Shashi Tharoor - Riot

I’m too tired to think. And too full of thoughts to sleep.

Rudyard Hart to Mohammed Sarwar

October 14, 1989

You know, I stopped at a cold-drink place this morning. Guess what they’re selling? Pepsi. Bloody Pepsi. Except that they call it Lehar Pepsi here. Some Indian rule against foreign brand names.

Despite myself, I bought it. Took a swig. And tasted defeat. Pepsi didn’t exist in the Indian market when I was here last. Now they’re here and we’re not. We could have been ten years ahead of them if we’d played our cards right.

You know, when we see a population without Coke we see an untapped market for the finest beverage invented by man. Not being here is an indescribable waste all around. Indians are being deprived of a wonderful product, and we’re being deprived of a chance to lead in this country too, as we do in so many countries.

We’ve got to come back to India. And we will. It’s the way the world is going. You’ll have American products, American ideas, American values all spreading throughout the land. And you’ll have to have Coke.

I’ll tell you what your problem is in India. You have too much history. Far more than you can use peacefully. So you end up wielding history like a battleaxe, against each other. Whereas we at Coke don’t care about history. We’ll sell you our drinks whatever your history is. We don’t worry too much about the past. It’s your future we want to be a part of.

My daughter believed in your future too. You know, I went through hell asking God why she had to be killed in a quarrel she had no part of. But now I realize it was her choice to be caught up in this country’s passions. She wanted to change India for the better. She was working for the future when she was struck down by the past.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Can’t say it makes me feel a whole lot better, though. But I now think I’ll ask Coke to send me back to India. Give it another try. I think Priscilla would have wanted me to.

note from Priscilla Hart to Lakshman

August 21, 1989

I’ve read the poem you asked Mitha Mohammed to bring to me at the office. I don’t know why you sent it to me, except to make me see our relationship in a different light. Maybe you too need to see things differently, Lucky.

You haven’t taken a risk in this relationship. At all. But I have. It was my risk to take, to fall in love with a married man, and I did, and I take full responsibility for it. I’m sorry about that ink splotch; I’m crying as I write this. But I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I want your love, not your pity.

Your poem reduced me to a “smiling body” and a “warm embrace.” I thought I was more than that to you, Lucky. When you’re dealing with someone else’s life, you have to be a lot more careful with your words than that.

I love you with all my heart and soul, but I don’t want a relationship with a man who doesn’t feel the same way as I do. I want a man who loves me, and a relationship where I can rely on the fact that he loves me. Not my body, not my embrace, ME.

You write of your daughter needing you to be there. I need you to be there for me, too, Lucky. But you don’t see that, do you?

You’re so good at understanding everyone else’s claims on you — your family’s, your daughter’s, your job’s. Do I have no claims on you, Lucky? Am I just a convenient outlet for your passion, your escape from humdrum reality? I know where I am in this relationship. You don’t really know where you are, do you?

On Saturday night, I felt such pain for you, looking at your sad and confused face. I believe in us completely, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give me. And I can’t show my needs to you if you don’t know how to respond, or if you believe you can’t respond because of your “prior creditor.”

I know, as a woman, that I’ve got to do better than this. Your poem frightened me, Lucky. After six months of this relationship I should know where I am, and what I can expect from you. I love you very deeply, but I’m in pain too, Lucky. I’ll be at the Kotli tomorrow as I’ve always been, every Tuesday and Saturday, available at your convenience when your wife is away at the temple. But I’m no longer sure this is good enough for me, Lucky. When we meet, I’ll need some definite answers from you.

Gurinder to Lakshman

Monday morning, August 21, 1989

Hey, lover-boy, since you keep going on and on about the pleasures of fucking sexual love — pardon my Sanskrit — do you know what I did last weekend? For your sake? I read the fucking Kama Sutra, that’s what. Indian civilization’s greatest tribute to the pleasures of sexual congress. In the classic translation by Sir Richard Burton and F. F. fucking Arbuthnot, no less. I never thought sex could be made so boring, yaar! Page after page of clinical detail — the nine types of sexual union, the sixty-four arts, the definitions of the different types of marks a woman can make with her bloody nails, the classifications of the female yoni as marelike or elephantine. How does it bugger-all matter, man, whether a woman’s embrace is like “the twining of a creeper” or “the climbing of a tree”? And have you ever heard anything more pissing ridiculous than Vatsyayana’s categories of the sounds women make when being stropped — Phut, Phat, Sut, Plat? Plat, I ask you! Anyway, the point I was going to make is, okay, I grant you that sexual love is a fine thing, and sexual pleasure may even be the finest of pleasures afforded to man, who am I to argue? But its greatest advocate, this third-century guru of sex, the immortal Vatsyayana, even he says, and I quote, “A girl who has already been joined with others, that is, one who is no longer a maiden, should never be loved, for it would be reproachable to do such a thing.” Look it up if you don’t believe me — part 2, chapter 1. Fucking reproachable, you understand?

And that’s why I reproach you, Lucky I’ve always admired you, yaar. Admired you like hell. You’ve done great work in this town. You’re one guy who puts in all the hours at work you need to even if your bloody wife is waiting for you to go out to a party. You’re a man who stands up for principle, against politicians, contractors, bosses, staff. You believe in the job you’re doing and you do it honestly and effectively and well. Okay, so you’ve found something you didn’t have before — so what? Enjoy it while you have it, and then move on, man! The way you move from posting to posting. You don’t turn your life upside down for sex, man. Or even sexual love, if that’s what you think it is. You don’t give up everything you’ve spent your life living for because your cock tells you it’s having a great time.

Don’t just take it from me, Lucky. Take it from the bloody Kama Sutra.

letter from Priscilla Hart to Cindy Valeriani

August 22, 1989

Cin, dear Cin, how I wish you were here in Zalilgarh! I don’t know how I can cope with all that’s going on without you to talk to, to give me a hug and tell me I’m going to be all right. I’m seeing Lucky tonight and I’m scared it’s all going to go wrong, that I’ve asked him for something he’s not going to be able to give me. And I don’t want to lose him, Cin. He’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a man — doesn’t that sound ridiculous? But it’s true, and I do love him, Cin, I love him so much it hurts. And I don’t know if he loves me enough to risk everything he knows for a life with me.…

And to add to everything, as if I don’t have enough to deal with, you’ll never believe what happened this morning. A little fellow who I know because he delivers tea and takes messages to and from Lucky’s office, a boy known to everyone as Sweet Mohammed, came to the Center today. Turns out he’s a neighbor or nephew or something of the Muslim woman I’ve told you about, Fatima Bi, remember? The one with the seven kids. Anyway, they all live on top of each other in the Muslim basti, and he said Fatima Bi had called him and given him an important message for me — she wanted to see me urgently. This from the same woman who’d been beaten up by her husband and told never to contact the Center again! Kadambari, the extension worker, was very nervous about venturing there again (she’s Hindu, by the way, which doesn’t help in the present charged circumstances, and of course I stick out like a sore thumb wherever I go, so there was no question of going to see Fatima Bi unnoticed). Kadambari was all for saying we couldn’t do anything, but that made me mad. “This is what we’re supposed to be here for,” I said, rather shrilly I’m afraid. “If this woman has the courage to ask us to help, despite the terrible risks she’s running, how can we let her down? We have to go!” So we went, and guess what? Poor Fatima Bi, mother of seven, which is about six more than she can handle, had just discovered she’s pregnant again. For the eighth blessed time.