The Red Sari: A Novel
Page 9
But the continent-nation that his mother was to govern was worse than it had ever been under Nehru or his successor. Several years of drought had caused a shortage of food and unleashed prolonged famines. The state of Kerala was shaken by violent disturbances connected with the distribution of food. The economy was the victim of galloping inflation. The region of the Punjab was suffering unrest because it called for Punjabi to be used there exclusively; one Sikh leader threatened to set himself on fire if this request was not granted. The Naga tribe in the northeast fought for secession. To cap it all, the Hindu holy men demonstrated naked outside Parliament, with their bodies covered in ashes, right under Indira’s nose, to demand it be prohibited to kill cows anywhere in the nation. A claim that went against the secular Constitution of India, which called for respect for the rights and equality of all religions. In such a poor country, beef was an essential source of protein for minorities like the Moslems or the Christians. The protests degenerated and there were deaths when the police fired on the troublemakers. “I am not going to let myself be intimidated by the cow-savers,” Indira declared defiantly. Decidedly, India was not like any other country. In 1966 it was a gigantic pressure cooker about to explode, as though independence had given rise to the outbreak of millions of little rebellions, the result of centuries and centuries of the exploitation of some minorities by others, of some castes by others, of some ethnic groups by others… The Congress big fish had not done Indira any favour by pushing her to the top.
For Indira there was a clear priority, the same one that her father or Gandhi would have identified: to put an end to the famines and thus avoid the deaths of the poorest of the poor. If to do that it was necessary to ask international bodies and the richer countries for assistance, she would need to swallow her pride and hold out her hand. Twenty years after independence India, much to her dismay, had gained the unenviable status of international beggar. Indira was ashamed at having to ask for aid, but she knew there was no other option. And yet she was determined not to look like she was begging: “The weaker our position is, the stronger we must appear to be.”
She immediately accepted the invitation of President Johnson to go to Washington and she prepared for the journey meticulously, since the lives of millions of her countrymen would depend on the result, and perhaps her political future too. She worked out her speeches punctiliously and corrected them, consulting her book of quotations that went everywhere with her. She sought simple ideas and turned her back on complicated concepts. She chose her clothes with the same care as she prepared her addresses: a sari, a bodice, a shawl and shoes for each reception. To crown it all she wanted her two sons to go with her. Rajiv had to interrupt his flying classes and travel to Paris to meet his mother. There, after General De Gaulle gave a lunch in her honour, they boarded a Boeing 707 which the White House had placed at her disposal. When De Gaulle was asked what he had thought of Indira, the old statesman said; “Those fragile shoulders on which the gigantic destiny of India rests … don’t seem to sag under so much weight. That woman has something inside her, and she will make it.”
In Washington, B.K. Nehru, Indira’s cousin and Ambassador to the United States, received a phone call at an early hour. It was President Lyndon B. Johnson, a giant from Texas. “I have just read in the New York Times that Indira doesn’t like to be called ‘Madame Prime Minister’ … How should I address her?”
“Let me find out, Mr President. I’ll call you back as soon as I get instructions.”
He immediately rushed into Indira’s suite.
“Let him call me whatever he wants …” she said, and before her cousin had left the room she added, “You can also tell him that some of my ministers call me ‘Sir’. If he likes, he can do that too.”
President Johnson succumbed to Indira’s charms. He unblocked American aid which had been interrupted because of the short war with Pakistan, and he got the World Bank to lend India money. The only point of disagreement during the visit was when Johnson asked her for a dance after the official banquet. Indira refused; she did not want even to think about the reaction of the Indian Press to a photo of the “Socialist daughter of Nehru bejewelled and dancing with the gringo President.” She explained to Johnson that it could make her very unpopular, and he understood. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to that girl,” he told his Chief of Staff in his strong Texan accent that made him sound as though he had a permanent cold, before promising Indira three million tons of foodstuffs and nine million dollars of immediate aid. That journey was the first big success of the new Prime Minister, although she confessed to one of her advisors, “I hope I never find myself in a situation like that again.”
Sonia experienced all this from a distance, with a certain apprehension because they were spectacular, widely publicized changes. The Italian media gave out the news of Indira Gandhi’s rise to power, and the Maino family could see the face of their daughter’s suitor’s mother close up on television from their sitting room in Via Bellini. But the fact that she was now Prime Minister did not seem to soften their resolve. Quite the opposite: it gave Stefano a sudden fright. For him, that increased the risk and made the whole thing more senseless. Everything around that lady smelled danger, he could see that clearly. They had killed Gandhi himself, hadn’t they? Those countries were too unpredictable … Paola, however, could not hide a certain satisfaction. Her daughter had not fallen in love with just anyone. In some way, Sonia had wiped away their paesani veneer, although she was not prepared for this love story to prosper just because of that. Neither did she want to lose her.
Rajiv returned from his trip to the United States satisfied, although it was too short and it was too full of official engagements for him to enjoy it as he would have liked. Since he was a little boy, politics had always meant the same to him: unending photo sessions with his mother, having to listen to boring conversations over lengthy dinners, always being very well-behaved, wearing a tie, saying yes to everything. He was more and more convinced that his was to be a life far away from all those goings- on, a quiet, discreet existence beside the woman of his dreams. He also wanted to get away from himself, from his roots, from the weight of the family tradition which, he felt, could one day crush him. He secretly trusted that the destiny drawn up for him by his name would never catch up with him.
In October 1966, he asked to borrow his brother’s car to go and see Sonia; the old Volkswagen had deteriorated so much that he had sold it for four pounds. Besides, Sanjay’s car was more appropriate for such a long journey. It was an old Jaguar, a model that his brother had acquired for an exceptional price because it did not work, thanks to his contacts at Rolls Royce. Sanjay had worked on it patiently until he got it to start again. Unlike his brother, Rajiv did not like to show off, and going to Orbassano in that car made him feel embarrassed, but on the other hand he thought it was better to turn up like that, like someone of means and not like a backpacker. In that way he stood a better chance of impressing Sonia’s parents favourably.
She was excited that he was coming; she had not seen him for months and the waiting seemed to go on forever. Her sisters and friends were also nervous. It was not every day that an Indian prince arrived in that dormitory town outside Turin, ready to carry off his Cinderella … There was enormous curiosity, including on the part of her parents, who had invited him to dinner that very day, although everyone pretended it was nothing special.
Rajiv’s arrival in his Jaguar caused a real commotion in the neighbourhood. Who could that rich Englishman be, coming to see the Maino girl? they asked each other in low tones. Their perplexity was even greater because his looks did not match his car. “He looks Sicilian,” joked one of Sonia’s friends. “With a car like that, he could be a terrone from the Mafia,” another commented. Rajiv arrived untidy and with several days’ growth of beard because he had slept in the car in order to save on hotel bills. Sonia did not know whether it was tiredness or the prospect of the dinner, or the recent events which had
catapulted his mother on to the international scene, but she noticed he was worried when she was finally able to hug him in an empty street in Orbassano where they had agreed to meet on the morning of his arrival.
“I’m going to have to go back to India,” he confessed to her as soon as the passion of their meeting had calmed.
“What about your pilot’s licence?”
“I’ll get it there. Anyway, I haven’t the money to get it in England. What worries me is being so far away from you.”
There was another reason, which was that his mother had asked him to come home.
“She’s very lonely. She has huge problems,” he told Sonia.
He explained to her that no sooner had she returned from the United States than the opposition attacked her ferociously, accusing her of having fallen under the influence of the Americans and of abandoning her father’s non-alignment policy… But not only the opposition: those who had elected her for the position of Prime Minister, the leaders of her own party too. They were bothered by the way Indira faced up to problems, directly, skipping over the party hierarchy, as in the case of the skirmishes with Pakistan. An old colleague of Nehru’s had launched a harsh diatribe against Indira in Parliament, questioning not so much the aid but the conditions which the Americans had imposed before handing it over. Among these was the devaluation of the rupee, a very unpopular measure which Indira took in spite of having the whole country against her, thus showing that she was not an imitation of her father, that she was able to administer bitter medicine to the nation if she really believed in it, and that she owed nothing to anybody. But the result was that her popularity fell to its lowest point, while the predictions about India’s future became gloomier and gloomier. The idea prevailed that only the personality and example of Nehru had managed to keep India united and democratic, but that now, with the successive droughts, the innumerable little ethnic rebellions, the tension with Pakistan and Indira’s leadership, the country was on the verge of disintegration.
“And they blame my mother for it,” said Rajiv. “As though she were responsible for the fact there have been three years of drought and the people are dying of hunger … The fact is, I have the impression I am abandoning her, and I don’t like it.”
Listening to Rajiv talk about his mother became Sonia’s special initiation into Indian politics. She was not aware of it, but she was coming into contact with concepts and ideas that had always seemed very distant and incomprehensible, and that soon would become as familiar to her as at home when they commented on the Juventus results or the Milan fashion week. She was beginning to realize that you cannot live close to someone like Rajiv’s mother without it affecting the lives of everyone around her, including Sonia herself. But it was still something too nebulous and faraway to upset her. Each battle in its own time. The battle now was to overcome her parents’ resistance.
Sonia accompanied Rajiv to the house of a friend who had offered to put him up, and then she showed him the town. They had a cappuccino each at Nino’s bar, walked around the streets in the centre and then stopped at Pier Luigi’s coffee shop. Apart from running his establishment, Pier Luigi was a radio ham in his free time, a hobby on which Rajiv also wanted to spend some time. He had discovered it during his flying studies and, apart from the attraction to the magic of electronics, he also saw it as a way of communicating with Sonia when he was far away. The desperation of one day finding himself so distant from her made him dream about any possibility of filling that void.
Sonia left him to rest and arranged to pick him up that night to take him to dinner at her parents’ home. Meanwhile, she would go to the annual meeting of ex-pupils at her school in Giaveno. “I remember that day as if it were yesterday,” Sister Giovanna Negri would say. Sonia was 20. After the meeting of ex-pupils of the school, Sonia announced that she was leaving.
“Why don’t you stay and have dinner with us?” I said to her. “You’ve been away in England for a long time and we’ve hardly seen you.”
“I can’t stay,” Sonia replied. “I have a guest coming for dinner tonight.”
“And who is it …?” asked Sister Giovanna, joking.
Sonia blushed, displaying the dimples in her cheeks. In the end she let it out: “My boyfriend.”
“Your boyfriend? What a surprise! Tell me all about him … Who is he?”
Sonia was reluctant to answer, which sharpened the nun’s curiosity even more.
“He’s Indian …” she said shyly.
“Indian?” the nun repeated in astonishment.
Sonia put a finger to her lips so she would lower her voice. Then she said, almost in a sigh, “He’s the son of Indira Gandhi.”
“I was puzzled,” Sister Negri would recall years later.
That dinner was a little like the Italian version of the famous film with Katharine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier. Except that it was not fiction and there was no happy ending, although the reactions of Stefano Maino and Spencer Tracy might be similar. Rajiv talked about his studies. He had just obtained his certificate as a private pilot and he thought that in a year and a half he would get the commercial pilot’s licence. He wanted to find a job as soon as possible. He had a powerful reason for it: “I have come with a very serious proposal,” he told Stefano Maino. “I have come to tell you that I want to marry your daughter.”
Sonia did not know where to put herself because she had to translate. Her mother, all nervous, began to put drinks on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Her hands were trembling. The patriarch remained cordial, but firm: “I have not the slightest doubt as to your sincerity and honesty,” he told Rajiv, looking at Sonia to get her to continue translating. “I only need to look you in the eye to see what you are like. I do not doubt you. All my doubts have to do with my daughter. She’s too young to know what she wants …” Sonia looked at the ceiling in exasperation. “Quite frankly, I don’t think she’ll be able to get used to living in India. The customs are too different.”
Rajiv suggested that Sonia should go there for a short holiday. He explained the idea that she should first go alone, before he arrived, so that she could judge for herself. But Stefano was categorically opposed to the idea.
“Until she is over 21, I cannot let her go.”
It was a hard nut to crack, and Sonia knew but she could not let the atmosphere of the meeting degenerate. Her father’s silences could be cut with a knife. The man was as immoveable as a rock, and he only made one small concession: “If at that time you still feel the same towards each other, I will let her go to India, but that will be in a year’s time, when she is of age,” he said before turning to his wife and adding, “If things work out badly, she won’t be able to reproach me for helping to ruin her life.”
But Stefano still believed and hoped with all his heart that things would get back to normal and that in view of the difficulties she would find, Sonia would end up by throwing in the towel. He was tormented by the idea of losing his daughter.
8
When Rajiv told his mother about his meeting with the Mainos in Orbassano, Indira was in agreement with the condition the Italian patriarch had imposed. Testing the feelings of the young people was the only way to know if their romance had a future. They had to gain time; she too would really have preferred Rajiv not to have chosen a foreign girl. But if time proved that they loved each other, Indira was not thinking of opposing her son’s decision. She had suffered too much with her father’s rejection of her own marriage to inflict the same on any of her children.
“Marriage isn’t everything. Life is something bigger,” Nehru had told her when she went to see him in Dehra Dun Prison to tell him she wanted to marry Firoz. Nehru advised her to get her strength back before she made any decision. She had been very ill and her father reminded her that the doctors had advised her not to have children. Furthermore, what Indira wanted seemed trivial to him, because it meant throwing “inheritance and family tradition” out of the window in order to marry a man whose backg
round and education were very different from hers. Indira did not agree, at least at that time. She told him she wanted an anonymous lifestyle, free from tension, which she had never had before. She wanted to get married and have children. More than one, she stressed, because she did not want her child to suffer the loneliness that she had known. She wanted to take care of them and her husband in a house full of books, music and friends. If to fulfill that dream, she had to defy the doctors and risk even her own health, she was prepared to do it.
Firoz was the son of a Parsee named Jehangir Ghandy, whose official biography attributes him with being a naval engineer, but other sources state that he was a dealer in alcohol, although there was no connection at all to Gandhi. At the end of the thirties he changed the spelling of his name to that of Gandhi, the name of a caste of perfume- makers, a common name among the Bania castes of the Hindus of Gujarat, where Mahatma came from. The reason is not known for that small change, which ended up being of inestimable value to the future political career of his wife.
Following Zarathustra, the Parsee religion is one of humanity’s oldest, but Firoz was never religious, rather the opposite. He had come into contact with the Nehrus because of the freedom fight against the English which led him to become a member of the Congress Party. A very active and very radical militant, he knew the texts of Marx and Engels better than Nehru himself. Together they had joined in a protest meeting in France against the bombing of civil populations during the war in Spain.