And yet it couldn’t be, Cin. There’s no way Lucky would betray our secret to anyone. So it must be about my work here. Like so many Indians, Guru’s suspicious of my motives in doing what I do.
What do I want? I want to change the lives of these women, the choices they believe they have. I want to see them one day, these women of Zalilgarh and of a thousand other towns and villages like it in India, standing around the well discussing their own lives and hopes and dreams instead of complaining about their mothers-in- law. I want to hear them not say, with a cross between pride and resignation, “My husband, he wants lots of children,” but rather, “I will decide when I am ready for a child.” I want them, instead of planning to arrange their teenage daughter’s marriage, to insist on sending her to high school. I want all this for them, and that’s why I’m here. Is that exploitation? How can it be exploitation to make women more aware of what they can be?
“Population-control awareness” seems more and more of a misnomer to me. I see myself as trying to make women aware of their reproductive rights, not just to control population but to give them a sense of their rights as a whole, their rights as women. Being forced to have babies is just one more form of oppression, of subjugation by men. I’d rather die than have an abortion myself, but I want to help these women understand that control of their bodies is a rights issue, it’s a health issue, and if they can improve their health and assert their rights, they will have a real future, and they’ll give their daughters a real future. Is this all so difficult to understand, Cin?
And yet, whether Guru meant it or not, I can’t help being conscious of a terrible irony. I care about Indian women in general, and yet I don’t allow myself to think about one Indian woman in particular — Lucky’s wife. I sit at her table and eat her rice and sambar, and I know all along that I am wronging her, that what I want will come at her expense, that Lucky’s and my true love can only hurt her in the end. You’re right, Cin, to remind me of that. And yet, she doesn’t love him, and he doesn’t love her. What he feels is the tug of duty, especially from his little daughter. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Lucky and I had a daughter, a nut-brown baby with America in her eyes. She’d be so beautiful, Cin. And then Lucky would see me as family….
But at the end of the day, I’m not all that inconsistent, am I? Because my life and my work are both about the same thing. It’s all about women — about our control of our bodies, our right to sleep with the man we choose, with the protection we choose, for an outcome we choose. I want every woman to have that right. Even me.
from transcript of Randy Diggs interview
with Superintendent of Police Gurinder Singh
October 14, 1989
RD: I’ve been interrupting too much. Go ahead and just tell me the story. In your own words. Take your time.
GS: Hell, man, of course I’ll tell it in my own words. Whose damned words do you expect me to use? Look, the police force in those days was stretched almost to the breaking point, like the rubber on a Nirodh, the bloody government-made condom. Ever since the Ram Sila Poojan program had been announced a fortnight earlier, the provincial armed constabulary — we call them the PAC — had been on continuous vigil in the neighboring districts. The riot at Zalilgarh meant that they had to be hastily bundled onto buses and trucks and driven overnight to this frigging town. We immediately deputed them to man every tense enclave. They weren’t a pretty sight, I can tell you, with bloodshot eyes and three days’ growth on their strained faces. It’s a miracle they didn’t start a riot themselves.
Lucky was magnificent. He and I made it a point during our own night-long rounds to stop at each of the PAC pickets. We’d speak to the men about how difficult, and how important, their mission was. And occasionally share with them a hot cup of tea. Our cops weren’t used to the DM-sahib coming to keep their morale up like this. Most of them had never directly spoken to a DM in their frigging lives. As they stood erect and alert at their watch posts, he would pass amongst them, talking to them in his Tamil-inflected Hindi, and the weary faces of the men would light up like Diwali lamps. You know, before the PAC buggers left for the next riot-torn city last week, the DM persuaded the eminent citizens of Zalilgarh to organize a bada khana of thanksgiving for the men. The buggers sat and ate as the city elders served them. Hasn’t happened before, I can tell you.
I don’t want to pretend my policemen are all piss-perfect. Hell, we know they’re not. But when they screw up, we deal with them. The DM received a lot of complaints about excesses committed by the police during the house-to-house searches in the Muslim bastis. We visited some of the houses. It was true. It was as though a frigging cyclone had swept through them. Everything in those houses had been smashed, torn, or burnt by the search teams — the TV and radio, mattresses, furniture, artifacts, everything. An old Muslim woman aged around seventy took off her kameez and salwar to show us deep lathi marks across her body. From the shoulders down to the ankles. I couldn’t bear to look. The DM ordered strong action against the guilty policeman. I ensured that it was taken. Such complaints will not recur on my watch.
In riots, all sorts of things happen. People strike first and ask questions later. It’s tough to be a cop in a riot.
You can tell I’m a Lakshman fan. Our partnership was natural, and necessary. The policing challenge was intertwined with the administrative challenge. Intimately, like one of those couples in the temple sculptures at Khajuraho. I’ll give you an example. The day after the bomb attack, the DM got a telephone call. One of the seriously injured riot victims, a young bugger, a Muslim called Mohammed, Sweet Mohammed they used to call him, had died on the way to the medical college hospital. They’d slit his throat and he’d bled to death in the ambulance. It was the middle of the frigging curfew, and what does the bloody hospital want? To get the district administration to arrange for the disposal of the body double-quick. So Lucky sent for the young man’s father, and the sadr or leader of the Muslim community, a humane and gentle old bugger known universally as Rauf-bhai, “Brother Rauf.” Rauf-bhai sat there, unblinking behind his thick glasses, his yellowing beard stretching out like a shield, a white cap on his head. But you know what? His bloody presence alone seemed to quiet the distraught father. Thanks to Rauf-bhai, the father agreed to a quiet funeral. After midnight. It was the only way we could prevent a fresh upsurge of violence. If they’d held the bloody funeral during the day, there would have been another fucking riot.
I arranged for the morgue van carrying the body from the medical college hospital to halt at a rural police thana on the outskirts of Zalilgarh, to wait till midnight. Lucky and I went there. You know, to offer solace to the bereaved family. The DM was very quiet the whole way, which meant he was either exhausted or thinking, or both. Either way, I spared him my jokes for once. Sad bloody scene, Randy. Mohammed’s mother was weeping desolately near the body of her son. The father and the sadr, Brother Rauf, were grieving nearby. Lucky walked up to them and quietly said: “We cannot bring back your son. But tell us who was responsible for your loss and we will ensure that justice is done.”
The mother replied in angry bitterness. “There is no point in telling you the names of the killers. Every time in Zalilgarh when there are riots, the same men lead the mobs, looting and burning and killing, but nothing ever happens to them. During the last riots, we were hopeful because the police even noted down our statements. We waited for four days, but nothing happened. In the end the police did come, but it was we who were arrested. So this time we have nothing to say.”