by Javier Moro
The book about Sanjay was the battlefield in the relationship between Indira and Maneka, who hardly dared to speak to her mother-in-law. She noticed she was distant and cold, and felt more afraid of her than ever. When she had to speak to her, the words would not come out, just like when she arrived in that house. She only got proper attention from Indira when she talked about the baby. Nothing when she talked about anything else. One day she finally dared to suggest an idea that had been going round and round in her head.
“As I can see you’re so busy, I thought that instead of you writing the foreword, it would be better if the journalist Kushwant Singh does it, based on an interview with you. That way you won’t have so much to do.”
Indira stood looking at her for a long time, in one of her silences that did not augur anything good.
“No way,” she said finally. “You should have done that immediately after Sanjay’s death. I would have had time then to write something. But you didn’t consult me. Now I’m not going to write anything and that man is not going to interview me.”
It was her personal revenge for the article that had so annoyed her. It was also a way of putting her daughter-in-law in her place. The war had started.
Maneka came out of that conversation with her mother-in-law in a terrible state. “If she doesn’t write the foreword, I’ll never speak to her again,” she threatened to anyone who wanted to hear. Then, alone in her room, she started crying. The draft of the book, with photos she had chosen with great care and love, was spread out over her bed. “Why won’t she help me? Isn’t it about her son?” she asked amid her tears.
When she had calmed down, Maneka attempted a final approach. She took the book to Indira’s room and left it on her bed. Perhaps, when she saw it, her mother-in-law would think again.
Over six months had gone by since Sanjay’s death, and seeing those pictures again after an exhausting day in Parliament moved Indira deeply. The angel face that Sanjay had when he was little, the photos of his childhood games, of when he stroked his favourite pet—his tiger—, of his toy cars, of his horse-riding with Nehru, of him and Indira hugging each other… all that past that suddenly came rushing back, like a wound reopened, and left her emotionally drained. She did not sleep a wink that night. She told her friend Pupul that the book was well presented, but that she was determined not to write the foreword. “She had erased Maneka from among the people she loved,” Pupul would write, having noticed a symbolic and revealing detail: the door that went into Sanjay’s room was shut and the one that went into Rajiv’s was open. Indira had moved on from one phase of her life and was preparing to start another.
28
“Rajiv, I’m worried to death about you flying…” Indira said to him one day in the sitting room at home.
“Mother, you are an intelligent person and you know perfectly well that statistically there is more chance of being run over crossing the street than flying in a plane.”
“I know, but I can’t help thinking about…”
Rajiv stood looking at her. Dressed in a white sari for mourning, his mother looked a wreck. Sanjay’s death, which projected its long shadow over the present, had made Indira insecure, and the fears that had always held her in their grip were now magnified. It made Rajiv infinitely sad to see her like that. Just the thought that she needed him and that he could not—or would not—help her, was beginning to torment him. Indira went on: “Did you know that a newspaper in Gujarat predicted that Sanjay would die in June?”
“Mother, please… If we had to believe the predictions of all the astrologers there are in India, no one would be able to live.”
“I’ve been receiving lots of letters warning me that danger is lurking near you, and that’s why I’m scared when I know you’re in the air.”
“Do you know the best thing you can do with those letters? Throw them on the fire…”
“Don’t be silly, Rajiv,” she replied with a distraught look on her face and an expression of dark despair. “What happened to Sanjay is because we didn’t do anything to avoid it happening. We didn’t take any notice of the predictions that were right when they gave the exact date.”
“No, Mother. What happened to Sanjay is because it was his own fault.”
Indira looked long at him. She was not used to Rajiv contradicting her.
He went on:
“…He did whatever he wanted, and when the Director of Civil Aviation told him off for not keeping to the rules and risking his life, Sanjay had him fired instead of listening to him. You have to see reality as it is, Mother. I’m very concerned that you allow yourself to be influenced by astrologers like that…”
Indira put her head down, as though to let him see that she was bowing to her son’s reasoning. Rajiv understood that his mother was trying to make sense out of the tragedy that had overcome her, and she found that sense in the occult forces that her enemies had launched against the family. That old paranoia of hers was more alive than ever.
“Mother,” Rajiv said, attempting to bring her round. “If there are evil forces, there are certainly positive forces that protect us too… Aren’t there?”
“Were they able to protect your brother?” she asked.
Rajiv looked up as though to say “Not again!” Indira went on: “If I had died, it would have been part of a natural process… I’m sixty-two, I’ve lived a full life, but your brother was so young…”
Rajiv stood there dejected. His mother was inconsolable. They were silent for a while. Suddenly Indira stood up: “I’ve got three hours of work left. I must get back.”
“You’re exhausted and you should rest,” Rajiv told her.
“If I don’t do that work now, I’ll have to get up at four in the morning to do it. Goodnight.”
Rajiv remained pensive. He saw his mother go off to her room like a hunched over bird, slightly dragging her feet. She looked as if she was adrift, like someone in a ship-wreck… Where was her boundless energy and her eternal optimism? It was distressing to see her like that. And the question that kept coming back to him was the logical consequence of that: “Have I really got the right to refuse to help her?”
When he told Sonia about his feelings regarding his mother, she burst into tears, perhaps because in moments of lucidity she realized that she was fighting a battle that was already lost beforehand. Besides, she felt that her husband was in a dilemma and he was suffering for it.
“Are you going to throw all that we’ve achieved overboard?… Your career, the time with your children, your hobbies, our happiness?”
For the first time, there was tension in their marriage. So much that one day, in desperation, Sonia told him: “If you’re thinking of going into politics, I’ll ask for a separation and I’ll go back to Italy.”
Never, in all the fifteen years of their marriage, had they had a fight. They had never exchanged harsh words. Sonia had never gone so far. “I fought for him like a tigress, for us and for our children, for the life we had built together, for his love of flying, for our friends, and above all, for our freedom: that simple human right that we had preserved so carefully and consistently,” she would write later.
But the forces against which Sonia was fighting were much more powerful than her arguments for individual happiness and family harmony. What weight could the bourgeois wellbeing of a family of four have in comparison with the destiny of India? Those forces, which came out of the deepest history of the nation, spoke in the name of a country of over seven hundred million people. They were the same forces that had once pushed Indira into the political arena and which now called for Rajiv’s presence. Two months after Sanjay’s death, three hundred MPs, all members of the Congress Party, signed a petition asking him to take on his brother’s post and stand as candidate in his constituency. The fact that he was married to a foreigner did not seem to be a problem, perhaps because in the mentality of the people, a woman takes on the identity of her husband’s family.
It was the beginning of inte
nse, constant, public pressure. From that time on, not a single day went by without the Press predicting his entry into politics. When reporters asked Indira about the subject, she remained impassive: “I cannot speak about it. Rajiv is the one who has to decide.” MPs began to besiege the house. They came to “visit him”, which meant trying to convince him. Sonia was forced to make tea with cardamom for all those “vultures” who, according to her, had come to tear the happiness of their family apart before her very eyes.
It was not only public pressure that began to be blatant, but personal pressure too. T.N. Kaul, Rajiv’s uncle, a diplomat with an unsullied reputation, was not a man whose advice could be taken lightly. Kaul was the last name of Nehru’s wife and T.N. had always been very close to Indira. His loyalty had resisted the blows of fate of recent years. His son was a pleasant, lively character who had studied at Cambridge with Rajiv and was part of the couple’s circle of close friends. The Kauls were very close relatives, and were very much loved.
“The lives of your mother and your brother were closely linked, even more than it seemed,” T.N. Kaul told Rajiv at the first meeting they held. “Sanjay was her communication link with the party leaders, and that is why she has been so isolated since his death. She needs someone close to her, someone who is able to act effectively to hold on to the party’s loyalty. And you know how she doesn’t trust anyone, except the ones who are very close to her.”
“I know, but I also know, and everybody knows, that I was not made for politics… Besides, you know what Sonia’s attitude to the matter is.”
“I understand that Sonia sees it that way, because she has been exposed to the worst side of public life, but not everything is contemptible or bad in politics. It’s supposed to be the noblest of duties…”
Rajiv gestured ironically. Kaul went on:
“It’s about serving the people, dedicating oneself in body and soul to others… as your grandfather did, as your brother did, as your mother is doing.”
“…As they want me to do.”
“Of course. It’s in your blood.”
“I’m not sure it’s as hereditary as you think. I stand every chance of losing…”
“If you stand a chance of losing, after having imbibed the atmosphere of politics from the very beginning, just imagine other people… On the contrary, you have every chance of winning. One day you could be Prime Minister.”
“No thanks. I’ve seen my mother weeping after her oldest, dearest and most faithful colleagues left her in the lurch to save themselves. I’ve seen comrades of hers, people in whom she had the utmost trust, turn their backs on her and become ruthless critics… Thanks, but I prefer to go on living my life in jeans with my wife and my family, who give me everything I need.”
“Rajiv, you know as well as I do that there are two kinds of people who go into politics: a few who consider politics as a way of getting society to move forward, and the rest who see it as a means to obtain advantages for themselves and their group. Those of the second type only care about the things connected with power: the glitter, the sycophancy, people kissing their feet and venerating them like a god, all the things that Sonia loathes.”
“And what is the reward for the others?”
“There’s only one. The satisfaction of being fulfilled as a human being.”
Rajiv shrugged his shoulders. It was too vague and abstract an idea for his taste. Then he asked: “What does my mother say?”
“She has told me word for word that she does not want to influence your decision; that you are to do as you think best.”
“Does she know that you’ve come to talk to me?”
“Yes. I asked her… and she told me that if I wanted to talk to you, there was no problem as far as she was concerned.”
There was a silence. Rajiv showed him some notebooks and books that he had spread out on the table.
“Do you know that I’m about to make one of the dreams of my life come true?”
“Oh yes?”
“Indian Airlines is just renewing its fleet, and there will only be jets. Until now I’ve flown as second-in-command on the 737. Next month I’m sitting the Captain’s exam. My salary will go up and I’ll be able to ask for the Delhi-Bombay route, which will allow me to have better working hours.”
Kaul glanced at the compass, the calculator, the maps unfolded with notes correcting direction and calculations written in pencil in the margins… Then with a serious look, he turned to Rajiv:
“So am I to understand that your answer is no?”
Rajiv nodded, and added:
“For me, going into politics would be like going to jail.”
As he felt his uncle’s eyes on him, he said:
“…Besides, I don’t even have a membership card for the Congress Party.”
“Think about it Rajiv. Think about all the sacrifices the family has made for the country. When you were little and you went to Teen Murti House, you did that because your grandfather was on his own and needed help. Like your mother does now. She sacrificed her personal life to serve him. She did it because she was a woman. Your duty as a man is to help her and support her in every way you can.
Uncle Kaul’s arguments were convincing and appealed to filial duty and a certain sense of predestination, to an imaginary family mission on a national level written in the stars. Rajiv’s were rational and practical. They spoke of simple things, such as living day to day, vocation, the love of the family. But the reality was more complex, a mixture of many people’s emotions and ambitions, of fears and doubts, of dreams and hidden impulses, of history and politics. For months the pressure on Rajiv continued, and therefore it continued on Sonia too. “I spent hours and hours trying to convince her to let her husband enter politics, but no argument seemed good enough for her,” Nirmala Deshpande, a family friend, would say. “At every attempt, Sonia very politely, but very firmly, said no.” One day Sonia went so far as to tell her: “I’d rather have my children begging on the streets than have Rajiv go into politics.”
For the couple it was a terrible year in which they both felt helpless to avoid getting closer to the abyss. They were overcome by the strange, perverse feeling that suddenly their lives did not belong to them. They had gone from being masters of their own existence to being the victims of a policy of harassment in the name of grand principles and noble causes which, at that moment, they felt were nothing to do with them. As though that gigantic country could not live without them. Rajiv was torn by the conflict between his duty as a son and his own happiness. Sonia was caught between her husband and her mother-in-law, two people whom she adored. “At the same time,” she wrote later, “I was furious and resentful of a system that, as I saw it, demanded a sacrificial lamb. A system that would crush him and destroy him —of that I was absolutely sure.”
Rajiv lost weight and could hardly sleep. His sense of duty pushed him towards helping his mother. His love for Sonia and the commitment he had taken on with her pulled him in the opposite direction. Everyone had their reasons, all of them were valid and he was in the middle, confused and unhappy. Then he took refuge in his studies to take the exam as captain of the 737, the only thing that allowed him to remove himself from a reality that was becoming unbearable to him. He, who had always fled from conflict and confrontation, was in anguish at being the target of everyone’s demands. “Won’t this pressure ever stop? Will this hell never end?” he wondered when he saw the months going by and the chorus of voices becoming deafening.
“I was hoping for a miracle,” Sonia would say, “a solution that would be acceptable and fair for all of us.”
But that miracle did not happen. On the contrary, every day that went by, the main actors in this drama found themselves worse off: Indira, ever more alone and overwhelmed by the problems piling up, Rajiv and Sonia, more and more tormented every day.
“I hate to see you like this,” Sonia said to him one day, hugging him tight, “I don’t want to see you so bad…”
“It’s as if they’d stolen our lives away from us…”
“Rajiv, forget what I told you when I was so angry. Forget it all. If you think you should help your mother, do it… I don’t want to see you so unhappy. It’s eating us up.”
“I don’t intend to make any decisions without you.”
“Do it,” said Sonia in tears, with her head on her husband’s chest. “Go ahead. Life changes, I find it hard to accept… Deep down, I think I’m going to end up losing you, but perhaps that’s selfishness on my part, I don’t know… What I do know is that we cannot go on like this.”
“He was my Rajiv,” Sonia would say, “we loved each other, and if he thought he should offer to help his mother, I would bow to those forces that were now too powerful for me to fight off, and I would go with him wherever they took him.”
Sonia once again showed that her love for her husband was more important to her than any other consideration. Was loyalty not the very essence of love? Had she not always followed him? Had she not left her family and her country for him? Had she not become an impeccable Indian daughter-in-law for him? If her whole life had revolved around him, if one day she had promised to follow him to the ends of the earth, now she would have to keep that promise. She would follow him wherever he went, into the nightmare hell of politics if it were necessary. Even if they both ended up burning in the flames there.
After four very long and very intense visits from uncle T.N. Kaul, Rajiv finally said: “… If Mother wants me to help her, then I will.”
Kaul sighed.
“It’s a sensible decision,” he said. “We are sure you can win the elections in Amethi, your brother’s constituency, which will give you the legitimacy necessary to work alongside your mother.”
“But I don’t want to form part of the government, that is my condition. I’m only prepared to work within the Party, because I realize that there is a vacuum and I can see that no one else can fill it.”
“The important thing is for you to win your seat in Amethi.”