Race Course Road: A Novel

by Goswami, Seema

  MP: ‘Speaking of family, how has yours been coping with the fallout of this scandal?’

  AD: (Tearing up) ‘My family has been my rock, my strength, my only salvation. They have stood by me. They have supported me. They have given me the motivation to carry on. Both my brothers have had my back. My sister-in-law has been my saviour. I really don’t know how I would have coped without her.’

  MP: ‘And your mother? How is Sadhanaji coping?’

  AD: ‘She is devastated. I have never seen her like this. She was already reeling from my father’s death. And now this. I don’t know if she will ever recover…’

  MP: ‘And what about you, Asha? Will you recover? Can you recover?’

  AD: ‘If my father taught me anything, it was to never give up. To never allow other people to dictate how I would live my life. He taught me that the most important thing in life is to be true to myself. And I am depending on those lessons to get me through this time.’

  MP: ‘Where do you see yourself going from here, Asha?

  AD: ‘I am not going anywhere, Manisha. I am here. And I am here to stay. My opponents can lob as many stones at me as they like, they can attack me in whatever grotesque manner that choose, but they will never succeed is getting rid of me. I will not back down. I will not give them an inch. That’s what my father would have wanted. So that’s what I will do.’

  MP: ‘Thank you for speaking to us, Asha (Turning to face camera) That was Asha Devi, daughter of late Prime Minister and LJP leader, Birendra Pratap Singh, talking to us about coping with the worst scandal of her short political life, with strength, stoicism, dignity and grace, and a courage that is rarely seen these days. Thank you for watching and goodbye.’

  ▪

  Vidya Fernando had been livid when Asha had announced that she was going to give Manisha Patel a full-length interview. This was madness, she had told Asha. She should leave image management to professionals like Vidya and her husband. They knew how to play the media. Asha did not.

  Vidya was sure that this would not end well. And that Asha would end up a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Manisha’s career.

  Asha had listened in silence. And had then gone on to do exactly as she pleased.

  Now, as Vidya sat unobtrusively in one corner of the room, watching Asha speak, she was seized afresh with dread. Asha was doing remarkably well, keeping her calm, allowing a sliver of vulnerability to show on occasion, but putting up a brave front on the whole. But would viewers watching at home buy this bravura performance?

  All her social media feeds were open on her iPad, and Vidya scrolled through them discreetly as the interview went on. The Fernandos had put together a media cell in place to tweet, WhatsApp and post Facebook comments on the interview, so that they could flood the Internet with positive responses to Asha’s interview.

  So, Vidya wasn’t at all surprised when the initial reactions on social media were universally supportive. That’s exactly how this was supposed to play out. Nor was she surprised when these were met with a wall of hostility from handles that she knew belonged to the Jayesh Sharma camp. This was how the game was played these days. Both sides knew the rules, so neither had the advantage of the other.

  But ten minutes or so into the interview, something changed. Suddenly, her timelines were full of comments from ordinary people rather than media cell handles. And nine out of ten commentators were on Asha’s side. Some of them praised her courage and tenacity. ‘Whatever you may think about her politics, there is no denying Asha’s bravery.’ Others pushed back against the vulgar abuse that the SPP handles were spewing. ‘Stop victim blaming. Stop slut-shaming. How would you feel if someone did this to your sister or wife?’

  Fifteen minutes into the interview, the hashtag #AshaSucks (that had been revived by the SPP for the occasion) had disappeared from the list of trending topics on Twitter. And its place had been taken by the hashtag #IStandWithAsha that was being pushed by the LJP. By the time the interview wrapped up, it was the number one trend in the country.

  Jayesh Sharma was watching the interview in his study with mounting frustration. Rajiv Mehta and Anisa Ahmed, who were monitoring the social media response to Asha on their laptops, were giving him quick updates. And it was clear after the first ten minutes that the SPP media machine had failed singularly to control the narrative. Despite their best efforts—the snarky tweets, the vulgar abuse, the sneering WhatsApp forwards—they hadn’t managed to see off Asha’s attempt at a comeback.

  At first, it had been because of pushback from the LJP media cell. But now it was clear that it was ordinary people who were rushing to Asha’s defence. Clearly the public had had its fill of salivating over her dirty pictures, passing salacious remarks, or even making holier-than-thou comments. Now, they were ready to forgive their fallen heroine, especially when she looked so divine and devastated at the same time.

  As he watched Asha get a bit tearful as she answered one particular question, Jayesh began to wonder if it had been worth it. The decision to leak those pictures—which had seemed so compelling at the time—now seemed like a fatal mistake.

  It may have given him some momentary political advantage but it had put irreparable cracks in his marriage. The memory of the scene when Malti had discovered that Asha’s pictures had been leaked popped back into his head.

  She had stormed into his office, where he was in a meeting with his parliamentary board. It hadn’t helped that there had been an atmosphere of jovial conviviality in his office as his party colleagues celebrated the death of the short-lived political career of Birendra Pratap’s daughter. Malti had taken in the scene at a glance, her mouth curling in contempt. She had looked straight at Jayesh, anger and disappointment in her gaze, and said curtly, ‘Jayesh, can I have a word?’

  Jayesh had pushed his chair back immediately, and left the room in her wake, gesturing to Sanjeev Satyarthi to take over the meeting. Malti hadn’t said a word until they were safely in their bedroom, the door locked behind them, with no fear of anyone eavesdropping.

  Only then had she turned to him and asked, ‘Why?’

  Jayesh had tried for innocence. ‘Why? Why what? What are you so upset about?’

  ‘Oh don’t give me that, Jay,’ Malti had snapped. ‘You know exactly why I am upset. After assuring me that you would never do so, you have gone ahead and leaked those pictures of Asha.’

  ‘That’s not true, darling,’ Jayesh had responded. ‘I swear to you that’s not true. It must have been done by Sunny Mahtani. You know he’s been very upset ever since Asha dumped him. He’s been running around all over London, telling everyone how he intends to destroy her.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure he’s the one who gave you the pictures. But you were the one who okayed their release, Jay. I can see your fingerprints all over this.’

  Jayesh, who had gone to such lengths to make sure that the leak could not be traced back to him, had been appalled. ‘What do you mean you can see my fingerprints? I didn’t have anything to do with this. How can you accuse me without any basis whatsoever?’

  ‘Without any basis? What a laugh! And by the way, you can tell Rajiv that he should ask that Ramanujan fellow if he knows any colour combination beyond red and white and any font other than Helvetica. Every single video he has done for the campaign has these two elements in some variation or the other. And, by some remarkable coincidence, so does the YouTube video of Asha’s pictures.’

  By then, Malti had been spluttering with rage. Jayesh had tried to inject some calm into the situation. ‘Darling, don’t you think you are overreacting? Just because the video has some surface similarity with our campaign videos, it doesn’t mean that we are guilty. It’s equally possible that someone did that deliberately to point the finger of suspicion at us. Though, frankly, you are the first person to make that point.’

  ‘You can sell that story to the world, Jay. And the world will probably believe it. But I know you. I know when you are telling the truth. And I can tell when you are
lying…’

  ‘I swear to you, darling. I am telling you the truth.’

  Malti had made a weary gesture. ‘You know Jay, if you can’t be honest with me, just shut up. Don’t insult my intelligence with these lies.’

  ‘Look, Malti, I have to get back to the meeting. Can we discuss this later—when you are in a more reasonable frame of mind?’

  But ever since then, Malti had adopted an attitude of cold indifference to Jayesh. Leave alone discuss the Asha pictures with him, she would not even talk about normal household stuff. If she needed to check on something to do with the children or the campaign, she would sms or email her husband. But other than that, there was complete silence from her. And that silent treatment, Jayesh guessed, was his punishment.

  But where was his reward, he wondered. He had taken a massive risk is leaking those pictures but so far it seemed that he had got away with it. People might think that he could have done that but in the absence of any proof, they were loath to level any allegations. And in the initial days at least it had seemed that he had dealt a body blow to the LJP campaign.

  What he hadn’t bargained for was that Asha would recover so quickly. Or that she would wrestle back control over her story quite so decisively. But now Jayesh had to concede that if the social media reaction to the Asha Devi interview was anything to go by, she had been forgiven her trespasses by the denizens of the Internet world. And it was only a matter of time before the rest of India forgave her as well.

  Madan Mohan had come to the same conclusion as he sat in his living room that night and watched a repeat of Asha’s interview. She may have been knocked about and trod upon, but she was back up on her feet. And now there would be no holding Asha back.

  His secret weapon in his fight against Karan and Arjun was back in play. Now he just had to make sure that he survived long enough to deploy her in his fight against her brothers. But before that he had to convince her that Karan and Arjun were framing him for Birendra Pratap’s death. That this was their revenge for his support of Asha.

  It would require every last bit of his ingenuity to sell that story. But sell it he must—on pain of death (or at least, prison).

  SEVENTEEN

  Everyone, across the political spectrum, was agreed on one thing: this election had gone on far too long. What was the need to have five phases of polling? Wouldn’t just three do? And if you must have five phases, why spread them over nearly two months? Surely, the country had enough security forces to conduct the entire exercise in a matter of weeks? So, why drag this process out?

  From the day the elections were announced to the day the last votes were cast, more than four months had elapsed. So, by the time the last day of polling rolled around the election campaign had lasted so long that it wasn’t just the politicians—and the media that covered them—who were exhausted. So were the people. While the first two phases of polling had seen a high turnout of 76 and 78 per cent, by the third the figure had come down to 70. The fourth phase had seen a turnout of 65 per cent while the figure for the fifth and final phase was an abysmal 58 per cent. Clearly, election fatigue had kicked in somewhere along the line.

  The conventional wisdom put this down to the interminable nature of the process. But the political pundits pontificating on the edit pages of newspapers and the talking heads on TV had their own theories.

  Some insisted that the L’Oiseau scandal, coming as it did before the second phase of polling, had turned people against politics and politicians. Others said that as the shock of Birendra Pratap’s assassination had worn off, people had reverted to their default position of indifference to elections. And then there were those who maintained that because the election had seemed like such a slam dunk for the LJP, people didn’t care enough to come out and vote. What was the point? The dead Prime Minister’s son would become the next Prime Minister. How would their vote make any difference?

  Gaurav Agnihotri, however, squarely blamed Asha. Still smarting from the fact that she had chosen to give an interview to Manisha rather than to him, he kept coming back to his pet theme of how the Asha Devi scandal had put people off. He was too canny to actually come out and say so but the implication was clear: Asha’s ‘lifestyle’, her ‘life choices’, were not something that ordinary, decent people could identify with. Her behaviour was both alien and alienating. The political discourse had been coarsened because of her. And that had resulted in some people just switching off—as was clear from the poor turnout in the last phase.

  This was, by no means, a popular position—not even on Gaurav’s carefully handpicked panel. Even the ever loyal Shaila Kaul was driven to protest in defence of Asha. That gave Aarti Saxena, her fellow panellist, the courage to argue with Gaurav as well. But before things got too heated, Raghav Chandra, political editor of NTN, intervened to push the discussion back to the exit polls.

  Now that the last vote was in, the embargo on releasing exit poll data from all the various phases had been lifted by the Election Commission. And the final figures didn’t look that great for the LJP. Contrary to popular expectations, the results seemed rather tight. The seat projections varied from one channel’s exit poll to the other. But only one poll had the LJP getting an absolute majority. All the rest predicted a hung house, with the LJP stuck just a few seats short of the magic 273 mark.

  Jayesh Sharma’s SPP seemed to have performed better than expected, making up lost ground in the second and third phases of polling (held just after the L’Oiseau scandal). The LJP had clawed back its advantage in the fourth round only to lose it in the fifth because of the Asha Photo Scandal. But despite these ups and downs, the best-case scenario for the SPP was a respectable tally that hovered around the 200 mark—which was way higher than anyone would have predicted when the elections were first announced.

  To Manisha Patel’s mind, this was the real story of the election: the unexpected comeback of Jayesh Sharma. Everyone had written off the SPP and its leader even before Birendra Pratap’s ashes were cold. The conventional wisdom was that the sympathy wave engendered by the PM’s assassination would see his party and his son, Karan Pratap, through. But politics was never as simple as that.

  Manisha had her own theories about the revival of Jayesh Sharma’s political fortunes. In her view, after the initial flush of sympathy that followed his father’s death, anti-incumbency had worked against Karan Pratap. People seemed to forget that Birendra Pratap had not been a very popular Prime Minister halfway through his term. He had failed to get a handle on the situation in the Valley or the Maoist insurgency. Industrial growth had been down, as was job creation. And his claim to run a corruption-free government had been exposed as a lie.

  The breaking of the L’Oiseau story in the middle of the election campaign, Manisha argued on her prime-time show, had brought the corruption issue right back to the top of people’s minds. As the shock of Birendra Pratap’s death receded, they suddenly remembered all the stuff they had hated about the LJP government: the lack of accountability, the constant drip-drip-drip of bad news, the indiscipline in the cabinet, the rumours of deal-making.

  And then, there was the fact that Jayesh Sharma had run an excellent campaign. It hadn’t been an easy task. No one would have blamed him if he had given up as soon as the news of Birendra Pratap’s assassination broke. But no, the SPP leader had kept at it, constantly changing his campaign strategy, being proactive, giving the voters a coherent platform to support, hitting the streets to connect with them directly, and most important of all, listening to what they had to say.

  But what caught almost all the political commentators, including Gaurav and Manisha, unaware was the surprise rise of the Poriborton Party, led by the redoubtable Sukanya Sarkar. Not only was the firebrand politician’s party projected to win 38 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in her state—which given her iron hold on West Bengal was not entirely unexpected—she also looked set to expand her footprint thanks to the judicious regional alliances she had struck in Bihar, Orissa and Assam. If
the exit polls were anything to go by, the PP would end up nearly doubling its Lok Sabha tally and, with a bit of luck, hitting the three-figure mark for the first time in its history.

  The other sizeable chunk of seats looked set to go to the Dalit Morcha, which had held on to its bastion in eastern Uttar Pradesh despite the fact that Asha Devi had held as many as six rallies in that area. But while the locals had turned out in record numbers to gawk at Asha, when the time came to vote, they went with their tried-and-tested leader, Didi Damyanti. And if the trends were at all accurate, then the Dalit Morcha would end up with between 30–40 seats.

  Clearly, very interesting times lay ahead. It was just about possible that the LJP would squeak through, perhaps with the help of assorted Independents and some smaller parties. But it was just as probable that the country would be left with a hung house, with neither the LJP nor the SPP within striking distance of an absolute majority.

  If that happened, then it would be up to two temperamental termagants to decide who the next Prime Minister of India would be. Sukanya Sarkar and Didi Damyanti would be the ones wielding the balance of power. And given their legendary unpredictability, nobody was laying any bets on which side they would come down on.

  ▪

  Karan’s nerves were too raw to sit through an entire evening of watching the exit poll results and hearing the commentariat hold forth on his political prospects. Exhausted from the months of travel on his election campaign, he had got back to RCR in the early evening after casting his vote in Sultanpur, and headed straight to bed.

  He only got an hour of sleep, though, before his daughters discovered that Daddy had sneaked back home. For once, Radhika failed to keep them out of the bedroom (probably because she didn’t try too hard) and Karan found himself being shaken awake by two giggling monsters.