The pooja lasted half an hour. Ma Durgeshwari chanted Sanskrit shlokas in a deep, hypnotic voice that made the skin on Victor’s and Bharati’s arms come up in gooseflesh. As the chanting rose to a crescendo, the Englishwoman at the ashram went into a frenzy and fell at her tantric guru’s feet and thrashed about like a fish out of water. After the aarti, Ma Durgeshwari helped the woman up gently and blessed her.
As the family were about to get into their cars, Ma Durgeshwari sidled up to Victor, ‘I want to be with you for a few days while you are in Delhi. Will you send a car to fetch me tomorrow or the day after?’
Victor nodded. ‘After the chautha ceremony, as soon as two of my sisters leave. The third stays in the house with her husband.’
The stream of mourners abruptly ended with the chautha. Bharati left for Bombay, Victor’s two sisters left for their homes; the ICS brother-in-law and his wife decided to go to Calcutta to see his parents. Victor sent a car to fetch Durgeshwari.
They had the house to themselves, but for the sake of abundant caution Victor put up his guest in Valerie’s cottage. Besides, it was more cosy and lived in and altogether a better place for making love than the large mansion. Victor had his personal servant put Scotch, soda and ice and his cut-glass tumblers on a table in the small sitting room. Durgeshwari had never objected to his drinking. At times she took a sip or two from his tumbler. ‘Let me taste this stuff you like so much,’ she said again. ‘Uffo, it has no taste—runs down my throat like fire water. But it gives me a little suroor. It’s a nice feeling before maithun.’
They made love. She was gentle and slow. She mothered him because he had lost his mother. ‘I’ll teach you something new,’ she said between long bouts of kissing. ‘We will lie on our sides, facing each other. I will guide you in and you must stay inside me without getting too excited. Don’t think of women you have made love to or want to make love to; empty your mind of all thoughts. I will milk you. Preserve your bindu so you can do it again and again.’ So they lay entwined in each others arms, his hands fondling her breasts. ‘I am tired,’ she said at last as she gently pushed him out of her and went down to kiss his phallus, still hard and erect like a bamboo pole. Victor felt strangely calm and on top of the world.
They repeated the exercise three evenings running. Each time Victor emerged from her body more triumphant, buoyant and lighter of step. His mind was clearer, he worked harder and went out of his way to exchange pleasantries with everyone he met. He wished it could go on for ever.
Alas, all good things must come to an end. So did his newfound prowess and pride in his body. Early one morning he received a call from Bharati. ‘Papi, a section of our textile mill caught fire last night and has been totally destroyed. Three workers lost their lives.’ She sounded remarkably in control. ‘I am going there straightaway to find out what happened. Come as soon as you can.’
Victor was concerned for her safety. ‘Bharati, you don’t need to go there yourself. I am sure the general manager can handle things. Have you informed the police?’
‘Yes, yes, Papi,’ she replied. ‘The GM is there. Also the police. The union is organizing a demonstration against the management. I must be there. You come as soon as you can.’
Victor told Durgesh. ‘I will not let you go alone; I am coming with you,’ she said firmly.
They took the next flight to Bombay. The mill’s GM and a few police officers were at the airport. The GM filled Victor in on the details. ‘Sir, the situation has taken a nasty turn. After the cremation of the workers who were killed in the fire, workers of other mills have gone on strike and are organizing demonstrations outside your mill.’
The mill was on the way from the airport to Jai Bhagwan Towers. The police advised him to take a different route. Victor ignored their suggestion. ‘I will go to the mill right now. Where is my daughter?’
‘Sir, despite our pleading with her, she is at the mill. We have provided her adequate security.’
Victor and Ma Durgeshwari drove up to the mill. There was a large crowd outside. A phalanx of policemen armed with lathis faced a mob of mill workers squatting on the road. The police cleared the way and opened the gates to let Victor’s car enter the mill. Bharati met them just inside the gate, her face flushed with anger.
‘It was done by outsiders,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’ve spoken to our workers, they swear they had nothing to do with it. “Kill our own mai-baap, our own annadaata—we are not mad,” they say.’
‘Then who? And why?’ asked Victor. ‘And who are those outsiders on the road?’
‘They are members of some union or the other. The fellow who was leading them last time is leading them again.’
Victor asked the police to allow workers of the mill to come in so he could talk to them. The officer in charge was hesitant at first but Victor insisted: ‘They are my people, I have nothing to fear. Please do as I say.’ The policeman relented and made the announcement on the megaphone. Workers were checked and came in an unending line. They bowed to Victor and sat down on the ground.
Victor spoke to them. ‘Have you any grievances against the management?’ he asked.
The question was answered by silence.
He pointed to the charred remains of the burnt-out section and continued, ‘We, that is you and I, will rebuild this part of the mill. We will never be able to bring back to life three of our fellow workers who perished in the fire and we will all have to live with that for the rest of our lives. I know I will and I don’t need to prove it to you after all these years. You will either believe me or you won’t. On behalf of the management I announce a compensation of rupees one lakh each to members of the bereaved families. We will also give employment to their widows or sons in the mill.’
There were loud shouts of ‘Jai Bhagwan ki Jai.’
‘If you wish to hear what the leader of the demonstrators outside has to say I will invite him here to speak to you.’
There was a murmur of assent. Victor asked the inspector of police standing by his side to go and ask the union leader if he wanted to speak to the workers. The union leader walked in jauntily and took the microphone. ‘Bhaiyon aur beheno—we are all fellow workers. Our interests are common. We … ’
Victor interrupted him. ‘You don’t work in any mill. Tell them the truth.’
‘Jai Bhagwan, you wanted me to speak, so don’t interrupt me,’ the leader said curtly and went on: ‘As I was saying, our interests are common. We have to stand united against capitalists who exploit us. You know the slums and hovels we have to live in. Have you seen the palatial mansions these people live in with hordes of servants? Your proprietor even has a ship of his own where he spends his days and nights so he does not have to see how the poor of Bombay live. It is there he entertains his friends, including the half-naked sadhvi lady you see sitting on the dais beside him. No personal offence meant,’ he said turning to Victor and Durgeshwari.
At the mention of Durgeshwari Victor’s composure snapped. He saw red and he did something completely out of character. He sprang up from his chair like a cheetah and planted a stinging slap on the union leader’s face that sent him reeling off the dais. A roar went up in the crowd of workers. A police officer blew his whistle; policemen came rushing in to help the union leader get up. He was led away shouting obscenities—‘Haraamzaada, maaderchode—what does he think of himself! Bhainchode—you will soon learn what it is to hit a worker’s leader!’
Someone from the crowd shouted, ‘Why did you do that, sahib? All for that manhoos sadhvi? She means more to you than us? She is evil; she will destroy you.’
Victor rushed down the dais and into the crowd, ‘Who said that? Come out and face me!’ he thundered. There was a stunned silence. No one had seen him in such a rage. Bharati came up and led him away by the arm. ‘Come away, Papi. These people don’t deserve you.’
They went back to Jai Bhagwan Towers in complete silence. There was little talk when they reassembled in Victor’s sitting room. ‘I should n
ot have hit that bastard; I’ve never hit anyone in my life. I don’t know what came over me.’
‘Lose your temper and you lose the argument,’ said Durgeshwari softly. ‘However, what happened has happened. Let’s see what comes next.’
‘I can guess,’ replied Victor. ‘The press will gun for me. The fellow will take me to court for assault and battery. I will become India’s villain number one.’
‘After all you’ve done for the country?’ asked Bharati. ‘Don’t worry, it will soon blow over.’
Ma Durgeshwari was quiet. She had made a decision.
Victor had little sleep that night. The more he thought over the matter, the more he was convinced that Nair was behind the union agitation and the campaign thatThunder had launched against him. He may not have had anything to do with the fire at the mill, but Victor wasn’t entirely sure anymore. It was true that Nair had goaded him to think his vision for India through all those years ago and helped in publishing his book. But then Victor had given Nair a career, made him the highest-paid executive in the country, helped him to get elected to Parliament from a constituency in which no one could speak Malayalam and few understood English. Why should Nair turn against him? He had heard someone say that you do good to anyone and you make an enemy for life. He had refused to believe it then but now thanks to Nair he was coming round to accepting that point of view.
Yet, Victor argued with himself, he must not let his experience of Nair sour him against his countrymen. They had expressed their gratitude to him in more ways than one. Some had reservations about his lavish style of living in a poor country. He felt he had earned it by his own sweat. PerhapsJal Bharati was an extravaganza but it was now his haven of refuge from people with whom he had very little in common. After Nair’s turn around he felt he needed his floating little island off the shores of his country more than ever before in his life. He kept reminding himself he must not let people like Nair, the editor ofThunder and the professional rabble-rouser calling himself a union leader make him cynical. Lines from the Bhagwad Gita Bapu Gandhi had once asked him to memorize came back to him:Karmanye ev adhikaraste, ma phaleshu kadachana—Your right is to do the work assigned to you, not count the fruits of the reward. He muttered the lines softly, over and over, and felt more at peace with himself.
He got up early and sent word to the others that he was going to spend a few days on his yacht. If anyone wanted to come along they were welcome. They agreed it was a good idea. They left Jai Bhagwan Towers well before sunrise. Only early morning walkers were out on Marine Drive. They picked up the morning papers from a stall near the Gateway of India.
As they waited forJal Bharati to pull up near the steps, Victor scanned the headlines. He was right, he had made the first page in all of them. They also carried interviews with the union leader who confirmed that he was taking Victor to court for criminal assault. Victor was sure thatThunder would fill its pages with pictures of his entourage and lurid stories about their private lives. He was not going to see it. And being out in the open seas no journalists would pester him for interviews. He would let his PR department handle them as best as it could.
Victor did a lot of walking round the deck and clearing his mind of confusion. He was convinced that the best way of doing things for his country and its people was to maintain a respectable distance from both. Distance lent objectivity and a clearer perspective; closeness made you aware of warts and blemishes—there were far too many of those and they made everything look ugly and repulsive. BuyingJal Bharati had been a splendid idea. It gave him the unique privilege of being both in India and away from it. The motor boat which brought fresh water and provisions also brought some senior executive or the other with files which needed to be cleared urgently. Work did not suffer. It was an ideal arrangement. He would soon makeJal Bharati his permanent base.
His mind made up, he returned to Bombay. He had to stay there till the burnt-out section of his mill was rebuilt and functional again, which would take a few months. He would let Bharati handle the details.
Meanwhile, he made enquiries about the outcome of the union leader’s complaint against him. The police had refused to entertain his first information report (FIR) and told him to file a case through a lawyer if he wanted to do so. There was little hope of the man getting anything more out of it. So he dropped the matter and vented his spleen against Victor and the police in the press. OnlyThundersupported him; all important newspapers and magazines wrote favourably about Victor and Jai Bhagwan Enterprises.
Frustrated, the union leader finally turned to Nair who owed him much for the workers’ votes which had put him in Parliament. Nair wanted to get even with Victor, his daughter and their new friends. He put in a vaguely worded question to be answered by the minister of labour—a post he himself had wanted—about the recent unrest among factory workers and the repressive measures adopted by the police to put it down. When the question came up, the minister simply replied, ‘A statement has been laid on the table of the House.’ The statement flatly denied any workers’ unrest anywhere in the country. Nair rose to ask supplementary questions, quite forgetting in his excitement that the minister was his own party colleague. He waved a copy ofThunder and shouted, ‘The honourable minister says there is no trouble anywhere. I draw his attention to this weekly journal which reports incidents of violence in the biggest textile mill in Bombay. A respected trade union leader was insulted and assaulted by the owner of the mill. The capitalist press maintained a conspiracy of silence. Only one progressive paper had the courage to tell the truth.’ He walked down the aisle and handed a copy ofThunder to the minister. From the back of the House some member shouted: ‘Namak haraam!’
Nair stopped in his swaggering march towards his seat and shouted, ‘Who dares to call me namak haraam?’
Three voices responded, ‘You are a namak haraam. Not only do you attack your own party colleague, you have also stabbed your benefactor in the back. How many years did you eat Jai Bhagwan’s salt?’
The opposition benches protested on behalf of Nair. They were enjoying this. The speaker stood up and said, ‘Namak haraam is unparliamentary. It will not go on record.’
Nair was visibly upset. As he got back to his seat, he addressed the chair. ‘Mr Speaker, I have nothing more to say. These capitalists have not only subverted the free press of this country, they have also got some members of Parliament in their pockets.’
This time the treasury benches were on their feet. The speaker intervened. ‘You have impugned the dignity of this house. This also will not go on record.’
‘Sir, as a protest I will stage a walkout of the House.’ He strode out of the chamber. There was loud thumping of desks, boos and shouts of ‘Good riddance. Stay out!’
Reports in next morning’s papers added more bile to Nair’s frayed temper. They did not report the unparliamentary expression used against him but gave every detail of how he had targeted his own minister, how he strode out in a huff and how his walkout was cheered. They devoted a lot of space to Nair having worked for Jai Bhagwan Enterprises and being elected to Parliament from a constituency heavily dominated by workers in his employer’s mills. The implication was clear: Nair had betrayed the trust of a man to whom he owed all he had achieved in his life.
13
* * *
Ma Durgeshwari had something to tell Victor. In all her life she had never felt as anxious about any decision or its consequences as she did now. She had not broached the subject on the yacht, nor for the first few days after their return to Jai Bhagwan Towers. But she could not put it off any longer. Sitting with Victor in the balcony of his penthouse after breakfast one morning, she told him. ‘It is time for me to return to the ashram.’ Victor held her hand. ‘I have been selfish, Durgesh. You miss Sheroo. We’ll leave early next week and bring Sheroo with us. I’ll charter a plane to fly us all back. It should have occurred to me—’
‘You have not understood,’ Durgeshwari interrupted him. ‘I am talking of r
eturning to the ashram and never coming back.’
A frown appeared on Victor’s brow. ‘I don’t understand. Can I ask why you are saying this now?’
‘We were together because we gave each other happiness,’ Durgeshwari explained quietly. ‘We have had good times. Now we will only bring sorrow into each other’s lives.’
‘Don’t be a child, Durgesh. You are talking of what those fools at the mill said. You should put that out of your mind, it will all blow over. You are overreacting.’
Durgeshwari put up a hand to stop him. ‘It will not blow over. It was you who overreacted at the mill. I told you in the beginning that we must both be free,hamare tumhare beech sambandh hoga, bandhan nahin(we would have a relationship but we wouldn’t be bound to each other). You have been behaving as a husband to a wife. You have jeopardized your reputation and unnecessarily made enemies. And we will always be in the public eye. There can be no freedom for us now. There will be no pleasure.’
Victor was distraught. What she was saying was true, but he could not accept it. ‘I cannot imagine a life without you, Durgesh. The last two years have been the happiest period of my life. It is not easy for me to forget.’
‘It won’t be easy for me to forget either.’ She took her time telling him the complete truth. She was silent for several minutes, then said, ‘I am pregnant. It is your child.’ Because she did not look up, she did not see the shock and confusion on Victor’s face.
When he had recovered, he asked, ‘How long has it been?’
‘A month, I think. It was a mistake, but what is done is done.’
Victor said nothing. He felt trapped.
‘I hope you won’t ask me to get rid of it. That would be hatya (murder).’
‘So what do we do now?’ Victor asked, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.
‘No one should know. I can’t afford that and nor can you. I have a place down South where I can go and spend some months in private. I can also leave the baby there. It will be safe and well looked after. Perhaps you can adopt it later.’
Burial at Sea Page 12
