On this trip, I was all business, wanting to maintain a scholarly distance from everything and everybody. I was going to figure out what had caused the death of the city I loved. I wanted to develop an unsentimental view of the place. By talking to Hindus and Muslims—poor ones, rich ones, and those in the middle—I wanted to determine how they could live side by side for so long and then turn on their neighbors with such swift anger and violence.
For the first several days after I arrived, I stayed with my father’s friend from childhood. He was a very successful surgeon whose house had more servants than occupants. He couldn’t understand what an anthropologist did, and he became obsessed, during mealtimes, with asking me how much money I would earn at the peak of my career. It was his only yardstick for what I would become.
When I was ready for a place of my own, he insisted I stay in an apartment he owned. I wanted to refuse the cook and the housecleaner who came with it, but I didn’t; ultimately, I liked the convenience. “It’s very safe,” he kept saying. “The whole building is Hindu. Don’t worry about what happened in February. It was just a few bad boys.” He also put me in touch with people all over the city I could talk to. After two months of fumbling around, doing interviews that made no real sense to me, I was ready for a break. Eva was flying in. I was going to pick her up at the airport, and from there we’d take the next flight to Jaipur, far from the leering eyes of my neighbors, who would surely have something to say about the fact that we weren’t married. From Jaipur, we’d start an extended vacation through northern India, then head down to Goa for Christmas on the beach.
But before I picked her up, I had to do one more interview.
I had been trying to arrange a meeting with this particular man for a while, but he’d been hard to pin down. Anand Mehta was a local official, and my father’s friend had set it up, insisting that I needed to speak to him if I wanted to understand what had happened in Ahmedabad over the past decade. We agreed to meet in the restaurant at the Holiday Inn; it was one of the better hotels in town. I often went there in the afternoons, to get away from the heat, have a pot of tea, and transcribe my notes from the day into my laptop.
I had expected someone older, but the man who walked in was in his early thirties and dressed in a way that suggested he had the means to keep the difficulties of Third World living at bay. He walked in without much fanfare, but the reactions of the hotel staff made clear that they recognized him as a man of import. He arrived with a young man who couldn’t have been older than twenty-one, who stood to the side while we talked.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Anand said, sitting down. “What will you have?”
“I just ordered us a pot of tea.”
“Perfect.”
He placed his cell phone on the table. It was much fancier than mine.
“Were you born in the States, Raj?”
“I was born here in Ahmedabad, but we lived in Bombay,” I said. “We came here in the summers. My family moved to the States when I was eight. I live in New York now.”
“Good,” Anand said. “Good. So we can actually talk. Like people who understand one another.”
The tea arrived, and I noted that the teacups were more delicate than usual.
“How’s Zabar’s?” Anand asked.
“You know it?”
“I did an LLM at Columbia.”
This eased some of the tension that gripped my body. There was often a divide between the people I was interviewing and me. They saw me as irreversibly American, and I couldn’t convince them—through a bit of Gujarati here and a nod of understanding there—that I was closer to them than they assumed. But Anand was different. He knew my world and I knew his. Maybe after all this time, I had finally found someone who would speak to me honestly.
“Zabar’s is still great. It’s turned me into a fan of all kinds of fish.”
“We’re not so different from the Jews, especially when it comes to our relations with Muslims,” Anand said. “But I can’t understand their love of fish. And pastrami. What exactly is pastrami?”
I wasn’t sure if it was a rhetorical question or not. “I don’t exactly know, but it sure is tasty.”
Anand’s face tightened, as if I had betrayed my Hinduness through beef consumption. His disapproval reminded me that I wasn’t here to have a friendly conversation. I took out my digital recorder, placed it between us, and turned it on.
“Maybe we should start. I’m sure you’re busy.” I explained a little of what I was doing and why I wanted to talk to him.
“You want to know what’s happened to Ahmedabad? That’s both a complicated question and a fairly simple one. You spent time here when you were young, correct?”
“Yes, the summers. With my grandparents.”
“I’m sure you remember this as a sweet, gentle place. My favorite thing to do when I was growing up was to go to the night market at Law Garden. We’d eat and have ice cream afterward and run around. Everything felt safe. Some vendors were Muslim. And some customers. But mostly, we all kept to ourselves. They lived in one part of town, we lived in another. But then something happened. Our lives began overlapping. We were told that we had to live in the same neighborhoods, to get along, even though we never had before. So now, the city is going through a natural change, something all cities go through. We’re returning back to our normal, separate lives.”
He spoke with the confidence of someone who could create neat, comforting narratives out of all sorts of conflicting data.
“But does this so-called natural change always occur with so much violence?” I asked.
“The violence was unfortunate,” Anand said, taking a sip of his tea. “But we know where to lay the blame for that.”
There was no change in his manner when he said this. It was as if he were talking about his favorite bagel spread at Zabar’s. He was laying the blame for all the violence that had occurred in February at the feet of the Muslims.
“Do you think there is blame on both sides?” I asked. I opened my notebook. “According to some accounts, there were nearly eight hundred Muslim dead compared to two hundred fifty Hindus.”
“No,” he said. “Just one side is to blame. It’s always been one side. How is it that a majority Hindu city like this is named after a Muslim ruler? Is that fair? We’ve been welcoming for centuries. But I think our patience finally has run out. Those Hindus on the train were coming home from pilgrimage. They were happy in their faith. Do you know what it’s like to be trapped in a burning train compartment? If you want numbers, I’ve got numbers for you. Long-term numbers tallied over many centuries.” Anand stopped and held my gaze. “They deserved everything they got. And more.”
Anand was spewing pure gold. I was already thinking about using him as the opening vignette for my introduction. The Columbia University–trained fascist. As hard as it was to sit and listen, I desperately wanted him to keep talking.
“Do you agree?” Anand asked.
Recently, I had watched Indian political and public life harden into something ugly. And it was always jarring to return, to see family and friends, and people who looked and seemed so familiar, standing on the wrong side of things. A cousin I had grown up with had told me that at the height of the rioting, he had purchased a machete, which he’d used to patrol the streets near his house at night. “If one came at me, I wasn’t going to stop and have a discussion,” he’d said.
Anand could easily have been a boy I’d known as a child, playing cricket together in the hot afternoons. Something about his slickness made me sick. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had personally lit the fires that had burned so many alive, though I knew he’d have someone else to do his dirty work. He would go far in politics.
“I’m trying to get as many views on this as possible,” I said. Telling him I disagreed with him would have made me feel better, but it wouldn’t have helped me do my job.
“I know what I must sound like to you,” Anand said. “But I’m simply
trying to keep my children from being subjected to the kind of fear and uncertainty I’ve had to endure. I want them to feel safe when they’re walking to and from school. They shouldn’t have to be afraid.”
I took a sip of tea and subtly checked the recorder, hoping it was still on.
“Did you get what you needed?”
“Definitely. This has been very helpful. If you have the time, I’d love to hear more. This is a great help in understanding what’s been happening here, and how the public feels about it.”
“I could talk for hours,” Anand said. “But I think I’ve been fairly clear. We’ve experimented with living together. That experiment failed. Now it’s time to move on to something new. Or something old, as the case may be.”
I glanced at my watch.
“Are you late for something?” Anand asked.
“No,” I said. “I have to leave for the airport in half an hour to pick up a friend.”
“A friend?”
If he didn’t approve of me eating pastrami, he was certainly going to take issue with the fact that Eva was white and American and we were unmarried.
“Yes, someone from back home.”
“What time does he land?”
“At five.”
“Babu,” Anand said to the young man who had been waiting in the wings. “Take this gentleman to the airport after we’re done with our tea. And if his friend has any trouble getting through customs, please help him.”
He spoke to Babu in rapid-fire Gujarati, while he had talked to me in perfect English.
“No, no,” I said, “I’ll take a taxi. I need to stop by my apartment first to pick up a few things.”
“I have some work I need to take care of here. Babu will take you wherever you like. Just tell him.”
I reluctantly agreed. It would be a relief not to feel that yet another taxi driver was overcharging me.
“Are we finished?” Anand asked.
Before I could answer, he took a sip of his tea and checked his phone. It had buzzed a few times during our conversation. He didn’t seem interested in me anymore.
“I don’t want to be rude, but I have to make a call,” Anand said, holding up his phone.
“I have plenty for now. And I should probably get going in case there’s traffic.”
I got up and reached into my pocket. Anand just shook his head.
“You have my mobile. Call me anytime you need anything while you’re here. Doctorji is an old friend. He does all our work.” Anand pointed to his belly. “He took out my appendix. I would do anything for him.”
“I’ll be in touch,” I said.
A few minutes later I was riding to my apartment in Anand’s clean and very new Mercedes sedan. I sat in the back seat as Babu maneuvered through the streets.
“So you work for Anand?” I asked in Gujarati.
Babu nodded and looked back at me through the rearview mirror. “Yes, sir.”
“What do you do?”
It was an innocuous question. “I’m his driver, sir,” he said. I hadn’t noticed much about him before, but now, through the mirror, I could see that his cheeks were hollowed out, his eyes dim.
“How long have you been doing that?”
“Many years. Anandji has been very generous to me and my family. I don’t know where we would be without him. I support my whole family with this job.”
He was very proud of this fact.
“So what does Anand do?” I asked, curious about what Babu knew of his boss’s dealings. Anand’s official title was Sub-Minister of Law, but I didn’t understand what exactly that meant.
“He’s an important man,” Babu said. “A government minister.”
“A minister of what?”
“I don’t know, sir. Is this the right way to the apartment?”
“Yes,” I said.
When we reached my apartment, I picked up my packed suitcase and we continued on to the airport.
“So, were you with Anand during the riots?”
I saw him through the rearview mirror, but his concentration purposefully remained on the road ahead. Maybe I was sensing something that wasn’t there, but I got the distinct impression that Babu had seen things he wished he hadn’t. A foot soldier in a dirty war.
He didn’t answer my question.
As we neared the airport, I said, “I’ll be fine. You can go once we get there.” I felt weird enough having accepted this favor from Anand, as if doing so were excusing his horrific views.
“No, I have to stay.”
“Just tell Anand that you dropped me off safely.”
He drove the car right to the main entrance of the terminal. Despite the signs, he parked, got out, and opened the door for me. People turned to stare. I felt like a movie star.
By the time we got inside, Eva was already there waiting, her suitcase next to her. She looked beautiful despite the exhaustion of traveling halfway across the world. I hadn’t seen her for two months, and that first glimpse made me realize just how much I had missed her. I turned to Babu and gave him a thumbs-up. He saw Eva, and for the first time since we met, he gave me the slightest hint of a smile. As I walked away, he didn’t move.
“I’m so glad to see you,” I said to Eva, walking up to her, grabbing hold of her hand. The warmth felt nourishing.
“The flight came in early and I made it through customs and baggage claim without a problem.”
“Let’s go find our flight and get out of here.”
“Who’s that man?” Eva asked. “He looks like he’s waiting for you.”
I turned around and saw Babu still there. I motioned him over, and as he tentatively walked toward us, I thought about how best to introduce Eva.
“Babu, I want you to meet my wife,” I said in Gujarati.
He smiled, and without missing a beat, so did Eva. He began talking to her in a mix of Gujarati and Hindi. He was welcoming her back to India and explaining that things had changed since she left. I couldn’t believe it. With her olive skin and brown hair, Eva looked vaguely ethnic. But still. I’d spent two months trying to convince people that I was Indian, and they had looked at me skeptically every time.
“We have to catch a flight,” I finally said.
Babu stopped and waved to us.
We both said goodbye and walked toward the departure gates.
“What was that?” Eva asked.
“I’m not entirely sure. He may think you’re my Indian wife.”
“Excellent,” Eva said. “The Indian part.” She smiled at me sheepishly. I had missed her terribly.
“I wonder if there’s an Indian Vegas for us to visit,” I said.
* * *
Babu and Robert seemed like similar young men: sorrowful faces, unsure and scared of what they’d already seen and what their lives were going to become. I didn’t know Robert at all, but I got the sense that his affiliation with Alex and Holly was by happenstance. When I’d seen them together earlier, Robert had been on the outskirts of the group. And the grievances Alex and Holly had been shouting about didn’t match up with what Robert had said to me in my office.
My one big regret from that entire year of fieldwork was that I had not spoken to Babu more, that afternoon in the car and maybe sometime after. I should have probed and asked him how he felt about the violence in Ahmedabad. Had he participated in it? But I was scared for him and didn’t want to compromise his relationship with Anand. I knew that Anand would have fired Babu on the spot if he’d said anything that contradicted his boss. Still, when I was back in New York the following year, struggling to write my dissertation, trying to home in on a thesis that got Ahmedabad from the magic of my childhood to the gruesome killings that had changed the city, I kept thinking that Babu held the key. I didn’t think that men like Babu—poor men, with few options for upward mobility—hated their neighbors because they were a different religion. It seemed far more likely that it was because people like Anand had convinced them that they were poor because Muslims h
ad taken the livelihoods that rightfully belonged to them.
I brought together my findings, worked through my argument, and eventually finished my dissertation. And yet, I’d always had this nagging feeling that I hadn’t gotten to the heart of the questions I set out to ask. Thinking about Babu now and trying to figure out what was going on with Robert, I was starting to make some of the connections I hadn’t made then. Maybe this is why my career had stalled. I had come up with some decent explanations for why Ahmedabad had been engulfed in flames—the religious tensions, the economic uncertainty, and the politicians who’d turned a blind eye and let hundreds die. But I’d not been able to figure out how this local story connected to something bigger. Now, strangely, the protesters and Robert were helping me get there. I didn’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but how far were we from our own moment of communal violence?
Sitting in the car, I thought about the rest of that trip, the time I’d spent traveling with Eva. We’d started by splurging on a hotel in Jaipur that had once been a castle. Then we rode camels in the desert near Jaisalmer. In Goa, we bought some hash from an Israeli and watched a sun that never quite set. Eva and I were good travelers together because neither of us was interested in seeing the sights. We liked meandering through the days, eating dinner at five one night and nine the next. And I particularly appreciated that she never asked me questions that forced me to give answers I couldn’t give. Why was there so much poverty in India alongside so much wealth? How could anyone just ignore the beggars? What’s up with the cows?
I asked her to marry me on a beach in Goa.
I was by no means the first member of the broader Bhatt clan to marry a non-Indian, and as such, my family’s interest in tradition had greatly waned. Still, I insisted on a full Indian wedding.
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