Of course you’ll take action, Lakshman, I have no doubt. But how could you allow such a thing to occur in the first place? What kind of country are we creating when the police response to a riot simply sows the seeds of the next one?
Iqbal said it best, as always: “Na samjhogey to mit jaogey aye Hindostan walon / Tumhari dastaan tak bhi na raheygi dastanon mein.” “If you don’t understand, O you Indians, you will be destroyed. Your story will not remain in the world’s treasury of stories.”
Ram Charan Gupta to Makhan Singh
September 30, 1989
The bastard. This is the way that Lakshman treats us, after what the Muslims did to us last night? Makhan, I am so angry about what has happened to your son Arup. Such a handsome boy, too, and just before his wedding. But don’t worry, Makhan. We will have our revenge. On the Muslims, and on the bastard who gives them such free rein.
Yes, we will revenge ourselves on Lakshman too. I understand your rage. It is these Muslim-lovers who make such attacks on our good Hindu boys possible.
But don’t do anything foolish and hotheaded. He is the DM, after all. Do you want the wrath of the entire government on your head? No, there is a simpler way You can catch him with his pants down. Literally.
Apparently he has a secret assignation every Tuesday and Saturday evening. At the Kotli. He is alone there. With a woman. The American woman we have seen cycling around town. But he’s completely alone, in a deserted place. No guards to protect him.
That would be a good place to teach him a lesson, Makhan. And his woman too.
And you know what day it is today? Saturday! March in the procession, visit Arup in the hospital, have your bath, perform your prayers, and go to the Kotli when the sun sets. Revenge is sweeter when you have had time to savor it.
from Katharine Hart’s diary
October 16, 1989
I am sitting next to Rudyard, yet again, on a plane, for the last time. He has been both diminished and redeemed by this trip, manifestly dwarfed by the complexity he encountered in India, humbled by the memory of his own failure there, and yet that deeply compassionate gesture. I felt sorry for him as he stumbled about trying to cope with his grief and his inadequacy, and I realized I’ve never felt sorry for him before. I find it curiously liberating.
I had to see Lakshman. It was him, of course. He confirmed it out of his own mouth. That phrase from Priscilla’s letter — “in his own words, he’s overworked, overweight, and married.” He couldn’t resist using it again. But I could see what Priscilla might have seen in him. And he’s not that overweight either.
I suppose I can understand why he feels he can’t afford to admit it. I wonder how much she meant to him. Or he to her, since she was leaving India, after all. The last love of her life … It doesn’t bear thinking about.
I’ll never know what happened to my poor baby. Perhaps it’s just as the officials said it was, and she was surprised by criminals, or surprised them in the act. They must have thought it was her life or theirs. But what was she doing there? It doesn’t make sense.
Except, perhaps, in the terms India believes in: Destiny. Fate. Karma.
Maybe it was God’s will, and all one can do is to accept it. She died where she would have wanted to have lived.
Gurinder to Ali, at Police Thana Zalilgarh
October 5, 1989
Come on, you misbegotten sonofabitch, tell me the truth. What happened at the Kotli?
Don’t give me that shit. You were there, you know it. You and your fucking friends, with your stupid bloody soothli bombs. Go on, turd-eater, tell me. You made the bombs, took them to town, tried to use them. Then I came along and started firing and you crapped in your pants and ran. We caught the young bugger, but you’d made it out by then, you and your cohorts. You didn’t know where to hide in the middle of a fucking riot, so you buggered off back to the Kotli, expecting to spend the night with the rest of your frigging bombmaking ingredients. And what did you find when you got there? A bloody American woman, that’s who.
And not just any bloody American woman, right, Ali? Somebody you had a fucking strong reason to dislike. Somebody you’d threatened more than once. There she is, you’re fucking scared, your adrenaline is pumping like crazy, she recognizes you, you know you’re done for, so you go at her, don’t you, Ali? Don’t you? Tell me, sisterlover! There’s worse for you if you don’t talk! What did you do with the fucking knife, you sonofabitch?
Forget him, Havildar. This bastard won’t talk.
Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he didn’t do it. But he did enough to get him put away for a long time. He won’t be beating his pissing wife for a while.
Ram Charan Gupta to Makhan Singh
October 3, 1989
I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me anything, Makhan. Perhaps you went there after your bath, your prayers fresh in your mind, looking for the DM to teach him a lesson. But he was in Zalilgarh, putting down the riot. Instead, perhaps you found his woman, sitting there, waiting for him. Perhaps she started running away from you, and you caught her, and perhaps she fought too hard and you used your knife. Perhaps you thought of Arup, scarred and disfigured for life because this woman’s special friend won’t let us deal with these Muslims once and for all. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know.
After all, perhaps you didn’t go there at all. Perhaps you finished your prayers and found the curfew made movement impossible, so you stayed at home. Don’t say a word! Or perhaps you went there and found the Muslim criminals already there, and you found discretion the better part of valor and turned back. So many possibilities … But I really don’t want to know, Makhan.
Sometimes, when you are in the position I am in, ignorance is bliss, Makhan. And I am a blissful man tonight.
Rudyard Hart to Katharine Hart at the PWD
guest house, Zalilgarh
October 15, 1989
Katharine, Kathy, goodnight. No, wait. I don’t know how to say this but I must. When we went to that Kotli place and saw the room where she was killed I thought I would burst in pain. But then something miraculous happened. I saw you. I saw the strength in you, the inner calm you’ve always had. When you knelt to touch that bloodstain on the floor of the alcove, the screaming inside my heart stopped. And a sort of peace descended on me.
Wait, I haven’t finished. I don’t know what exactly I was looking for when I decided to come here and talked you into coming too. Closure, I guess. Some way to come to terms with the finality of Priscilla’s — of the knowledge that she was gone. I don’t know if I’ve found that. I’ve found something else, though. A way of seeing into myself.
Coming back to India has taught me a lot about my first time here. When I was here last, Kathy, I saw a market, not a people. At my work, I saw a target, not a need. With Nandini, I saw an opportunity, not a lover. I took what I could and left. And now India has taken from me the one human being who mattered most to me in the world. Except that she didn’t know it. And I didn’t fully realize it myself until it was too late.…
There are a lot of other things it’s too late for. But there’s one thing I should have said to you a long time ago. A very simple thing: I’m sorry
It’s never too late to say you’re sorry, is it, Kathy?
Geetha at the Shiva Mandir
October 7, 1989
Every Saturday I have come here to pray with my daughter, and I have sought your blessings and your advice, Purohit-ji, as well as that of the Swamiji.