The Great Indian Novel by Tharoor Shashi

Author:Tharoor, Shashi [Tharoor, Shashi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9789351187004
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-02-19T18:30:00+00:00

67

There were other lines too. Lines of glittering socialites queuing up to be received at one of the numerous soirées and balls organized at the Viceroy’s house (‘almost as if he wants to spend the rest of the government-hospitality budget while he still has one,’ a cynic commented). Lines of journalists and cameramen queuing outside his study for quotographs as he emerged after his breezy summits with a succession of dignitaries (‘almost as if he only meets them for the sake of the pictures afterwards’). Lines of stiff soldiers in starched uniforms, ceremonial swords at the ready, to welcome him to airfield after airfield on his whirlwind tours of the country (‘almost as if he wants to see it all before they take away his plane’). Lines of nawabs, maharajas and allied potentates anxious to wheedle some assurance out of him that they wouldn’t have to merge their principalities into either the new democracy or the emerging Karnocracy (‘now there he did the right thing by us: he told the princelings they wouldn’t get a pop-gun out of Britain if they sought to resist’).

At last Vidur came into his own. He was by now sufficiently senior in the States Department, the organ of government that dealt with the princely states, and Drewpad needed an Indian in his higher councils on the eve of a transition from British to Indian rule. Within a short while - and remember a short while was as much as Drewpad gave anybody - he was amongst the Viceroy’s closest advisors. It was he who did the meticulous paperwork that allowed Drewpad to deliver his startling pronouncements on everything from princely privilege to constitutional prerogative. And if occasionally he slipped away to brief Dhritarashtra or myself in advance of an impending development of some importance to the future of the country, he was only doing his larger duty - to the nation, rather than just to the government. As a result of which India did not do too badly out of the partitioning of the army or the division of governmental assets. Vidur, as always, did his work well.

Ah, Ganapathi, those were proud paternal days for me, unacknowledged father though I was. One son was poised to inherit the first free government of India, another had been martyred in the attempt and was revered in almost every Indian home, and the third stood side by side with the British Viceroy as the last arrangements were made for the withdrawal of colonialism. There were few fathers, Ganapathi, who could say, as I could, that history had sprung from their loins.

But I would rather procreate history than propagate it. There are moments in my own story I would rather forget, and that terrible year of 1947 was full of them. For the last time I took to the dusty roads in my sandals to see and learn what was happening, and I saw too much, Ganapathi, I heard too much. The killing, the violence, the carnage, the sheer mindlessness of the destruction, burned out something within me.

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