The Red Sari: A Novel

by Javier Moro

  Sonia looked at him with her dark eyes, swollen from tiredness and grief, and nodded. When she was alone, she went to bed in what had been her room before she was married, and she wondered, as if surprised at herself, Am I really from here? Her father would have turned in his grave if he could have heard her say something like that, but she felt an indefinable feeling of strangeness, of not belonging now to that setting which had been the stage of her youth. As though the death of her father had precipitated the feeling of having no roots. Sonia found it hard to recognize herself in the country of her childhood. Her mind was too far away from the day to day concerns of the people of Orbassano for her to identify with them. In fact she had lived more years in India than in Italy, more years in an environment focussed on the problems of governing a sixth of humanity than in an environment aimed at mere individual well-being. It had been some time since her heart had stopped wavering between the two worlds. She was from there, and her father’s death had confirmed it for her, in a secret way, as though the disappearance of the person who had most opposed her designs made her see more clearly where the truth lay.

  She stayed inside the house for several days, not wanting to do anything. She did not even have the strength to go and see Pier Luigi; she did not want to talk to anyone, or give explanations, or talk about her life… Was it possible to tell her life? How could she expect anyone to understand the life she led? Only the closest family could understand that, and now not even her father. When she closed her eyes, she remembered the tickling of her father’s moustache on her cheek, his smell of soap, his smile and his frown, his words, always wise, full of very basic common sense. She remembered when he took her to see a completed job and he showed it to her with the pride of a job well done. “Why has he gone so soon?” Sonia asked herself. She remembered Indira, who had lost her husband to a heart attack, which is like a light going out suddenly. Or when a bomb explodes and leaves a crater. They say it is best to die like that, but Sonia would have liked to say goodbye to him, to tell him how much she loved him… even if just that once. A few days later, Sonia went back to New Delhi and no one ever saw her again in Orbassano.

  38

  History was repeating itself. Rajiv could not be Prime Minister without provoking the same animosity that his grandfather and his mother had aroused before him. In 1989, parties on the Right and the Left allied themselves with members of the old Janata Party, the coalition that had been born to defeat Indira, with the aim of presenting a common front in the general elections and achieving the same goal: getting a Gandhi out of power again. During the campaign, an episode of fierce violence in the state of Bihar between Moslems and Hindus damaged Rajiv’s already tarnished image even more. There were over a thousand dead before Rajiv could manage to quiet the disturbances.

  Then he went on travelling round the country, just like his mother, piling up rallies and kilometres and selling the achievements of his government. The difference is that his mother had little protection around her, which allowed to shake hands, give out hugs and, certainly, be in physical contact with the people. Every move that Rajiv made, however, meant the mobilization of some three hundred security agents, who did not allow him to get as close, except in absolutely controlled situations. From time to time, he skipped the protocol, even if he had to argue with his bodyguards, but in general, every one of his movements meant so much in terms of logistics that it had to be thought about to see if it was really worth it or not. He knew that so many limitations made him appear as a distant leader to the masses and therefore he struggled to be free of the surveillance. “I have never been afraid for myself,” he declared in an interview. As usual, the one who was more aware of the danger was Sonia.

  On campaign, Rajiv travelled in an army Boeing, paid for by the party. It took off from New Delhi before dawn and this allowed him to visit three or four states in one day. In order to reach remote places, he used helicopters which had practiced making emergency landings the day before. He finished the day’s work after midnight and stayed in the plane to sleep for a few hours, or in government lodgings. Only someone with the resistance and a sportsman’s attitude to life that Rajiv had could stand such a rhythm. No doubt Indians did not profess the same adoration for him as they did for his grandfather, or the almost reverential respect with which they surrounded Indira, but they appreciated this decent man who struggled to prove himself worthy of the dynastic legacy he had inherited. On several occasions his son Rahul went with him, an adolescent with glasses who looked very much like him. For the young man, it was an introduction to the crowds. The people wanted to touch him as if by doing so they might catch some of the magic and power of a Gandhi. Priyanka was not going to be less than her brother, and she insisted that she and her mother should go to the Amethi constituency, for which Rajiv was MP, to pull out all the stops. Priyanka very much enjoyed campaigning with her mother. They were both very popular and much loved by the million and a half inhabitants of Amethi, who now enjoyed the prosperity that Rajiv had promised them during his first campaign. Amethi could now boast of having all its roads asphalted; almost all the villages had electricity and drinking water and a little industrial boom had drastically reduced unemployment. Those were the advantages of having their MP as Prime Minister. Mother and daughter were welcomed with great love and effusiveness. Sonia was the main attraction for the peasants, anxious to place a garland of flowers round the neck of this foreign woman who intrigued them because she was always dressed in a sari and spoke Hindi fluently. “I may be a daughter of Italy, but I am the daughter-in-law of Amethi,” she told them to explain her origins, and her smile showed her dainty dimples. As Sonia did not like speaking in public, she preferred to go from house to house, or from hut to hut, and encourage people to vote for her husband. Mother and daughter also improvised rallies at the side of the road, where they explained the same as Rajiv and Rahul thousands of kilometres from there to other peasants even poorer than these. They gave out stickers and badges to the young people, and adhesive bindis (the dot between the eyes) with the logo of the Congress Party, the open palm of a hand, to the women. “I only want you to realize how the situation of your villages has improved since Rajiv was elected to Parliament eight years ago…” Sonia said to them, before adding, “Brothers and sisters, if you want us to go on working together, vote for my husband.”

  Her husband was no longer the novice politician of five years before. Adulation no longer had the same effect on him, and he was hardly embarrassed at all by the songs that were dedicated to him or the flowery adjectives used to describe him. He was impatient to get people to understand the progress achieved, the new policies and the original initiatives undertaken. He shouted himself hoarse explaining how he had solved most of the conflicts inherited in 1984 and how he had managed to put the economy on the path to a growth of 6%, four points more than when his mother was in power, but he had the impression that he had lost his powers of persuasion and that his words were empty. It irritated him to have the feeling that he had done things right and at the same time he had to constantly defend himself from attacks and ill-intentioned insinuations. The fact is that his image had gone from being “the brave son who took on his mother’s mantle” to “a European rich boy who lived at the expense of the people”. It was inevitable that after calming down so many conflicts, new ones should arise, but the important thing was that India was still united and a country respected internationally with a rising economy. However, the opposition hammered him with an avalanche of slander. Sonia was a favourite target of the critics: a manipulating foreigner who diverted resources away from poor Indians to capitalist paradises with the help of her friends and family, in the purest Mafia style, so typical of her country. The problem of her nationality was so thorny that she was advised not to go and welcome the Pope on his stopover in New Delhi. It was not considered politically correct for millions of Indians to see her curtsey and kiss the ring of the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church. In fact, neither the po
liticians nor the masses nor the media were used to the glamour of a married couple in the highest post in the government. There was no tradition in India of Kennedys or Blairs, because all the previous prime ministers had been widowed, beginning with grandfather Nehru.

  By the end of the campaign, Rajiv had had his fingers burned and was disappointed. He began to have doubts whether his work and the sincerity of his intentions would finally overcome, as he had thought at first. “The real world is a jungle,” he wrote to his daughter Priyanka, “but not even the law of the jungle works when you are in public life.” His looks reflected his disappointment. He no longer had the serene face and relaxed expression of the past. With age, his features had tensed, his step was heavier, his voice had lost its firmness, although it was still warm, because he was an affable man.

  In the opposition, an exultant Maneka Gandhi was also putting into practice, in her own way, everything she had learned from her mother-in-law. She campaigned in a constituency neighbouring Rajiv’s, with all the vigour of her youth and her desire to get revenge. Indira would have been scandalized from beyond the grave to discover that her daughter-in-law had become one of the secretaries general of a new version of the Janata coalition, by which she had managed to be beaten and sent to jail. Furthermore, Maneka was working as a journalist and reporter specializing in the environment, and above all in the protection of animals, a subject very close the ideology of the Hindu Right, always very concerned about the welfare of the sacred cow. The influential magazine India Today described her campaigning style: “This is the real Maneka: mature, self- confident, an untiring politician who knows exactly how to win hearts in rural areas. She wears saris with the saffron-yellow and green colours of her party and her head is always covered; the perfect image of a demure but determined widow.” She had no scruples about using her links with the family to back the opposing party. The slogans, written on brick and adobe walls, offered a curious panegyric of the “in-law”: “The storm of revolution: Maneka Gandhi” or “Indira’s brave daughter-in-law will give her blood for the nation”, as though her relationship to the family was enough to make her into a potential martyr.

  The elections took place from November 22nd to 24th, 1989. The greatest voluntary mobilization in the world of men, women and materials with a single aim came to an end with few interruptions and hardly any disturbances. Three and a half million civil servants supervised 589,449 electoral colleges so that five hundred million people could place their votes in the urns. The whole process, which was enjoyed like a big party, was a reason for pride for most of the population who found in democracy a new God that linked them above and beyond their differences in caste, race or religion. Rajiv won again in Amethi, but the Congress Party, for the first time in its history, did not gain an absolute majority in the national Parliament. Analysts agreed that the Bofors affair had played an important role in the results. Those elections marked the end of what was called the “dominant party system” because no party has ever managed to win an absolute majority of seats in Parliament again.

  The rumour had gone round that Rajiv had a flight booked to go to Italy in case of defeat, but that was not true. Shortly before the elections, a close friend, also fond of music, had asked him: “Let’s suppose you lose the elections…”

  “For me that would mean peace,” Rajiv answered. “I’ll sit down and listen to music with the children. I’ll take up my old hobbies again, like the radio and photography.”

  But he had said so lightly, owing to his tiredness and exhaustion. Both he and his family were disappointed after all the efforts made. Priyanka, who had inherited Indira’s fighting spirit, would not accept defeat. “Dad,” she said, “if the Congress Party has won the most seats, you have the right to form a government… Why don’t you?”

  In effect, Rajiv had the right to form the government, but he decided not to do so. Even if he had had enough support among the minority parties, he thought that this was not the time to go on.

  “I think it’s best to stay out of it,” he told her. “I’m going to resign. Let the new boys worry about it now. I interpret the results to the effect that the people are not as satisfied as they should be. It’s logical after so much expectation at the beginning that now there’s been a negative reaction…”

  Pushed out of power by the pendulum of democracy, Rajiv felt very frustrated. Not because of the verdict of the people, but for not having been able to do all the things he had set himself to do, and because of his inability to cope in the viper’s nest of Indian politics. Now that he knew how hard it was to build something, to change concepts and ideas, he felt dizzy to think how easy it would be to destroy his work of recent years. Perhaps his vision of India had been too innocent: in five years, he had wanted his old nation, so fearful of changes and yet at the same time so wanting them, to undertake a journey of several centuries into the future. Was it not too much to ask of that old Indian elephant? For a moment, Sonia thought that he might leave politics, but when she saw him so downhearted, it was she who encouraged him to keep at it. When a journalist asked Rajiv if he had finally accepted politics as his profession, he answered with good humour, “Yes, except that sometimes I feel like taking a break. I think that’s a very human thing to do.”

  Sonia knew that it was impossible for them to go back to their old lifestyle. When her husband looked back, he did so with nostalgia, but he accepted that it was all in the past: “I’m the same as I was before;” he said in a television interview, “but what has changed is everything else. I had a very comfortable life, a small family, a well-paid job with a lot of free time… but all that came to an end.” Rajiv was imbued with a feeling of fate which made him think that a man cannot complain about his destiny. Recent years had made him grow in a direction that had placed him on a different plane in life. Now the challenges were much greater and the expectations were different. Above all, the responsibility of improving the lives of eight hundred million people had become a priority for him. “That responsibility weighs so much that it changes everything I did and do now. What is not going to change is my commitment to the people of India to improve their lives, and for the nation to take its place in the world.” The defeat had not altered his faith. He knew that his name was the only, unique resource for his party, shaken by several defeats in different states. His plan was to go on reforming the party to make it into a more democratic organization, as it had been in the time of his grandfather. A non- denominational secular party able to cover all trends and beliefs. A common home that would be the best antidote for the growing trend towards religious factions that the country was experiencing. In order to do that work, it was better to be in the opposition.

  “With this coalition between Communists and the Hindu fundamentalist Right,” he told his daughter, who was always very interested in the day to day details of life in politics, “…what happened with Grandma and the Janata Party will happen… It will fall of its own accord. It’s just a question of time until the leaders start squabbling for power, you’ll soon see.”

  Rajiv resigned on November 29th, 1989: “Elections are won and lost… the work of a nation is never done. I want to thank the people of India for the love they have so generously given me.” These were words that evoked the words in his grandfather’s will, in which Nehru had stated that he was moved by the love that all classes of Indians had shown him. They were words that sounded like a farewell. The appointment that Rajiv Gandhi had with destiny was coming inexorably closer.

  Just as he had foretold, the two most important leaders of the new coalition became embroiled in a struggle over the designation of the new Prime Minister. It was a bad start which augured a stormy course ahead. But among the new members of the government was a specially euphoric person who had been part of the family dynasty of the Nehrus. On being named as Minister for the Environment and Forests, Maneka Gandhi finally saw her old dream come true. Now she was in power. It was one more humiliation for Rajiv, although he was over t
he scares along the intricate paths of politics, and nothing in the world could surprise him now. For the rest of the family, who had seen how Maneka used their name with a total lack of scruples, it was a bitter pill that only the certainty that the government would be a flash in the pan could sweeten.

  For Sonia, having lost the elections meant another move, this time the last one. They had to leave the Prime Minister’s official residence and they moved to another Colonial style white villa, all on one floor and surrounded by a large garden. It was at number 10, Janpath Avenue, formerly Queen’s Way, one of the main thoroughfares of New Delhi, lined with flame trees and neem trees with very spreading, leafy branches, and whose bitter leaves “cure everything”, according to popular belief. Perhaps their protective shade was responsible for curing the melancholy they felt at the defeat because, as soon as they moved, the atmosphere at home livened up. Life became a little quieter and lighter, as if they had taken a weight off their shoulders, the weight of power. Rajiv was still very busy with his work in Parliament and in the party, but the rhythm was more bearable. “He was relaxed,” Sonia would write, “almost relieved. Once again he enjoyed simple, day to day pleasures such as uninterrupted meals, sitting on at table with us, watching a video from time to time instead of shutting himself in his office to work.” The chef of the exquisite Bukhara Indian restaurant, where formerly they used to go as a family for the Saturday buffet, welcomed them with open arms when he saw them again after such a long time. They went there to celebrate Rahul’s birthday, and his imminent departure for the United States. The children were no longer little, but young adults who devoured the newspapers and were very interested in everything that went on around them. When they could no longer go on studying at home because they had finished the equivalent of ‘A’ levels, Rajiv and Sonia had decided to send their son to Harvard University, thus putting an end to the family tradition of educating the children in England, as three generations of Nehrus had done. Priyanka preferred to stay in New Delhi, studying psychology at Jesus and Mary College. Her obsession with politics worried her father so much that he mentioned it to Benazir Bhutto, when they met for the last time in Paris, as guests of President Mitterand to celebrate the bi-centenary of the French Revolution.