The Red Sari: A Novel

by Javier Moro

  Maneka clenched her fists and bit her tongue: perhaps this was not the moment to do without such a prestigious relationship. She lowered her eyes:

  “Alright, I’ll delay the launch of the book and I’ll change the captions of the photos.”

  Indira breathed a sigh of relief. She was aware that she had won a battle, but she was sure it would not be the last. For the moment the crisis had been avoided.

  Argumentative and persistent, Maneka became expert at tightening the rope. She had become convinced of two things: one, that there was no place for her in the power structure over which Indira presided, and two, that she could come to rival her mother-in- law. So she decided, on one hand, to redouble her defiant and provocative attitude and, on the other, to develop her own power base by mobilizing Sanjay’s now dethroned supporters. Maneka had agreed to go and give a speech in the city of Lucknow, the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh… for a group of dissidents of the Congress Party, led by an old friend of Sanjay’s. Indira was furious: “They’re defying me with a mini-revolt,” she told Pupul after Maneka had let her know that she had gained the support of a hundred or so members of the legislative assembly of the state of Uttar Pradesh loyal to Sanjay. Indira sent her a message: “If you go to Lucknow, don’t ever come back to my house.” Maneka withdrew and apologized, but it seemed clear that a confrontation was inevitable. That stubborn “kid”, who was making Indira’s life impossible, was driving her mad, something which her powerful political adversaries, who were much more Machiavellian and experienced, had not been able to do.

  In an attempt to put things right, Indira took her on a trip to Kenya with Rahul and Priyanka. But the trip that Maneka would really have liked to make was the one that Rajiv and Sonia made to London for the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Diana Spencer. Indira had sent them to represent her, in order to introduce on the international stage the one who in all probability would end up succeeding her. That was a glamorous trip, rubbing elbows with power and crème of world society. Maneka, on the other hand, was going off with the children “to see animals”. She began by complaining that she was the only one in the family who did not have a diplomatic passport. She hardly spoke to her nephew and niece on the whole trip and she barely answered her mother-in-law when she called her or tried to cheer her up. She kept herself to herself the whole time, with a long face, because she did not really want to be there. In the Embassy in Nairobi, when the time came to greet the representatives of the numerous Indian colony there, she did so unwillingly and coldly, to such an extent that it was embarrassing. She was taciturn and they did not really know whether she felt bored or if she was simply not interested in anything. Or if she was plotting something. Or all three at the same time.

  The one who was plotting something was her mother. Something explosive. She was negotiating the sale of Surya magazine to a well- known sympathizer of the RSS behind Indira’s back. When she found out, she was furious. The RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) was a Hindu political organization on the extreme right with almost military discipline, which had been involved in the massacres during Partition. Indira had always considered the RSS as “the greatest threat to India” because of its fanatical and exclusive Hindu nature. She was convinced that this party could one day lead the country into ruin. Had one of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassins not been a member of the RSS? The sale of Surya, which ended up going through, was a real provocation. Although it belonged to Maneka and her mother, Indira was fully aware that the magazine had been born and was able to function thanks to her contacts and her influence. Family tension came to boiling point. For some months Rajiv had avoided meeting his sister-in-law at home. Now it was clear that Maneka could no longer go on living there.

  Seeing that the conflict with Maneka was going to deprive her of her grandson, Indira became very depressed. Of all the betrayals she had been through, she felt that this was the most serious, the most harmful and the cruellest, because it came from within the family, sacred territory, and it affected the child of her favourite son. The imminence of another crisis, this time a definitive one, drained all her energy and made her feel exhausted. She made a last attempt for her grandson’s sake. She sent her old yoga teacher and guru, Dhirendra Brahmachari, who still visited her from time to time, to negotiate the re-purchase of the magazine, at any price, from the new owners. But they refused the offer. Indira was left with no way out. Hundreds of millions of people, the whole country, waited expectantly for the outcome of this live soap opera, a reality show before its time.

  Indira was in London, inaugurating the Year of India, a huge effort on the part of her government to promote cultural, industrial and commercial exchanges between India and the West. She had wanted Sonia to go with her. A large number of politicians, scientists, personalities from the world of culture, the aristocracy and the media attended the opening party. Indira was very moved when Zubin Mehta, who was a Parsee like Indira’s father, conducted the orchestra in playing the national anthems of India and the United Kingdom and the audience rose to their feet. It had special meaning because it was the first time the Indian national anthem had been played in public in London, the old capital of the Empire. Even Sonia felt shivers of emotion. Exquisitely dressed thanks to her daughter-in-law’s ministrations, Indira was radiant at the different receptions and dinners that went with the inauguration. So much so that it would have been impossible to guess how agitated and anxious she was inside. The messages that came from home announced that Maneka was prepared to abandon the family home permanently and that she had decided to defy Indira openly. Sonia remained silent and expectant regarding the inexorable moment of the split.

  In effect, Maneka had calculated the date very carefully, taking advantage of the fact that Indira and Sonia were away, and that Rajiv was too busy with his work and did not go near the house in order to avoid coinciding with her. The young woman had ignored Indira and had gone to Lucknow, where, in front of her husband’s followers, she made a heated speech, taking great care, however, not to appear to be disloyal to the Prime Minister. “Long live Indira Gandhi!” “Sanjay is immortal!” said the posters the organizers of the meeting had put up everywhere. “I will always honour the discipline and reputation of the great Nehru-Gandhi family to which I belong,” Maneka had ended.

  But that show of false loyalty did not soften Indira, who came back from London on the morning of March 28th, 1982, determined to be obeyed. When Maneka went to greet her, Indira cut her short: “We’ll talk later.”

  Maneka shut herself in her room and waited for a long time, until a servant knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” said Maneka.

  The man came in bearing a tray with her food on it.

  “What’s that?”

  “Mrs Gandhi asks me to tell you that she does not wish you to join the rest of the family for lunch.”

  “Take it away. I don’t intend to eat in my room just because she says so.”

  The man obeyed. An hour later he came back.

  “The Prime Minister would like to see you now,” he said obsequiously.

  Maneka’s legs were shaking as she went down the corridor. The moment of truth had come, but there was no one in the sitting room. She had to wait a few minutes, which seemed to go on forever, and during which she started biting her nails again, like when she was a little girl. Suddenly she heard noises and Indira appeared, furious and walking barefoot, accompanied by the guru, Dhirendra Brahmachari, and secretary Dhawan, with the fancy hairstyle. She wanted them as witnesses.

  Under normal circumstances, Indira would have fought this battle with her usual skill, waiting for the right moment to act. Now, perhaps because the thought of being separated from her grandson clouded her judgement, Indira fell into the trap her daughter- in-law had set for her. Her words could hardly be understood, and yet she could be heard loud and clear when she pointed her finger at her and shouted, “Get out of this house immediately!”

  “Why?” Maneka replied, looking
innocent. “What have I done?”

  “I’ve heard every word of the speech you gave!”

  “You gave the OK.”

  Maneka said that she had sent it to Indira for approval. And in effect, Rajiv had sent it on to London by telex. His mother had read it, but had not answered. She had decided to wait until she got home to give an answer.

  “I told you not to speak in Lucknow, but you did exactly what you wanted and you disobeyed me! There was poison in every single one of your words… Do you think I can’t see that? Get out of here! Leave this house right now!” she screamed. “Go back to your mother’s house!”

  “I don’t want to go to my mother’s house,” Maneka replied defiantly.

  “You will go to her. Since you’ve got together with the riff-raff of this country, to whom you’ve sold the magazine you started thanks to the contacts I got for you, I don’t want to see you again, either you or your mother.”

  Maneka started to cry, but added, “I need time to get my things ready.”

  “You’ve had all the time in the world. You’ll leave here when I tell you. Your things will be sent on to you later. You and your mother are trash!” Indira shouted, completely beside herself.

  Maneka went off towards her room, shouting, “I won’t allow you to insult my mother!”

  But Indira was determined to throw her out. She could not control herself. All the wrongs accumulated since Maneka had come into the house exploded like the gates of a dam bursting.

  “Get out! Get out this instant! And don’t take anything away from this house apart from your clothes!”

  Maneka shut herself in her room, and from there she called her sister Ambika to tell her what had happened, so that she could tell the Press and get help. The writer Kushwant Singh found out what was going on from a call from Ambika asking him to go to the Prime Minister’s house.

  Stormy relationships between mother- and daughter-in-law are part of the age-old culture of India, to the extent that many Bollywood productions are based on stories that recreate those domestic conflicts in all their gory details. What occurred in the home of the highest authority in the country exposed the whole family to public scrutiny in a way that even the most hardened film producers could not have imagined.

  About nine o’clock that night, a crowd of photographers and reporters, including a large group of international correspondents, gathered at the gate at the entrance of the house. The police, whose reinforcements had deployed in the surrounding area, did not know who to let in and who not to. So Ambika and Maneka’s brother got in without any difficulty, after having visited for eight years. They found their sister in her room, in floods of tears, piling everything untidily into suitcases. Suddenly, while they were deciding how to proceed, Indira burst into the room: “Get out now!… I’ve told you not to take anything with you.”

  Ambika intervened: “She won’t go! This is her home!”

  “This is not her home,” shouted Indira, with her eyes bulging in fury. “This is the home of the Prime Minister of India!” And pointing at Maneka, she added, “You can’t bring people in here without my permission.”

  Ambika was going to say something, but Indira interrupted her.

  “Anyway, Ambika Anand, I don’t wish to talk to you.”

  “You have no right to talk to my sister like this!” shouted Ambika, with no intention whatsoever of allowing herself to be cowed. “This is Sanjay’s house and my sister is Sanjay’s wife! So this is her home. Nobody can throw her out.”

  Indira went crazy then. What her bitterest enemies had not managed to do, those two sisters did. Indira’s shouts alerted Sonia who ran to tell Rajiv in his office in Akbar Road. Rajiv tried to get the situation under control with the help of a cousin who was helping him with his political business. They asked the chief of security, a tall, burly Sikh, to kindly throw the sisters out of the house. The man replied cautiously, “Sir, I can only follow that order if I have it in writing.”

  Rajiv was ready to sign a written order, but his cousin stopped him.

  “Don’t do it,” he said. “Don’t sign anything that might later be used by the Press against you or the family. Whether you like it or not, Maneka has the right to be in this house. Signing a document to throw her out can only bring you problems.”

  Rajiv looked at the Sikh, who nodded, totally in agreement with what the cousin had just said.

  “It isn’t wise,” his cousin added.

  “OK,” said Rajiv, giving up and looking towards the end of the corridor where, suddenly, a deafening noise had started up.

  Shut in Maneka’s room, the two sisters had put a video of a Bollywood film on at full volume so that Indira, who was exhausted in the room next door, could see that they would do whatever they liked. Meanwhile, they planned their strategy and the exact time they would leave. Secretary Dhawan and guru Dhirendra Brahmachari had to act as messengers. Every time Dhawan went in to tell them to leave, they asked for something else. First they asked for dinner, which was served them in the room. Then they told him that the dogs also needed to eat, and the secretary ordered them to be fed and was unlucky enough for Sheba, Maneka’s Irish wolfhound, excited by the atmosphere of hostility there was in the house, to give him a slight bite on the arm.

  It went on like that for a couple of hours, until the sisters ordered their trunks, suitcases and parcels to be taken out. When they were already outside, Dhawan came back again, this time accompanied by the guru: “I’m sorry, but we have orders to check your things.”

  “Very well,” said Maneka, “if you’re going to search me, let it be out here, so that everyone can see.” And she began to open the trunks, deliberately pulling out clothes, shoes, books…

  Suddenly, the flashes of the photographers at the gates lit up the night like a minor fireworks display. Indira appeared in the doorway, and told her secretary not to insist on the search. She had realized that her daughter-in-law had won the match and she was beginning to give way. Maneka had done nothing more than to apply one of her mother- in-law’s lessons: “Let your enemies do what they want to you, but always in the public eye, so they show the worst side of themselves”. When the lamentable spectacle of the search came to an end, Maneka and her sister went back to their room, demanding that her things and the dogs should be sent on ahead of them to their new home. The last of the conditions was that they would not leave without little Firoz Varun.

  On that disastrous night, Indira’s worst mistake was trying to keep hold of her two-year old grandson. Before the quarrel she had given orders for him to be taken to her room. He had spent the day with a slight temperature. When the servants went to fetch him, Indira refused to hand him over.

  “My grandson is staying with me,” she said in an attack of irrational stubbornness.

  Maneka let her know that if she did not hand over the baby, she would do a sit-in at the door of the house until she got him. Very skilfully, the young widow was preparing to exploit her role as victim using Mahatma Gandhi’s weapon of civil disobedience. Indira’s fight was a desperate one. She sent for P.C. Alexander, her chief official secretary, who, on being woken in the middle of the night, thought that some international conflict had broken out. “I had never seen her so distressed, so worried, so anxious, so tense as that night,” the man would say. “Her face reflected her indescribable anguish.”

  “Madam,” Alexander said to her, “you have had to face so many crises in your life, so many political battles, the death of your son. Why are you like this now?”

  “Alexander, this girl wants to take Firoz Varun away from me. You know my relationship with Sanjay’s son. He’s my grandson. They want to take him away from me.”

  Indira was still beside herself. The suffering caused by the loss of her grandson was clouding her judgement. There was no way to make her see sense, to convince her that her daughter-in-law was in the right. However much she was Prime Minister, she could do nothing against the fact that Maneka was the baby’s mother. The
rule of law reigned supreme in India, didn’t it? The lawyers she made come in the middle of the night to see how she could hang on to the baby all agreed that there was nothing to be done.

  “Madam,” one of the lawyers said finally, “if you keep the baby, your daughter- in-law will put in a complaint and you will be forced to hand him over to the police, who in turn will give him back to his mother. I suggest you save yourself all that trouble.”

  The battle was lost. Indira went to her room, and stood looking at the baby, who was sleeping in his cot, breathing regularly and audibly. The woman was in floods of tears. Rarely in her life had she been seen to cry so much and to be so distraught. For her, it was like her son’s death all over again. When the nanny went to take the baby away, Indira gestured to her, took him out of the cot and hugged him to her for a long time, aware that it was the last time she would see him. Then she handed him over, shattered inside, wiping her tears away with the end of her sari.

  It was after eleven o’clock when, carrying the confused, half-asleep Firoz Varun in her arms, Maneka finally left the house and got into a car with her sister. An explosion of flashes lit up the whole sequence of their departure. Photos that fitted the image she wanted to give, of a loyal daughter-in-law treated cruelly by her powerful and authoritarian mother-in-law. “Maneka waving to the reporters from the car,” said the caption under the photo that came out the next morning in all the newspapers in India and some abroad. The daily Indian Express published an article comparing the efforts of the Prime Minister to kick Maneka out to the act of “killing a wasp with blows from an axe”. Indira had lost and she knew it.

  Sonia was heartbroken to see her so distraught. She too suffered with what happened, although she had been able to see it coming, perhaps more clearly than Indira herself. She suffered because she had cared for the baby a lot since he was born. She had been like a second mother to him. The baby’s birth evoked memories of the family’s happiness, found again after the upsets of the Emergency. The harmony had not lasted long, only until Sanjay’s death, but it had left a deep impression on all the members of the family. Priyanka and Rahul had also become used to their little cousin’s presence, so close to them that they considered him to be like a brother. During the following days, Indira said to everyone who came to see her, “Do you know what’s happened? Maneka and Firoz Varun have left the house,” as though it had been the considered decision of two adults. The whole country knew what had happened down to the last detail.