Days of Despair

Our hero will be called Rajiv, suggesting to the minds of the more cynical of our readers the suspicion that this novel will be about me. They, indeed you, need not worry. This is intended to be a conventional novel, and our hero therefore must be great. I unfortunately have not yet achieved greatness, whereas this Rajiv was not only born great, he also had greatness thrust upon him, when his brother fell out of the sky for instance. 1 Rajiv Gandhi, former prime minister of India; his brother Sanjay died in a plane crash in 1980.

There are, this being a sordid world, those who say that his brother's wife, the ravishing Swedish air hostess Brunnhilde, pushed him out and then tried to thrust herself upon Rajiv. On this story we offer no comment. Suffice it for the moment to say that as our story opens Rajiv is still unmarried, even if Brunnhilde does live, not exactly with him, but in a separate section of his state mansion in the heart of old Delhi. Together with her, perhaps to act as chaperones, live several of her brothers and her cousins and her aunts. Rumour has it that with their help through commissions and omissions, blind eyes usually, she is amassing a tremendous fortune. For our part we can confidently assert that Rajiv has no share in this. He does not require that sort of greatness as well.

That he was destined for greatness was known from the start, long before Brunnhilde appeared on the scene, known if not to everyone at least to his mother and his grandfather, who used to suckle him himself too in accordance with the awareness that was developing in him that he would come in time absolutely to symbolize Mother India. For the old man what made Rajiv special, in preference to his elder brother, were the incipient breasts that, on top of his undoubted masculinity, suggested how readily he would fit into any role his nation demanded of him: keen for a return to old values, he saw in his grandson the modern equivalent of all those divinely androgynous figures who had always caught his fancy in the pages of the Mahabharata. 2 One of the two great Sanskrit epics.

Rajiv's mother, the Widow as she became soon after he was conceived, did not share her father's feelings. 3 Indira Gandhi. For her the position of the stars was enough, and with those behind him she felt Rajiv had no need of his breasts. Before he reached adolescence she had them removed. Her father was distraught. But then, soon afterwards, Mother India herself was dismembered, with pieces removed to left and to right, and the name of the trunk that remained was cut short to Hind. 4 Alluding to the Partition of India, with the creation of West and East (subsequently Bangladesh) Pakistan in 1947) The old man's faith in his grandson was restored. 5 Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India after Independence At the same time, taking control as he now had to do of a smaller area than he had dreamed of while he read the Mahabharata in his prison cell, he was not pleased.

He realized there was no point in holding Rajiv responsible. But day after day, for a year and longer, he did not cease to heap reproaches upon his daughter for the callous and hasty action that had made partition inevitable. All he got in reply was a shrug of the shoulders and a charge of superstition. Now however we can judge that his words did have their effect. From the time the Widow succeeded her father, the final aim of all her actions was to make her country whole again; and, being a thorough sort, she was concerned not only with the breasts that had been removed, but also with all the other little bits and pieces that must once have belonged to the main body. Of course as far as she knew Rajiv had lost nothing else during his adolescence. But she noticed that he developed hair on his body only very late in life, after the storming of Goa (it was much later that it occurred to her that it was her worries about that deficiency that had provoked her father's action in retaking what was an integral part of the Motherland). 6 By the Indian army in 1961. And it was after the great Mongol invasion some time later that she saw that Rajiv's high forehead was growing higher, and that his baldness was really very astonishingly premature. It was then that she began to look wistfully at the lands beyond the Himalayas to the north.

And perhaps it was for connected reasons that, unlike most mothers in Hind, she did not make sure that Rajiv married soon after he came of age. The usual explanation is that Brunnhilde proved too much for her, and she wanted to keep Rajiv at least safely under her control. But that explanation will not suffice. There were other ways of achieving that aim. Rather, it seems to me clear that she was worried that Rajiv would not feel comfortable in a marriage, not at any rate until she had done something about the little island that lay detached off the south of India in the Ocean she wanted freed from all other influences; so that it might be entirely, not of course hers, but under the control of the land she so satisfactorily represented and that her son too would represent in time even more fittingly.

From all this our readers, swiftly or not, would have gathered that this is meant to be a political novel. At the same time there is much else that is vital, not only what might be called the obvious such as the psychological, but also spiritual and, in this day and age especially, the structural. This last I should confess fits in with my own predilections. For me the most powerful of the indications that Rajiv was certain to succeed was his name.

It means Blue Lotus. I discovered this when I was thirteen and he was thirty, in the year his mother defended the Muslim Martyrs of the East against the Menace of the West, unquestionably her most signal success, though it brought for the moment no actual material gains. Rajiv himself may have been more impressed by her acquisition of the little mountain kingdom of Sackem, after which the growth on his face became so luxuriant that no one afterwards except in jest could call him a beardless boy. Coincidentally, it was about that very time that my own moustache began to flourish; but from the point of view of the country it must be clear that the creation of Easthind out of Westhind was the greatest step forward. Indeed, I would even go so far as to suggest that Rajiv, and even his generally farsighted mother, were being selfish in erecting a fence to separate Easthind from Hind proper, at the time when mammary tissue began to collect again and another minor operation was required.

Yet I can also sympathize with him (which is why it seems to me better in the end to achieve greatness than to be born great, or to have it thrust upon one, in so many embarrassing ways). I still remember my embarrassment when I discovered what my name meant, embarrassment enhanced by the fact that I was at the time at a public school supposed to be built on British lines, and in the tropics of course everything happens much more quickly. Yet one can recover from anything; and now I am emphatically proud, as there is no doubt our hero is, and should be in spite of passing irritations.

For the fact is, there can be no name more appropriate for our ancient subcontinent. The lotus part stands for Buddhism, the most spiritual of religions, showing how purity can spring from the dungheap, the many concentric petals unfolding to the perceptive mind such as your own the shadow cycle of life at the very heart of which lies the final solution, the annihilation of the self (at this point I have to confess they lose me, but then I am still immature, and you can find a much more thorough account in any good book on the subject). The colour blue is that of Visnu, the most beloved of the Hindu gods, the Preserver, who comes down to earth whenever he is needed, as Krishna for instance in the Mahabharata, and also as Rama when he had a whole book devoted to his exploits, (though for the moment at any rate the plot of the Ramayana is a sensitive subject, concerned as it is with the invasion of Ceylon by a massive army from Great Hind). 7 In the Ramayana Rama leads an expedition to recover his beloved Sita from Ravana, the demon-king of Lanka.

But there is no need to be diverted here. Let us simply acknowledge now that the name Blue Lotus typifies all that is best in the ancient cultures of the east, that it brings together two nations that have the same interests at heart, two religions that should never have been considered separate, springing as they did from the self-same soil. It is this community of the spirit that makes clear that, when the two nations which through the centuries have been the spiritual homes of Buddhism and Hinduism are brought together, it will be through peaceful negotiation not with the bloodshed and animosity that will be required to make Mother India whole again as far as the other missing pieces are concerned. As far as external appearances go, of course, the other parts may seem much more important; the world will concentrate on the cavortings in Easthind and Westhind of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, as they try to resist the inevitable; but the perceptive will by now have realized that the essential connection to be made is that with the island that lies to the south, at that point on the map which the old traditional systems of medicine showed to be the source of all strength for all humankind. It is not only a matter of politics: for our hero, and the subcontinent for which he stands, to be fulfilled psychologically, spiritually, indeed structurally, he must bridge the gap, and do so without inflicting any wounds.

Of course the cynical may claim that history shows this is impossible to do. Even Rama came only temporarily, to take back what he had lost. But that is a start, if one is seeking for inspiration. And there is always a first time for anything, as Brunnhilde said on that fateful day when her husband took her up in his aeroplane.
