Durbar (17 page)

The interview was arranged on an especially hot Sunday in April or May in the summer of 1978. The plan was for me to collect Akbar from his office and take him to 12 Willingdon Crescent. Akbar seemed both nervous and excited about the interview and asked me all sorts of questions about Rajiv on the short drive to Mrs Gandhi’s house.

Tall trees line Willingdon Crescent and it has rows of colonial bungalows of monotonous uniformity. The walls that half conceal the bungalows from passing traffic are of unpainted brick and have bamboo fences that are painted military green. Some are so high you cannot see the bungalows that lie beyond, some are lower and reveal squat white-or yellow-washed bungalows. In the seventies the PWD was too poor to keep them in good condition so, often, there were dark patches on the walls where there had been seepage. Since all the bungalows were built in the 1920s when there was no air-conditioning, to keep out the terrible heat of Delhi summers they had large porches to shade entrances. And dingy rooms with high ventilators and small windows to allow the passage of light and fresh air but not so much as to heat up the interior. Mrs Gandhi had been allotted one of the smaller bungalows, which at the time had a circular entrance hall with a corridor that led from it to living rooms on either side and bedrooms beyond.

Rajiv was waiting in what seemed to be the study, seated beside a window that offered a view of the garden. He was reading a magazine but stood up when he saw us, held out his hand to Akbar and said something like, ‘Hello, nice to meet you…Let me tell you, I’m very nervous. I’ve never given an interview, ever.’

The sincerity of the remark disarmed Akbar. A look of wonder came into his eyes as he held Rajiv’s hand and it took me a few moments to realize that Akbar was overawed to be in the presence of Mrs Gandhi’s son. Rajiv made a gesture that indicated that he would like me to stay during the interview so I sat down and pretended to be looking out of the window and at the Tanjore paintings on the wall. Mrs Gandhi was careful about keeping her socialist image intact and the room was not air-conditioned. A slow, dusty fan grumbled creakily overhead, birds chattered in the garden and ribbons of sunlight came in through the ventilators.

As I remember it, Akbar started by asking soft, easy questions about Rajiv’s childhood and what it had been like to grow up as the son of one prime minister and the grandson of another. And, Rajiv gradually relaxed and became chattier. I could see from Akbar’s expression that he would prefer it if I left so I slipped quietly back into the circular entrance hall and was about to go into the garden when Sonia appeared from a door at the end of the corridor, a hairdryer in her hand. She asked me to come into her room. It was the first time I had been inside her bedroom and I was struck by its austerity. I had expected elegance, charm, some effort at luxury and was surprised to find a nondescript bed, a couple of old carpets strewn across the floor and some unremarkable armchairs. It could have been furnished by the PWD for its charmless severity but those were socialist times and most rooms in government bungalows were unattractive and bare.

Sonia quickly explained what she wanted to talk to me about. She reminded me that we had a plan to go on to lunch at Romi’s house after the interview and wanted to know whether we should take Akbar with us. I said that it might seem rude if we did not and saw no harm in taking him along. He was usually good company, I remember thinking, and besides it would have seemed very odd for me to stay on while he left after the interview ended. So he came with us.

We arrived at Romi’s house in Vasant Vihar to find him and Vasundhara Raje ensconced in the drawing room. They looked momentarily surprised to see Akbar but greeted him as if they knew he was coming. Akbar looked uncomfortable. He had seemed slightly dazed from the moment he got into Rajiv’s car. Rajiv drove with Akbar sitting beside him, and Sonia and me in the back. There were efforts at polite conversation, but Akbar seemed too overcome to do more than respond in monosyllables. Now he seemed
bemused by the intimacy of Romi’s small lunch party. Rajiv noticed that Akbar was unsure of himself and went out of his way to make him feel at home. He joked about the interview and said he was sure he was going to sound like a fool when people read it, but added that it had been painless because Akbar had been so gentle with him.

After the usual pleasantries, I think we got into a conversation over lunch about the merits of dictatorship, and someone expressed a commonly held view in Delhi at the time that what India needed was a period of ‘benign dictatorship’. It could have been because we had gone from the totalitarianism of the Emergency to the indiscipline and confusion of the Janata government, but there was much talk in those days of the need for a benign dictator and even some debate over whether a period of military rule would be best for the country. With democracy now considered one of India’s greatest assets, it seems absurd that people thought this way in 1978. But they did.

Whatever the political conversation over lunch, and I remember that almost all the talk was about politics, it was a pleasant enough afternoon. The food was delicious. Sonia had brought with her some lasagna that she had cooked and it was as good lasagna as I have ever eaten. By the time we got to whatever the pudding was, I remember that Akbar was the centre of attention as he regaled us with political gossip about the flaws and foibles of the Janata government.

This lunch at Romi’s was to later become the cause of a problem between Akbar and me after Rajiv became prime minister. But I am getting ahead of my story. Years ahead of it. Akbar’s interview with Rajiv appeared on the cover of
Sunday
magazine and although it may have made no difference to improving Mrs Gandhi’s image, it was much discussed in the drawing rooms of Delhi with most people agreeing that Rajiv sounded like a very good man and that it was a shame that he was not in politics. This was meant as a comparison with his younger brother who, because of his role during the Emergency, was not seen as a ‘good’ man.

By the summer of 1978, when Rajiv gave that first interview, the Janata government was already beginning to fall apart. The smallest disagreement could turn into a crisis, and at the crux of it all was the uncontrollable ambition of Chaudhury Charan Singh.

It was knowledge of this that made Sanjay and his friends use the services of a skilled ‘holy man’ called Chandraswami to bring down the Janata government in a political manouevre that could have come straight out of a Bollywood film. Chandraswami was persuaded to use his legendary fortune-telling skills to tell Charan Singh that he had seen in the lines of his hand the possibility of him becoming prime minister. I first heard the story from Akbar Ahmed, and confirmed it years later with Chandraswami himself.

Ironically, the man Sanjay’s friends used as a go-between to introduce Chandraswami to Charan Singh was Mrs Gandhi’s old opponent from Rae Bareli, Raj Narain, who was known to be very close to Chaudhury Sahib. Raj Narain was also well known by then for his rustic peculiarities. He lived in his large ministerial bungalow just as he must have done in his village. On the few occasions that I went to meet him there were always masseurs in attendance while Raj Narain reclined against bolsters having a limb massaged. When he went out in public, he often wore a green or red bandana and this along with his greasy white beard and thick spectacles gave him the appearance of a weather-beaten garden gnome.

Chandraswami was a tall and dark-skinned man with thick lips who looked like the quintessential ‘holy man’ from a Bollywood film. Years later when I met him in his house in south Delhi that he had converted into an ashram I noticed that his room looked like a film set. It had powder-blue walls and ornate furniture in gaudy colours and on the mantelpiece were pictures of Chandraswami with important American politicians and, of all people, Elizabeth Taylor. Chandraswami’s chair was designed to look like a throne and was covered with a tiger skin. Around his neck he wore a heavy gold necklace strung with sacred rudraksh beads. Those who knew him well said that if he had a gift at all it was in the area of astrology. Apparently, his predictions were rarely wrong.

It is possible that knowledge of Chandraswami’s gift and his prediction persuaded Charan Singh to bring down his own government, or it may have been Charan Singh’s ambition, or even real political considerations. But the Janata government had become, within a year of being in power, such a bundle of contradictions and absurdities that I find it entirely credible that in the end it was brought down by the chicanery of Chandraswami.

D
ynastic democracy in India began when Mrs Gandhi made Sanjay her political heir. When analysing why the Nehru–Gandhi dynasty continues to endure even serious political analysts say it is because of their charisma, their ability to win votes. This is only partly true. It is my conviction that the dynasty’s real power comes from the support they get from the bureaucracy in Delhi. High officials in India are famous for the disdain with which they treat the representatives of the people but put almost any of them in the presence of a member of the Gandhi family and they behave like humble employees. This is something I have observed in long years of covering politics and governance.

If they ever make it to the inner circles of the court around the family their obsequiousness knows no bounds but they have not usually been admitted to this inner court. Indira Gandhi trusted her former stenographers Yashpal Kapoor and his nephew R.K. Dhawan more than she did any senior bureaucrat. Sanjay preferred to surround himself with his close friends, as did Rajiv. This tradition has been continued by both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, but on the edge of their courts have always lurked senior bureaucrats dripping with a servility they rarely show anyone else. The most sycophantic are those who went to Oxford and Cambridge and who appear to have developed from this British experience a genetic memory of serving colonial masters.

Towards the end of 1978, when it became clear to the bureaucracy that Morarji Desai’s government was not going to last a full term, they began to court people who they thought were close to the Gandhi family. Not just people around Mrs Gandhi but those close to Sanjay Gandhi as well.
I discovered this accidentally when I took Akbar Ahmed to dinner at the house of a senior bureaucrat who shall remain nameless. He was far from being the only civil servant who behaved this way once the winds started to blow against the Janata government but I remember this dinner party more vividly because it happened to be the first time I saw a senior bureaucrat demean himself before someone he believed was close to the Gandhi family.

The bureaucrat lived in a particularly beautiful colonial bungalow on Aurangzeb Road. The rooms had high ceilings and long French windows that opened on to wide verandas. Akbar and I arrived late and the drawing room and verandas were already filled with people. The scent of summer flowers wafted in from the garden and Indian classical music played discreetly in the background. Since officials were not allowed to serve foreign liquor, and the Indian liquor available then was undrinkable, we were served a rum punch with enough fruit juice in it to disguise the coarse taste of Indian rum.

Akbar looked around nervously when he saw that the gathering consisted mostly of what he called ‘intellectual types’. This made him so uncomfortable that we were about to do a quiet disappearing act when our host came up to us with an obsequious smile on his face, and bowed deeply before Akbar, who looked embarrassed and unsure of how to react. The bureaucrat wasted no time in telling him that he had seen his pictures in the newspapers and knew that he was a close friend of Sanjay Gandhi. This is how I remember the conversation that followed.

‘How long have you known him?’ the bureaucrat asked with a look almost of wonder in his eyes. Sanjay at this point, it is important to remember, was being painted as a criminal by the Janata government for whom the bureaucrat worked in a senior position.

‘Since we were in the Doon School together,’ Akbar said, looking like he thought he should make a run for it.

‘Well, let me tell you,’ the bureaucrat continued, ‘that I think Sanjay Gandhi is what this country needs. He has a vision for this country.’

‘Yes,’ Akbar said uncertainly.

‘Let me tell you that the incident in the court the other day, when he refused to sit in the dock and you threw a pen at the judge… I think it was justified. I know there is no case against him. It’s a witch hunt.’

‘Yes. But we’ll get our revenge when the time comes.’

‘Yes. There is no doubt that Mrs Gandhi will soon be back in power. This government cannot last because it has no idea how to govern.’

‘Right. Well, I know nothing about governance,’ Akbar said with a laugh and a wink at me.

‘Ah, but the country waits for the moment when we will be ruled once more by a strong leader instead of by these people, who should not have been in politics, leave alone government. Look at my minister. He is an absurdity, he understands nothing of the job he is supposed to be doing.’

‘And Mrs Gandhi’s ministers did?’ This question came from me.

‘Oh, much, much better. They came from the right class, which is why they will be back for sure.’

‘Yes,’ said Akbar with a wicked grin, ‘we must all get our chance to fuck this mother-fucking country.’

He made this last remark in Hindi, making it sound cruder, and I thought our host would be embarrassed, but he laughed happily.

‘Come on, Akbar, let’s see if Naveen is here,’ I said, before Akbar could make another informed comment on governance.