In Our Time

There isn't a drop of water in the great reservoir the Peshwas built. There is nothing in it. Except a hundred years of silt. — Arun Kolatkar, Jejuri

MY mother's singsong chanting of bha-jans—an unchanging crack of dawn ritual in our home—went up a few decibels in the December of 1971. My father was at war, in the Shakargarh sector, and listening to the BBC and chanting a little louder for God were acts of faith. The cantonment was deserted of officers, and the wives had hammered together a warm camaraderie based on rummy and the absence of husbands. The extraordinary situation created strange relationships. In the starchy hierarchy of the forces, my mother, with a mere working knowledge of English, became the best friend of the brigade commander's wife, an anglicised lady famous for her hau-teur. The two of them, along with others, would sit up all night, listening to the radio, and dealing out 13 card hands.

Though a mere child, I do not recall any whiff of bitterness in the air. No one ever questioned the decision of Mrs Gandhi that had sent their husbands into battle. No one wondered why we were fighting someone else's war. I never once heard my mother rail against the government, army, or fate. Even before it was all over, and our fathers had come home, the stirring lore had arrived. Unforgettable, in particular, was the story of Second-Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal of Poona Horse, just commissioned, no more than twenty, who had refused to evacuate his tank even after its track was gutted, and had gone on firing till only death and the Param Vir Chakra remained. One day we knew nothing about him. And the next, as if by magic, every boy was reciting his name like a mantra.

Political faith and heroism are like chicken pox and measles, ideally suited to the young. Adulthood afflictions can prove terrible, like Iraq's self-deluding moment in 1991. But at the time of the Bangladesh war, India was young, and so was I. By the time Mrs Gandhi died, the years had rolled on. I could still thrill to Khetarpal's heroics but could no longer find in myself unquestioning allegiance to a dubious political leadership. When television relayed images of the dead leader's cortege, my father's eyes welled up. I scoffed at his naivete. A chill set into our relationship for some time.

The point was that though he was far older than me, my father belonged to a young India. He had been young when the nation was young, and the faith and heroism of that time was inextricably tied up in his life. His was a generation that had thrilled to the true warriors, figures of pure heroism like Gandhi and Nehru—in a sense no different from Arun Khetarpal. Many years later, after I had been covering Punjab as a reporter, and had got to know K.P.S. Gill, I heard a story about him. When freedom and Partition came, Gill was 16. Apparently every night his mother would put him and his sister to sleep on the same charpoy with a naked sword between them. Her instructions were clear. If the mobs came, he was to kill his sister then die fighting. For Gill, this was how India had been wrested. He could not imagine anyone wanting to sunder it or take it away. Finally, no matter the legal politics surrounding him, it was Gill who made the difference in a state most people had given up as irredeemable.

Some people, essentially outsiders, complain that we are not celebrating our half century of freedom. Most wonder what there is to celebrate. The point is the older generation is tired, and the new does not connect. Freedom is the point they started from, not where they finally arrived. It is a given. They have been moving on from there, to conquer the new world of materialism. No wonder they see politicians not as repositories of higher virtues, but essentially as bad professionals who claim to be more than they are. Those born till the sixties still have a problem, a vague sense of loss and betrayal. Thanks to Gandhi and Nehru there is a nagging conscience, so that everyone who swims clear keeps looking over his shoulder. But as the new generations move away more and more from that glorious freedom movement, as they are cleansed of history and know less and less, the nagging conscience and guilt will die. Perhaps they will shape the new India, perhaps they will have the answers. Commercial warriors.

Shobha De, for one, I think believes this to be true. Last month I was at a seminar with her. A woman whose energies and instincts belong to nineties urban India, she railed long and eloquent against Indian writers who reinforce old stereotypes of poverty and degradation. Last night, as I leave office, way past midnight, I stop to count the number of people sleeping in the open. Our office is in Safdarjang Enclave, an upmarket colony of South Delhi. There are 33 men, women and children, sleeping on parking curbs three feet wide. Not one of them stirs when my car engine sparks to life. Just one mangy dog lifts his head and gives a bark to record my passage.