Delhi (53 page)

The next day Gandhi says that Pahwa probably looks upon him (Gandhi) as an enemy of Hinduism and himself as an instrument sent by God for his removal. He requests the police not to harass Pahwa but to convert him to ‘right thinking’. I want to tell the Old Fellow there is no ‘perhaps’ about it. He
is
the enemy number one of the Hindus.

*

Gandhi wants to be different from everyone else. On 26 January everyone goes to see the great parade. Gandhi says he does not like parades and stays in Birla House. I take the day off and take my parents to see it. It is a wonderful
tamasha
! Thousands of soldiers come down the slope between the Secretariat left-righting; hundreds of tanks, guns, armoured cars follow and rumble through India Gate. They salute Nehru. Nehru salutes them. Airplanes streak across leaving trails of coloured smoke in the sky. Then Nehru tells us that India is the land of Gandhi; India does not believe in tanks, guns, armoured cars or airplanes but in
ahimsa
.

Gandhi does not like a military
tamasha
because he has his own special kind of
tamasha
. The next day he announces he is going to the tomb of Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki near the Qutub Minar in Mehrauli. It is this Kaki fellow’s death anniversary. Kaki had come to India some 600 years ago and converted many Hindus to Islam. Hindu refugees from Multan drove away the Mussalmans and settled in Mehrauli. They broke the marble screen around Kaki’s grave. But when they hear Gandhi is coming they line the road and shout ‘
Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai
’ and serve tea to the Muslims. I am so angry that I want to yell: ‘Bastards! Have you forgotten how your mothers were raped in Multan?’

Gandhi bows to Kaki’s tomb. The Mussalmans ask him, ‘Repeat our
fateha
.’ Gandhi raises his hands, recites: ‘In the name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.’ That makes him a Mussalman, does it not? If a Hindu were to kill him he would be reducing the population of the enemies of Hinduism by one.

Gandhi asks the Muslims to forgive the Hindus and Sikhs for breaking the marble screen. He tells them he has heard some very good news. One-hundred-and-thirty Hindus and Sikhs have been massacred by Mussalmans at Parachinar near Peshawar in Pakistan. He says it is good news because the Hindus and Sikhs showed ‘non-violent courage’. I say
shabash
! Do you need any more evidence of Gandhi being our greatest enemy?

A man who has escaped a massacre of Hindus and Sikhs at Gujarat railway station tells the Old Fellow: ‘You have done enough harm. You have ruined us utterly. You ought now to leave us at once and retire to the Himalayas.’

‘I cannot retire at anybody’s orders,’ replies the Old Man. ‘I have put myself under God’s sole command.’

‘No,’ insists the refugee. ‘It is through us that God speaks to you. Our minds are crazed with grief.’

‘My grief is not less than yours,’ replies the great hypocrite.

How could you put sense into the skull of a man who keeps saying, ‘I am right, everyone else is wrong. Muslims are right, Hindus and Sikhs in the wrong.’

*

It is Friday. The date, the 30th of January. The day, the month and the year (1948) are printed on my mind like my name Ram Rakha is tattooed on my right arm.

I am sleeping on the sofa I have been using for the last many days. It feels like the coldest night of the year. The lights are switched on at 3 a.m. I get up. I slap my arms across my chest, jump up and down to get the ice out of my limbs. I go and defecate in the dry water drain outside the house. I wash my bottom at a hydrant in the garden and rinse my hands with mud. I tuck them under my armpits to prevent them from freezing. I go to see what the Old Man is up to. I say
namaskar
. He looks through his glasses and smiles at me. He drinks a glass of hot water spiked with honey and lime-juice. Then another glass of orange-juice. He tells people that he will live to be a hundred-and-twenty-six. That’s all he knows of God’s ways.

Before the sky turns grey he goes through his routine of hymns, recitations from holy books and meditation. With the sun come the crowds. It is a regular
mela
. Morning turns to afternoon. The crowd becomes bigger. Sardar Patel arrives with his daughter Maniben. He has a scowl on his face. She is pale, thin as a stick and looks as if she has never known a man or how to laugh. They spend a long time arguing about something with the Old Man. Gandhi who is never late is ten minutes behind time.

When the Old Man comes out for his afternoon meeting he seems very happy. And why not! He has one arm resting on one girl, the other on another. Both girls are young and pretty. He jokes with them. His jokes are very silly. One girl gives him a carrot. ‘So you are giving me cattle-food!’ says he. Everyone laughs.

He pulls out his watch from the fold of his
dhoti
. ‘I am late by ten minutes. I hate being late. I like to be at the prayer punctually at the stroke of five,’ he says.

I edge up closer to him. I like being close to him because I get into the pictures in the newspapers and show them to my mother. People stand up to greet him. Someone shouts ‘
Bolo,
bolo
’; others respond ‘
Mahatma
Gandhi ki jai’
. The Old Man grins and says
namaskar
.

And then everything happens so quickly that I have to go over it again and again to make sure I really saw it happen. A stout, young fellow muscles his way through the crowd, pushes aside a girl who tries to stop him, bends down as if to touch Gandhi’s feet, draws a revolver from the fold of his
dhoti
and before anyone can guess what he is up to pumps three bullets into the Old Man,
thah, thah, thah
.

Gandhi’s hands remain joined as if he is bidding
namaskar
to the world. He says,
Ram, Ram
. Then he crumples down in a pool of his own blood.

A fit of madness comes over me. I jump on the man and bring him down. I tear the hair off his scalp; I bash his head on the ground and call him all kinds of names: mother-fucker, dog, bastard, son of a pig. A policeman grips me by the neck, pushes me aside and grabs the fellow. There is a lot of confusion. I jostle my way out of the crowd and run away. I start crying — running and crying, crying and running. I sit down on the pavement and slap my forehead with my hands and yell
hai, hai, hai
. A crowd of people gather round me. They ask me very kindly: ‘Son, why are you crying?’ I look up at them through my tears and reply: ‘My
bapu
is dead.’ They make clucking sounds of sympathy. One says, ‘You must be brave. You must stand by your mother. You must carry on whatever work your
bapu
was doing.’ Then he becomes more serious and asks, ‘How did your
bapu
die? Was he very ill?’

‘No, he wasn’t ill at all, I killed him with my own hands, I killed him.’ Then I slap my forehead and yell, ‘
Hai, hai
, I murdered my
bapu
.’

Budh Singh is very angry with Gandhi and his
dhoti-topee
gang as he describes the Mahatma’s followers. They want the British out of India. Budh Singh wants them to stay. He is setting up a British Retention League. He has invited H.M. the King of England to become its chief patron. He has nominated me as honorary treasurer and designated my apartment as the headquarters of BRL. He has started a signature campaign and proposes to send a scroll of a million Indian names protesting the transfer of power from the King to the
dhoti-topeewallas
.

So far he has only succeeded in persuading Bhagmati. She can’t write so he’s made her affix her thumb impression against which he has inscribed her name, sex and profession. Bhagmati—Sex: neutral
Hijda
; Profession: prostitute. Proudly he displays the scroll to me and asks me to be the second signatory. I try to reason with him. I tell him all the events he wants changed took place a long time ago and there is nothing he can do about them. He looks at me as though I am mad so I decide to adopt his line of thinking and try and deflect him using an argument he will understand. I say: ‘The British themselves want to leave India. Didn’t you read in the papers that they will give Muslims their Pakistan and go away on the 15th of August?’

‘That is all
buk buk,
’ he retorts with disdain. ‘This Lord Mountbatten is a Gandhi
chela
. I have written to Buckingham Palace about his mischief.’

‘He is related to the king. His nephew is married to the king’s daughter.’

‘It is the traitor within who brings down the castle.’

‘Don’t you want India to be free?’

Budh Singh hasn’t given the problem much thought. He mumbles in his beard; ‘What freedom? Freedom for what? Loot, kill. Everyone talk freedom, freedom—don’t know what freedom means.’

The doorbell saves me from Budh Singh. ‘Let me think over it,’ I say and go to open the door. It is my friend the Sikh journalist. Before he can explain the aims and objects of the British Retention League to my visitor, I gently push Budh Singh out. ‘Another time, after I’ve had time to think. One should not decide such important matters in a hurry.’

The Sikh journalist is a joker. He tells me an old joke as if it were the latest one. ‘When Rama, Sita and Lakshmana were leaving Ayodhya for their fourteen year exile, the citizens came to see them off. At the city gate Sri Ramchandraji begged them to return to their homes: “Ladies and gentlemen, thus far but no further.” The citizens obeyed his orders and went back. Fourteen years later when the exiles returned to Ayodhya they met a party sitting outside the city gates. “You did not give us permission to return to our homes,” they said. “You only allowed the men and women to go back. We are neither because we are
hijdas
.” Sri Ramchandraji was so overcome by their devotion that he blessed them: “In the year 1947 I grant you
hijdas
the empire of Hindustan.’”

He bursts into loud laughter ‘
Ha, ha, ha
.’ I join him ‘
Hi,
hi, hi
.’

The doorbell rings again. It is Bhagmati. ‘What is the big joke?’ she asks me.

‘You tell her,’ replies my journalist friend, looking at his watch ‘I must go to the Coffee House at 11 a.m.’ And breezes out of the apartment.

‘What was he saying?’ demands Bhagmati as she flops on the sofa. How can I tell her?

*

After the rains come months of dew and mists. Every dawn when I set out for a game of tennis I have to wipe dew off the windscreen of my car. The duster turns soggy and black with soot. One morning I return home to see Budh Singh sitting on his haunches with his head between his knees. He looks up. His eyes are bloodshot. He glowers at me with murderous intent. ‘What is the matter, Budh Singh?’ I ask him in as kindly a tone as I can manage.

‘My eyes have come,’ he mumbles wiping them with the back of his hand.

‘You should see a doctor.’

He takes no notice of my suggestion and puts his head back between his knees.

I go into my apartment. My cook is lying on the carpet and groaning. ‘What is the matter?’ I ask him.

‘My body is breaking.’

I ring up the doctor. His home-clinic is in the neighbouring block. He comes over, takes one look at Budh Singh and pronounces, ‘Conjunctivitis, everyone in Delhi is getting it.’ He prescribes an ointment.

Then he asks the cook to open his mouth and say ‘
aah
’. The cook opens his mouth and says ‘
Aah
’. The doctor turns up his eyelids and peers into his eyes. He sticks a thermometer in his mouth. Temperature: 102 degrees. He asks him if he is having loose motions or vomitting. ‘No,’ replies the cook. ‘My body is breaking.’

The doctor turns to me and says, ‘It is not hepatitis or cholera; lots of it around in Delhi. It is probably malaria or dengue-fly fever or perhaps viral fever. Everyone in Delhi is down with something or the other. I’ll have to examine samples of his blood, urine and faeces to make sure.’

He prescribes analgesic tablets for the cook, malaria preventive pills for me. I fork out one-hundred-and-fifty rupees for the visit. I go to the chemist, get the prescriptions and hand medicines to Budh Singh and the cook. I tell them to stay in their quarters. ‘These diseases are very catching. Don’t come back till you are well.’

I have the apartment all to myself. It would be nice if Bhagmati were to come over. We could have some nice conjunctivitis together. Probably the bitch has already contracted one or the other ailment from her diseased patrons.

After a cold shower, I make myself a mug of Ginseng tea and get down to the newspapers. First, I pick up
The
Hindustan Times
—Delhi’s worst paper with the largest circulation. I start with page four which is largely devoted to obituaries and in memoriams. In Delhi all demises are sad and untimely. When their time is up, Delhiwallas do not simply die, they go up to their heavenly abode with reassurances from the
Gita
that death is no more than a changing of garments: the body (which wears garments) perishes, but the soul does not as it is eternal. So good care is taken that their earthly remains are consumed by fire at Nigambodh Ghat or at other crematoria. Delhi’s dead consume a sizeable forest of timber every day as they proceed on their onward journey. The only takers for the electric crematorium which costs less than a quarter of the expense of disposal by wood are the dead of the anglicized rich or the unclaimed bodies of beggars. The right bank of the Jamna from the Tibetan colony at Majnoon ka Tilla to Raj Ghat where Gandhi was cremated has been consecrated to
viharas
, temples, burning
ghats
, the electric crematorium and memorials for tfre famous: Nehru, Shastri, Charan Singh, Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and the original Gandhi, Father of the Nation. The Jamna riverside has become the launching pad for the journey into the unknown.

Back to page four. A boxed item says Nigambodh Ghat has been inundated by the flood waters of the Jamna. People should take their loved ones elsewhere. Perhaps for the first time, the electric crematorium will be earning dividends. I have nothing much to do. So I decide to take a look before joining my cronies at the Coffee House. I go by Purana Qila to the Ring Road. I leave the regional Headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) on my left, the prime cause of Delhi’s ill-health, the filtration plant, on my right. Its four chimneys belch smoke all round the clock and provide WHO brochures their best illustrations for environmental pollution. They shower Delhi with soot. Its filtered water gives Delhiwallas Delhi belly, hepatitis, cholera, dysentry and other intestinal disorders. From the top of the overbridge I catch a glimpse of the Jamna licking the lower road of the old iron bridge and rolling its muddy waters past Gandhi’s
samadhi
and the Velodrome. At the roundabout near the bridge is a police barrier: the bridge is closed to vehicular traffic. I turn round and drive into the electric crematorium. Sweepers are busy sweeping the road and the hall. Three corpses of beggars are put on a wheel-barrow behind the building to await disposal when bookings have been taken care of. The clerk in the office looks at his wrist-watch and asks me, ‘Has the body arrived? There are three bookings for the morning. I’ve fixed them an hour apart.’