I knew very little of Prabha Dutt before I became her boss. She was the bossy type and instinctively resented anyone lording over her. When she first came to see me in my office she made it quite clear that she wasn’t the kind of person who took orders from anyone; she knew her job better than I and if I minded my business she would mind hers. She regarded me with her large, grey eyes as an insect-collector would examine the latest beetle in his collection and put me several questions framed to find out what kind of editor I would make. I was somewhat overawed by her presence and the viva-voce test she put me through. It took me several months to break through her impersonal, no-nonsense attitude toward me and persuade her to accept the hand of friendship I extended to her.
The breakthrough was dramatic. Prabha was as much married to the Hindustan Times as she was to her husband and as involved with the paper as she was with her two daughters. And extremely touchy about both. It was after one of her many outbursts against a colleague who got away with very little work that she dissolved in tears of rage. I was able to take the liberty of putting a paternal arm round her shoulders. She shrugged it off but thereafter did me the honour of treating me as her father-in-office to whom she could turn in moments of crisis.
In Prabha’s scheme of values work took precedence over everything else. This gave her enormous courage to speak her mind without bothering who she was speaking to and writing without concern of consequences that might follow. In my presence she told K.K. Birla to his face what was wrong with the Hindustan Times. She bust financial and social rackets (she had a lady-like disdain for sex scandals) and was often threatened with violence. The one and only time she quarrelled with me was when I tried to withhold her story on S.L. Khurana who had been executive president of the Hindustan Times and was then Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. I have little doubt that if she had found out something about my evading taxes, smuggling contraband or involvement in some shady deal, despite her affection for me, she would not have spared me.
Prabha was a very conservative, strait-laced person, passionately devoted to her family, friends, servants and their families. She not only spent every moment she could spare from work teaching her and her servants’ children but eagerly took on the problems of her friends on her own shoulders. She was as fierce in her loyalties towards people she befriended as she could be aggressively unfriendly and outspokenly offensive to their detractors. These characteristics gave her the image of one who was hard as nails and quick of temper. Those who knew her better realized how soft she really was: every outburst of temper was followed by a cascade of tears. She was like the cactus, prickly on the outside, sugar-sweet within.
Had Prabha a premonition that she had a short time to go? I am not sure. She certainly crammed in as much activity for her two daughters as any mother would who felt she may soon be parted from them. On the other hand a day before her haemorrhage she went to see a relative in hospital and told him very cheerfully how lucky he was to be lying comfortably in bed without having to bother about going to office. Little did she then know that within a few hours she would be in the same hospital fighting a losing battle for her own life. Her closest friend, Usha Rai, told me that the evening before she died, as Usha was rubbing her hands, Prabha asked her in a feeble voice: ‘Are you reading the lines on my palm? Tell me, will I leave this hospital alive?’
In all my years in journalism I have yet to meet as gutsy a girl, with integrity that brooked no compromise, daring that verged on foolhardiness, total dedication to her work with contempt for the kaamchor (shirker), than Prabha Dutt. The most fitting tribute I can pay her is by placing a wreath stolen from Shakespeare:
Now boast thee death, in thy possession lies
A lass unparalleled!
Mother Teresa, Apostle of the Unwanted
It must have been more than twenty years ago that I was asked by the New York Times to do a profile of Mother Teresa for its magazine section. I wrote to Mother Teresa, asking her permission to call on her. And having got it, spent three days with her from the early hours of the morning to late at night. Nothing in my long journalistic career has remained as sharply etched in my memory as those three days with her in Calcutta. In my little study in my villa at Kasauli I have only two pictures of the people I admire most—Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa.
Before I met her face to face I read Malcolm Muggeridge’s book on Mother Teresa, Something Beautiful for God. Malcolm was a recent convert to Catholicism and prone to accept stories of miracles. He had gone to make a film on her for British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Television. They first went to the Nirmal Hriday (Sacred Heart) Home for dying destitutes close to the Kalighat temple. The team took some shots of the building from outside and of its sunlit courtyard. The camera crew was of the opinion that the interior was too dark and they had no artificial lights. However, since some footage was left, they decided to use it for interior shots. When the film was developed the shots of the dormitories were found to be clearer than those taken in sunlight. The first thing I asked Mother Teresa was if this was true. She replied, ‘But of course, such things happen all the time.’ And added with increasing intensity of voice, ‘Every day, every hour, every single minute, God manifests himself in some miracle.’
She narrated other miracles of the days when her organization was little known and chronically short of cash. ‘Money has never been much of a problem,’ she told me. ‘God gives through His people.’ She told me that when she started her first school in the slums, she had no more than five rupees with her. But as soon as people came to know what she was doing, they brought money and things: ‘It was all divine providence.’ One winter they ran out of quilts. Her nuns found sheets but there was no money to buy cotton. Just as Mother Teresa was about to rip open her own pillow, the bell rang. Some official who was about to leave Calcutta for a posting abroad had brought his quilts and mattresses to give them away. On another occasion when they had run out of rations, a lady they had never seen before left them a bag of rice. ‘We measured the rice with our little tin cup; it was exactly what we required for the day. When I told the lady that, she broke down and cried as she realized that God had used her as an instrument of His will.’
The first institution she took me to was Nirmal Hriday. It was in 1952 that the Calcutta Corporation handed the building to her. Orthodox Hindus were outraged. Four hundred Brahmin priests attached to the Kali temple demonstrated outside the building. ‘One day I went out and spoke to them. “If you want to kill me, kill me. But do not disturb the inmates. Let them die in peace.”’ That silenced them. Then one of the priests staggered in. He was an advanced case of galloping phthisis. The nuns looked after him till he died. That changed the priests’ attitude towards Mother Teresa. Later one day another priest entered the Home, prostrated himself at Mother Teresa’s feet and said, ‘For thirty years I have served the Goddess Kali in her temple. Now the goddess stands before me.’
I went round Nirmal Hriday with Mother Teresa. In the hour we were there, of the 170 men and women lying in rows, two died. Their beds were quickly taken by two lying on the floor of the veranda outside. Mother Teresa went round to everyone of the inmates and asked them how they were. Her only message of cheer to people who knew they had not much longer to go was Bhoggoban acchen—there is God.
Mother Teresa did not make an impressive figure—barely five foot tall and very slim, high cheek bones and thin lips. And a face full of wrinkles. It was a homely face without any charisma. Muggeridge was right in describing her as a unique person, ‘but not in the vulgar celebrity sense of having neon lighting about her head. Rather in the opposite sense—of someone who has merged herself in the common face of mankind.’ The nun’s dress she had designed for herself would make the plainest looking woman look plainer.
She spoke with an Indian lilt in her voice. And like most convent-bred Indians ended her sentences with an interrogatory ‘No?’, meaning ‘isn’t that so?’ She told me how at the age of twelve she had dared to b
ecome a nun and left her parental home in Skopje (Yugoslavia.) How she learnt English in a Dublin convent and came to Calcutta in 1929 as a geography teacher in St Mary’s High School. She was for many years principal of the school. Then suddenly a strange restlessness came over her; it was, as she describes it ‘a special call from Jesus Christ’. 10 September 1946 was her ‘day of decision’ as well as ‘inspiration day’. This is how she put it: ‘I was going to Darjeeling to make my retreat. It was in that train I heard the call to give up all and follow Him to the slums and serve Him among the poorest of the poor.’ She prepared herself for her mission, receiving an intensive course in nursing at Patna. In 1948 she opened her first school in the slums of Calcutta in a private house donated to her. Her only helper was Subhasini Das (Sister Agnes). A new order, the Missionaries of Charity, was instituted. A male branch, Brothers of Charity, came up some years later, and initiates had to take four vows—poverty, chastity, obedience and whole-hearted service to the poor.
Mother Teresa taught herselfBengali which she soon was able to speak fluently. When India became independent she took Indian nationality. Her strength came from simple convictions. (‘She is blessed with certainties,’ writes Muggeridge.) When I asked her, ‘Who has been the dominant figure in your life—Gandhi, Nehru, Albert Schweitzer?’ without a pause she replied, ‘Jesus Christ.’ When I followed it up with a question about books that might have impressed her, her answer was equally categorical and in the singular: ‘The Bible.’
The day I accompanied Mother Teresa on a ‘begging’ expedition, we boarded a crowded tram car. A man immediately stood up to offer her his seat. Another untied a knot in his dhoti and took out change to buy her ticket. The ticket conductor refused to take money from her and punched a ticket for which he paid himself. We arrived at the office of a large biscuit factory. Mr Mukherjee, the manager, had his excuses ready. His business was not doing well, he was having union problems. And so on. Mother Teresa expressed sympathy with him. ‘We only want the broken biscuits you discard. Thank God, we have no union problems. We work for God; there are no unions.’ I could see Mr Mukherjee’s defences crumble. He picked up his phone and ordered forty large tins of broken biscuits to be delivered to Mother Teresa.
Recognition came to Mother Teresa. In 1962 she was awarded the Padma Shri. Both Pandit Nehru and his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit who were present at the investiture admitted that they almost broke down with emotion. A few months later came the Magsaysay award. Pope Paul VI presented her with a car; she auctioned it and raised four-and-a-half lakh rupees. In 1971 she was awarded the Pope John XXIII prize of 21,500 US dollars. Then came the Good Samaritans and the Joseph Kennedy awards and the Templeton Foundation Prize. While making the presentation Prince Philip referred to the ‘sheer goodness which shines through Mother Teresa’s life and work and inspires humility, wonder and admiration’.
Since then till she got the Nobel Prize for peace there was not a month when she was not showered with money and awards of some kind or the other. Every paise went into the upkeep of hospitals, orphanages and leprosaria which she opened in different parts of India as well as in foreign countries.
One evening, returning from Sealdah to her home we had to get out of our car as there was a mammoth funeral procession coming from the opposite direction. It was the cortege of Muzaffar Ahmed, one of the founding fathers of communism in India. As we proceeded on our way, men waving little red flags stepped out of their ranks to touch Mother Teresa’s feet, receive her blessings, and then rejoin the procession.
Mother Teresa dropped me at Dum Dum airport. As I was about to take leave of her she said ‘So?’ meaning if I had anything else to ask. ‘Tell me how you can touch people with loathsome diseases like leprosy and gangrene. Aren’t you revolted by people filthy with dysentry and cholera vomit?’
She replied, ‘I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself: this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has gangrene, dysentry and cholera. I must wash him and tend to him. I serve them because I love Jesus.’
The last time I saw Mother Teresa was two years ago when she came to Delhi to receive two Maruti Vans presented to her by my friend H.N. Sikand. There was an enormous crowd in his home. Mother Teresa passed by me without recognizing me. How could she after all those years and the millions of people she must have met? She made a very short speech of thanks in her usually flat voice. I could see through my own tear-filled eyes that almost everyone present was also in tears.
Phoolan Devi, Queen of Dacoits
For two years after this article was written, Phoolan Devi continued to evade capture. Then, in February 1983, she surrendered to the police. On 25 July 2001, Phoolan Devi was shot dead by assailants.
It was the afternoon of Saturday, 14 February 1981. Winter had given way to spring. Amidst the undulating sea of ripening wheat and green lentil were patches of bright yellow mustard in flower. Skylarks rose from the ground, suspended themselves in the blue skies and poured down song on the earth below. Allah was in His heaven and all was peace and tranquillity in Behmai.
Behmai is a tiny hamlet along the river Jamuna inhabited by about fifty families belonging mainly to the Thakur caste, with a sprinkling of shepherds and ironsmiths. Although it is only eighty miles from the industrial metropolis, Kanpur, it has no road connecting it to any town. To get to Behmai you have to traverse dusty footpaths meandering through cultivated fields, and go down narrow, snake-infested ravines choked with camelthorn and elephant grass. It is not surprising that till the middle of February few people had heard of Behmai. After what happened on Saturday the 14th, it was on everyone’s lips.
There was not much to do in the fields except drive off wild pig and deer: some boys armed with catapults and loud voices were out doing this; others played on the sand bank while their buffaloes wallowed in the mud. Men dozed on their charpoys: women sat in huddles gossiping as they ground corn or picked lice out of their children’s hair.
No one in Behmai noticed a party dressed in police uniforms cross the river. It was led by a young woman with short-cropped hair wearing the khaki coat of a deputy superintendent of police with three silver stars, blue jeans and boots with zippers. She wore lipstick and her nails had varnish on them. Her belt was charged with bullets and had a curved Gurkha knife—a kokri—attached to it. A sten-gun was slung across her shoulders and she carried a battery-fitted megaphone in her hand. The party sat down beside the village shrine, adorned with the trident emblem of Shiva, the god of destruction.
The eldest of the party, a notorious gangster named Baba Mustaqeem, instructed the group how to go about their job. A dozen men were to surround the village so that no one could get out; the remaining men, led by the woman, were to search all the houses and take whatever they liked. But no women were to be raped nor anyone except the two men they were looking for were to be slain. They listened in silence and nodded their heads in agreement. They touched the base of Shiva’s trident for good luck and dispersed.
The girl in the officer’s uniform went up on the parapet of the village well, switched on the megaphone and shouted at the top of her voice: ‘Listen you fellows! You bhosreekey! (progenies of the cunt) If you love your lives hand over all the cash, silver and gold you have. And listen again! I know those madarchods (mother-fuckers) Lal Ram Singh and Shri Ram Singh are hiding in this village. If you don’t hand them over to me I will stick my gun into your bums and tear them apart. You’ve heard me. This is Phoolan Devi speaking. If you don’t get cracking, you know what Phoolan Devi will do to you. Jai Durga Mata! (victory to the Mother Goddess Durga!).’ She raised her gun and fired a single shot in the air to convince them that she meant what she said.
Phoolan Devi stayed at the well while her men went looting the Thakurs’ homes. Women were stripped of their earrings, nose-pins, silver bangles and anklets. Men handed over whatever cash they had on their persons. The operation lasted almost an hour. But there was no trace of Lal Ram Singh or Shri Ram S
ingh. The people of the village denied having ever seen them. ‘You are lying!’ roared Phoolan Devi. ‘I will teach you to tell the truth.’ She ordered all the young men to be brought before her. About thirty were dragged to her presence. She asked them again: ‘You mother-fuckers, unless you tell me where those two sons of pigs are, I will roast you alive.’ The men pleaded with her and swore they had never seen the two men.
‘Take these fellows along,’ she ordered her men. ‘I’ll teach them a lesson they will never forget.’ The gang pushed the thirty villagers out of Behmai along the path leading to the river. At an embankment she ordered them to be halted and lined up. ‘For the last time, will you tell me where those two bastards are or do I have to kill you?’ she asked pointing her sten-gun at them. The villagers again pleaded ignorance: ‘If we knew, we would tell you.’ ‘Turn round,’ thundered Phoolan Devi. The men turned their faces towards the green embankment. ‘Bhosreekey, this will also teach you not to report to the police. Shoot the bloody bastards!’ she ordered her men and yelled: ‘Jai Durga Mata!’ There was a burst of gunfire. The thirty men crumpled to the earth. Twenty were dead; others hit in their limbs or buttocks sprawled in blood-spattered dust.
Phoolan Devi and her murderous gang went down the path yelling: ‘Jai Durga Mata! Jai Baba Mustaqeem! Jai Bikram Singh! Jai Phoolan Devi!’
The next morning the massacre of Behmai made front page headlines in all newspapers all over India.
~
Dacoity in India is as old as history. In some regions it is endemic and no sooner are some gangs liquidated than others come up. The most notorious dacoit country is a couple of hundred miles south-west of Behmai, along the ravines of the Chambal river in Madhya Pradesh. In the Bundelkhand district of Uttar Pradesh in which Behmai is located, it is of comparatively recent origin and the state police suspect that when things became too hot around the Chambal some gangs migrated to Bundelkhand where the terrain was very much like the one they were familiar with. The river Jamuna, after its descent from the Himalayas, runs a sluggish, serpentine course past Delhi and Agra into Bundelkhand. Here it passes through a range of low-lying hills covered with dense forests. Several monsoon-fed rivulets running through deep gorges join it as it goes on to meet the holy Ganga at Allahabad. It is wild and beautiful country: hills, ravines and forests enclosing small picturesque hamlets. By day there are peacocks and multi-coloured butterflies: by night, nightjars calling to each other across the pitch black wilderness flecked by fireflies. Neelgai (blue bull), spotted deer, wild boar, hyena, jackal and fox abound. It is also infested with snakes, the commonest being cobras, the most venomous of the species. Cultivation is sparse and entirely dependent on rain. The chief produce are lentils and wheat. The peasantry is amongst the poorest in the country. The two main communities living along the river banks are Mallahs (boatmen) and Thakurs. The Thakurs are the higher caste and own most of the land. The Mallahs are amongst the lowest in the Hindu caste hierarchy, own little land and live mostly by plying boats, fishing and distilling liquor. Till recently dacoit gangs were mixed: Thakurs, Mallahs, Yadavs (cattlemen), Gujjars (milkmen) and Muslims. But now more and more are tending to becoming caste-oriented. There is little love lost between the Thakurs and the Mallahs. Behmai is a Thakur village; Phoolan Devi, a Mallahin (boatwoman).
Not a Nice Man to Know Page 6
