The Solitude of Emperors (9 page)

When the grey world I had sunk into was finally dispelled with the help of my therapist and a regime of antidepressants, I became obsessed with the riots. I read every word about them in the papers, watched reports on the television in the hostel’s mess, and was desperate to get involved in some way with the peace marches, mohalla committees, fund-raisers and other measures that were being initiated as concerned citizens tried to put the city back together again. Failing that, I wanted to return to work on the magazine, it would give me a measure of engagement with what was going on. Mr Sorabjee was in the thick of the action, working with the energy and focus of a man half his age, but he would not allow me to leave my room and even threatened to dismiss me from his employ if I insisted on getting involved; all he would agree to was my helping with the magazine from the safety of the hostel. Every morning at 11 his chauffeur would come to my room with a stack of brown paper files and a large Thermos filled with glucose-enriched, freshly squeezed mausambi juice, and would return the following day to pick up the completed assignments and deliver a fresh batch.

During my days of rest and recuperation, although I chafed at the restrictions placed on me by Mr Sorabjee, I marvelled at my good fortune in finding such a benefactor. When we are very young our allegiances are extreme, and I recall that it seemed as if the course of my life was set for the foreseeable future and that nothing would stop me from serving the man who had been so kind to me with unswerving devotion and diligence.

The other person I felt indebted to was Rao. I couldn’t have had a more unlikely saviour, this wastrel son of a wealthy Andhra landowner whose only aim in life seemed to be to enjoy himself as much as he could, but somehow he had summoned up the courage to come back for me. He had found me lying on the pavement and had bundled me into a taxi and brought me to the hostel from where he had telephoned my employer. He apologized profusely for running away, but I didn’t hold that against him; I was grateful he hadn’t left me in that street of dead men.

Of all the problems I suffered in the aftermath of the attack, the nightmares persisted the longest. Almost every night for weeks, I would have a dream that varied little in its essential details: I would be walking down a Bombay street much like the one I had been attacked on, with crumbling buildings and an absence of people. The street lamps on either side were of an unusual design, with human heads surmounting the columns. I would make a great effort to escape but some invisible force would pull me along, the tops of the street lamps shearing off and the columns collapsing in a welter of blood as I passed them. At the very end of the street was a seated figure. At my approach, the man, who was slouched over, would start to straighten up, and then, just as I was upon him, his eyelids would open to reveal orbs of blood. His mouth would stretch in a ghastly smile and he would begin to lift his right hand in which there was a sword… and I would wake up, drenched in sweat and shivering violently. Fortunately for me, under the patient ministrations of my therapist, the nightmares eventually began to fade, and in a couple of months I no longer experienced them.

As time passed, the riots receded from the front pages of the newspapers, from public memory, from everywhere except the hearts and minds of the victims and the people who had come together to ensure that Bombay would never have to experience that sort of trauma again. At
The Indian Secularist
our mission took on a new dimension—we would try to do everything we could to ensure that the dead were not forgotten. We started a section in the magazine that was wholly devoted to short obituaries of the hundreds of ordinary Bombayites who had died in the riots. After consulting with my therapist and generally satisfying himself that I was completely recovered, Mr Sorabjee entrusted me with the task of collecting as much information as I could on these humble victims. I would travel to chawls, slums and footpaths to interview eyewitnesses and families, a task that was as depressing from the moment I started it to the day I was finally told by Mr Sorabjee to stop, when information became increasingly hard to come by. From then on, the magazine simply ran lists of names of the remaining dead, the only memorials these people would ever have.

~

Just when it seemed the city was finally getting over the riots, bombs went off in some of its most crowded localities, as the powerful dons of the Muslim underworld sought to avenge the massacre of people of their faith. It was a Friday, and we had already sent the forthcoming issue of the magazine to the printers, so Mr Sorabjee sent us home early, after telling all of us that he did not want us to go anywhere near the affected areas.

I heeded his injunction for as long as I could but by the evening of the next day I could no longer passively watch the unfolding of the tragedy on television. Arguing that I would be more or less following Mr Sorabjee’s instructions by not getting in harm’s way, all I wanted to do was see things for myself, I walked to the site of the nearest explosion, the Air India high-rise on Marine Drive. This was close to the place where I had watched the sun set on my first visit to Bombay. This time I did not look out to sea but faced the damaged building. Shattered glass coated the road like frost, and smoke blackened the facade of the structure, otherwise the scene in front of me was strangely calm. But I didn’t need to hear the screams of the dying to be assailed by feelings of rage and sorrow. When would this cycle of hatred and bloodletting end? Were Muslim murderers any better than their Hindu counterparts? How could the killing of hundreds more innocents be justified no matter how great the provocation? Perhaps what was needed was for the sea to rise up and flood the city, wasn’t that what the Gods did when evil in the world grew too unmanageable, didn’t they simply destroy their creation and start all over again?

All through the weekend my despair grew. I couldn’t wait to get to the office on Monday, where I hoped that Mr Sorabjee would be able to offer me the wisdom and comfort I needed. But it was not to be for even Mr Sorabjee’s determination to keep fighting for what he believed in was shaken by the latest round of violence. After a brief appearance in the office, he locked himself away in his private quarters, leaving word with Mrs Dastur that he was not to be disturbed. He missed his Thursday editorial meeting two weeks in a row, and didn’t come back to work for twenty-two days. Sakshi, Mr Desai and I tried to cobble together the next issue of the magazine, but we were making little progress in the absence of the boss, so we went in a delegation to see Mrs Dastur. She was sharp with us. ‘Mr Sorabjee is not well, but he expects you all to keep working. If you don’t, how will the magazine come out?’ We tried to explain the problem to her but she couldn’t offer us a solution, so we went back and tried again; however, our desultory attempts were not stellar, and it seemed that
The Indian Secularist
would miss an issue for the first time since its inception.

But the next day when I walked into Jehangir Mansion, I saw to my delight that Mr Sorabjee was in the chair he usually occupied during editorial meetings, dressed in the spotless white drill trousers and long-sleeved white shirt he always wore, scanning the day’s papers, ready to start the editorial meeting. I still remember what he said to us that day: ‘We have always fought for what is right, and until last month I was prepared to go on doing that for as long as I had the energy and the means to do so. But after the bomb blasts, I wondered whether anything we do is going to make a difference—there are forces massing to destroy the plural masterpiece that this country has always been, and those of us who think this is deplorable don’t seem to be doing any good at all. I have told all of you that we can never allow our voice to be silenced but is there any one around to hear us cry out? This is what I have been wrestling with for the past few days. This morning, when I woke up, I finally had my answer: if there is even one person left in the country to whom our message will make a difference, that person is the reason we will keep going. Let us never forget that, my friends.’

And so we went back to work. I was sent out to gather information for a series of investigative reports that the magazine intended to run on how one of India’s most secular cities had been destroyed from within. Sakshi would write the articles and I would report them. I interviewed ordinary people accused of murder, the families of victims, volunteers who were helping with the reconstruction of the city, policemen, bystanders… Often I would think I couldn’t go on, the tales of brutality and pathos in my notebook were almost too much to bear. But I kept at it, as did my colleagues, and the tens of thousands who were trying to help, people from every faith and every section of society, all of us doing our best to heal the wounds inflicted on our city.

But Bombay would never be the same again. It was broken, its industriousness and resilience a sham, a thin veil that covered the deep-seated fear and suspicion that had taken hold of its inhabitants. The trains and buses ran packed to capacity every day, office workers and mill hands and shoppers and hawkers and beggars and pickpockets and policemen went about their daily routine, but it was only because they had no option but to go to work in order to feed their families; they did not have the luxury of staying at home and building bomb shelters and stocking them with mountains of toilet paper and grapefruit juice and low-fat yoghurt as their counterparts in a Western city might have done. Bombay would live and die on its streets, its crowded bazaars and mohallas, and even as they went about their daily lives, its millions watched and wondered if they would be expected to sacrifice themselves for their city. But the same fear that ruled their lives hobbled the venal politicians and criminals who stayed their hands for the time being for fear of retribution from the other side. As the first anniversary of the riots approached we watched, and prayed, with the rest of the city that the fragile peace would hold. It did, more or less, and we went on. The week before Christmas, Mr Sorabjee invited me to tea in his private quarters after work. This was unusual, and as I walked over to his room I wondered what infraction I had committed. When Mrs Dastur asked me to go in, I was surprised to find Mr Sorabjee had company. His visitor, a large man with thinning hair and a bulbous nose that dominated his face, was introduced to me as Mr Khanna, an old friend of my employer. Without wasting too much time on niceties, Mr Sorabjee said to me, ‘Vijay, I know that the last time you took a holiday was nearly a year and a half ago, and you haven’t taken any time off since, except when you were ill. I checked with Mrs Dastur and she said you weren’t planning on going home this year. Now, while I don’t think I should get involved with your personal life, I am concerned about you. Your health has not been the best, but you are a stubborn young man, and you don’t seem to want to listen to me. So I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. Vikram here owns a tea estate near a town called Meham in the Nilgiris. He has been wintering in Bombay for the past few years, he can’t take the cold of the mountains any more, and during his absence he leaves his bungalow in the hands of his servants. I have spoken to him, and he is agreeable to your spending ten days there this winter. I have already booked your train tickets. You leave on the twenty-seventh.’

I was opening my mouth to speak, but Mr Sorabjee held up his hand to indicate that he wasn’t finished.

‘It’s going to be a working holiday, young man, so don’t think it’s going to be all fun and games. I have two assignments for you. The first is that there is some sort of controversy in Meham surrounding a shrine called the Tower of God, one of the hundreds of brush fires lit by those rascals when they brought down the mosque. There is a Bombay connection, apparently, but Vikram doesn’t know very much about that. I know you’ve been itching to write for the magazine, so consider this your first assignment. But a word of caution: I do not want you to get mixed up in this matter in any way. All I want you to be is a responsible journalist, collect the facts, and write a piece for our “View from the Front Line” column. That’s all.’

I left his room elated. I had never been on a proper holiday before in my life, especially not to a hill station as celebrated as the Nilgiris, but more than that I was thrilled by the thought of doing my first proper assignment for the magazine. I couldn’t wait to send my father a copy with my byline in it.

In my excitement I had forgotten to ask Mr Sorabjee what my second assignment would be but I needn’t have worried because the day before I was due to leave Mrs Dastur, from whom I had collected my train tickets and money for expenses, told me that Mr Sorabjee wanted to see me.

My employer took me to his office. Next to his desk stood a Godrej steel cupboard. Unlocking it, he withdrew a slim manuscript which he handed to me. The title page read:
THE SOLITUDE OF EMPERORS: Why Ashoka, Akbar and Gandhi Matter to Us Today.

‘I’ve always been fascinated by them,’ Mr Sorabjee said, ‘the three greatest Indians who’ve ever lived. And why do they so easily assume that mantle of greatness? Because each of them, along with their other attributes, has embodied the one prerequisite that anyone who wants to be remembered as a great Indian needs to possess—a soaring vision for this country that transcends caste and creed. I wanted to write about them when I retired but then I started the magazine, which soon took up all my energy and passion and I simply didn’t have the discipline to write the book in my spare time. However, I have wanted to write it for twenty-three years, and while she was alive my wife Bhicoo never failed to remind me about it. When she died ten years ago with not a page written, it was the biggest regret of my life, and I was determined to do something about it.

‘Finally, when I thought it would never happen, a Bombay publisher approached me with an idea. They were textbook publishers but were thinking of starting a new series aimed at high-school students about the key issues facing the country today. I thought it was a very good project. There are so few books written for our children that are stimulating and teach them how to think that I decided to take on the assignment. Each book in the series was to be 10,000 words long, and the publishers were going to commission a famous painter to illustrate the text.