THE WHEELS GRIND SLOW

Politically, things were getting messier. The fifty-odd commissions set up by the Janata government had nothing much to show. Mrs G was, of course, sent to jail amidst high drama. She played cat and mouse with the team of flatfoots sent to arrest her, now moving into another room to collect some knick knack and now going to the washroom and bolting the door. Who can object if you bolt the washroom door? The sons, Rajiv and Sanjay, in their Pajeros chased the arresting team right up to Tihar jail. Nishant was visibly shaken and I relented, in the sense I put a stop to my relentless diatribes. The Janata government thought the people would be satisfied once she was jailed, as promised by them. The only promises politicians keep in India Mama, are jailing their opponents once they come to power. As for the jobs they promised and the sops to the labour movement and stern action against criminals, you may as well forget it. They didn’t calculate how sentimental the Indians are. The eyes of the women turned watery, not because they were stung by the smoke in the kitchen, but on seeing Mrs Gandhi sent to jail. This was not what they wanted to see. They were no part of an audience around an amphitheatre, their souls cleansed by watching Antigone. The black-and-white TVs touched a vein of national compassion no one thought existed. And they started doubting the statements, twenty-seven to the dozen, of the Georges and Raj Narayans and Madhu Limyes day after day. They treated what these leaders said with the disdain reserved for slogans coined a week before elections. Under the skin of words there was no blood, sub-cutaneous anaemia Mama.

There was no hidden code to this change of mood. The clamour from the party leaders did the trick—and the bickering. The people disapproved, and harboured their dislike against this vendetta, as they perceived it, against a forlorn woman. The national euphoria which had brought the party in had just collapsed.

The Greeks had a wheel of fortune they believed in. Wheels have to turn Mama, or why have wheels. And pardon my asides, if our planet was square, it wouldn’t have been wheeling around the sun—must ask an astronomer. Wish I could have dated Copernicus! I sat in an auto the other day, returning from the South Extension market, and the driver asked me, ‘Mem Sahib, yeh salay kar kya rahen hain?’ (What are these so and sos up to?) He was talking of the government, of course. When pejoratives get linked to the government you know something is wrong. And then he added, ‘They won’t last long’.

The fellow was a prophet. Next day the government started disintegrating, chaps jumped ship, they moved towards Charan Singh. The ostensible cause for the desertions was that they could not work with Jana Sangha members, who also belonged to the RSS, an organization suspected perhaps erroneously (who knows?)of sporting a hidden Hitlerite moustache, though how a moustache can be hidden is anyone’s guess. No one has accused them of a Mussolini paunch as yet. A falling government is like a huge landslide Mama, first some debris rolls down the hillside, then there’s a tremor which only the sensitive can feel, (mules and mountain ponies can smell it from afar, instinctively) and then the crash, mud-slime gathering pace as it rolls down in cahoots with gravity. During our conversations over the Janata fiasco my husband did not gloat. The civil service gets used to routine; it doesn’t like jerk and jhatka, if you know what I mean. Stability, status quo, same idiot or scoundrel in dhoti kurta to look up to, his personal eccentricities known, his love for methi-ka-paratha for instance—that’s the ideal air-conditioned, politically-conditioned atmosphere he is comfortable with. He never commiserated, thank God. Then, out of nowhere, it occurred to him to mention that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had been arrested in Pakistan. Murder charge no less. ‘You are showing me two maps Nishant, comparing us with Pakistan and implying we still are better off even as we blunder along. Is that it? A government with a massive mandate falls within two years. How does that change anything? Our politicians have let us down. Let the Pakistanis handle their murder and crime and probable regicide as best as they can.’

Six months, an election and a chastened Indira Gandhi was back in power. Of course, I realized that things would change for the better as far as we were concerned. Husbandji did not want to show me his little glimmer of glee. But he was driving all over the place, making political contacts. Efforts never go waste. He was picked up by a minister from Bihar. Bihari water is quite special but Bihari blood is thicker than even water. He was now joint secretary in the ministry and secretary to the minister. Initially all he would say into the phone was ‘Sir, Sir’. Slowly that changed. He was soon speaking in Hindustani to his boss, now and then even cracking a joke. Within six months he was handling the minister’s personal affairs, and one Saturday he even brought the great man’s cheque book home. ‘How come?’ I asked. ‘Well, I am writing his cheques, a good dozen, he just has to sign. He is paying back an overdraft from the bank, sending a cheque for his property tax and so on. Don’t bother your head with all this.’

He was going with the minister abroad now and the bar was getting well stocked—two Johnnie Walker Black Labels a trip. Soon that stopped. He was getting exotic whiskies now. I noticed a Talisker, single malt from the Isle of Skye. These were the early eighties Mama, I didn’t know what single malt meant, by which I mean I had no idea what was so great about a single malt. Once in a week or so I would sip a glass of wine, but that was it. I benefitted now and then—a perfume here, once even a chiffon lace sari. His minister took no one but him on his foreign jaunts. He headed two ministries. Once he returned from a tour of West Germany and next day as I was putting away his coat I found a Swiss Air boarding card for Zurich, Frankfurt to Zurich. In the evening I let it drop casually that I thought he was going to West Germany. That’s right he answered and I thought I had put him off a bit. After a gulp or two of his whiskey he said, ‘Why did you ask?’ I had no option but to be frank now. ‘You never said anything about going to Zurich,’ I said. He was startled, I could tell though he didn’t want to show it. He didn’t ask how I came to know, but kept looking into his glass like a sibyl staring at a bowl of coffee grounds. ‘I was brushing your coat this morning and found your boarding card.’

‘The minister had to go there, a private affair of his. Never talk about it.’ And he shook his head in dismay. I refrained from joking about the ‘affair.’ Even a street urchin would tell you why a minister had to go to Zurich or Geneva. After this incident I made it a point not to touch his coat once he returned from a trip. A coat being brushed or a boarding card sticking out of a pocket are no big deal Mama, it’s just like a fly falling in a jug of milk. Our parties became more chic and friends looked out for them. Then disaster struck. Sanjay Gandhi died as his plane crashed during stunts in the air. The paparazzi zeroed in on how Mrs Gandhi had gone looking for keys at the accident site. Disasters come in pairs, sometimes in threes. A few days later days later, Nishant’s minister went down a mine to see for himself the conditions under which miners worked, and never came back. I mean did not come out alive. They wasted time trying to revive him. When they took him to the hospital he was declared ‘brought dead’.

Gloom all around. This was not some sundry political boss kicking the bucket. He was from Bihar, from the same biradari, caste, as Nishant, and Hubby was damn good at work, everyone said so, no wonder he was the favourite of the politico. A month after the minister died, Nishant was transferred to the Agricultural Ministry. Within a month he was off on a tour—again abroad this time. ‘So you are in with the minister of your new ministry as well?’ I asked. He just shrugged his shoulders. He was hardly away for three or four days and was back.