Helium (27 page)

The archive says:

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Sikhs ought to be taught a lesson
(continued Mr Gopal). Your father was part of this mindset. He and other senior officers in the police force colluded with the government and ordered the force to behave criminally, unconstitutionally. Your father was an overnight hero, and he was not alone. Son, schoolchildren, today, do not read about the glorious work of astonishing beauty performed by these men because the story is not part of their textbooks . . . The state has tried to wipe away this dark memory . . . When the parliament reconvened the government never once mentioned the horrific carnage directly. When schools and colleges reopened the headmasters and principals completely forgot to mention those four days the city had just witnessed. The state, like a true criminal, took further advantage of the carnage. The astonishing Congress Party spent millions on an ad campaign, which vilified the minorities. The subliminal message of that PR campaign was that the pogroms were ‘natural’, ‘spontaneous’, ‘legitimate’, ‘outbursts of anger’, ‘inevitable’, ‘logical’. An entire community with a deep sense of belonging to India and Indianness was constructed by the state as the ‘other’. Part propaganda, part justification, the ad campaign is largely forgotten today, but in ’84 the Congress milked the pogroms to win an important election and retain power. The ads portrayed Sikhs as the enemy from across the barbed-wire fence, and the ‘strong’ Congress Party as the country’s most trusted ‘saviour’. Soon afterwards our colonial-style justice system took it upon itself to protect the guilty. Calling a public inquiry is not prudent, ruled the High Court judges of ‘democratic’ and ‘secular’ India. They were promoted to the Supreme Court, one was made the Chief Justice. Names are important. Have you followed Justice Ranganath Mishra’s glittering career? Later, one farcical commission after another essentially gave the Congress Party a clean chit. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent, he said.

No one should be assassinated, but assassinations don’t change how one lived one’s life, continued Mr Gopal. Mrs Gandhi more than anyone else corroded the institutions of our democracy. The reason the violence against the Sikh citizens took place so efficiently, in such a coordinated fashion, is proof that she left the institutions rotten to the core.

In 1981 Mrs G refused to implement the recommendations of the National Police Commission. The commission after many years of hard work proposed a method to reduce the grip of the party in power on the police force. A thick report was presented to Madam, which also covered reforming police training, so as to inculcate the ‘supremacy of law’ and ‘human dignity’. Madam treated the report like crap.

She started the mess in Punjab. That is a complex and tragic story, topic for a thick book, a separate one. The book would also narrate the lives of Sikh leaders, some of them no better than self-serving pigs . . . Anyway . . . Let us not digress. We must learn from the damaged pages of history. How central this one thing is to that entire era. Mrs Gandhi, the so-called saviour of India, bought into her own ‘great leader’ myth:
Indira is India and India is Indira
. Myths can be dangerous. That one ruined her and millions of others. I hear a film is being made on her life and on her death. Soon they will worship her as a devi in temples.

The silence between us grew louder and, perhaps to forget it all, we began dozing and fell asleep for an hour. In my dizzy state I noticed a slightly peeved Mrs Gopal, in a green sari and chappals, clearing the table. I stood up and wished her namaste. She didn’t hug me her usual way. The years had created an enormous gulf between us. Before you go away there is something I must say. She didn’t sit down, but spoke candidly. It might comfort you. Something about your mother. I listened to your conversation with my husband (from the kitchen) and that is why decided to tell you. Under normal circumstances this is not the stuff an aunt tells her nephew. Mrs Gopal literally stammered as she called me her nephew. This might provide you some comfort, she repeated. I turned towards Mr Gopal. He was fast asleep, snoring mildly. On a certain day and at a certain hour, she said, your uncle and your father stopped their friendship and they asked us, the women, to act likewise. Did you? I asked. Well, we tried, but we couldn’t and we didn’t. Both of us, your mother and I, found a way around the closed doors and continued seeing each other. We stopped sharing confidences for a while, but it started again. If this comforts you to hear then you must know that your mother ‘denied’ your father after November ’84. Denied what? I asked. She denied him sex. This continued for several months. I can’t tell you more. And don’t ask me for more. Mrs Gopal returned to the kitchen with her eyes moist. Later, when he woke up, Mr Gopal dropped me at the train station.

We were on platform number 1, waiting. I can’t forget the operatic cacophony of birds. Tens and thousands of them perched right under the corrugated-metal roof. Perched on trussed structures right above the tracks, diminishing the evening light. Hundreds of them on electric wires and distant carriages and water pipes . . . The station felt like a grand bustling chiriaghar, each one of those creatures emitting sounds as if hopelessly lost and disorientated, with no sense of distance or direction or purpose. A loss incomprehensible to me, and it hurt my ears, the out-of-tune orchestra, wave after amplified wave assaulting my ears, showing no signs of dampening. The chorus: much larger than the sum of its parts. Why were they there? Why were they indifferent to those thousands of mango and guava groves in the vicinity? Perhaps they were simply waiting for food. Perhaps a railway station is the safest place to roost. No predators. It was all a deafening mystery. What birds are these? I asked. Have you forgotten? he said. Mynahs, the common hill mynahs. Mr Gopal put his courageous arm around my shoulder. He smiled. Thank you, I said. He didn’t hear me. Forgot to mention something. His voice louder now. Have you heard of Ved Marwah? IPS? He is still alive, a fine man, but he missed a beautiful chance to become a hero. Ved Marwah, several years ago, after pressure from human rights organisations, was brought in to conduct an inquiry by the authorities, and suddenly he was asked to stop. Ved, you see, had made no attempt to save the guilty. He was not allowed to table the report. Your father and other senior officers and bureaucrats and senior Congress leaders concerned, including that failed aeronautical engineer Rajiv Gandhi (Mr Clean), and all the ethnic cleansers, simply wrecked the inquiry.
It would raise issues which are really dead
, emphasised Mr Clean. He, for his special talents and exemplary deeds, was showered with the highest civilian awards, including the Bharat Ratna, whereas Ved has been hounded for the last twenty-five years. A number of cases have been filed against Ved on flimsy grounds.