What Am I Doing Here?

by Bruce Chatwin

  Delhi talk:

  ‘All this nonsense about the 700 million. As far as we’re concerned, there are 700 Indians and we know them all.’

  ‘Moraji’s quite right. There should be an auto-urine therapy clinic in every Indian village.’

  ‘We’ve got to stop behaving like Hamlets.’

  ‘She can’t come back with all those flunkeys and sycophants. She’s got nobody to come back with.’

  ‘Hindus have always worshipped power for power’s sake. In the Hindu pantheon, the male god is passive, whereas the mother-goddess, his Shakti, is the active partner.’

  ‘The atmosphere around Mrs Gandhi has always reminded me of Arsenic and Old Lace’ (Piloo Mody, one of her ex-cabinet ministers).

  No aspect of the Emergency was more surreal or more damaging to Mrs G. than Sanjay’s programme for sterilising the Muslim men and bulldozing the slums of Old Delhi. The two went hand in hand. If you refused sterilisation, you were bulldozed and packed off to a shanty-town.

  Rukhsana Sultana – a gorgeous girl and friend of Sanjay - had been, semi-officially, in charge of the programme.

  When I called on her, she was wearing a mass of flowered grey chiffon, and sunglasses in a darkened room. Before she took up ‘social work’, she had run a jewellery boutique. Her servant brought in some red plush boxes, from which she pulled strings of emeralds, alexandrines, rubies and pearls.

  ‘All our vasectomies’, she said, ‘were done in a lovely air-conditioned cellar. I and my workers had to sweat it out on the street.

  ‘At my first vasectomy,’ she went on, ‘I simply passed out . . . The blood and all. But after a while I got used to it. Three minutes on the table . . . snip . . . snip . . . and they were away . . .

  ‘In India one’s got to have family planning. We were brilliant. We were idealistic. But we were young and inexperienced and we were victims of vicious propaganda. I must tell you, none of us was working for money. We all came from prosperous families. Our idealism was selfless.’

  The programme ended in the famous riot at the Turkman Gate in which at least fifty people were killed.

  ‘But I’m sure she’s coming back,’ said Rukhsana. ‘The people of India have to have one leader. They worship Mrs G. like a god. Indians are only capable of worshipping one God.’

  ‘I thought they worshipped a lot of gods.’

  ‘Hundreds of gods! Thousands of gods! But all manifestations of the same OM. You know what is OM? Well, for them Mrs G. is a manifestation of the OM.’

  Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh

  We got here by taxi from Benares in the sweltering May heat. The fields were grey: the cultivators had nothing much to do but wait for the monsoon. Azamgarh itself was a dusty, almost shadeless town on the banks of a sluggish river. There was one hotel. It was full.

  In the restaurant - if it could actually be called a restaurant – we overheard three Congress-I workers weighing the pros and cons of getting a Muslim stooge to burn a copy of the Ramayana – and so cause an incident. A very young Delhi journalist was eating his dahl and chapatis. He raised an eyebrow as we came in, as if to say, ‘The Brits!’

  After a meagre lunch Eve and I set off in search of a bed and, after threading through a mass of rickshaws, were shown a squalid communal doss-house.

  ‘There’s nothing for it,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to go back to Benares.’

  ‘We mustn’t give up.’ I said. ‘I think if we’re very nice to that young journalist, he’ll give up his room for you.’

  He was still in the restaurant.

  ‘Can I introduce you to Mrs Arnold?’ I said.

  ‘Not Eve Arnold!’ He jumped up. ‘Your pictures of Joan Crawford are absolutely fabulous!’

  Eve almost fainted with pleasure – and it all worked out as I hoped. She got the room and Rajiv (as I shall call him) and I joined a long line of sleepers on the roof.

  Rajiv was an exhilarating companion. He had been everywhere in India roughing it. He could take in Hindi and spit it out in English from the sides of his mouth. The Janata candidate was not much in evidence, but we called on Mrs Kidwai: a nice, stout, motherly woman who had set up her headquarters in a ruined rajah’s palace on the riverbank. She had carefully modelled her style on Mrs G.

  A man asked me, ‘Excuse me, Sir. Is she Indiraji’s niece?’

  Mrs G. was expected to arrive at the border of the constituency around three. While Eve took a nap, Rajiv and I followed Mrs Kidwai’s car. But as we passed a clump of ancient mangoes, we saw the green-and-orange flags of the Janata. Rajiv shouted, ‘Vajpayee!’ — and we tumbled out of the car.

  Atal Behri Vajpayee, the Foreign Minister — perhaps the best Foreign Minister India has had — was addressing a crowd assembled in the shade. He had silver hair, a square intelligent face, a dramatic use of gesture, and mastery of metaphor. His audience clung to every word. The level of discourse made Western electioneering seem like some barbaric rout. This was true democracy.

  ‘The squabbles of the Janata’, he said, ‘are not so unhealthy. All Indians like to squabble.

  ‘Take a bowl of milk,’ he continued. ‘It hangs over the fire on a rope of five strings. Think of those strings as the Janata. The cats playing round the fire think they are going to snap. But they don’t snap. The cats get tired of waiting and fight among themselves . . .

  ‘But this is no ordinary election, my friends. Had it been so, why would Indira Gandhi have bothered to visit you for the last five days?’

  Mrs G. and her bandwagon turned up on time. She wore the look of victory. On the window of her used Ford Falcon was an advertisement: ‘Go naked in the SUN. Action-packed weekly.’ A Jeep-load of Sikh bodyguards followed. One was a vast and sinister man with ice-blue eyes and a turban to match. Proudly, he showed me the revolvers nestling in his rolls of fat.

  ‘She’s coming back,’ he said, ‘like de Gaulle.’

  At dusk, they propped her above the roof of the Jeep and, with the torch shining upwards, she really did look like an image on a juggernaut.

  Bilaria Ganj, Azamgarh

  Mrs Kidwai began the speeches while Mrs G., in vengeful vermilion, glared at the crowd. She then rose to speak and told such outrageous lies that Rajiv and I, crouching under the platform, made a commotion of protest.

  ‘There are no compulsory sterilisations in this part of the country,’ she continued blandly.

  ‘Liar!’ shrieked a voice from the crowd. ‘I have been sterilised!’

  He was a shy, frail boy shaking with nerves. He wore steel-framed glasses and a black cap. He was a Muslim divinity student.

  ‘Murderess!’ he shouted, as the Sikh bodyguards bore down on him. ‘She killed my friend. She put my teacher in prison. And my father! And my grandfather! Why shouldn’t I call her a murderess?’

  The Sikh in the ice-blue turban clamped his hand over the boy’s mouth, and dragged him away.

  Benares

  Around five in the morning, Mrs G. dipped herself in the Ganges. She did not want to be photographed, so her secretary gave us the wrong time and the wrong place.

  We returned to the Circuit House where a splendid breakfast was being prepared. The place was so nineteenth-century in atmosphere that one half-expected the sound of braying English voices.

  Mrs G. sat at the head of the table flanked by her faithful ex-Minister of Railways, Mr Kamlapathi Tripathi, and a local Congress-I politician. I sat next to the politician, and on my right sat the Congress-I Youth Leader for Delhi. He had bad gums.

  Mrs G.’s face was working wrathfully. What she knew – and we did not yet know – was that Sanjay had been arrested in the night and put in Tikhar fort.

  ‘Permit me to ask you, Sir,’ asked Youth-for-Delhi, ‘which varsity in England did you attend?’

  ‘It was in Scotland,’ I said, ‘I went to Edinburgh.’

  ‘It is not possible!’

  ‘It is possible.’

  ‘Edinburgh was my father’s varsity.’

  ‘
He was probably a medical student.’

  ‘How could you know that?’

  ‘Indians who come to Edinburgh are nearly always medical students.’

  ‘And which was the subject of your study?’

  ‘Archaeology,’ I said. ‘But I also learned some Sanskrit.’

  ‘Sanskrit, yes. Language of the Ancient Aryans!’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Tell me, Sir, have you ever heard of the Greek Philosopher Plato?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘He came to India to learn about the Ideal State from the ancient Brahmins.’

  ‘Plato in India?’ Mrs G. piped up. ‘I knew he was in Greece, but I never knew he came to India.’

  ‘Oh! but he did!’ Youth-for-Delhi warmed to his theme. ‘And shortly after his visit, some Brahmins travelled all the way to Germany taking with them their sacred vision symbol, the swastika . . . ’

  A look of utter disgust passed across Mrs G.’s face. She gave me a filthy look as if it were my fault for having lured her into this ridiculous exchange. In a far corner of the room Rajiv was having a tumultuous row with the ice-blue turban, who accused us of ‘abusing Mrs Gandhi’.

  I was pro-Indira that morning: she seemed so bizarre and eccentric. I felt that anyone who aspired to rule India was bound to end up a bit barmy.

  But Eve was down on her and, as a real pro, intuitively spotted her chance. I overheard snatches of her honeyed words. She had photographed so many facets of Indira’s life: in a crowd, talking to villagers, to politicians or to her grandchildren. The one thing missing was the spiritual dimension.

  Mrs G. obviously needed time to think, yet I was unsurprised when the two of them made for the old Club Room, and locked the door. They stayed there fifteen minutes. Then Mrs G. re-emerged, entirely cool and collected, and set about receiving a stream of well-wishers.

  ‘I really got her this time,’ said Eve. ‘Here, come and have a look!’

  She had prevailed on Mrs G. to sit meditating in the lotus position on a splay-legged coffee-table, at one side of which stood a jardinière with an aspidistra. Behind these hung an English hunting print: The Quorn take a fence.

  ‘What a picture!’ said Eve.

  We parted in Benares. I took the train to Sultanpur to investigate the story of a wolf-boy. Eve had things to do in Delhi.

  I returned around lunchtime the day she was due to take the night flight to London. She had been forced out of her hotel room at twelve, and was waiting in the lobby. We went upstairs to my bedroom. I had hardly set foot through the door when the phone rang.

  ‘Hello, is that you, Bruce?’ came a crisp voice. ‘It’s Indira here!’ She had not called me Bruce before.

  ‘You know I’m a little bit worried about one of those photos Eve took of me in Benares. She wanted to show the spiritual side of my character – and of course I am a Kashmiri Brahmin. But we have so many different religions in India. We have Buddhists, we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Parsees, Christians. I don’t want to favour one religion over another. I wonder if you’d mind not publishing it with the article?’

  I clamped my palm over the mouthpiece:

  ‘She doesn’t want the photo published with the article.’

  ‘Great!’ said Eve. ‘I could make the cover of Time with that picture!’

  ‘Of course,’ I said to Indira, ‘we won’t publish it with the article.’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind,’ she said. ‘When are you coming to see me again?’

  ‘We’ve seen a lot of each other lately.’

  ‘No. No. I’d love to see you again. Why don’t you drop in for coffee tomorrow? I’ll expect you at 10.30.’

  Delhi

  That evening I called on Mrs G.’s deadly foe, the Rajmata of Gwalior who is a very orthodox Hindu.

  ‘I’ve just come back from Benares,’ I said, ‘where Mrs Gandhi dipped herself in the Ganges.’

  ‘Sacrilege!’ said the Rajmata.

  She described her time in Tikhar fort during the Emergency. H.H. Jaipur was in the next cell, and spent most of her time reading the Memoirs of Saint-Simon.

  ‘But I’m no great reader,’ she said. ‘I was an ordinary girl who happened to marry a maharajah. So I decided to take this opportunity to meet the kind of women one would never normally meet – prostitutes, murderesses and so on. They would come to my cell at five o’clock. We called it The Gwalior Club . . . ’

  Around the same hour H.H. Jaipur was in the habit of taking her bath, into which she always put a lot of bathessence. An open drain ran along the balcony.

  ‘The women loved it,’ she said. ‘They would get down on their knees and smell the scented water.’

  Delhi

  12 Willingdon Crescent

  The news from Azamgarh had come in. Mrs G.’s candidate had a majority of 35,385 votes.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, as she poured the coffee, ‘we are quite pleased with the result. Of course, we expected some rigging and that’s why we made as much noise as possible.’

  Sanjay’s arrest had also helped: ‘People came up and said, “Our son is taken away.” ’

  All she wanted was reassurance about the photo, yet she felt obliged to launch into a monologue: ‘What the women in the villages need is cheaper potatoes. I say to my people, “If the women in the villages don’t get cheaper potatoes, how are they going to live?” ’

  I cut her short.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s been a very interesting time since I last saw you. A wolf-boy’s been found. They’ve taken him to Mother Teresa’s orphanage at Lucknow.’

  ‘Like Mowgli?’ said Mrs G.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve always heard about those wolf-children but I’ve never actually seen one. Will the child ever talk? It would be very interesting to know what it was like to be brought up by a wolf-mother.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid he won’t. If any child is deprived of human speech during his early years, the frontal lobes — which deal with speech and symbolic thought - will fail to develop.’

  ‘How old was the child when it was found?’

  ‘About five or six.’

  ‘Well, Sanjay didn’t speak until he was six . . .

  ‘But we knew a family in Bombay whose children didn’t speak until they were eight! AND THEY WERE PERFECTLY NORMAL!’

  Silence.

  She looked utterly stricken and all too human. I was sitting quite close to her and brushed her hand.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I murmured.

  Gradually, she resumed the conversation. I was amazed to hear her say the word ‘Thatcher’.

  ‘Quite a different personality!’ she said. ‘How that woman wants to be PM! When she came here to Delhi she was so nervous. I felt like telling her, “If you want to be PM that badly, you’ll never make it.” ’

  London

  I called Eve the evening of my arrival – to hear how the photos had turned out.

  ‘Come over right away,’ she said.

  She was very agitated.

  ‘What did you do with that roll of film I gave you in Benares? . . . It’s incredible,’ she said.

  ‘Out of your hundred-odd rolls, there was one dud . . . She hexed you,’ I said.

  Everyone knows the rest of the story: the electoral triumph, the death of Sanjay, the storming of the Golden Temple, the assassin’s bullet As I watched the press and TV pictures of the funeral, I felt immeasurably sad. One saw Mrs Thatcher, with her pearls and prurient lips, peering at the flower-filled bier, as if saying to herself, ‘Can she really be dead?’ Yes. Indira had found her martyrdom Politically, she was a catastrophe: yet she was still the little girl who wanted to be Joan of Arc. I loved her for that — and still do

  1978

  10

  CODA

  THE ALBATROSS

  In In Patagonia I suggested that the Albatross which hung from the neck of the Ancient Mariner was not the Great Wandering Albatross but a smaller black species: either the Sooty Albatro
ss or the Black-browed. The Sooty is the likelier of the two. It is a streamlined bird that keeps to the open sea. I think I saw one off the south-east coast of Tierra del Fuego. The Black-browed is everywhere, in the Magellan Strait and the Beagle Channel, and resembles a large Greater Black-backed Gull.

  On the south side of the Beagle Channel is the Chilean island of Navarino, with its naval base at Puerto Williams. I hoped to walk around the coast and get a glimpse of Hermit Island, which is the breeding colony of the Black-browed Albatross. The wind and the rain drove me back.

  East of the naval base there is a row of shacks in which live the last of the Fuegian Indians – the Indians Darwin mistook for the ‘missing link’. He compared their language to the ‘grunts of animals’, being unaware that a young Fuegian spoke as many words as Shakespeare ever wrote.

  Most of the Fuegians on Navarino are half-bloods. But I met one old man, Grandpa Felipe, who was said to be almost pure. He was a frail old man, mending his crab-gear. He had never been strong. He had watched his wife die. And all his children die.

  ‘It was the epidemics,’ he said – and whenever he said the word epidemias, it sounded as a mournful refrain.

  The Fuegians were as skilful canoers as the Eskimoes.

  A year and a half later, when In Patagonia was in press, I went to the island of Steepholm in the Bristol Channel. My companion was a naturalist in his eighties. The purpose of our visit was to see in flower the peony that is supposed to have been brought here as a medicinal herb by monks from the Mediterranean.

  I told my friend the story of how, in the nineteenth century, a Black-browed albatross had followed a ship north of the Equator. Its direction-finding mechanisms had been thrown out of line. It had ended up on a rock in the Faroe Islands where it lived for thirty-odd years and was known as ‘The King of the Gannets’. The Hon. Walter Rothschild made a pilgrimage to see it. Finally, it was shot, stuffed and put in the Copenhagen Museum.