Durbar (36 page)

Weeks before Mrs Gandhi was killed he had sent me off to the district of Ballia in eastern Uttar Pradesh for a long article on Chandrashekhar, the opposition leader he believed could defeat Mrs Gandhi in the coming election. Chandrashekhar was seen, by political analysts, as a possible candidate for prime minister. This was because he had between January and June 1983 walked from Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India, to Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial, Rajghat, in Delhi with the stated aim of seeing first-hand the problems that ordinary Indians faced. The gesture was Gandhian, at a time when Gandhian idealism was totally absent from Indian politics, and so the ‘padayatra’ got a lot of support from ordinary people and the media. On Akbar’s instructions I walked some distance with Chandrashekhar on this ‘padayatra’ and observed that he was more interested in getting to Delhi as fast as possible than in understanding the problems of the ordinary people he met on the long journey. But I wrote good things about the ‘padayatra’ because I knew this was what Akbar wanted and because at least Chandrashekhar was trying to infuse a new spirit into the cynical atmosphere of Indian politics.

Ballia was a dismal, primitive place but I noticed that the people loved Chandrashekhar. Not so much for what he had done for them but because they were proud that one of their own had become an important national leader. Chandrashekhar spent his growing years in Ibrahimpatti, a village
near Ballia town, walked 10 kilometres to school every day and lived in a hut. His constituents liked him for having overcome these difficulties to become a national leader. They appeared not to mind that their hero had done so little for his constituency that it had remained a rough backwater in spite of his political success. To get to Chandrashekhar’s village we had to get off at a railway station that did not have a platform. The photographer I was with happened to be from Ballia and was used to jumping out of trains when there was no platform. He showed me how to jump on to the filthy tracks and clamber up on to a decrepit platform that existed somewhere beyond the expanse of tracks.

When we got to Ibrahimpatti I saw that Chandrashekhar, an avowed socialist, had spent more money on building a temple for the people of Ballia than on a hospital. The temple was built in an elaborate south Indian style with many carved statues and arches and steps that led down to an attractive tank. Devotees flocked from far and near, but the hospital nearby, another of Chandrashekhar’s projects, remained unfinished. Another thing that worried me was that the man who wanted to be our next prime minister had built himself a large farmhouse in nouveau-riche Delhi architectural style. And, in what seemed to me an act of disturbing vanity, he had left intact the hut in which he was born in a corner of the garden of his new estate. Unfortunately for Chandrashekhar his dreams of becoming prime minister died with Indira Gandhi’s assassination. When he did eventually become prime minister, a decade later and only for a few brief months, it was ironically with Rajiv’s support.

On the morning of the election results when I got to the office nearly everyone was already there drinking tea and warming themselves in front of electric heaters. Akbar’s favourites looked a little sullen and I thought this must indicate that they had picked up more than a whiff of the Rajiv wave despite what they wrote in their reports. When early results confirmed a landslide for Rajiv we, the non-favourites, whispered gleefully about how Akbar had allowed his personal feelings to get in the way of his political judgement. The favourites treated us to filthy looks and pretended to be busy writing stories of great importance.

By late afternoon, when it was clear that Rajiv Gandhi was likely to win more seats in Parliament than any prime minister ever, Kewal Sahib suggested I go to his house and see what was happening there. I could not get away fast enough because I knew Akbar would not want to see me on
a day when I was proved right and he so decisively wrong. The
Telegraph
office was in an old-fashioned colonial building called the IENS building on Rafi Marg in which many regional newspapers had their Delhi offices. The minute I stepped out into the corridor that led to the warren of small newspaper offices I noticed the celebratory mood. Journalists chatted to peons and everyone seemed to be revelling in Rajiv’s victory as if it were their personal achievement. From Rafi Marg it was a short drive to Mrs Gandhi’s house on Safdarjang Road, where Rajiv and Sonia had continued to live. By the time I got there all the results were in and it was clear that this was a victory on a scale that not even Rajiv could have dreamed of. The street that led to the house was filled with dancing party workers and the sound of drums. Boxes of soggy sweets were being passed around and marigold garlands tossed in the air as the slogans became more frenzied: ‘Rajiv Gandhi
zindabad
.’ Long Live Rajiv Gandhi. It was as if Mrs Gandhi had died a long, long time ago.

The gates to the house were locked but journalists were being allowed in along with more well-heeled supporters who came bearing flowers. Rajiv and Sonia stood at the entrance to the house receiving them. At some distance stood a group of senior political reporters. I went and stood with them. The drums and slogans got louder and more hysterical as the crowds outside the closed gates swelled, leaving little room for friends and well-wishers to pass. They came in looking dishevelled and bemused. Among them were businessmen bearing bouquets of orchids and senior bureaucrats with obsequious smiles on their faces. And there were socialites, friends and foreign diplomats.

Rajiv noticed our little group and signalled to someone to tell us to wait inside Mrs Gandhi’s old office. We were led into a small, narrow room with a long conference table occupying most of it. On the yellow-washed walls were portraits of the late leader. I thought I recognized one as the painting by M.F. Hussain of Mrs Gandhi as the goddess Durga. It had been his tribute to the Emergency and was considered such an outrageous act of sycophancy on the part of India’s most celebrated artist that the painting became a blot on Husain’s reputation. Below the portraits, on a side table, lay wilting bouquets and garlands filling the warm room with the scent of dying roses. Before Rajiv arrived we whispered among ourselves that this room must have been Mrs Gandhi’s private conference room.
It was here that she was headed on the ill-fated morning of 31 October to meet Peter Ustinov and his TV crew. It was hard to believe that it was just two months ago. So much had changed that it felt as if an aeon had gone by since then.

We did not have to wait long before Rajiv arrived. He came in smiling warmly and sat down at the head of the table and because I was seated closest to him, and the only woman in the room, I got to ask the first question.

‘Congratulations, prime minister,’ I said. He grinned when I called him prime minister. ‘How do you read the election results? Do you think this was a sympathy vote or a vote for change?’

‘Of course, there was the sympathy factor,’ he said carefully, ‘but wherever I went I noticed that people seemed to be hungry for change. They are tired of the old kind of politics and want something new.’

‘What, sir, will be your first priority?’ I am not sure who asked the question but I remember that Rajiv did not hesitate even slightly before answering that his first priority would be to bring peace in Punjab and in the north-eastern states. The problems in India’s north-east were part of his political inheritance. Long before Punjab and Kashmir became India’s most politically troubled states there had been secessionist movements in the north-eastern states which had been put down by Mrs Gandhi’s government with a heavy hand. What complicated an already complex situation was that she had allowed an election to go ahead in Assam in 1983, despite knowing the extent of the seething rage over illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, and this resulted in a savage massacre of women and children in a village called Nellie. Assam had remained in ferment since then. That morning Rajiv said he was ready to talk to secessionist groups as long as they agreed to give up violence.

Everyone at this first press conference seemed bewitched by Rajiv. Veteran hacks who had long grown accustomed to treating the words of politicians with cynical disdain listened to India’s new, young prime minister as if they were determined to believe everything he said. It was a short press conference and after Rajiv left the room we lingered and chatted among ourselves. The consensus was that he was ‘prime ministerial material’. When I asked the person who said this why he thought this was so he said, ‘I noticed first at Mrs Gandhi’s funeral. He showed such grace and dignity and now look at the confidence with which he answered our
questions.’ Everyone agreed that the priority he was giving to healing the wounds in Punjab was another indication of his ‘leadership qualities’. When we came out of the small, warm room we saw that Rajiv had been surrounded by dancing, slogan-shouting party workers who were now being allowed into the house in small groups. They showered him with rose petals and raced each other to garland him. Some fell at his feet, others gazed in wonder as if in the presence of a deity. In India gods are easily invented, and that day Rajiv became a god.

As I watched him standing there, surrounded by supporters, laughing as they covered him in garlands I found myself making a conscious effort to forget the massacres of 3000 innocent Sikhs just two months ago. I told myself that if Rajiv had justified the killing of helpless, ordinary people he had probably done it on someone else’s advice. I remained concerned about his lack of compassion but believed that he needed to be given a fair chance. I remembered that he had spent most of his life with people whose compassion was confined to those they met in Delhi’s drawing rooms.

Even in those heady first days after his magnificent election victory there were those who had their doubts about Rajiv, but they were very few and were mostly human rights activists and others of ‘liberal’ disposition who found his justification of the Sikh massacres impossible to forgive.

Among the doubters was the Rajmata of Gwalior and her concerns arose not from political considerations but from what she saw as evil omens. Within a month of Rajiv’s becoming prime minister the gas leak happened in Bhopal on the night of 3 December 1984. It must have been a day or two later that Vasu and I had lunch with her mother. We did not know many details then, only that thousands of people had died from a gas leak in the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, but since the tragedy came right after the Sikh massacres it troubled Rajmata Sahib. She said, ‘So many people have died such terrible deaths since he became prime minister…it doesn’t bode well.’ It was the sort of remark that is hard to forget and it has lain buried in my memory since that winter afternoon.

Almost nobody else in India seemed to have any doubt that Rajiv would be a great prime minister. It would not be untrue to say that the whole of India fell instantly and completely in love with Rajiv Gandhi. He revived
in the most pessimistic hearts a tentative, undefined hope. Despite my own doubts I could understand why. He was young, he was not a politician in the traditional sense, during the campaign he had said all the right things about ending corruption and building a new India, and he seemed to radiate a goodness that made people trust him instinctively. Everyone was ready to give him a real chance.

M
y problems with M.J. Akbar increased immediately after the election results for reasons that had nothing to do with my abilities as a journalist. I think it was exactly the day after the results that he summoned me and said he would like me to arrange for him to get the first interview Rajiv gave as prime minister. I said I would do my best, of course, but pointed out that now that he was the prime minister I really had very little say in planning his interviews. But, perhaps because of that Sunday lunch I had taken him to so very long ago, he thought I had more influence than I did and insisted that I try. I did. I rang Sonia and told her that my job virtually depended on her being able to do something, and she was sympathetic and promised to help. She tried putting in a word on my behalf with the people who were handling the prime minister’s media relations, but was told that Rajiv would have to give his first interview to a Hindi publication.

For reasons unknown and unclear a Hindi women’s magazine was chosen for the first interview that Rajiv and Sonia gave together and an apolitical woman journalist was granted the honour. She was so overawed by this extraordinary privilege that she spent most of the article expounding on how she felt about being in the presence of ‘our beloved prime minister’. In words of breathless excitement she wrote, ‘I still can’t believe that I am here in the house of our beloved prime minister and that any minute now he will appear. I wait in a long conference room with paintings of gods and goddesses and our deceased leaders on the walls… I am proud to be here as I have never interviewed a political leader before and that I have
now been given the chance to interview a man who is the emperor of the hearts of not just crores of Indians but the hope of the whole of the Third World. A man whom the world is talking about today, a man who has taken time from his busy schedule to talk to me. This makes me excited and a little nervous. What will I ask him about…’

When the interview started she appeared to be at no loss for questions. She asked Rajiv about his childhood, his relationship with his mother, the toys he liked playing with as a child and every other apolitical question she could think of. When it came to Sonia she was totally enraptured and spent a whole page describing every detail of her clothes and make-up. ‘A cream-coloured Oriya sari with a red border, red bangles on one wrist and a puja thread on the other. Her brown, dead-straight hair was parted in the middle and pinned back on both sides. She could have been your sister-in-law or mine. Her simplicity was breathtaking.’