‘I can’t afford to lose him to the other side,’ Yudhishtir said to me. ‘I must get him to issue a statement in my favour before Ashwathaman returns from his tour of the southern states and beats me to it.’
‘Yama, the god of death, might beat you both to it,’ I said. My own advancing years had made my imagery even more traditional, at least on the subject of mortality. ‘I saw him this morning and felt he wouldn’t last till tomorrow. But if he does, Yudhishtir, he is not going to support you against his son.’
‘I realize that. And if he adds his voice to Ashwathaman’s, I am finished,’ Yudhishtir said matter-of-factly. ‘The time has come for me to act as our ancestors would have done.’ Without responding to my raised eyebrow, the Prime Minister beckoned to his youngest brother. ‘Sahadev, I want you to go to Drona’s house now and tell him Ashwathaman’s plane back to Delhi has crashed.’
I was numbed by his words. ‘You can’t possibly do this,’ I protested as soon as I had recovered my breath.
‘Tell him also,’ Yudhishtir went on obliviously, ‘that I am on my way over to give him the news myself. I shall follow you in about ten minutes. Make sure no one else is with you when you say this, or when I enter.’
‘But Yudhishtir,’ I expostulated, ‘you’ve never told a lie in your life!’
‘And I never will,’ my grandson replied piously.
‘Drona knows that,’ I pointed out. ‘And he is bound to ask you for the truth of Sahadev’s information.’
‘Precisely.’ Yudhishtir seemed undisturbed.
‘You can’t lie to him then! A dying man — your own guru. .’
‘Don’t worry, VVji,’ Yudhishtir said. ‘I won’t lie.’
I went with him to Drona’s house. The old man lay in a darkened room, surrounded by the medicines and equipment that kept him alive. Sahadev was crouched miserably at his bedside; I was shaken to see that the Messiah was weeping.
As we entered, he turned to Yudhishtir with a desperate anxiety even his frailty could not efface. ‘He tells me this terrible fate has befallen my son,’ Drona said. ‘Tell me, Yudhishtir, is it true? I cannot believe it unless it comes from you. Tell me, is Ashwathaman safe?’
A look of genuine sadness appeared on the Prime Minister’s face. ‘I am sorry, Dronaji,’ Yudhishtir said. ‘Ashwathaman is dead.’
Even I believed him then, for Yudhishtir simply did not lie. His honesty was like the brightness of the sun or the wetness of the rain, one of the elements of the natural world: you simply took it for granted.
‘Ashwathaman,’ he repeated softly, ‘is dead.’
A terrible cry rose from Drona’s lips. He turned his face away from us, towards the white-plastered wall, his voice drained of all emotion. ‘Then I have nothing more to live for.’ His eyes closed.
‘I am sorry, Drona, to ask you this at this painful time,’ the Prime Minister whispered, ‘but will you not support the unity of the Front you did so much to create and place in power?’
The Messiah did not look at him. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘Of course.’
I saw the triumph in Yudhishtir’s eyes at the same time that I saw the light fade from Drona’s. Within minutes, the old guru was gone.
We stood in vigil as the life ebbed away from him, and I felt regret flood my spirit. Throughout his life, during his days of violence and of peace, his years of teaching and of withdrawal, Drona had been one of India’s simplest men. ‘The new Mahaguru’, a Sunday magazine had dubbed him, but he was a flawed Mahaguru, a man whose goodness was not balanced by the shrewdness of the original. He had stood above his peers, a secular saint whose commitment to truth and justice was beyond question. But though his loyalty to the ideals of a democratic and egalitarian India could not be challenged, Drona’s abhorrence of power had made him unfit to wield it. He had offered inspiration but not involvement, charisma but not change, hope but no harness. Having abandoned politics when he seemed the likely heir-apparent to Dhritarashtra, he tried to stay above it all after the fall of Dhritarashtra’s daughter, and so he let the revolution he had wrought fall into the hands of lesser men who were unworthy of his ideals. Now he was dying, and the nation did not know what it would mourn.
‘”J.D.,” our modern Messiah, is no more,’ Yudhishtir announced outside when it was all over. ‘And his last words were a stirring plea for unity amongst us in the Front. It is no secret that he was deeply saddened by the troubles that have affected the government — his government, a government he did more than anyone else to make possible. It is sadly true that Dronaji died a deeply disappointed man, but his legacy lives on in the hearts of the Indian people — to whom, in the last analysis, he taught their own strength.’ Yudhishtir paused, his voice breaking. ‘I plead with all his followers and heirs today — let us not dissipate that strength. On this tragic occasion I shall call on every member of the Front, and in particular on Dronaji’s son Ashwathaman, our party’s President, to rededicate ourselves to the cause J.D. held so dear.’
‘Ashwathaman?’ I asked Yudhishtir later when we were alone. ‘I thought you told the old man he was dead.’ I shook my head in disappointment. ‘You, Yudhishtir; you of all people. I believed you could never lie.’
‘You believed right, VVji,’ Yudhishtir said implacably. ‘I didn’t lie this time either. When I said Ashwathaman was dead, I was speaking the truth. Before leaving the house I caught a cockroach in the closet, named it Ashwathaman, and crushed it under my prime-ministerial despatch-box. So you see, VVji, I did not lie to Drona. I never said it was his son who had died.’
I stared at him, breathless at his sophistry. ‘Your words, Yudhishtir,’ I said at last, ‘took away the last spark of life from the old man. In effect, they killed him.’
‘You are being most unjust, VVji,’ Yudhishtir replied. ‘He was ill; he was dying. Perhaps his grief hastened his end, but is it not said that the time of our going is determined from our births? I may not have spoken the whole truth, but I spoke no untruth, and my words may have helped sustain a greater truth by prompting him to endorse my plea for unity. Would it have been better to allow his tremendous moral authority to have been manipulated by the radical rabble to bring down the government that has restored Indian democracy? I believe, VVji, that I acted righteously, in full pursuit of dharma. Dharma, you know, is a subtle thing.’
‘But not as subtle as that, Yudhishtir,’ I replied sadly. ‘I do not believe you will profit from your deception. Our national motto is “Satyameva Jayate,” Truth will Prevail. Not your truth or mine, Yudhishtir; just Truth. A truth too immutable to be uttered only in the letter and violated in the spirit.’ I rose, clenching my walking stick so tightly my palm hurt. ‘Goodbye, Yudhishtir. You shall not see me again.’
I did not turn to see if my exit had even momentarily shaken his complacency.
122
It did not matter, for of course I was right. Drona’s dying benediction achieved no more than his lifetime’s crusades. A majority of the Front’s MPs left the Prime Minister’s emunctory embrace. The government fell; and in the elections that followed, Priya Duryodhani was returned overwhelmingly to power. The still unresolved case against her was discreetly withdrawn. Dharma had turned full circle.
123
What remains to be said, Ganapathi? There is, of course, the question of expectations. This story, like that of our country, is a story of betrayed expectations, yours as much as our characters’. There is no story and too many stories; there are no heroes and too many heroes. What is left out matters almost as much as what is said.