Helium (31 page)

The car stopped in front of the eighty-foot-high statue of Shiva. The monument of excess. Thermodynamics of new materials and materialism. A strong, reinforced god, looking authentically metallic with a little help from car paint.

From the parking area the two men followed the concrete path to the base of the statue. My father in civilian clothes, stick in hand. His companion, ten or fifteen years younger, in IPS ceremonial dress (khaki tunic, tie, belt, hat). I observed them from a distance.

They sat, the two dwarfs, next to concrete Shiva and watched the planes land just across the highway. The new terminal at the Indira Gandhi International Airport was ready. This is where Commonwealth athletes from seventy-one countries (ex-colonies) were going to land in the near future.

From the parking lot I marvelled at drive-by religion, and I marvelled at the tourists, picnickers, stalled motorcycle-wallahs and other devotees. They stood little chance of gaining proximity to the god; the ones closest were the birds. On Shiva’s hand, arm, snake, drum, trishul and fluted hair. Rose-ringed parakeets, pigeons, sparrows.

Twenty minutes later I stepped out of the car and walked slowly on sharp pebbles. The guard came after me. ‘Sa’ab, you forgot to lock.’ I used the remote control to lock the vehicle and resumed my walk to the giant foot of Shiva. Behind the statue the sun shone brightly. I looked up and up. God. There was a strange glint in those dark blue eyes. Two starlings circled and swooped around Shiva’s head before vanishing in his copper-sulphatish tresses. Father was a bit surprised. He didn’t hug (he rarely hugged me in public), and of course we did not have a model father–son relationship.

He introduced me to the IPS officer. ‘My son’.

‘Exactly like you.’

‘How is Father?’

‘Son, we just did a panel for the Doordarshan TV. How happy I am to be alive to witness this moment, this airport. This new terminal is nearly ready and, you see, our subway system is the best in the world . . . The panel was on the security of approximately seven thousand athletes . . . Our new Commissioner of Delhi Police –’ he patted the IPS officer on his back – ‘was there! He is a lucky fellow, he will provide
holistic
security. No such opportunity presented itself when I was active in service.’

But you did get the opportunity, Father, and you were a disaster. I wanted to press charges. It was not the right moment. Father and I for a long time were not able to have any meaningful conversation because he would not listen to me and slowly I stopped listening to him.

‘Sir, I will make a move,’ said the new police commissioner. He saluted the old man and extended his hand towards me, and although I had nothing against the new chief I felt I was shaking hands with the Devil.

Father used his cellphone and asked the driver to drop the new hero at his bungalow.

Suddenly he looked frail and weak. No longer ‘significant’. But he has always looked terribly significant, even in old photos.

‘How is your health, Father?’

‘Nothing wrong with me, son. I am more worried about you. Do you remember? It was your mother’s anniversary last week. I called several times, left three or four messages. You didn’t even bother to return my calls. Are you still upset? Why didn’t I inform you about my surgery? Why didn’t I write to you before the operation was over? But, son, you would not have come anyway, you didn’t even come home for your own mother’s cremation.’

I felt like crying.

‘Keep Mother out of this.’

Father was tactful.

‘Is IIT keeping you busy?’

‘If you don’t need me here, then–’

‘Son, let’s have Scotch tonight. I do need your assistance. There is a girl.’

‘A girl?’

‘She is around thirty-two years old. A journalist. She has been after my blood regarding my alleged role.’

‘Your role in what?’

‘Remember ’84? In the month of December, gas leaked in Bhopal. The Union Carbide, it turns out, got the license to set up a pesticide plant with flawed and obsolete design, unfit for Virginia, during Indra Gandhi’s Emergency years. A few journalists are tracking everyone down who played any role, any small role, in facilitating the release of the CEO of Union Carbide. Warren Anderson. That man has blood on his hands. Bhopal was our country’s tragedy, bigger than 9/11, and we allowed Warren Anderson to flee. He lives in a big mansion in Long Island somewhere. All I did was follow the PM’s and the CM’s orders.’

‘And there are reports, Father, about your involvement in the anti-Sikh massacres?’

‘Oh, the Sikhs we can handle, but the Carbide case is bigger. I want you to help me. Last time you asked me if I wanted to emigrate to the US; I declined. What would I do there? But I have changed my mind. When are you headed back? I have a tourist visa anyway. We can leave at the same time.’

‘Father, will you give me time to think?’

‘What do you mean? If you need money, we can sell the house. Son, it’s yours anyway. It is, as you well know, worth a lot of money.’

There was a long pause.

‘Raj, I’ll help you raise your daughters. It is time you went back to your family. Clara is a kind-hearted, beautiful woman. It is time you stopped living recklessly.’

‘Reckless? That is the wrong word, Father. I would like to drive with you. I want to show you something really shitty and reckless. Please sit with me in the car, and we will drive around the city. That’s all. Lunch is on me (and I promise we will drink Scotch in the evening). In fact you will need a lot of Scotch. But first we will go across the river. Not far from the new stadium under construction for the Commonwealth Games. Tell your driver we don’t need him any more.’

‘I am glad you have started driving.’

‘It had to begin some day.’

And I drove him to the other side of Yamuna. The river looked tense, the volume of plastic and toxins more than water. My father knows most of the roads of Delhi and on the way he kept reciting their names, even the one named after the most intolerant Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb. Father feels rooted only in Delhi, and spouts a lot of trivia. He pointed out an unusual tree, one with red buds. They are ready, he said, ready to open and astonish with the beauty of their blossoms. More roundabouts reeled behind us. ‘Son, Delhi is inclement weather for trees and despite that they continue their business.’ My father, my navigator. We zipped past Type III flats, and then the road was empty. It felt strange. In Delhi the roads are never empty. ‘Son, there are powers in this world who don’t want India to become a superpower, they don’t want to see us becoming a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. In the larger scheme of things all of these small issues from the past are raised to dismiss, diminish and disempower us.’

‘When I was a child, remember, you helped me prepare for the school UN exams?’

The memory surged out of me without proper processing.

‘Yes, you had to learn by heart all the data, when the UN was formed, and the names of the secretary generals.’

‘Do you recall my performance?’

‘How can I forget! You stood second in the exam.’

‘I was very worried I had not stood first, and I delayed returning home. I intentionally missed the school bus. The peon, by mistake, locked me in the classroom. You came to the school to collect me. I was still crying because I had come second, I had made a serious error. I hugged you outside the classroom and cried more. I had misspelled him. Kurt . . . Kurt Waldheim of Austria.’

‘Yes, he later on became the President of Austria.’

‘Well, turned out that Kurt Waldheim was a Nazi, Papa.’

‘I never heard.’

‘Of course. But it matters to me.’

‘Did I say it didn’t matter?’

‘If they gave you a UN position would you accept it, Papa?’

‘Well, there is an Indian who almost became the Secretary General in lieu of Ban Ki-moon. The Government of India is well aware that I understand the mechanisms of this new world better. I will not say no if I am offered that important role. Where are you going?’

‘We are going to look at your deeds, Papa, not direct deeds, because your hands didn’t strike a match, your hands don’t know what it means to use a metal rod or a rubber tyre. You didn’t rape the women yourself, no, you didn’t mutilate their genitals. You were not the “mob”, but you made the mob. We are going to look at all that you enabled in ’84. It was your job to protect the people who lived here, and you failed them, you were a disaster.’

I stopped the car next to a handpump.

‘Block 32, Papa. Trilokpuri. Remember? This is the site where the worst massacres took place. The so-called streets and the houses in this resettlement colony, in this slum, have outlasted those who lived here, and they will outlast you. Even if you bulldoze them. Even if you help eliminate the new occupants and build a new sports complex. You see that handpump over there? That handpump knows the details of every single crime you enabled. The water flowing out of the pump is cleaner than your morally pulverised soul. That bicycle there (on top of its faint shadow). It knows each one of your compromises. Do you see the jute cot? Are you listening?’

I made my father read a newspaper article by a witness (Rahul Bedi,
Indian Express
). He, my unreformed father, refused to read. Look at the aching spectacle you created. I displayed a black-and-white photo. Three Women.

Uneasy silence filled the car.

Most who died in ’84 lived in slums, the wretched of the earth, twice or thrice dispossessed. People with nothing, pushed further to the limits of nothingness. They wove

jute cots or worked as carpenters. It won’t surprise me if I hear that the sons of those dead fathers have grown up to become drug addicts and gang members. Substance abuse. Life goes on. Criminals. Delhi, the city of criminals. Delhi, the city of miles and miles of haze and guiltless criminals. What is sad and infuriatingly tragic is that the instigators and inciters and facilitators of the pogrom and their loyal protectors walk the streets of the criminal city or get driven around (and they get level-Z security from the police) . . . They run our country. My father was shaking and angry. A kind of convulsive shaking. (If they ever make a film, they will make him stare at his hands shaking convulsively, an orgy of shaking.) It was strange. In the past I was the one who would shake in his presence, and now he was, uncontrollably. ‘Have you no shame?’ my father said. He ordered me to drive home. It was then I told him that he was a true ‘scholar’ who needed a bit of extra reading. Of late you have become careless, Papa. Carelessness, you well know, corrodes morals. The library in your study is not up to date. I see you have stopped reading crime stories. Please allow me to give you a bag of essential books. Crime thrillers. The problem with 1984 is definitely not the lack of books:
When a Tree Shook Delhi
by Manoj Mitta and H. S. Phoolka,
The Other Side of Silence
by Urvashi Butalia,
Who are the Guilty?
by People’s Union for Democratic Rights and People’s Union for Civil Liberties,
November 84
by Ajit Caur,
I Accuse
by Jarnail Singh,
Scorched White Lilies of ’84
by Reema Anand,
Gujarat
by Siddharth Varadarajan . . . And the film:
Amu
(uncensored version), and the documentary:
The Widow Colony
.