The Red Sari: A Novel

by Javier Moro

  But five months into the pregnancy she was still feeling constantly sick. Her morale was also affected. Sanjay paid lots of attention to his sister-in-law. When he knew his brother was flying, he did not leave the house without checking to see if Sonia wanted to accompany him for a drive, to have an ice cream at Nirula’s, one of the few establishments similar to a Western café, or to visit a friend. But Sonia did not feel like going out. She preferred to stay at home, spending hours stroking the dogs Putli and Pepita, two Golden Retrievers, favourites of Nehru’s from the times in Anand Bhawan, and a mongrel called Sona that Rajiv brought home from an alley in old Delhi when he was a boy. When her husband came home again, they spent hours listening to music. At home Rajiv was making a large collection of records that he had put together over the years and which he treated with great care. He did not want anyone to touch the equipment or records without first checking that it would be done as scrupulously as if he did it himself. From time to time they attended concerts of classical Indian music, where Sonia learned about ragas (a classical melody) and ghazals (poems sung in Urdu) and to distinguish instruments such as the sarangi or the tabla, precursors of the guitars and drums of the West. Very often Rajiv recorded the recitals of great masters like Ustad Ali Khan or Ravi Shankar and then added them to his collection, which he classified methodically. But if they did not usually go out much and they were not very fond of parties, now that Sonia’s health was fragile, they went out even less. They had never wanted to become part of the New Delhi jet-set or to belong to any coterie. Rajiv felt comfortable with friends of very varied social rank, from a mechanic at the flying club to his old classmates at Cambridge who came to Delhi with a certain frequency. Sonia, feeling dizzy and sick, only agreed to go out on Sunday mornings to Khan Market, where the best-stocked record and book shops in the city were. It was a short ride, which the Italian girl took advantage of to buy fruit and also some European products in one of the shops there, frequently visited by diplomats. At five months, the gentle curve of her belly, which she could proudly see reflected in the shop windows, was the object of the gossip of the people she met that knew her, because in a way New Delhi was like a big village.

  Five months is a length of time after which it is considered that a pregnancy has passed its most critical period. In Sonia’s case, it was not like that. In the middle of one hot night, she felt shooting pains in her belly and realized she was losing a lot of blood. The pains were so sharp and there was such a strong feeling that she was emptying from the inside that she thought she was dying. Rajiv organized transport to the hospital in his mother’s car. He saw Sonia was so pale and weak that he was scared he was going to lose her. After the transfusion, when she was feeling better, they told Sonia that she had lost a lot of blood, but that now, once she had had a little operation, she was going to feel better. “What about the baby?” she asked, terrified because deep down she knew what had happened. Rajiv’s eyes, looking down at the ground, said it all.

  It was the hardest moment in Sonia’s life. Five months into the pregnancy she did not considered that she had had a miscarriage, but that she had lost her baby. Added to that deep grief was a bitter feeling of personal failure. It seemed to her as if she had failed her husband, Indira, her own family and the whole world. It seemed as though she were paying now for all the happiness that life had given her, as though she had to expiate the sin of her extraordinary love story. The doctors’ explanations which assured her that what had happened was relatively common in a first pregnancy and that it did not mean that the same would happen again the next time they tried, did not manage to lift her out of her profound melancholy. Furthermore, there were comments from the domestic staff about such an event being an evil omen, or the rumour on the streets that attributed responsibility for what had happened to Indira “because she forced her daughter-in-law to move and walk, obsessed with the idea that she should keep fit and not get too fat during the pregnancy”. In certain areas of gossip in the city, after everything that had happened with the nationalizations and the abolition of the maharajas’ privileges, it had become fashionable to call Indira a monster. As was to be expected, the family reacted as one and everyone surrounded Sonia with attention and affection. Indira was very upset. This had reminded her of a similar event, when her second son was born on December 14th, 1946. The birth pains had begun at night, totally unexpectedly. She was taken to hospital as an emergency where the English doctors came to fear for her life because she was bleeding to death. Right from the start that baby had been a problem. Nehru arrived when the bleeding was finally under control. A baby boy was born in the early hours, which Nehru named Sanjay, as a tribute to a visionary priest who describes the great battle against the blind king in the Mahabharata, the great epic of Hinduism. Firoz, her husband, did not come until a few days later. He was working in the city of Lucknow, and Indira had just found out that he was having a love affair with a Moslem woman, the daughter of a prominent family in the city. Therefore, the arrival of the baby had not been as happy an event as that of their first child, Rajiv. And Indira, subconsciously, blamed herself for it. She must have thought it was unfair and that she had to make up for it. All her life she felt she owed Sanjay something.

  Little by little, Sonia emerged from the ocean of sadness in which she was submerged, although she never smiled until she became pregnant again, a few months later. This time, her gynaecologist was strict: no walking or effort. The more time she spent lying down, the less risk of another miscarriage there was. Determined this time to complete the pregnancy, Sonia prepared to spend nine months in bed. Her inspiration came from another world-famous Italian, Sofia Loren, who had just gone through the same thing, with a happy ending. It was a tough experience, but Sonia took it as a test that she had to pass. She had the support of Rajiv, who spoiled her and cared for her with great devotion. Fortunately, he was not like Firoz, his father: he was home-loving, affectionate and totally faithful. He was still as in love with Sonia as the first day. Or more, because now a deeper feeling was added, one which is born from an harmonious relationship, from looking at everything through the other’s eyes, of a life together fully accepted and enjoyed.

  Indira was delighted again and took care of the baby’s layette with an eye for all the details. “You’re always boasting about the joys and ‘superior status’ of being a grandmother,” she wrote to her American friend Dorothy Norman from a plane that was taking her to the south of India to celebrate the fourth centenary of the synagogue of the Jewish community in Kerala, “and that is why I am letting you in on a secret: I am also competing for that status. Sonia is expecting a baby at the end of May. Isn’t it exciting? Although when a daughter-in-law is from another continent, there are many complexities too.” She was referring to Sonia’s fear of giving birth in Delhi, and to the new demands of her daughter-in-law, which arose as a reaction to the pressure around her. Suddenly Sonia declared that she did not want either a wet nurse or a servant to take care of the baby, and that she would do it all herself. To say that was a little naif, a way of affirming herself by making it understood: “I am European and in my private circle I will do things my way.” Indira and Rajiv took it like that, and did not insist, convinced that her stubbornness would pass once the baby was born. Reality would ensure that things fell into place. It was going to be very hard for Sonia to do without help bearing in mind that she would have to be available to accompany her husband or Indira on official visits. But, in general, the joy of welcoming a new member of the family compensated for the domestic friction. When Rajiv was working, his mother or his brother tried to take turns to be with Sonia at mealtimes. They did not want her to feel lonely at any time or for her to lose heart. Now Rajiv was flying as co-pilot on Indian Airlines Fokker Friendship turbo-propellers, high-winged aircraft with room for some 40 passengers, worthy successors to the DC-3.

  Sonia spent a lot of time with both brothers, who shared friends and interests in common, although Sanjay was to be seen
less and less. He was obsessed with his project to build an “Indian Volkswagen”. With a friend he had opened a workshop in the outskirts of the city and there, surrounded by rubbish dumps and open sewers, he was chasing his dream of becoming a local “Henry Ford” amid pieces of metal and rusty iron. The project to build a working class car produced for the masses had been under discussion for more than ten years in government offices, and finally the decision was made to hand production over to the private sector. Until then, only two models were made under licence in India: the famous Ambassadors, replicas of the Morris Oxford which served as taxis in post-war London, and which are still made at the Hindustan Motors factory in the state of Bengal, and the Fiat Padmini, which would become the only model of taxi in Bombay (in Europe they were known as the Fiat 1100). The car that Sanjay wanted to make had to be completely Indian, it would be cheap, able to reach the speed of 50 kilometres an hour and would consume only five litres per one hundred kilometres. The name he had chosen was Maruti, an allusion to the son of the wind god in Hindu mythology.

  At that time Indira was not looking beyond her own career. She did not imagine a family dynasty, just like her father before her. In numerous interviews she repeated that her sons had no interest in politics and that she would do whatever she could to keep them away from the world of politics. She showed no desire to pass on the family “burden” to them. Indira did not like in the least to mix politics with her private life.

  But her son Sanjay, determined at all costs to make a success of his project, was going to cross that line that his mother had so much interest in keeping. Why didn’t he have the right to manufacture a genuinely Indian car? he asked himself. It did not seem fair to him that just because he was the son of the Prime Minister, a venture like this should be closed off to him. Indira was in a difficult situation, torn between her feelings as a mother and her duty as the leader of the country. She had asked Sanjay not to present his project to the Ministry of Industrial Development, but he had paid her no attention and had formally asked for the licence, in spite of the fact that he had not even completed his training as a Rolls-Royce apprentice and was not a businessman or a car manufacturer. In fact his love affair with cars had been a constant headache to his mother. As an adolescent, more than once the police had brought him home after having found him with a friend, abandoning cars they had previously stolen from a car park in order to go for a joyride. These spoilt-boy games took on different aspects as he grew up. In England Sanjay had caused several accidents without physical damage, and several times he had been arrested for speeding at the wheel of his old Jaguar or for not having a valid driving licence.

  Unlike Rajiv, Sanjay was aggressive in his way of fighting for what he believed in and he exerted considerable pressure on his mother to get the licence granted. Indira presided over the cabinet meeting at which the Industry Minister granted Sanjay a permit to produce fifty thousand cars a year, made entirely out of Indian materials. And that was in spite of the fact that Sanjay had no qualifications and could not present the results of any previous projects. It was clear that if he had not been the son of the Prime Minister, they would never have given it to him. For once, Indira broke her sacrosanct principle of placing duty before personal desire, an exception that would cost her dearly. A scandal and a general protest accompanied the birth of the Indian car project. Indira was accused by the Press of the worst kind of nepotism. An opposition Member of Parliament called the concession “a disgrace to democracy and Socialism.” Others spoke of “unlimited corruption”. Her own allies, the Bengal Communists, joined in the storm of criticism. Indira replied in an unconvincing manner, “My son has proved he is an entrepreneur… If we do not encourage them, how can we expect other young people to take risks?” In fact Indira believed blindly in her son and probably thought that the Maruti was a golden opportunity for Sanjay to make his way in life and prove his worth. She knew he was young, immature and impetuous, but she believed he was skillful and strong. She thought that he would learn and that he would be able to control it all. She also knew that this meant exposing him to the public eye. In the long term it meant that, in spite of repeating that she did not want her sons to go into politics, Indira already saw her younger son as a worthy successor of the Nehru-Gandhi lineage. It was perhaps a way of feeling a little less lonely in the exercise of power.

  In that struggle against the feeling of loneliness that had come over her since her earliest years, the birth of her grandson, on June 19th, 1970, filled her with joy. Just as in all homes all over India, the birth of a son was an extremely important event. Rajiv was present at the birth, which was unheard of in the India of the time, and he did so camera in hand to record the first tears of his son, who had been born a little premature. Sonia was exhausted, but her husband helped her a lot, changing the baby and getting him to sleep between feeds. They behaved like modern parents, although eternal India was already waiting at the gates of the house when they came home from hospital and a holy man was waiting for the baby to draw up his astrological chart. The name chosen was Rahul, suggested by Indira. She explained to Sonia that it was the name she had originally chosen for her first son, although in the end she called him Rajiv to please her father. Nehru had been receiving suggestions for names in prison, and had chosen Rajiv because in Sanskrit it meant “lotus”, the same meaning as Kamala, the name of his wife who had died eight years before. In the same way as Indira gave way to her father’s wish, Sonia gave way to Indira, and by doing so became a little more Indian. Rahul was the name of a son of Gautama Buddha and in Sanskrit it meant “he who is able”. Although the family was not religious, the strength of custom caused the child to be welcomed with the corresponding Hindu rites. The ceremony of the first haircut took place three weeks after the birth, and all the couple’s friends gathered at the house. They shaved the baby’s head, leaving only one lock of hair which, according to the tradition, would protect his memory. Shaving his head had the symbolic meaning of freeing him from the remains of his past lives and preparing him to face the future.

  Indira was absolutely captivated by the baby. She tried to come home between sessions in Parliament just to see him and hold him in her arms. The woman who was grimly pursuing the aristocrats of India, who had just stood up to her party to remain in power, who expelled colleagues who had not voted for her, was a grandmother who melted when she was with her grandson. “How much he looks like Rajiv!” she said, without anyone else being able to find any similarity whatsoever yet. However this was no compliment because she had said thousands of times how ugly Rajiv had been when he was born. But the baby touched a sensitive spot inside her and reminded her of the time of her own motherhood. Indira had given birth to Rajiv on August 20th, 1944, not in a hospital but at the home of her youngest aunt, in Bombay, in difficult conditions. She had become pregnant in spite of her history of tuberculosis, the doctors’ warnings and her father’s opposition to her marriage, so that birth was seen as a real triumph over adversity. Indira wanted above all that Nehru should know his grandson. It was still three years until independence and he was locked up in a British jail on what would be his ninth and last imprisonment. When she heard that he was going to be moved, Indira turned up at the gates of Naini Prison in Allahabad, and in the short time between the prison gates and the prison van, she held little Rajiv up in her arms. “In the dim light of a lamp post, my father discovered his grandson, and was looking at him for the short time he was allowed,” Indira said.

  When Sonia had recovered, they travelled to Italy with the baby. Sonia had often dreamed of this moment during her long convalescence. The smell of delicious coffee as soon as they got to the airport, the silence of the big public areas, the biting cold, the comfort and speed of the cars, the water you could drink from the tap, the supermarkets that sold everything … those simple things she lacked in India seemed marvellous to her. It was as if it was the first time she was in her own country. It was a moment of intense joy to meet her family, in th
eir town. She hugged her father and they did not say anything to each other, it was not necessary. Stefano Maino suddenly found himself with little Rahul in his arms and the only thing that mattered was the baby’s wellbeing. Was that moment not worth all the grief of the past? Sonia seemed to ask herself. Finally, she was under the same roof with all those closest to her heart.

  12

  They soon came back to New Delhi, to get on with their quiet family life, although this was a false calm because it was always under threat from the ups and downs of politics. In spite of how much Indira loved her grandson, she hardly saw him because she was so busy. She spent many hours in her office in South Block, and when she came home she was always tired and worried-looking.

  “What’s going on?” Rajiv asked as soon as they arrived back.

  “They say there’s going to be a coup,” Sanjay answered.

  “Who says so?”

  “Everyone. At parties, at cocktails, at dinners. People are talking about nothing else. Mother knows, and she fears the worst.”

  Indira had made herself many enemies with her attacks on the wealthy, who accused her of turning India into a Communist country. All of the Right had turned against her, the employers, the owners of the media, the maharajas and their descendents, etc. and, like a large part of the country, she feared a violent reaction. But she did not want to make India into a Communist country like those she had known on her travels behind the Iron Curtain. Quite the opposite: she was making great efforts to reassure the wealthy that their interests were not endangered. She had compensated the great financial families with generous indemnities for the nationalization of their banks. Freedom – individual, collective and national—was a supreme value that she was not prepared to sacrifice on the altar of Socialism.