Daughter of Empire (21 page)

There was an early morning shoot of the famous imperial sandgrouse. Thirty thousand birds flew over our heads. They were difficult to shoot, flying very fast and swerving in all directions. That
evening we gathered in the Durbar Hall of Lallgarh Palace where my father invested the maharajah with the Grand Cross of the Star of India. The assembled nobles and courtiers looked magnificent in
their red and yellow Durbar dress.

The next day, a review of the Bikaner State Army included a trot past of the Camel Corps and a gallop past of the Durbar Lancers. The Bijey Battery on parade served with great distinction in my
father’s Burma Campaign in the Second World War and also fought in the battles of Kohima and Imphal.

We then visited the fort where we saw regalia given to the Bikaner rulers by Moghal Emperors and were shown beautifully illuminated Sanskrit and Urdu manuscripts.

Immediately we arrived back in Dehli, my parents went to see Gandhi at Birla House and found him very weak but not without his desire to tease. ‘It takes a fast to bring you to me,’
he reproached them with a smile. Five days after he began his fast, Congress relented and paid over the money to Pakistan. Gandhiji had remained characteristically composed both during his fast and
after a bomb exploded in his garden two days later.

There are no words to express the shock, that moment of horror, when two weeks later, as I was listening to the wireless in my room, having returned from a visit with my parents to the Central
States, it was announced that Gandhiji had been assassinated. At first I could not believe what I was hearing but the gravity of the announcer’s voice was unmistakable, and as the tears
poured down my cheeks I felt as if I had lost a member of my family. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of India came to a complete standstill, everyone stunned by the death of
the Father of the Nation.

In the chaotic hours that followed, it was not clear who had been the assassin. When my father arrived at Birla House, someone in the crowd shouted, ‘A Muslim did it!’ My father had
to think quickly, for such an unfounded rumour could incite civil war. ‘You fool!’ he shouted back. ‘It was a Hindu!’ He was proved right, the assassin a Hindu fanatic from
the RSS Party. Inside the building my father found the country’s leaders in silent reverence, lost in their distress at the death of their mentor and friend. Nehru had somehow to pull himself
together to make a broadcast to the nation that afternoon. The simplicity of his words, ‘The light has gone out’, summed up our collective feelings perfectly.

In keeping with the Hindu custom to cremate a body as soon as possible after death, Gandhiji’s funeral was arranged for the next day. His body had been laid on the balcony at Birla House
and in death he seemed so tiny and frail, his head resting peacefully on a cushion of flowers. At first I couldn’t work out why he didn’t look like himself, then I realised that his
glasses had been removed. His body was carried down to the funeral carriage and covered with the new Indian national flag. Everywhere the crowds pressed in, trying to touch him, and it was a while
before the procession was able to start. The Mahatma’s last journey, accompanied by large crowds of his fellow countrymen, was to take him to the Raj Ghat, the burning ground six miles away
on the banks of the holy River Jumna. At the head of the procession, next to the bier, Nehru led the people, a slow, solemn journey on foot.

We went ahead by car, followed by the Indian governors. At the Raj Ghat we pushed our way through the enormous gathering to a low platform in front of the funeral pyre. In the distance we could
see the slow approach of the cortège, followed by hundreds of thousands of mourners. My father, realising that the sheer pressure of such an emotional crowd might push all those in the front
ranks on to the pyre, rushed up and down instructing the ambassadors, governors and assorted VIPs to sit cross-legged on the ground. In a highly charged atmosphere, Gandhiji’s body was placed
on the funeral pyre. After he was anointed with sacred oils and showered with ghee, Gandhiji’s son lit the pyre. It was horrific to see his beloved body engulfed by flames, but strangely the
atmosphere of intense sorrow soon changed to one of joy as people in the crowd pressed forward to throw flowers. Momentarily, the new feeling of elation changed to shock as several village women
screamed hysterically and tried to hurl themselves into the flames to commit suttee, but mercifully they were stopped before they could harm themselves. As the fire consumed Gandhiji’s body,
the air became filled with cries of ‘Gandhi is immortal!’

Gandhiji’s ashes were to be scattered in Allahabad at the confluence of the two sacred rivers, the Ganges and the Jumna. So it was decided that the forthcoming
Mela
– when
hundreds of thousands of people come together to bathe in holy waters on the first day of the new moon – would be an auspicious time to take them. Allahabad, by coincidence, was also the
place of Panditji’s birth and so, a little over a week after the assassination, we set off with Panditji to make the journey. We did so with mixed feelings of sorrow at the heaviness of the
duty that was to be performed and excitement at the prospect of seeing the
Mela
with the man who was rapidly becoming a close and very special friend.

When we arrived at Allahabad there was a memorial service at the Cathedral Church of the Redemption for Gandhiji, where we sang his favourite hymns, including ‘Abide with Me’, and my
father read a lesson. Gandhiji’s ashes were scattered in the water, where hundreds of pilgrims had gathered – fully clothed women, near-naked
sadhus
adorned in white body paint,
some standing up to their knees, others to their waists, others submerged completely in the holy waters.

Although it was a deeply sorrowful time, it was a comfort to spend more time with Panditji and get used to his ways. He was apt to fall into long periods of silence and reflection, but he was
never aloof with us. When he was not his normal animated self you realised that he was wrestling with some incredibly important problem and needed to be left alone, but soon he would be full of
charm again. His moods could change very quickly and he was often quick to anger, such as on the day when too many people gave my parents autograph books to sign and the crowd became overwhelming.
Suddenly Panditji’s mood changed and he seized all the books and threw them into the air. My mother was very taken aback but his smile returned just as quickly and he put his arm around our
shoulders and we laughed and everything felt fine again.

There was no sign at this time that my mother’s regard for Nehru was anything other than deep friendship, but during a short break at the Retreat in the Himalayas to help him recover his
energy, a profound connection developed between them. Now, just six weeks before we were due to leave India, she found in Panditji the companionship and equality of spirit and intellect that she
craved. Each helped overcome loneliness in the other. Nehru had been a widower for ten years and had also recently lost the company of his family: his daughter, Mrs Gandhi, was rarely around as she
was married with young children and was much involved in the Congress Party; one sister, Nan Pandit, was now ambassador to Moscow and the other, Betty Hutheesing, lived in Bombay.

As we left the heat of the plains and travelled up into the hills, journeying to the Retreat at Mashobra, in the wooded hillside above Simla, my mother was easy to get along with, and a sense of
well-being emanated from her. My father and I were very tactful, falling behind her and Nehru as we walked together or leaving the room when they were deep in conversation. But we did not, at any
time, feel excluded. Our small party did everything together, most memorably taking a long drive into the mountains to see Tibet at a distance. At night we all played racing demons or parlour games
(not my father’s favourite pastime) or simply sat reading peacefully together.

My parents’ modus vivendi would hold fast but it was particularly easy in this instance, for my father trusted them both. His life was made easier too now that my mother’s new-found
happiness released him from the relentless late-night recriminations. In recent months, whenever he had left his huge pile of paperwork to go up to say goodnight to her, my father would find
himself subject to a long string of accusations that he didn’t understand: he was ignoring her, his behaviour had been rude and he didn’t care about her. He was sympathetic and
apologised, even though he did not understand what he had done wrong. These were the exhausted outpourings of a woman who always drove herself too hard and felt intellectually isolated. To my
father’s great relief, after our short stay in the mountains, these sessions ceased. Now when my father went up he would find her studying her pocket atlas, and she would simply smile and
wish him a cheery ‘Goodnight, Dickie, darling’. He would then return to work through most of the night without a heavy heart.

In later years, reading Panditji’s inner thoughts and feelings in his letters to my mother, I came to realise how deeply he and my mother loved and respected each other. I had been curious
as to whether or not their affair had been sexual in nature; having read the letters, I was utterly convinced it hadn’t been. Quite apart from the fact that neither my mother nor Panditji had
time to indulge in a physical affair, they were rarely alone. They were always surrounded by staff, police and other people, and as my father’s ADC, Freddie Burnaby Atkins, told me later, it
would have been impossible for them to have been having an affair, such was the very public nature of their lives.

Our final few weeks in India whirled by, my mother still making tours of the refugee camps. In Kurukshetra and Panipat, the refugees had crowded around in their thousands to say goodbye. Even
more moving was the fact that refugees from other camps had clubbed together to buy a railway ticket so that each camp could send a representative with a small gift as a token of their
gratitude.

A few days before we were to leave, a book arrived for me from Panditji. ‘I am sending you a little book about myself!’ he wrote. ‘It is meant for children. I have to add that
my sending you this book does not mean to imply that I do not respect your mature wisdom.’ He always managed to make me laugh. My mother wanted to give Panditji a gift – her precious
emerald ring – but she knew he would not accept it. Instead, she handed it to his daughter, Indira, telling her that if he were ever to find himself in financial difficulties – he was
well known for giving away all his money – she should sell it for him.

Our last day was overwhelming. We began with a drive through Old Delhi, waving to crowds estimated to be over a quarter of a million strong, and then we returned to Governor-General’s
House for a farewell party for all two thousand staff. In the evening we attended our last state banquet in the house, hosted by the cabinet. It was a bittersweet occasion. Panditji made moving
speeches about both my parents, praising my father and thanking him profoundly. I was overcome with shyness as he thanked me for ‘coming straight from school and possessing all the charm she
does’, for doing ‘a grown-up person’s work in the troubled scene of India’. Most poignantly he addressed my mother directly, saying: ‘Wherever you have gone, you have
brought solace, you have brought hope and encouragement. Is it surprising therefore that the people of India should love you and look up to you as one of themselves and should grieve that you are
going?’

As we prepared to leave I found myself overcome with sorrow as I said goodbye to Leela Nand. He was still recovering from the tragic death of his seven-year-old son three months earlier, and
while I had done all I could to comfort him, I knew he was broken inside. We clung to each other, tears rolling down our cheeks. As we left Governor-General’s House for the last time we
descended the long flight of steps lined by the bodyguard and got into the carriage with the mounted escort drawn up behind. Suddenly one of the horses jibbed and a voice shouted out: ‘Even
the horses won’t let you go.’ This cry was taken up and repeated by the crowd. My mother and I waved through our tears, trying to keep on smiling.

At Palam airport the incoming Governor-General, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, our dear friend Rajaji, wept as he embraced my mother in farewell. Nevertheless she managed to smile as she shook
hands with row upon row of officials before we climbed into the plane. As we took our places, I saw her fumbling with something around her neck, an urgency to her movements that betrayed her calm
exterior. She whispered something to her PA and passed her something in a closed fist, motioning for her to leave the plane. It was only later that I discovered the PA had been sent out with my
mother’s precious St Christopher to find a safe pair of hands to get it to Panditji. The long flight home passed in sombre silence.

Landing at Northolt, we were greeted by a host of people including Prince Philip, Clement Attlee, the prime minister, Krishna Menon and Patricia. After the formal greetings my father made a
short statement to the press and then my mother, now dressed immaculately for the British summer in a suit, hat and fur stole, stepped on to the dais to make a speech. She could only just control
her emotions. She spoke first of the people of India, who she said had ‘shown us such unbelievable confidence and generosity and affection’. Then she added, ‘I shall always think
back on our time in India with . . .’ and here she began to falter, and had difficulty in getting the words out, ‘. . . every . . . possible . . . feeling.’ She stopped, blinked,
then licked her lower lip until for a horrifying moment I thought she might break down. Then, as she turned to my father for support, he gave her a warm, confident smile and she regained her
composure and found the strength to continue, ‘. . . with happiness, as well as sorrow, for what the people have been through. But I am grateful to India and I will always regard India as a
second home.’ And with that the photographers’ bulbs popped, we shook more hands, and drove off to our other home.