okay, Kalyan. We have completely lost the momentum we had built up over the last year. Don’t you remember the kind of response we used to get in those days? The crowds were so loud that it was hard to even hear myself. And now, nothing. Just a polite smattering of applause at the end. It is all over for us.’

  ‘You know what they say, Jay,’ replied Kalyan. ‘It’s not over till it’s over. We still have five weeks to go until the first phase of polling. That is enough time for the momentum to shift. All we need is a lucky break.’

  ‘Sorry, Kalyan, but I am fresh out of luck. Who could have predicted that the old man would be assassinated? Or that the Pratap Singh boys, who I could have dealt with, would be joined by their sainted s
ister? Or that the sister would turn out to have the charisma that was entirely lacking in her brothers? Given that the entire country seems to be caught up in some sort of sympathy tsunami for the family, I really don’t see how we can recover.’

  ‘Remember that old story about Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister? He was asked what was the most difficult part of his job. And you know what his reply was?’ asked Kalyan.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Kalyan. Of course I do! I did PPE at Oxford, you know!’

  ‘So, what did he say?’ Kalyan persisted.

  ‘Events, dear boy, events,’ quoted Jayesh, with an air of weary resignation.

  ‘Exactly,’ responded Kalyan. ‘Events, dear boy, events! We don’t know what will happen in the weeks between now and polling day. But we have to stay positive and on message. We can’t just give up and hand the election over to those Pratap Singh brats.’

  Despite himself, Jayesh began to laugh. Pratap Singh brats. What a good way to characterize the three spoilt, entitled children of Birendra Pratap Singh.

  But that flash of good humour aside, Jayesh Sharma was a very worried man. His party workers from across the country had been reporting back on what an enormous impact Asha Devi’s presence had had on the LJP’s campaign.

  She had turned out to be a complete political natural. She made soul-stirring speeches at campaign rallies. She took selfies with teenagers as she campaigned from door-to-door. She kissed babies and hugged old ladies as if these were her two favourite things to do. She had grown men grovelling at her feet as she turned on the charm and that thousand-watt smile. And through it all, she constantly invoked the spirit of her beloved Baba.

  Asha Devi was simply killing it on the campaign trail. And by the time she was done, Jayesh was sure his political career would be dead in the water as well.

  Kalyan hesitated for a moment and then with a visible effort, began, ‘This is probably the wrong time to bring this up, but the new poll numbers are in. Rajiv just mailed them to me.’