It was almost fifty years ago. The US engineered coup in Chile on nine-eleven was still a fresh wound in progressive minds. The historic all-India movement of the railway workers had been brutally suppressed by the prime minister Indira Gandhi. The high court in her home state indicted her for election fraud. She was setting in motion a dictatorial roller-coaster.
Turbulence was brewing. Freedom fighter Jayaprakash Narayan known by the acronym 'JP' was planting the seeds of social change. The mass of students started tuning into him, and his call for total revolution to address the ills of the society. Students, workers, and people belonging to the other strata of society were starting to listen to his exhortation, and absorb his message.
Brought up in conservative households first by one uncle and aunt through fourth grade, then by another aunt who was even more strict through middle and high schools; I became an excellent parrot. I was very good at repeating what my teachers taught me in school, and what my guardians inculcated in our household. The advantage of being a parrot was that I managed to get good grades in my elementary, middle, and high school as the answers I gave pleased my teachers. The disadvantages were many; I had developed a flat myopic view of the world and had acquired a narrow tubular vision to make sense of my surroundings and environment. My faculties of critical thinking lagged considerably.
I had a lot of friends in my neighborhood and I walked to school with them. I also had many other buddies in my local public school. I I now realise that a parrot doesn’t cause much conflict and is likeable and agreeable to most people and possibly even beloved to some. My parrot-boosted grades bought me a coach class ticket to medical school.
I soon found myself in a class of two hundred students, wide-eyed teens and twenty somethings from all walks of life, holding a panoply of outlooks and world views. Many of them were also highly talented given their ages, in art, music, or sports. A parrot by nature and definition is not talented, but in the new environs my world opened up. My brain became a sponge and I started absorbing a rainbow of views from my new friends, acquaintances, and classmates. There was a group of students who were attracted to progressive ideas and I was slowly drawn to them. I quickly shed my parrot avatar and started hanging out with a bunch of forward-looking students sporting a progressive label and discussing various approaches to repair, change, and transform the world.
My grade school classmates had come from lower-middle-class, and working-class families; the income disparities among the households in our neighborhood were marginal. But in my medical school class there were significant wealth disparities. Some students came from very poor families and I noticed a few who were from very wealthy families. They were the ones getting dropped off in private cars while the rest arrived by city public buses or the weather-beaten college bus.
Vivek came from a neighboring town and his parents were college professors. I quickly became good friends with him. He was well-read, and I saw him carry various titles — For Whom the Bell tolls, State and Revolution, Dialectics of Nature, Notes from the Gallows — he was either reading for the first time or, more likely, re-reading them. Vivek had an in-depth knowledge of politics, art, and literature. I noticed that being well-grounded in different fields gives you conviction and also makes one opinionated. Vivek was no exception and he emerged as the leader of the progressives of our class.
The sixties were the decade of student movements in many parts of the world. Though the movement lost some steam in the seventies, fresh student revolts and uprisings sprouted in various other countries including India. The students from different states started to coordinate their activities. Coming from all sorts of backgrounds, and upholding different viewpoints, the student mass represented a broad spectrum of thought, some carrying the communist manifesto, a few subscribing to Che’s guerilla warfare ideas while many others just embraced the concept of JP’s total revolution.
Vivek became the convener for the state of Kerala and he started visiting other medical schools and various arts and science colleges to drum up support for the student movement and navigate it towards a revolutionary direction. I frequently joined Vivek on many of his travels and meetings with student groups in various colleges and universities. The movement had come up with various demands for broadening and democratization of education and allocation of significant budgetary resources from the central and state governments.
Vivek was set on his progressive and revolutionary trajectory; I was more of a fellow traveler. By coming under his tutelage, and associating with him and other persons in the forefront of the movement, my depth of political understanding and conviction increased. During many of these student meetings to formulate educational demands and coin effective slogans to attract the mass of students, topics of art, literature, music, and films would also come up. Vivek would enthusiastically lead these discussions.
We read widely — Sartre, Camus, Kafka, Marquez, Joyce, Eliot, Tagore, Saratchandra, and others. We joined Chalachitra and Surya film societies and watched the works of Kurosawa, David Lean, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Truffaut, Fassbinder, Fellini, Ghatak, and many other renowned film directors.
In coordination with the student groups and movements emerging in the various states an all-India action plan was drawn up to bring visibility to the movement in the nation’s capital. A call for a protest demonstration and public meeting in front of the parliament house in New Delhi was given. All states were asked to mobilise and send the maximum number of students which was feasible from each state. New Delhi and the states surrounding the nation’s capital committed to bring a few hundred to thousands each; Vivek and I thought that twenty-five would be a reasonable target for our state, one of the farthest from New Delhi. The date was to be February 21st when parliament would be in session. The plan was to have thousands of students from all over India marching through the streets of New Delhi and massing in front of the parliament. The gathering would be addressed by the movement’s leaders and a few members of parliament sympathetic to the cause of students and the movement.
More than five thousand students gathered in the capital from different states. Most started coming on the previous day and were put up in a large open-air stadium under pandals segregated by gender. It was winter in Delhi and we were provided with carpets and blankets to keep us warm. Students from the southern states not used to the cold found themselves shivering in the open-air chill. Everyone took it with a spirit of adventure and kept their focus on the protest demonstration.
The march, organized in a disciplined manner in four columns but bunched in some places as processions tend to get, snaked through many thoroughfares of the capital. Increase Educational Budget, Cut Down Military Budget and similar slogans hung in the air and slowly rippled and wafted across the city carrying our message. The organised mass of students segmented by banners representing different states moved towards the boat club maidan in front of the parliament building.
The central convener and the different state conveners, including Vivek, addressed the students. Two members of Parliament sympathetic and appreciative of our cause also spoke. We had prepared a memorandum discussing and listing our demands to hand to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. An audience with her was scheduled for mid-afternoon. Vivek and I looked forward to the meeting even though we were not enamoured of the PM. She had suppressed many democratic mass movements, promulgated anti-people policies, and was becoming increasingly dictatorial. She was the only woman in the cabinet of ministers and she was the PM; all the other ministers were men. Yet, she was referred to as the only man in her cabinet; she was an iron woman like Margaret Thatcher of Britain, her contemporary.
The PM’s office had capped the strength of the delegation to be led by the central convener at twelve members. Adhering to the PMO’s diktat, twelve of us including Vivek and I got there for the meeting a few minutes early. Soon we were ushered into the waiting room and we took our seats in the well-furnished room with Mahogany loveseats, reclining chairs, and a long oval coffee table. The walls were decorated with large portraits of Indira and former PMs — Jawaharlal Nehru, the first PM and Indira’s dad, and Lal Bahadur Shastri. A waiter served us cups of hot steaming black tea blended with milk, and cookies. We were told that the PM was meeting with another group which was likely to get over soon. After about twenty minutes we were escorted into the PM’s office.
She was sitting on a large office chair behind a huge mahogany desk. The chair was draped in a towel with green, white, and red stripes; the colours of the national flag. A huge portrait of Nehru looked down on her from the wall behind. She appeared quite diminished in his presence; it seemed as though he was breathing down her neck. About twenty small chairs were arranged in rows in the room. She stood up to greet us and asked us to take our seats. A young woman probably in her teens, most likely an intern, and an older woman with a steno notebook also joined the meeting. The young woman was tall with cropped hair; she walked with soft elegant steps and looked stunning in a green salwar, and a patterned white top. A red silk scarf was casually thrown around her neck. The petite older woman was dressed in a white sari with green borders. The PM’s hair was clipped short, dyed black leaving a streak of gray in front and center which gave her hair the appearance of a wavy flag.
The meeting, the business part of it, was a non-event. The convener explained our demands. I saw the steno taking notes furiously and meticulously. The PM sat there with a disinterested expression conveying an impression of routineness as though this was an activity of her daily living, like taking a shower. She would occasionally nod her head in a bored manner like wealthy novices occupying front row seats of a classical music performance.
My gaze was mostly tuned on the intern. I was happy that she also stole furtive glances towards me. Well, it was the magic of being eighteen years-old. The meeting came to a sudden end when the PM stood up saying the government will give careful consideration to all the points raised. She asked her Chief of Staff to collect the memorandum. The PM then invited us all for a group photo which took place in the well-maintained enclosed lawn adjacent to the office. I knew it was my last chance to steal a couple of glances of the pretty intern who reminded me of a Bollywood heartthrob. When the photos are developed and printed there would be clear evidence that my focus became the gorgeous intern and not the grandstanding image-conscious PM.
I had heard that she would scan the front pages of all national newspapers and ask the Chief of Staff to call the editor with an admonishment or warning if she found the coverage wanting — inadequate coverage or an unfavourable portrayal. She was known to be a vengeful person. When she heard that her aunt, Nehru’s sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit, was not in favor of her engagement to Feroze Gandhi; she cut her aunt out of the list of wedding invitees.
A few weeks later freedom fighter JP came to our state and city with his bugle of total revolution. A cross section of people, with the Gandhians at one end and leftists and progressives like us at the other end of the ideological spectrum, wanted to greet and meet with him. Members of our progressive group including Vivek and I marched in a procession to the airport carrying red banners mouthing, Welcome JP, Build Up Movement, at the top of our voices, to greet JP. Later in the afternoon, eight of us, including Vivek and I, headed to the city guest house to have an audience with JP.
He was the leader of a mass movement but I was surprised that there wasn’t much security detail around him. After taking down some essential details including our names and addresses, we were directed to a meeting room where JP had already met with many delegations. He was seated in a recliner, and he looked frail in his reading glasses. His long face adorned with large piercing eyes exuded a warm radiance. On the wall behind him hung large portraits of Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh. On a small table in front of him lay a few books, folders, and papers. Soon a young intern walked in dressed in a khadi white sari and white blouse. Her long black hair which was flowing down like a waterfall at night was tied at the end with a short black ribbon. She casually balanced a writing pad and a fountain pen in her hands. She took a seat a few feet away from us.
I was enamored of JP. But I couldn’t help stealing glances at the pretty intern which soon evolved into an exchange of lingering looks. Initially she appeared nervous and embarrassed but that soon gave way to boldness and confidence. And once the meeting and discussion started, she was focused on note-taking. JP was a doyen of the freedom struggle; he had authority and conviction. He was soft spoken, and we all took his exhortation for movement and change quite seriously.
The call of JP found a voice among the masses and a massive all-India movement began to take shape in the country anchored in Bihar and the neighboring states. Feeling the political heat Indira Gandhi declared a state of national emergency in the summer of 1975 pointing to external and internal threats to the country. She revoked civil and democratic rights and imposed strict censorship of the media. Scores of opposition political leaders and activists starting with JP were arrested and thrown into jail. We were not picked up immediately but felt the headwinds and the chilling effects on the populace and the democratic landscape.
The cops came for us the following year when the PM on anabolic steroids came to lay the foundation stone for the Regional Cancer Center to be built on our medical school campus. We were making some noises in the form of posters, leaflets, and political discussions on and off campus. But as a small group we never posed a significant political threat to the PM in the city or the state. We were a nuisance at best.
Nevertheless, the special branch cops in civil dress and an unmarked white van came for Vivek and I. Vivek was taken in at his place of residence and I was detained as I stepped out of a film society screening. We were taken into custody and locked up before the PM’s plane landed in our city, and only let go after two days when her plane took off and attained cruising altitude.
Due to the growing political pressure and the brewing country-wide discontent the PM was forced to withdraw the emergency declaration after two years, and call for fresh elections. Congress under the leadership of Indira lost the elections and the opposition came to power. All the arrested political leaders and activists including JP were freed. He was a hero but was physically frail and ailing. Though he declined to accept any position in the new government he exerted soft power as the conscience of society, and a moral authority in the country.
***
Decades later I had started splitting my time between the US, where I had gone for higher studies and worked subsequently and India. I chanced upon the special branch officer who had arrested Vivek and I at the museum complex during our morning walks. We shook hands. He had retired from service and was in a relaxed mode. He had started using a cane during his walks. Lifting up the tip of the cane and tapping it on the ground, he said, this lets me balance better; it also serves as a good defense against the crazy stray dogs.
Oh, I see, that makes sense, I said. He looked around, shifted his gaze to the skies, tapped his walking cane a couple of more times, and then looking straight into my eyes narrated this strange story from the past.
I had always wanted to tell you this. He stammered, cleared his throat, and continued. It is about your arrest during the PM’s visit to the medical college.
What about it? I asked.
***
Officer: Do you really know why I had to pick you up?
I: And my friend Vivek, too. We opposed the emergency; campaigned against it; pasted posters demanding its withdrawal, and called for the release of all political prisoners.
Officer: That was only part of it.
I: What do you mean? Vivek was the state convener of the student movement, and the progressive student group. I was a fellow traveler, and hung around him.
Officer: That was the least of it. We knew, based on our intelligence, and our monitoring, that your stand against the emergency was principled, and peaceful; the progressive and left unit in college was also disciplined. We didn’t expect any trouble during the PM’s visit. Moreover, security was tight. We had deployed central forces in different ways.
I: No, we had no plans to crash the PM’s function or heckle her in any way.
Officer: Yes, that is the point. Recall that you, Vivek, and others had an audience with the PM before the emergency.
I: Yes, that was following our protest meeting before parliament. We went with a list of educational demands to meet her.
Officer: As part of the security arrangements, we didn’t originally include you or your friend in the pick-up list.
I: Then, what happened?
Officer: The PM’s office gave your name. The PMO had a note in your dossier that you were disrespectful to the PM during the meeting.
I: What? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.
Officer: You were distracted by her intern. Your focus wasn’t on the PM. You and the intern created a side show, an uncalled-for tableau.
***
I was flabbergasted; I couldn’t believe it.
Then why arrest Vivek, I asked.
***
Officer: See, he was your group leader. When we had to pick you up, we also included him.
***
I remained silent. The officer smiled. Shaking his head he pointed the tip of his cane towards the horizon and continued. The PM is long dead; I am retired, and counting my years. Dictators can be vengeful over small matters. It appears silly, but that is part of their strong-person avatar. But my friend, don’t quote me on this.
This inside view gave me a rare peek into the mind of the ex-PM who had nudged the cops to lock us up. Though it was only a short put-away, getting locked up is no ordinary experience; Vivek and I got some real-life lessons from it.
After the emergency collapsed and the opposition was voted to power, JP’s prestige was sky-high. He was held in high esteem and beloved to the people. I was tempted to compare the minds of JP and Indira based on the price I had to pay for exchanging furtive glances with their pretty interns during my meetings with them. Indira, the dictator, perceived a slight and took it personally. JP, the freedom fighter, just took a walk through his teenage memory lane and exclaimed, it is the fun part of passage for a teen.
Subramani started writing late after practicing medicine and teaching computer science and AI. During the pandemic he felt the urge to share his memories and life experiences. He is a second year MFA fiction candidate at Texas State University, San Marcos and the incoming nonfiction editor of Porter House Review.
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