Riot

~ ~ ~

letter from Lakshman to Priscilla

August 25, 1989

My darling Priscilla,

Please try and understand what I’m going through. The last three days since I saw you have been the worst three days of my life. I was shattered when you left like that, and I haven’t slept a wink. I feel physically ill. I told you that losing you would be like amputating a limb — they say you constantly feel pain from the place where the limb used to be. In my case, that’s my heart.

I feel I’ve conducted a terrible mutilation of myself in telling you why I couldn’t give you the commitment you seek. Watching you cycle away into the darkness last Tuesday was the most wrenching experience of my life.

And yet I have made my own bed and I must lie in it. I’m a desperately sad human being who is suffering terribly, and my suffering is made no more bearable by the fact that it is self-inflicted. I could have said something else to you, but I knew you deserved the truth. I felt I could not do otherwise, my dearest Priscilla, and be true to myself, above all to my obligations as a man and my duty as a father. It was the most difficult choice I’ve ever had to make, and at one level I still can’t believe I’ve made it.

I can’t bear to think I won’t see you again at the Kotli. I’ll be there anyway tomorrow, as usual. I’ll understand if you don’t want to come anymore. I’m in too much pain to be anywhere else on Saturday, so I’ll go there, even if it is to be alone with my memories.

May the divine Providence in which both of us believes give you strength and happiness, and may some of it rub off on me.

Always your (un) Lucky

from Lakshman’s journal

August 26, 1989

She comes to him that Saturday, of course. She leaves her cycle in the shrubbery and walks softly up the old stone stairway to their lair. He is sitting on the ledge, his hair swept back by the wind, looking pensively at the river as darkness slowly reaches out to embrace the horizon. She sees him and her heartbeat catches in her veins like a scarf on a doorknob, so that she stumbles on the threshold and has to steady herself. He turns then, mist in his eyes, and when he sees her the gloom lifts off his shoulders like a veil. He rises and bounds to her, and she is caught up in his arms like a butterfly in a strong gust, fluttering but imprisoned, and he is kissing her so hard that the breath is pushed out of her. She surrenders, feeling his hands running up and down her body as if to reassure himself she is all there. He finds that she is, and his heart is delighted, his eyes sparkling in wordless pleasure as she in turn strokes his face, still silent, and he catches her fingers and kisses them, and before she knows it he is on top of her and inside her and it is as if he is strumming the same tune she has always heard and it has never stopped playing. And afterwards neither of them wants to speak because each is afraid of what the other might say.

And they are right not to speak, for how can either of them explain what has happened? It is a blur in his mind, and yet an indelible blur. He peels off her clothing, the soft cotton skirt with the swirling print, the comfortably loose blouse, as light and flammable as the spirit it sheathes. The hooks of her bra do not resist him this time, her panties slide off like a wisp, and she is naked in his urgent arms, unquestioning in her surrender. He is still kissing her as he turns her around, and she shows no surprise at finding herself on her knees on the mat. He is behind her now, tugging at his belt, and he sees them both in the mirror, that long mirror in which they have so often seen the sunset, except that what it reveals now in the shadows is the paleness of her beneath him on her hands and knees, her face averted, her breasts swaying with each thrust as he takes her from behind. He is transported by his conquest as he watches her in the mirror and beneath him, the curve of her back vividly stretched in her submission, his hands on the soft flesh below her hips as he drives home his message of need and possession. He remembers that this is not supposed to happen, that this is the one thing she will not do, but he has not asked and she has not resisted. He keeps his eyes open throughout, blinking only briefly in climax, and in his wonderment he does not see, or he imagines he cannot see, the solitary tear that drops gently down her love-saddened face.

Geetha Lakshman at the Shiva Mandir

September 2, 1989

Every Saturday I have come here with my daughter to pray, Swamiji, and I have sought your blessings and your advice. Remember how you told me that a devout woman like me should not hesitate to come to you with any kind of problem? Tonight I really need your help, Swamiji.

Yesterday my husband’s friend Gurinder told me he had to speak to me. He said he had thought about it for a long time and hesitated but now he felt he had no choice. He made me swear not to breathe a word to my husband about what he was going to tell me. And then he said — aiyo, such a terrible thing. He said my husband was in love with another woman and wanted to leave me. It was the yellow-haired American woman, of course. And he was thinking of leaving my daughter and me and running off with her to America.

Gurinder said he was telling me this because he wanted me to do everything I could to prevent this from happening. He wanted, he said, to save my husband from himself. He was doing this as a friend, because my husband would not listen to his advice that what he was doing was wrong.

What can I do, I wailed. That is up to you, Gurinder said. Plead with him. Love him. Make him feel he must stay. You must fight to keep your husband, Geetha, or you will lose him.

Swamiji, my heart broke. When Gurinder left I rushed to my husband’s study, where he keeps all his papers. He is often there, even at night, writing, writing, so much. He gets up at night to go and write there and I pretend to be asleep because I know he doesn’t want me to know what he’s doing. Sometimes, in the old days, when he went to work I used to sneak in and read what he had written. But it was all very difficult Yinglish poetry that I could not understand. So for a long time I had not bothered to read his writings. Now I knew I had to.

This time it was heartbreaking, Swamiji. What Gurinder had told me is true! He is having an affair with this woman. He has written so many chhi-chhi things about the things they do together. And he has written that he does not love me and he is thinking of leaving me and our daughter. What can I do, Swamiji? I cannot talk to him about this. It would kill me if I had to tell him what I knew! I can only turn to God, Swamiji, and to you. Please conduct a special puja for me to help me keep my husband!

Yes, of course, Swamiji. Beyond a puja? Anything you say. No, no, I don’t have to ask my husband for money. My father will send you the money. I don’t care about the expense. I don’t care how you do it. Use tantra, do the tandava, use anyone and anything you want, Swamiji, but please don’t let this foreign devil-woman run away with my husband….

Ram Charan Gupta to Randy Diggs

(translated from Hindi)

October 12, 1989

I shall be frank with you, Mr. Diggs. I don’t know whether I am wasting my time talking to you. You foreign journalists and photographers who cover India are only interested in the kind of India you want to see. The horrible, dark India of killing and riots, like this riot that you are so interested in, of course: it is all of a piece with the stories of poverty and disease, of the widows of Benares, the caste system and the untouchables, poor people selling their blood or their kidneys, the slums of Calcutta or Bombay, brides being burned for not having brought enough dowry — how many such stories have you written for your American readers, Mr. Diggs? Of course it is even better if the bad things about India are being set right by kind white Christians — Mother Teresa is a real favorite of yours, I’m sure, especially after she won the Nobel Prize, and isn’t a white man making a lot of money these days by selling the pornography of poverty in something he calls “The City of Joy”? I do not deny that these things exist in India, Mr. Diggs, but they are only a part of our reality, and not such a large part of it either. But it is all that you and your cohorts in the foreign press are interested in, and you tell the world that is what India is all about.

You protest, Mr. Diggs? Just because I am speaking to you in Hindi, do not think I cannot read your English-American papers. In fact I will add to my indictment. I have only listed your bad-news stories, and I know you write less negative pieces too. But what are those, Mr. Diggs? Exotic local color. The maharajas and their palaces, their polo games, their fabulous wealth, their lavish lifestyles. You westerners are fascinated by them long after they have lost whatever importance they had in my country. Of course you write about Rajasthan, its colorful festivals, the Pushkar Mela, the camel fairs, the religious pilgrimages, the beaches of Goa, the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho. I am glad this brings a few tourists in to spend their American dollars in my country, but do not think, Mr. Diggs, that you or they are seeing “India” either.

So what does that leave us with when it comes to hard news, Mr. Diggs? Simplicities. Hindu-Muslim violence; “Hindu fundamentalism”; the secular Congress Party; the westernized pilot Rajiv Gandhi; the fanatic forces of Hindu revivalism. How many dozens of foreign correspondents are there in Delhi, Mr. Diggs? And how many of those have departed from this stale menu? How many have written stories that pay honor to India’s great culture and civilization, its history, the complexities and philosophical grandeur of Hinduism? I know of very few, Mr. Diggs. I have no reason to believe you are an exception.

I know you are only interviewing me about this riot because an American girl was killed in it. Tragically killed, I grant you that. But dozens of Hindu youths were also killed, stabbed, wounded, and they do not matter to you. You and your tribe will write of attacks on minorities in India, especially Christians, but you will not mention that minorities — Jews, Parsis, Christians, and even Muslims — have found refuge in this country for two thousand years and have been allowed to practice their own faith without hindrance by Hindu rulers. When will you and your friends in the foreign press give your readers an article on the richness and glory of this ancient country, Mr. Diggs, its varied and profound civilization?

Don’t bother to answer me: I know what the truth is. Even before you arrive in Delhi, you foreign presswallahs already have your biases, stereotypes, predilections about India, and they never change with experience. Some of your clichés are romantic ones: John Masters, Gunga Din, the Bengal Lancers, Kipling’s innocent Western jungle boy surrounded by the dark animals of the Hindu kingdom — you know them all. But their stories are not my stories, Mr. Diggs. You are writing Western stories for a Western audience and telling them you are writing about India.

And some of your preconceptions are the obvious ones: poverty, the caste system, the untouchables, religious strife. Your norm is a world without any of these, a world that is prosperous, clean, and tranquil. But do you not have Harlem, Mr. Diggs? Or Appalachia? Don’t think I do not know about your American poverty. Or your discrimination against your Negroes, your so-called blacks. Isn’t that a hundred times worse than our caste system? After all, very often you cannot tell a man’s caste by looking at him, but you can always tell black from white at first glance, can’t you? And don’t you have your own Christian Coalition? How is that different from our Sangh Parivar? Or is religious belief only acceptable in politics if it is Christian, not Hindu?

How many Western lies and distortions about India are we supposed to swallow, Mr. Diggs? The British partition our country, and you put the blame on us. A Christian is killed in a property dispute, and you write that he has been killed because he is a Christian. A politician speaks of rebuilding the most sacred temple of his faith, and you call him an intolerant fanatic.

But then, you don’t make any effort to understand Hindus, do you? It is all received wisdom. You portray us as the weak and helpless victims of millennia of invasions, starting with the Aryans three thousand five hundred years ago, the founding myth of British imperialism which sought to portray a weak and dark subcontinent at the mercy of Caucasian power and strength. But when Hindu historians and archaeologists say it never happened, that the Aryans were Indian, living here along the river Saraswati which has since dried up, they are pooh-poohed as chauvinists or fantasists. You are only too ready to trumpet the great achievements of the Mughals, their art and architecture, but in fact they mostly stole from Hindu talent; did you know that the Taj Mahal was really a Hindu palace? You attack the Hindutva movement as fundamentalist, but you say nothing about the thirteen centuries of Islamic fundamentalism and oppression they are reacting to. India is asserting itself, Mr. Diggs, and your readers are told nothing of the resurgent pride of Indians in their own land, their own culture, their own history. Instead all you can see is the threat to “secularism,” as if that were some precious Indian heritage. What is this dogma imported from the West that I am supposed to fall on my knees before? Can the word “secularism” be found in the Vedas?

You don’t understand. None of you do. But I am not surprised. India is a large and complex country, Mr. Diggs, with our contradictions, paradoxes, inconsistencies all ours. How can you foreigners be expected to understand it? Where else do you have our mixture of ethnicities and castes, our profusion of mutually incomprehensible languages, our varieties of geography and climate, our diversity of religions and cultural practices, our clamor of political parties, our ranges of economic development? How do you understand a country whose population is more than fifty percent illiterate but which has produced the world’s largest pool of trained scientists and engineers? How do you cover the poverty and squalor of a land that led a Mughal emperor to declaim, “If on earth there be paradise of bliss, it is this, it is this, it is this”? Everything you write as the truth, I can show you the opposite is also true. You come from a country, Mr. Diggs, where everything is black and white, there are good guys and bad guys, cowboys and red Indians. You can only understand India on your own terms, and you do not understand that your terms do not apply here.

I have not finished. Don’t protest. I know that you are not merely writing from your preconceptions — if that is all you did, your editors would fire you, would they not? So you embellish your prejudices by talking to Indians. Not usually Indians like myself, so I pay tribute to you, Mr. Diggs, for having taken the trouble to seek me out. No, you talk to Indians like yourselves — English-educated Indians, people who would not know how to tie a dhoti and are proud they do not eat with their hands. People like the district administrator Lakshman whom you will no doubt go to see. The very people who are anxious to explain their India to you are the ones you ought to mistrust, Mr. Diggs. Because they are too much like you to be of any use. They think they are modern, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, secular. They heap contempt on “Hindu fanatics,” laugh at our faith and beliefs, sneer at our traditions. They are embarrassed by the real India, because they are desperately anxious to belong to the world. Your world. And you turn to them for insight and advice about my country?

All you get from the Indians you talk to is the view from New Delhi — even here in Zalilgarh. You foreign correspondents do not realize that New Delhi is not India. At least, not the New Delhi you see and hear, at your diplomatic receptions or businessmen’s cocktail parties. This is India, Mr. Diggs. I am Indian. Listen to me.

letter from Priscilla Hart to Cindy Valeriani

September 3, 1989

Cin, my dear Cin, I don’t know what to do. I went back to him with everything still unresolved, because I couldn’t bear not to. I went to the Kotli again. And I held him, and he hugged me, and we made love. Not just as usual. Something happened that day that I don’t really want to write about, but it made me realize how much I love him, how much I want to give myself to him, how much I’m sure he is the right man for me. I want to spend the rest of my life with him, Cin, and it’s driving me crazy. I wanted to talk about my feelings afterwards but somehow the words didn’t come and he didn’t want to say anything, didn’t really want me to speak either. He just held me so close against his chest that I couldn’t move my lips even if I wanted to.

So I don’t really know where I stand with him, whether I should be planning for a future with Lucky or packing for my scheduled return to NY just over a month from now. Or both. God, Cin, I need your advice.

And there’s something else about which I don’t know what to do. Cindy, there’s been another upsetting development in the Fatima Bi business I wrote to you about. Ali, the husband, came back, found out what she’d done, and beat the hell out of her. Hardly surprising. He also came charging down to the Center looking for Kadambari and me. Kadambari wasn’t in — she was out on her rounds — and I had to bear the brunt. He was murderously angry, eyes bloodshot and red and practically popping out of their sockets, and when he advanced toward me screaming “I told you to leave her alone!” a couple of the men in the office had to physically restrain him. “I’ll kill the foreign whore!” he shouted as he was dragged out, flailing his fists in my direction. Poor Mr. Shankar Das told me not to worry and asked me if he should call the police. I told him not to. I couldn’t help thinking of poor Fatima Bi and the additional misery she’d suffer if her husband got pulled in by the police because of this. After all, I’d encouraged her to go to the clinic. I know I did the right thing. And I don’t seriously believe that, once he’s calmed down, Ali will try to do me any harm.

But the whole situation is getting me down. The Center sometimes seems to me a rather ineffective place, and though I write papers for Mr. Shankar Das that he seems to like a lot, I frankly wonder how much difference it makes. My fieldwork is largely done, but it involves doing the rounds with Kadambari, and I’m not real thrilled about that. Kadambari is a peculiar woman, and I’m not enjoying doing my field research in her company. Ever since the Fatima business she’s sort of kept her distance from me, as if to signal to everyone that it was all my fault and she wanted no part of it. Well, telling women about their reproductive rights is her job, for Christ’s sake!

And then Kadambari’s made some strange comments in that sidelong way she has that really gets under my skin. She tells me I’ve been spotted cycling to the Kotli and that I should be careful, because no one goes there. I ask her why not and she says it’s because people believe the place is haunted. I tell her I don’t believe in ghosts and she replies, “It’s haunted, but not only by ghosts.” What’s she getting at? I said I’ve been there a few times and I’ve never seen anyone else there. She says, well, everyone knows the DM — that’s Lucky — likes to go there a lot, and when his car is outside the gate no one dares to venture in, but when he’s not there, all sorts of “badmashes” — bad types — use the place. I glower at her and say that whenever I’ve been there I’ve never seen the DM either. Kadambari gives me an arch look, can you imagine, and flounces off, muttering, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Cindy, one thing you’ve got to promise me, OK? These letters are between you and me. DON’T show them to anyone else, not even Matt. And don’t breathe a word about them to my parents if you ever run into them — not that you would, of course. Tell them, I mean. It would just worry them, and it’s not as if anyone in America can do anything about all of this anyway. My letters are just a way of sharing everything in my life here with the one person who understands. Assume they’re like the phone calls I’d have made to you if I was still in NY, OK? Tear them up when you’ve read them, as if you’ve just put the phone down.

Anyway, what does Kadambari think she’s warned me about? Lucky? Well, in a small town like this I guess I should have realized that people would begin talking sooner or later. It can’t do Lucky much good to be the subject of gossip among the likes of Kadambari. And I don’t know how seriously to take her warning to be careful. Does she mean the Kotli’s not safe or that I’ll be found out? I don’t want to ask Lucky because I’m afraid it’ll worry him. And because I don’t want to do anything that’ll jeopardize our meeting there. It’s the only place I love in Zalilgarh, and I’d rather die than give it up….

transcript of Randy Diggs interview with

District Magistrate V. Lakshman (Part 3)

October 13, 1989

Oh — they’re here? Well, their timing isn’t too bad. Mr. Diggs, it turns out that Priscilla’s parents, the Harts, have shown up to see me. Ah, you know them, do you? Would you mind very much if I asked them to join us? They’ll have the same questions as you, and I suppose I could kill two birds with one stone, if that doesn’t sound too callous.

What’s that? Yes, of course you can tape it, if they don’t mind, naturally.

Do come in. Mr. Hart, Mrs. Hart, I’m pleased to meet you. [Scraping of chair.] I’m Lakshman, the district magistrate here. I believe you know Mr. Diggs of the New York Journal? He was just asking me about the events — the tragic events of two weeks ago. Would you mind if he remained here for our conversation and recorded my replies?

You’re quite right, Mr. Hart, you’re both interested in the truth. Indeed. The truth. You know, that’s my government’s official motto: “Satyameva Jayate.” “Truth Alone Triumphs.” It’s on all our letterheads — and on this visiting card I’ve just given you. Truth Alone Triumphs. But sometimes I’m tempted to ask, whose truth? There’s not always an easy answer.

Please do sit down, Mrs. Hart, Mr. Hart. Some tea? No? A soft drink? Ah, I’m afraid we have no Coca-Cola here. Would Campa-Cola be acceptable? No?

I do hope you have been comfortable in Zalilgarh. Yes of course, Mrs. Hart, I realize that comfort is not what you’re looking for here. Forgive me.

You’ve seen the Center where Priscilla worked? And spoken to her project manager, Mr. Das? Good. Been to her home? A rather simple place, I’m told. No, I’ve never been there, Mrs. Hart.

Yes, I knew Priscilla rather well. Or perhaps I should say, my wife and I did. Priscilla was a fairly frequent guest at our dining table. She was such pleasant company, you know. Such pleasant company. And Geetha and I took pleasure in helping her feel welcome in this little town. She seemed to cope with her loneliness rather well.

No, I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea why she was where she was when she was — killed. Forgive me, I feel a sense of responsibility, really, not merely because I’m in charge of law and order in this town, but because I’ve been haunted by the thought that perhaps — you see, I think she first heard about the Kotli from me. I was talking to her about the town, and I believe I mentioned it was the one place worth visiting for, shall we say, touristic reasons. I’ve been there myself sometimes and the sunsets over the river are spectacular. I fear she may have taken my advice.

Yes, of course I can arrange a visit for you there. I’ll do so immediately. And you too, Mr. Diggs, if you wish.

I’m afraid we’re — none of us is very sure what happened. It seems a group of Muslim troublemakers chose to use the abandoned ruin as a sort of storehouse to manufacture some crude homemade bombs the day before the riot. The day of the riot itself she seems to have stumbled across them, or they across her — no one knows. She was, as you know, stabbed to death. I’m truly sorry.

No, no, there was no robbery or any other kind of assault. It looks like Priscilla simply had the misfortune to go to that place at the very moment her assailants chose to use it. The killers probably thought she’d report them to the police. That they had to kill her to ensure her silence.

No, we didn’t find out till nearly twenty-four hours later. It was such an out-of-the-way place that no one really gave the Kotli much thought. Our energies were focused on the town, and particularly the Muslim quarter. That’s where the worst of the rioting occurred. I’ve been telling Mr. Diggs the details of the story.

What happened is that these fellows brought their bombs into town and began throwing them. We put a stop to that fairly quickly and caught one of the perpetrators. He didn’t mention Priscilla in his confession, but he did tell us about their having used the Kotli. It was in a routine follow-up visit to the Kotli that the police found — the body.

No one has confessed to the murder. The bomb makers all claim they never even saw her. Eight lives were lost in the riots, Mr. Hart, including one of a boy who worked in this office. Not one of them is linked to an identifiable assailant. That’s how it often is in riots. A confused clamor of hatred, violence, weapons, assaults. In the end, no one is responsible. Or perhaps a whole community is responsible. People pull out bombs or knives, then melt away into the darkness. We are left with the bodies, the burned and destroyed homes, the legacy of hate and mistrust. And it goes on.

I’m sorry I don’t have much more to tell you. Perhaps you ought to meet the superintendent of police. I’ll ask him to receive you. I’m afraid our rules won’t permit him to show you the actual police report, but I’m sure he’ll tell you what it says. I’ll give him a call and urge him to cooperate fully. We know you’ve come a long way on this very sad errand.

Would Sunday work for you? Good. I’ll try and arrange the appointment and get word to you. No, that’s all right, we work seven-day weeks here these days. And of course, we’ll organize a visit to the Kotli.

Your daughter was a wonderful person, Mrs. Hart, Mr. Hart. She will be greatly missed here in Zalilgarh.

letter from Lakshman to Priscilla

September 18, 1989

My dearest, most precious Priscilla,

For the first time in my life I genuinely do not know how to say something I must say to you. I cannot bring myself to say it directly, to your face, and so I must say it in this letter. We are supposed to meet tomorrow, Tuesday. I won’t be there.

Priscilla, forgive me, but I must end our relationship. I love you but I cannot leave my wife, my daughter, my job, my country, my whole life, for my love. I just can’t go on giving you the hope of a future together and returning home to the reality of my present. I believe it is more honest to tell you that what you want cannot be.

I cannot bear the thought that in writing these words I am hurting someone who has been nothing but good and loving to me. I cannot bear the knowledge that I am depriving myself of your love, which has fulfilled me in ways that nothing else in my life can ever compensate for. In writing this letter I know I am losing something I was lucky to have found in the first place — a good, lovely and loving woman, a chance of a different life, the second chance that comes to so few in this world.

Then why am I doing it? A dozen times in recent weeks I had decided to leave my marriage. Yesterday I told myself my decision was final, that I couldn’t live without you. Then last night I couldn’t sleep. I kept imagining what my departure would mean to Rekha. I knew how Geetha would react — I was sure she would collapse in incomprehension and grief; she simply would not be able to deal with the shock. But Rekha would suffer the most horrendous trauma. I kept thinking not just that she would suffer the pain of a broken home, but of the small daily losses she would suffer — that she would not have her Daddy tucking her into bed at night or reading her an Enid Blyton story, that she would miss her Daddy at breakfast every day, that she could no longer turn to Daddy with her homework, with her questions about the world, about words, about life: the hundred small interactions that make up the texture of a father-child relationship. And I realized, then, that I could not deny these to her and still feel myself a worthy human being. That having brought her into the world, I had a responsibility, an obligation, to see her through those difficult years of growing up, secure in the environment of a predictable two-parent family structure. And that if I failed to fulfil this obligation in pursuing my own happiness, I would in fact find no happiness at all.

One day she will be grown up and gone, and none of this will matter. But today, now, I cannot do it to her. This is when she needs a father most. But you, understandably, want me to make the break now or never. I respect the way you feel, my precious Priscilla, but I cannot do it now.

I realized, too, during this tormented night, that I could only make you unhappy too, because my guilt at abandoning my family — which is how I would see it — would corrode my feelings for the person for whom I had abandoned them. When you evoke that kind of love, you want to be worthy of it. I could not have abandoned my responsibilities to my daughter and felt worthy of you.

In other words, dearest Priscilla, I was — I am — torn between two kinds of love and the prospect of two kinds of unhappiness. I chose my love for my daughter over my love for you, and the unhappiness of losing you to the unhappiness of shattering her. That is my choice, and I must live with it. I never thought either would be easy: this one is killing me.

I know you will think this proves I never really loved you. That you were a sexual convenience at worst, an escape from a loveless marriage at best. You know that’s not true, Priscilla; you’ve seen what happened the first time I tried to leave you. I still love everything about you, no less than I ever have. I can’t bear the knowledge that you are no longer mine, but I want you to be happy. I would do anything for you, short of destroying my family.

In pain, and with love,

Lucky

letter from Priscilla Hart to Cindy Valeriani

September 19, 1989

Dearest Cin, what am I to do? It’s over now, he’s written me this awful letter, and I’ve been crying all night. I suppose Mom was right when she said that I see things in people that they don’t see in themselves. I saw so much in Lucky — a good man in a bad marriage, someone capable of love who had no opportunity to love until I came along, a man who hadn’t seen his own unhappiness fully until he met me. With me I think he realized for the first time that he hadn’t truly known love in his life and that he could find happiness loving and being loved. Happiness, of course, at a price. A price that in the end he was not prepared — with his upbringing, his sense of his responsibilities, his inability to escape from Indian society — to pay.

On one level I feel bitterly angry with him. I feel used. And I can’t believe a man of his intelligence would be so blind and conventional. And cowardly. In my tears last night, there were moments of deep rage at the way he dumped me. “You two-faced jerk!” I screamed at the letter he’d written me.

And yet, I can’t bring myself to hate him, Cin. There’s a part of me that wants to, but I can’t, I still love him so much. I’m in terrible pain, but I don’t want to regret a minute of the seven months we had together. “Had together” — I don’t even know if I can say that of a relationship where we were only together two evenings a week, except for those occasional dinners at his home where I was beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable. But yes, “together.” Because I loved being with him, Cindy. I saw in him all the things I wanted in a man — not just his looks or his voice, but his earnestness about the world, his desire to make a difference, his easy confidence in his own authority, and his command, quite simply, of India. The India I’d come back to rediscover as an adult, the India that had changed my life so profoundly a decade ago. Loving Lakshman filled every pore of my being; it gave me a sense of attachment, not just to a man, but to this land. Does this sound hokey to you, Cin? I hope not, because I can’t explain it any better.

What hurts is that it must have meant so much less to him. I suppose at the beginning he just thought of me as an easy lay. Our relationship must just have been a sexual adventure for him those first few weeks. I know he came to love me afterwards, but I realize now that I’m not someone he would have started off falling in love with. He was attracted to me, sure, but he began it all, that first evening at the Kotli, as just an affair. Through sex he found love, and in love he found confusion, uncertainty, fear. Whereas I loved him from almost the first moment and felt nothing but certainty about him. The sex was just a means of expressing my love, a way of giving myself to the man I loved. I’m not sure that he ever understood the difference.

He used to quote Wilde about hypocrisy being just a way of multiplying your personalities. That was part of Lucky’s problem — he had multiple personalities, and they didn’t match. The district administrator, the passionate lover, the traditional husband and father, the closet writer who fantasized about a masterpiece he could write one day on an American campus — all of those were him. I couldn’t hold on to all of them at the same time. And so I lost him.

But then I borrowed a copy of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” from him, and I came across the actual quote. And guess what, Wilde wasn’t talking about hypocrisy at all, you know, but about insincerity! Was Lucky trying to warn me that his love was insincere? I think about these things and it drives me crazy!

It’s strange, isn’t it, Cin? Ever since Darryl it’s been I who walked away from relationships, I who ended every one of them. Poor Winston could never understand why I wouldn’t marry him. Nor could my mother. Instead I fell for someone completely unsuitable by Mom’s standards — married, foreign, tied to another life — and I’ve allowed him to dump me. Mom would probably blame it on India. You were overwhelmed by it all, dear, she’d say, this big, hot, foreign, oppressive, unfamiliar place, and you attached yourself to this man as a port in the storm. Once you come home you’ll realize he didn’t really mean that much to you. You’ll get over it.

And that’s why I’ve never been able to tell Mom about Lucky. She’d never understand.

Do you remember, Cin, when we were little and you used to tease me about the amount of tender loving care I gave my Barbie doll? How I’d sit with my little nylon brush and gently smooth down her golden mane, over and over again? “Give it a rest, Prissy,” you’d say. “She’s a doll. She can’t tell whether you’ve brushed her hair three times or two.” And I’d be shocked. “But I’m all she’s got!” I’d reply. “If I don’t do it for her, who will?” Which of course was totally beside the point you were making. But that’s the way I was! And I wonder if I wasn’t doing the same thing with Lakshman — stroking him over and over again, oblivious to his reaction? Telling myself I was all he’d got — the only true love he’d ever know? Was I projecting onto him the needs I imagined he must have? Oh Cindy, have I been a fool?

But I have to see him once more. There’s something I’ve got to tell him. And I have to look into his eyes when I say it. Only then will I know if he really ever loved me.

Kadambari to Shankar Das

September 20, 1989

Sir, I am so scared, I am so upset, I don’t know what to do, sir. Yes, sir, I will calm down, sir, I just wanted to tell you that that man Ali, sir, the chauffeur, Fatima Bi’s husband, he caught me in the street, sir, when I was going to visit one of our IUD cases, and he threatened me, sir. He said he would cut off my — cut off my breasts, sir, because I had told his wife to get an abortion. Sir, I was so scared, I told him it wasn’t me, sir, it was the American girl, it was all her idea, and she would be leaving the country soon, so please leave me alone. And he said, sir, you tell that American whore that if I ever lay my hands on her, she won’t be catching that plane to America. Sir, I don’t know what to do, if I tell her she will just be frightened, but he seems to mean it, sir. What should I do?

Yes, sir, of course, sir. You are right, sir. He is a government driver, he has a job and a family, he will never do such a thing, it is all just talk. Yes, sir, you are right, sir. I will try to forget about it, sir. But sir, please do not ask me to visit those Muslim bastis for a while. Please, sir, let me have another caseload until I am sure he has calmed down. Thank you, sir. You are my mother and my father, sir. Thank you very, very much, sir….

from Katharine Hart’s diary

October 13, 1989

Kadambari, who seems to have been assigned by Mr. Das as our guide to the town, took me today to the women’s ward of the Zalilgarh hospital. It was just as well that Rudyard couldn’t come — he was told it would not be appropriate — because I don’t think he could have handled what I saw.

The hospital is a large, run-down building, dating from somewhere after the turn of the century, though buildings age so rapidly in this country that it could be a lot more recent than that. Decay and rot are everywhere — the bits of chipped-off masonry visible as you enter, the peeling yellow paint on the walls, the rusty carts on which dirty orderlies in stained uniforms wheel their antiquated supplies, the pervasive odor of waste matter and ammonia. A public hospital in small-town India is a far cry from the luxury hospital in Delhi in which Lance had his appendix removed; the only thing the two places have in common appears to be the profusion of people — people waiting to be seen, people bustling about the corridors, people standing around aimlessly, people lining up outside the dispensary and the lab. But they’re a different class of people. I knew before I stepped into the hospital that this was where the really poor came; the somewhat better-off would frequent one of the two private “nursing homes” that have sprung up in the town, while the rich would simply go to Delhi. But even then I was not prepared for the horror of the women’s ward.

We entered it from a dank corridor, dimly lit by a flickering neon tubelight. The ward was essentially a single long room, and I was drawn short by the sight as soon as I stepped in. The narrow metal cots were all occupied, and there were women on the floor as well, some on thin beddings, some stretched out on their own faded cotton saris. Overflowing refuse-bins spilled onto the floor, where bloodstained rags already lay, so that I had to pick my way over garbage while avoiding stepping on bodies, and vice versa. It was hot, and there was no fan; perspiration dripped down my arms, and the stale smell of sweat from dozens of bodies mingled with the chemicals in the air to make me gag. Many women moaned in pain; only a few seemed to have IV’s on their arms, dripping morphine into their veins. Some stared emptily at the ceiling, where darting lizards and geckos provided the only distraction.

I was there because Mr. Das thought I would be interested to see some of the kinds of women Priscilla was trying to help: women who had had difficult childbirths, women whose ill health did not permit them to bear or look after more children, women recovering from botched self-induced abortions, the whole female chamber of horrors in this overcrowded and desperately poor country. But after a few perfunctory minutes with such women, exhausted figures who responded listlessly to my inarticulate questions, I moved numbly on. Kadambari wanted me to meet someone else altogether, someone whom my daughter had had nothing to do with.

She lay wrapped like some grotesque mummy on a cot in the darkest corner of the room, moaning involuntarily with every second breath. “Sundari,” she said briefly. “My sister. She has burns over seventy-five percent of her body. She is not yet nineteen years old.”

Sundari opened pain-wracked eyes when she heard her name, and smiled weakly to acknowledge her visitors. “Sundari, you know, means beautiful,” Kadambari said. “She is very beautiful, my sister.” And indeed, what I could see of her face seemed quite unlike Kadambari’s, with a delicately lovely nose and lips, but from under the swathed bandage, I caught a glimpse of the warped dry burned skin of her neck.

“Tell her your story, Sundari,” Kadambari said, her voice ungentle, commanding.

“No, it’s all right, don’t bother her,” I protested, but Kadambari was insistent. Sundari looked at me without moving her face, her eyes raking me with a regard that combined defeat with yearning, as if she wished I could reach out to her and pull her out of the quicksand into which she was sinking.

“I got married last year,” she said in a feeble voice, her bluish lips barely moving. “Kadambari helped arrange it. My father had to take a loan to pay for the wedding. He gave the boy a Bajaj scooter. Rupesh. That is his name. He is — he had a job, as a peon in an office. A few months after the wedding, he lost his job.

“We were living with Rupesh’s parents. His father is old and sick. His mother ran the house. I had to do whatever she told me to do. Help her cook the food, chop the vegetables, clean the kitchen, empty the garbage. And more. Massage the old man’s feet. Help clean him. He could not even get up to go the bathroom. It was disgusting.

“I had never done some of these things before. Rupesh seemed to like me. He kept telling me at night how beautiful I was. So I asked him, couldn’t we go away? Live by ourselves somewhere. He was shocked. He said his duty was to his parents and so was mine, as his wife. His mother overheard us and slapped me. I looked to Rupesh to protect me but he just turned his back and let her slap me again. From that day I realized I was alone in that house.

“Every day the beatings got worse. Nothing I did around the house was good enough for my mother-in-law. She was screaming at me all the time. If the floor wasn’t clean, she beat me. If anything was unsatisfactory about the food, the plates, the way the bed was made, it was my fault. If I didn’t run to my father-in-law every time we heard him hawking and spitting in the next room, I would be called a lazy and ungrateful witch and beaten again. Rupesh learned to turn his eyes away from me. He told me I had to obey his mother at all times.

“When he lost his job they treated me even worse. They said I had brought bad luck upon my husband and his family. They said I was born under an evil star, and that my parents had bribed the jyotishi to alter my horoscope so that it seemed to match Rupesh’s. Then they started complaining about my dowry. How little it was, how it was less than my father had promised when the marriage was arranged. None of this was true, but if I said so they screamed at me for talking back to them and beat me more.”

I looked around for some water to give the poor girl, whose dry lips barely moved as she spoke, but I could see none. She struggled on. “I was miserable, crying all the time, unable to sleep. When Rupesh came to me at night he no longer said I was beautiful. He did not stroke my cheek as he used to. He took me by force, very roughly and very quickly, and turned away.

“One day I threw up in the morning and was beaten for that too. But in a day or two it became clear I was not sick, but pregnant. For a few days the beatings stopped. Rupesh’s mother even began talking of the son her son was going to have. Then a new nightmare began.

“Rupesh’s mother had a relative who worked in one of those new clinics that do amniocentesis. He slipped me in without my in-laws having to pay anything. The doctor inserted a big needle into me. It hurt a lot. A few days later Rupesh came to the house looking as if he had been whipped. My sample had tested positive. The baby was going to be a girl.

“The beatings started again. My pregnancy was no longer an acceptable excuse not to do the chores they wanted me to. Rupesh looked more and more woebegone by the day. And his mother started saying, ‘What use is this woman who does no work around the house and cannot even produce a son?’

“One day last week I was working in the kitchen rolling the dough for chapatis which my mother-in-law was making at the stove. I remember Rupesh coming in with a can of kerosene for the stove, and my mother-in-law picking up a box of matches. I turned back to my dough when I felt a splash on my sari. The next thing I knew my whole body was on fire. I screamed and ran out of the kitchen and out the front door. People came running. If I had run the other way, into the house, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Her dry lips parted in a sad and bitter grimace. “Perhaps that would have been better for me than — than this.” Her eyes, the only mobile part of her face, took in the room, the bed, the other patients, Kadambari, and me. “Why did my neighbors bother to save my life? What did they save me for?”

I turned to Kadambari. “And Rupesh and his mother? Have they been arrested? What are the police doing about this?”

“They say it was a kitchen accident,” Kadambari replied. “There are a few dozen ‘kitchen accidents’ like this every year in Zalilgarh. What can the police prove? It is her word against theirs.”

I looked sadly at the young girl, knowing she will be disfigured for life, and worse, that she will either have to go back to live a pariah’s existence in the very family that tried to kill her, or return to her own parents, who will feel the disgrace of her broken marriage and face a mountain of unpaid debts from the wedding and the hospitalization of their daughter.

“The baby?” I asked. Sundari closed her eyes; it was the only way she could avert her gaze.

“She miscarried, the day after the burning,” Kadambari said. Kadambari spoke into my silence. “She was a good student and wanted to go to college,” Kadambari said. “But my parents felt she had to marry before she became too old to find a good husband.”

“A good husband,” Sundari whispered from the bed.

When we left the ward Kadambari was strangely more communicative than she has been so far. “You see, Mrs. Hart,” she observed, “this is the real issue for women in India. Not population control, but violence against women. In our own homes. What good are all our efforts as long as men have the power to do this to us? Your daughter never understood that.”

I wheeled on her then. “You’re wrong, miss,” I said in my most schoolteacherly manner. “Priscilla did understand. Her whole approach was based on her belief that women need to resist their own subjugation. That when they are empowered, they will no longer have more babies than they can look after. She wrote that to me very clearly. I am surprised you could have worked so closely with her and not understood what my daughter believed in.”

Kadambari looked unabashed, even defiant. “A lot of people,” she said slowly and softly, “did not understand what your daughter believed in.”

She would not explain what she meant, and the rest of our journey back to the guest house passed in a strained silence. When we arrived I thanked her for having introduced me to her sister. Rudyard emerged at that point and insisted she stay for a cup of tea. He always had a tin ear for my signals. In the circumstances, I could scarcely excuse myself. So I sat down in one of the rattan chairs in the guest house’s verandah, and while the tea was being made, I told him what had happened.

“God, that’s terrible,” he said. Then he turned to Kadambari. “Tell me, this sister of yours. Will she get well?”

“The burns will take a long time to heal,” Kadambari replied, “but the doctors say she will live.”

“She won’t have much of a life, Rudyard,” I began. “Her—”

“I understand all that,” he interrupted me. “My question to you, Miss Kadambari, is: Would she be able to go to college?”

“My parents can’t afford to send her to college,” Kadambari said. “They live on what I earn at the HELP project.”

“That wasn’t my question,” Rudyard said with that note of impatience that executives so often mistake for efficiency “If she could go, would she want to? Would she get in? Would she be able to cope?”

“She was the top student in her high school class,” Kadambari said.

“Great,” Rudyard said. “Now here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to sign over a thousand dollars worth of traveler’s checks to you tomorrow. That should be more than enough to cover your family’s expenses while she’s in hospital. And for every year that she’s in college, I’ll set aside money for her tuition fees, books, and living expenses.”

Kadambari seemed stunned, but even she could not have been as stunned as I felt. This was not a gesture I would have thought Rudyard capable of.

“Your sister’s going to have a future, young lady,” Rudyard said. He left unspoken the thought, Unlike my daughter.

“Rudyard, that’s a wonderful thing to do,” I said, a new respect for him in my eyes.

“It’s what Priscilla would have wanted, Kathy,” he replied.

It was the first time in years that he’d called me Kathy.

note from Priscilla Hart to Lakshman

September 29, 1989

As you know, I’m leaving town on Tuesday morning. My flight back home from Delhi is on Thursday. I guess I’ll never see you again.

It’s been so hard, Lucky. There are a hundred things I’ve wanted to say to you, to ask you. But you’ve never given me the chance, and we may never have the chance again.

I’m going back to the Kotli for the very last time tomorrow. How many Saturday evenings I’ve spent there with you! Do you remember, last month, when you wrote to me and said you’d be there after I’d walked out on you — and I came to see you because I couldn’t bear not to? That all seems a hundred years ago now, Lucky. But it’s now my turn to ask the same thing. Will you come tomorrow, for old times’ sake? I just want to see the sunset one last time with you, and to say goodbye properly. I don’t want to leave Zalilgarh feeling that the last word I had from you was that awful letter.

I’m sure you can do it if you want to. I know your wife and daughter are usually at the temple Saturday evenings. It’s not much to ask, is it, Lucky?

Don’t let this note put too much pressure on you, Lucky. If you think it’s too painful for you, or disloyal to your family, or whatever, don’t come. Think about everything and decide for yourself. I’ll be waiting.

I know you’re a decent and honorable man. Whatever you do, I know you’ll do the right thing.

Yours as ever, P

251

from Lakshman’s journal

October 3, 1989

I haven’t slept for three nights. The riot is over now; tensions are calming, though God knows when they will erupt again. I have abandoned the camp cot in the police station and returned to what I know as my home. But the horrible finality of Priscilla’s death keeps me awake in my own bed.

I completely forgot. It is as simple as that. I read her letter; I mentally upbraided her for having been so oblivious to the real life of Zalilgarh that she forgot there was a major Hindu procession on Saturday; but I planned to go to her afterwards. There was never any question in my mind that I would go to her, for that one last embrace, the final goodbye. But of course I didn’t plan on a riot, and once it began I forgot everything else, even her, waiting for me at dusk at the Kotli.

When Guru came to give me the news I doubled over as from a blow to the stomach. If I had had any food in me I would have been sick, but I experienced a retching of my soul instead. He put a hand on my shoulder and thrust something at me with his other hand.

“We found it by her body,” he said gruffly. “It’s not entered in the log. You can have it.”

I looked stupidly at the foolscap volume, spattered with her blood. Priscilla’s scrapbook.

It was the only thing of hers that I’d ever have. I clutched it as a drowning man clutches a floating plank from his unsalvageable ship. “Thanks, Guru,” I managed to say.

And then, for the first time since my father’s death, I wept.

Katharine Hart and Lakshman

October 14, 1989

KH: I’m really sorry to bother you again, but it was important that I see you alone. Without — the others.

VL: Of course. How can I help you?

KH: There’s something about Priscilla’s life here that’s not very clear to me. That bothers me.

VL: Yes?

KH: Well, I may as well plunge right in. In one of her letters to me she mentioned that she’d met someone she was quite — attracted to. Someone in a position of authority here.

VL: And?

KH: I wondered if it might have been you.

VL: Good God, Mrs. Hart! I’m flattered, I suppose. But I’m overworked, overweight, and married. It couldn’t have been me.

KH: I’m sorry if I’ve been impertinent in any way. Rudyard — Priscilla’s father — doesn’t know about any of this. Nor does the journalist, Mr. Diggs. I’m not trying to embarrass you, Mr. Lakshman. I just want to understand everything I can about my daughter’s death.

VL: I wish I could help you, Mrs. Hart. But there was nothing between us. If you will permit me to say this, sometimes it is best not to assume we can know everything. Your daughter led a good and admirable life. She worked for others; she was popular and well-respected. She died a tragic, senseless death. You know the old Greek adage, the good die young. That was all there was to it.

KH: But there was more. There was something else, something that might explain why she was there, in that out-of-the-way place. Perhaps it had to do with some aspect of her life we don’t know about.

VL: Perhaps. But does it matter what we do not know? Any attraction she may have felt to anyone did not kill her. Communal passions that she had nothing to do with, did.

KH: I suppose you’re right.

VL: I am, Mrs. Hart. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. I wish you a safe trip back home.

Gurinder to Lakshman

October 15, 1989

Why the hell did you saddle me with that bunch, yaar? Bloody demanding Americans. They want this, they want that, they want to see the exact spot where we found her, what are the details of the police report, why did the postmortem omit this or that. I’d already given the journalist Diggs more than enough of my time. Then the fucking Harts on top of it, it was all too much.

And that mother of hers! Went on and on about the missing scrapbook. She knows it exists, she says. Well, ma’am, perhaps it does, I respond, but it’s not up my fucking ass. No, I don’t really say that. But I finally have to show her the whole pissing inventory in the bloody logbook of every item found at the murder scene. No scrapbook. That quieted her.

We’ve already spent more time on this visit than on everything to do with all the other riot victims, dead and injured. What is wrong with us, that we give so much importance to a bunch of foreigners? I’m glad they’re leaving tomorrow, I tell you.

That bloody Hart, with his patronizing airs, as if he knows India so well from having tried to sell his bloody Coke here. What has he ever done for India, or for a single Indian? We don’t need your pissing soft drinks, I nearly told him. We’ve had lassi and nimbu-paani for a thousand years before anyone invented your bloody beverage. Just as well we kept you out. The frigging East India Company came here to trade and stayed on to rule; we don’t want history to repeat itself with Coca sucking Cola. We don’t need you, mister. We can get pissed on our own, thank you bloody much.

And Diggs. Poking around the bloody embers of the riot like a bloody commission of enquiry. All for some thousand-word piece in which he’ll use two sentences of the two hours I gave him. I liked him at first, even took him home for a drink last night, told him some things I haven’t told anyone from the press before. Off the frigging record, of course. Feeling a bit ashamed of my garrulousness now. Why are we so sucking anxious to oblige these bloody foreigners, Lucky? Some flaw in the national character? I wouldn’t have given an Indian journalist a fraction of the stuff I gave this man, and he won’t even use it. Maybe that’s why.

Anyway, you?ll want to know what I told them. I told them what seemed to have happened. The Muslim bomb-chuckers, running away from the house where I’d fired at them, came back to the Kotli to seek refuge — all except the motherlover we’d caught. They found Priscilla there — or she found them, it’s not clear. They killed her to protect themselves.

Of course, none of them will admit it. They swear her body was there when they arrived. And of course we didn’t catch them there. When the interrogation of the other fellow revealed their use of the Kotli, we went there the next day to look for evidence of bomb making, and found Priscilla as well. The others weren’t there; we rounded them up from their homes on the arrested bugger’s evidence. At least one of them, the municipal driver, Ali, looks like he’s capable of anything.

And in case you’re wondering, I didn’t offer them any speculation on why she might have been there.

I see you don’t want to talk. Just one thing. I’m glad you listened to me and shut up about your precious Priscilla. The last thing you needed for your career, not to mention your marriage, was an article in the New York fucking Journal about the slain American girl having an affair with the district buggering administrator. The dung would truly have hit the punkah then, Lucky, and you could have kissed goodbye to your future. You might as well have resigned and run off with Blondie the way you nearly did.

Okay, okay, I’m sorry I just don’t get it, but I know she meant a lot to you. So does this country, Lucky. You’ve got work to do here. The riot’s over. She’s gone, as she would have been gone anyway. It’s time to turn the page.

Ram Charan Gupta to Kadambari

September 25, 1989

How very interesting, young lady.

So our do-gooding district magistrate is having a little fling on the side, is he? With this white woman, you say? That could be very useful information indeed, my dear. Tuesdays and Saturdays? My, you are thorough. Very diligent of you.

You are a good girl, Kadambari. A good Hindu girl. Here’s a little something for your trouble. No, that’s all right, my dear. I insist.

Mohammed Sarwar to Lakshman

October 14, 1989

Well, I got more than I bargained for on this visit. A full-scale riot. Two people killed on my street. And firsthand evidence of police excesses committed during house-to-house searches in the Muslim bastis. My uncle, Rauf-bhai, is the sadr of the community. He’s helped you manage this riot, keep the peace. Even he wasn’t spared, Lakshman. His house was broken into and trashed by the police search team. They took the TV and radio, poked holes in the mattresses, smashed some furniture. I live in the house; my research notes were picked up, scattered, trampled upon. Randy Diggs, the New York Journal-wallah whom I know from Delhi, wanted to meet me, and I couldn’t even invite him home. How ashamed I feel. Of everything. Of everything that we are.

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.

I want to tell you this evening that my prayers have been answered.

Here is my offering for a special puja. That’s right. For my husband’s health, happiness, and long life.