A Fine Family: A Novel (34 page)

One day Arjun came home early. He looked flushed and excited. Both Priti and Tara were at first concerned, but they quickly realized that nothing was wrong with him. He had brought news of a major national event which would in time envelop them and totally change their lives.

‘The Supreme Court has confirmed that she is guilty. It came on our wire this afternoon,’ he informed them.

‘Oh no!’ gasped Priti.

‘How can the Court do it? It is like removing the Prime Minister for speeding in traffic,’ said Tara outraged.

At three forty-five that afternoon the Supreme Court had confirmed that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was guilty ‘of corrupt election practices’.

‘Strange are the workings of the law,’ said Arjun.

‘She won by over a lakh votes, for pity’s sake,’ said Tara. ‘Can anyone believe that using a few government people for putting up some rostrums and mikes could have affected the outcome. It was a minor impropriety, not an offence.’

‘The law is blind, mother. And no one is above it, thank god!’

‘You seem almost happy!’ said Tara.

‘I hope she won’t do anything reckless now,’ said Priti.

‘If she is smart, she will resign,’ said Arjun.

‘Everyone knows the offences are minor. She will get a lot of sympathy. In eight months she can return to power at the next general election.’

‘Her father would have resigned. I don’t know about her,’ said Priti.

‘I too am afraid,’ said Arjun.

Their worst fears were realized. On 26 June 1975 the Prime Minister declared an Emergency. Before dawn police parties acting under her orders woke up political opponents and locked them up. In those thirty-six hours Arjun felt that India had changed from a democracy to a dictatorship. Arjun, Tara and Priti were all numb with shock.

‘She won’t get away with it,’ he said. ‘A democracy can’t become a dictatorship just like that.’

‘“Democracy” and “dictatorship” are big words,’ said Priti. ‘Every five years people go to the polls and vote for whom they are told to vote. There’s no real opposition, there’s only the Nehru family. Is that really a democracy?’

‘Come, come, Arjun,’ said Tara. ‘To talk of dictatorship is a bit extreme, isn’t it? Besides we do need some discipline in our national life.’

‘I bet he’s behind it,’ said Arjun.

‘Who?’ asked Tara.

‘Sanjay. She only listens to him these days.’

Arjun and his family were not excessively political. Their reactions to these events were not very different to the rest of the country. What they said reflected what was being talked about in millions of homes. Many were initially angry, especially the educated. But they got used to the Emergency and were soon absorbed in their daily lives and their work. Arjun was no different.

Arjun had always enjoyed his work and done it well. A year earlier he had again been promoted, this time to Sales Director. He was one of the youngest ever to occupy this position and he was rightly proud. Inside the office it was generally believed that he had earned his elevation. He had eventually succeeded in convincing the company to market the companion product, Bombay Colds Balm, and it too had been a huge success. In the head office in Bombay, of course, there were some managers who complained that he had been promoted too quickly. But they were moved by envy. As a matter of fact Arjun’s new flat had come as a result of his promotion rather than the compulsions of marriage. Happily the two events had almost coincided. The company had a limited number of flats and these were assigned on the basis of seniority. On his salary Arjun could never have been able to afford a larger flat, rents being what they were on the island of Bombay.

One of the main issues that Arjun had to tackle in his new position was a growing militancy in the trade. There was a threat looming in the east. Over the past few years, the retailers who sold his products had banded together to fight for higher margins from the companies. Typically, collectivizing began around a local leader, who went around from shop to shop convincing the shopkeepers that it was in their interest to unite. Where there was no strong leader, the market remained passive and dealers were fragmented.

The most successful leader was Ram Kishen Guha, who had united the chemists, wholesalers and the general merchants in central Calcutta. He had recently been successful in forcing the smaller companies to raise their retail margin from ten to seventeen per cent, and wholesaler margin from four to seven.

Having tasted success with the smaller firms, Guha was ready to take on the bigger ones. He hit upon a plan to select one large company as a target and convince retailers to refuse to stock its products until it agreed to a higher margin. Once it ‘fell’, he would select a second and a third, and soon they would all follow suit. It was certainly a clever strategy. The first company he thus honoured was Arjun’s.

One morning Arjun walked into his office to discover that he was boycotted in the large Calcutta market. The traders in the neighbouring markets of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa had also struck ‘in sympathy’. Arjun thus found that a quarter of his sales target was in jeopardy. Unless he acted fast the movement might spread.

Arjun flew to Calcutta. He talked to a lot of people and confirmed that the situation was serious. Not a single dealer was prepared to sell his products. Guha’s success must have surprised even him. He wanted to meet Guha, but the latter refused. Arjun returned to Bombay and briefed the Board. Billimoria considered giving in to the pressure, because the daily loss in sales was far greater than the value of the increased margin. The Finance Director agreed saying they could accede and immediately recover the loss by raising prices to the consumer. Others in the management also felt the same. Arjun found himself isolated. He strongly believed in holding firm and fighting. He argued that higher consumer prices would reduce the volume of sales, especially of the lower priced sizes. The poor classes would just not be able to pay the extra ten per cent, and would stop buying them.

Arjun argued with the Board that giving in to the trade would be the beginning of appeasement. The traders would merely escalate their demands in the next round. He likened the boycott to a strike by a militant union, and urged them to respond maturely by negotiation.

‘But they will not negotiate,’ said one Board member.

‘We must keep trying,’ said Arjun.

‘Every day of lost sales is a permanent loss.’

‘We just have to accept the short-term loss for a much larger long term gain.’

With some difficulty Arjun succeeded in getting fifteen days from the Board in which to negotiate and reach agreement. He flew back to Calcutta, and settled down in the Grand Hotel for a long siege. Redeploying his best men from other territories, he and his managers set up a field headquarters, and executed a two-pronged strategy: while Arjun attempted to open negotiations with Guha, his men dispersed and set out to win key dealers to their point of view. Using a cogently developed brief, his men pointed out to the dealers the risks of the boycott—it was a ‘restrictive trade practice’ which might invite action from the government; it meant loss of goodwill from their customers who could not easily substitute some of the company’s products, especially the lower-priced packs—and they reaffirmed the company’s desire to negotiate the margins with the trade leadership. A week later Arjun took the issue directly to the public in a series of advertisements in the local newspapers. As a result of these moves, a few old loyal stockists and wholesalers started to break ranks and much to Arjun’s surprise the boycott began to weaken. Arjun escalated the pressure by announcing in the press the names of dealers where consumers could directly buy the company’s products. The boycott now seemed on the verge of breaking and Guha succumbed to the pressure and agreed to negotiate. But the negotiations did not get anywhere because the gap between what Arjun offered and the demand of the association was too great. Before the negotiations broke, Guha threatened Arjun with ‘serious consequences’ if he persisted in his efforts to break the boycott.

Arjun flew the next day to Delhi. There he met a firm of lawyers, developed a legal brief and filed a complaint with the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission. He also met officials in the Industries Ministry and tried to solicit their aid. One of the Joint Secretaries agreed to help by issuing a letter ‘deploring the boycott’. Arjun had the letter promptly published in the Calcutta press. He returned to Bombay and appealed to the industry association to consider a joint action against the trade: he asked for a month’s boycott by the larger companies of the trade in Calcutta.

Even though he did not succeed in mobilizing the industry, his moves were deliberately leaked, and when he returned to Calcutta there was fear in the trade and Guha was angry. Guha’s next move was totally unexpected. He hired thugs who systematically beat up Arjun’s salesmen and managers; two godowns of the loyal stockists were burnt down within twenty-four hours; the company van in Hooghly was looted; and the brakes of Arjun’s car suddenly failed as he was on his way to offer his sympathies to the stockists whose shops had been burned. Arjun went to the police where he discovered that he was up against a different kind of enemy. The police officer ‘advised’ Arjun to leave Calcutta immediately since his life was in danger. That evening Priti phoned from Bombay to say that she had received a threat to her life. Having discovered that Guha had ‘police protection’, Arjun’s confidence was shaken. His men were totally demoralized. The boycott in the market was also complete again.

That night there was a knock on Arjun’s door at the hotel. A man brought a message that Guha wanted to see him at his home. Arjun was afraid, but he seemed to have no choice, because the man looked ‘persuasive’. They drove for an hour to Salt Lake, a new suburb of the new rich of Calcutta. Arjun had discovered that Guha was not a trader himself, but a small-time politician who had hit upon a good racket in ‘trade unity’. Being a new and distant suburb, Salt Lake was dark and Arjun was even more afraid. Soon they arrived at a brand new, brightly lit bungalow. As soon as he was led into the drawing room Arjun realized that he had totally misjudged his man. On one wall was a huge photograph of Sanjay Gandhi and on another a smaller one of Mrs Gandhi. Far from being ‘small time’, Guha seemed to have political connections at the highest level.

Guha was alone in the room drinking whisky. He got up with a smile, shook Arjun’s hand, and politely offered him a drink. Arjun looked around and realized that everything in the house was new—from the briefcase on the table, the furniture, the refrigerator, to the owner’s clothes and shoes. Guha came quickly to the point. He offered Arjun a deal. He wanted to be paid twenty lakhs, and the boycott would be called off almost on Arjun’s terms. He requested an extra half per cent to retailers over Arjun’s last offer, in order to ‘save the face’ of the trade association. In order to keep the company’s books clean, the payment could be recorded as ‘a donation towards the building fund of the trade association’. Arjun would also have to withdraw the complaint in Delhi. Guha had thought of everything. He finally emphasized that this would be much cheaper for the company than a protracted boycott.

‘And if I refuse?’ said Arjun.

‘Then the boycott will be escalated and you will have to personally pay for your refusal.’

Arjun did not dare ask what that meant.

‘Why don’t you think about it tonight? Talk to your people and call me tomorrow. No one must know about the payment, except your boss and your accountant.’

Arjun stayed awake that night thinking not about whether to pay up but about the consequences. He was clear in his mind that there was no question about paying. He wondered how the company could cut its losses if the boycott continued. The next day he spoke to Billimoria, informed him about what was happening, and advised against the payment. He spoke to Priti, and reassured her that he was all right, and told her not to worry. He booked a ticket to return to Bombay the same evening. Then he called Guha and told him that the payment would not be possible, but he would return to Calcutta with a counter-proposal after reviewing the situation with his people.

‘Was it they who refused the money?’ Guha asked.

‘No. I don’t think it can be done.’

Half-an-hour before his departure for the airport two plain-clothesmen came to Arjun’s room and told him that he was under arrest.

‘On what grounds?’ he asked.

‘Under MISA.’ He was shown a warrant signed by the Deputy Commissioner of Calcutta, dated 1 October 1975. It stated that Arjun was to be detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA). Under the emergency MISA allowed the government to detain a person indefinitely without trial, or without producing charges before a court of law.

‘This is Sanjay Gandhi’s Raj, eh?’ Arjun said bitterly. He realized that he had become a victim of the Emergency.

At the Lalbazar police station, officers were waiting, drinking tea and biscuits. In the back room, armed men of the Central Reserve Police lounged around leering at a young female prisoner. Arjun sat stiffly on a bench. Numerous officers and civilians came and went, each repeating the same question and each noting his replies in his little book. Nobody seemed to take much interest in his answers; they were mainly interested in completing the formalities. Through the open door Arjun could see a boy sitting on the floor, his wrists handcuffed, waist roped, one eye purple and swollen, blood trickling down his cheek. There was an iron trestle nearby. The boy was only wearing shorts and shivering with fever. As Arjun was led to his cell, he saw a policeman hit the boy with a rifle butt. Arjun looked quizzically at his guard.

‘Naxalite,’ spat out the guard. ‘Very dangerous! They don’t confess easily.’

Arjun wondered how a middle class Bengali youth could be dangerous, even if he were fighting for the rights of the rural poor. The guard flung Arjun inside his cell with such violence that he slipped on the floor, and struck the back of his head. The blow dazed him. He dragged himself to the wall. He huddled there, his back to the wall, his legs stretched out on the floor. Later that evening, the same boy half-dead was brought into a cell next to his. As Arjun lay down to sleep, the boy began to shiver violently. Arjun asked the guard to give him a shirt. The guard sneered in reply. About half-an-hour later, unable to sleep, Arjun took off his own shirt and gave it to the grateful boy.

After a few days, Arjun was shifted to Gaya Central Jail in Bihar. During those first few days, he was numb and barely conscious of being in prison. He had a vague hope throughout that something would turn up, some agreeable surprise. He wondered why no one had come to see him. The answer came soon in Priti’s first letter telling him that they would not allow her to visit him. She said that a team of lawyers, engaged by his company, had been working day and night. ‘We were all in Calcutta (including Billimoria) the day after your arrest, but it was futile. Everyone says these are different times (referring to the Emergency). I’m sick to death that we haven’t been able to help you so far. They won’t even let me see you, because you are detained under MISA—they use this word so ominously, as if you had committed some terrible crime.’

From that moment Arjun realized that his cell would be his home for a long time. Gaya Central Jail was a long, low, yellow-ochre dormitory, surrounded by red earth, bushes, and a vegetable garden. Arjun was put in a cell by himself; it was thirty-five feet square and completely bare except for a small earthen pitcher and several coarse grey blankets containing the dirt and grease of his predecessors. He folded the blankets to make a bed on the stone floor. His cell looked out to a yard. The walls were whitewashed and pitted with nail holes. In one corner was the toilet, a hole in the wall, with a raised floor on which was cut an oblong slit. The open drain from all the toilets ran past the outer wall of his cell, filling the hot nights with a stench that made him retch. This smell was sometimes intermingled with jasmine because a ‘poetically inclined’ Superintendent some years ago had planted jasmine bushes along the compound wall.

Not knowing what to expect in prison, Arjun was initially afraid. When he heard the sound of people in the corridor outside his cell, his first thought was that the beating was about to start. He stopped in the middle of the cell, listened, his chin pushed forward. The steps outside came to a halt. He heard a low command, the keys jingled, and there was silence. He stood stiffly between the bed and the toilet, held his breath, and waited for the first scream. But the scream did not come. Then he heard a faint clanging, a voice murmured something, a cell door slammed. The footsteps moved on. Arjun went to the spy-hole and looked into the corridor. The men stopped nearby opposite his cell. They were two orderlies, dragging a bucket of tea, followed by an armed guard. There was to be no beating. They were serving breakfast.

The physical discomfort bothered Arjun less than the isolation. He had not the slightest idea what happened outside his cell; he did not know how many persons were there or who was in the adjoining cells. The only people he saw were those who sloshed out his food from two dirty buckets and cleared the latrine. The Head Warden would come around twice a day to check the lock. Occasionally the Superintendent (in dark glasses) came to inspect, accompanied by armed guards. Shut up for days with nothing to do, idleness was a torment.

The silence almost broke his nerves. At first it did not seem harmful; on the contrary it helped him to think more clearly. But soon he realized that the silence actually made him think less. His brain seemed to stagnate with no one to talk to. At times he played with the illusion that he was dreaming. He tried to make himself believe that the whole thing was unreal. If I succeed in believing that I am dreaming, then it will really be a dream, he thought.

Arjun almost welcomed his interrogators even though they were rude to him and abused him. It was a chance to speak to someone. The plainclothes officers brought a bit of the outside world into his lonely life. He would try to prolong his interrogation through long-winded answers. But eventually his interrogators would leave and he would return to his solitary world, thirty-five square feet. Arjun would walk up and down in the cell, from the door to the window and back, between the bed and the toilet, seven-and-a-half steps there, and seven-and-a-half steps back. It was a natural habit which all prisoners got into; if you did not change direction at the turn, you quickly became dizzy.

One day, angry at the disgusting food and the isolation, Arjun threw his plate back at the guard. The next day he was taken out of his cell. It was eleven o’clock in the morning when they came to fetch him. By the Warden’s solemn expression, Arjun guessed that it was serious. He followed the Warden. They crossed several corridors and a courtyard. They passed a staircase leading underground. He wondered what was down there. He did not like the look of the staircase. Then they crossed a narrow, windowless room; it was a blind shaft, rather dark, but over it hung the open sky. They turned into a small room and there he saw the same kind of iron trestle he had seen in the police station in Calcutta. But it was a cane about four feet long and half-an-inch thick. He was told to strip. When he was standing naked, someone knocked at the door, and the Superintendent walked in. Arjun felt humiliated to have to stand there unclothed before strangers. They bent him over the trestle and tied his wrists and ankles. He found it difficult to breathe in this position. At a signal from the Superintendent, the guard came forward and gave Arjun several strokes. He screamed. They put a wet cloth on his buttocks and completed the rest of his ‘sentence’. They had put the wet cloth over him so that the skin would not cut too badly and leave permanent marks. Nevertheless, there was blood all over his buttocks. The pain was awful and he felt faint.

Time passed slowly. He tried to devise ways to make it pass quicker: he would count the moments remaining for his daily walk in the compound in the evening; he would count the stars at night; he would count how long it took the cloud overhead to drift out of sight. He tried to remember his past as minutely as possible and he learned to exercise his memory. He would think about his childhood in Simla. Starting with his bedroom, he would try to make a complete inventory of every piece of furniture, right down to the stains, and each article upon it, and try to visualize every detail of each piece. From the bedroom he would move on to the drawing room, and the kitchen, the garden, the classrooms and so on. Each room would trigger off memories of people and incidents, and before he realized it hours had gone by. His memory grew sharper and he became more and more comfortable living in the past.

The winter evenings were more difficult. He had a thin shirt to protect him from the harsh winds and often he spent the night shivering under ragged blankets. The cement floor was icy cold. To keep from freezing, he would interrupt his sleep, rise and start walking up and down. But after a while his legs would grow stiff, and he would stretch out again on the floor or sit with his back to the wall. His teeth would chatter as he waited for the sun to rise. The sun would bring warmth; he would grow more impatient waiting for the warmth than for the food. He was cold, miserable, and lonely. His whole life revolved around trying to stay warm and hoping that they would give him enough gruel at the next meal so that he would not be hungry.

Thus the months went by. He did not receive any letters, except the first one from Priti. Just as he had given up all hope, the Head Warden himself came one day to fetch him. ‘Visitors,’ he announced. ‘Your family has come. You can meet them at the office.’

The office was littered with files and papers, and crowded not only with clerks but also with other prisoners’ relatives. Everyone was shouting or talking loudly. Seva Ram and Tara were seated in one corner with Priti standing beside them; they presented a picture of calm and dignity amidst the confusion. They were wedged between a small peasant woman from Bihar and a fat Punjabi matron in salwar-kameez, who was talking shrilly and gesticulating all the time. Some of the lower caste prisoners and their relatives were squatting on the floor opposite each other. They did not raise their voices, and despite the din, managed to converse in whispers. Arjun noticed a prison official at each door. He stood in front of his parents and Priti. Seeing him thus, emaciated and ragged, Tara began to cry. He looked at Priti; she gazed at him with a dark sombre brow, trying hard to smile. He thought she looked very pretty, but somehow he could not bring himself to say so in front of his parents in the prison office. As he glimpsed her sad, quick smile, he had a great desire to put his arms around her and hold her to him. Instead he merely smiled back silently.

‘How long has it been?’ he asked. He had lost track of the time.

‘Four months,’ said Seva Ram. Arjun was surprised; he thought it must be much longer.

They were silent for some time. He kept looking at Priti. Although she could not bring herself to say anything, her eyes seemed to ask if they were treating him well, if he was all right, if he needed anything. At the same time, he detected a strange, distant look in her eyes, the kind that his father sometimes had. He wanted to know ‘how much longer’, but he figured they would tell him if they knew.

The fat woman was bawling at the prisoner beside him; he was her husband presumably, a tall and dignified Punjabi peasant.

‘Are you all right?’ said the peasant gently.

The fat woman laughed loudly. ‘What do you think? I’m a picture of health. You’re the one in jail,’ she said.

Meanwhile the prisoner from Bihar on his right hardly said a word. His eyes were fixed on the peasant woman opposite him, and she returned his look with a sort of hungry passion.

‘You mustn’t lose hope,’ Tara said.

Arjun nodded and looked again at Priti. Her sari heightened her curves. He had a great longing to squeeze her breasts and her buttocks through the thin material.

‘Don’t worry about her,’ said Tara following his gaze. ‘She’s staying at the ashram with us. She is going to give you a baby.’

Arjun did not know what to say. He was pleased but the fat woman was now yelling louder than ever, telling her husband that she had brought a basket, and describing its contents with the prices. She reminded him to be sure to check because the prison staff were thieves. The younger peasant on his side was still gazing mournfully at the woman opposite him. The strident voice of the fat woman jarred in Arjun’s ears. There was no let-up.

One by one the prisoners were slowly led away. Gradually it became quiet. A warden tapped the Punjabi peasant’s shoulder and he turned to leave. The fat woman shouted at him—she didn’t seem to realize it was no longer necessary to shout. ‘Mind yourself, now. We are all waiting for you.’

Soon it was Arjun’s turn. He looked back as he walked away. ‘But we haven’t even talked about the case!’ said Tara in tears. Priti had not moved. Her head tilted, she looked at him with the same affectionate smile. As he walked back to his cell, he felt bothered by that calm, unvarying look on her face. He did not understand what it meant. It was a weary, distant look.

The next day he received clothes, home-made sweets, soap and toiletries, and some books and writing paper. As he paced the compound in the evening he was angry with himself for having forgotten to say all the things he had been wanting to for months. The one thing that he particularly wanted to tell them was to ask the prison to get him out of ‘solitary’. He desperately wanted to talk to someone. The visit had been an unsettling experience forcing him to remember life outside, the people he loved, and things that he missed. For the first few days he felt an insane desire for a woman; this was natural enough, considering his age. He mostly thought of Priti, and the memories of their love—making surrounded him, hurting him. He could not believe that she was pregnant. He had forgotten to ask when the baby was due. He also thought of other women he had known, in his office, at the Gym, cousins, friends, anyone. His cell seemed to become crowded with faces, bodies, and his lustful frenzy grew.

No longer did he think about the circumstances of his arrest. This was a change from his early days in prison when he could think of nothing else. In those days he would constantly imagine alternative endings: What if he had given in? What if he had left the decision to his boss? Would they have jailed Billimoria instead? He had a lingering suspicion that Billimoria would have paid Guha if his own neck had been on the line. He would try to go further back. What if Mrs Gandhi had not declared the Emergency? Slowly he would realize the futility of thinking about the ‘what ifs’ of the past. And he would grow sad.

During the early interrogations he had not yet lost hope. He would plead with his interrogators. He would defend his action. He would ask about his rights. But each time he would be told, sometimes politely but usually callously, that under the dreaded MISA he had no rights: he could be detained indefinitely without a trial.