He jogged to the crowded counter where fifteen or twenty men pressed together, arms around shoulders to listen, while an almost hysterical announcer gave details of the murder in Hindi. Vikram could’ve listened to the broadcast from his seat at our table-the volume was switched up to the maximum, and we heard every word. It was something else that drew him to that crowded counter: a sense of solidarity and kinship; a huddled need to
‘Let’s have that drink,’ I suggested.
‘Yes, Lin,’ Didier answered, pouting with his lower lip, and offering a flourish of his hand to dismiss the distressing subject. The gesture failed. His head lolled forward, and he stared vacantly at the table in front of him. ‘I can’t believe it. It is simply not believable.
I ordered for Didier, and let my thoughts wander while we listened to the plaintive screech of the radio announcer. Selfishly, I wondered first what the assassination might mean for my security, and then what it might do to the exchange rates on the black money market. Some months before, Indira Gandhi had authorised an assault on the Sikh holy-of-holies, the Golden Temple, in Amritsar. Her goal was to drive out a large, well-armed company of Sikh militants who’d entered the temple and fortified themselves there under the leadership of a handsome, charismatic separatist named Bhindranwale. Using the temple complex as a base, the militants had launched punitive attacks against Hindus, and those they described as
The army operation to dislodge the militants from the Golden Temple was known as Operation Bluestar. Bhindranwale’s militants, believing themselves to be freedom fighters and martyrs for the Sikh cause, met the army force with reckless and desperate resistance. More than six hundred lives were lost, and many hundreds of people were injured. In the end, the Golden Temple complex was cleared, and Indira emerged as anything but indecisive or weak. Her goal of reassuring the Hindu heartland of voters had been achieved, but the Sikh struggle for a separate homeland, called
The radio at the counter gave us no other details, but the message wailed from the speaker that she’d been murdered. Only a few months after Bluestar, Indira’s own Sikh bodyguards had killed her. The woman who’d been reviled as a despot by some, adored as the mother of the country by many others, and so closely identified with the nation as to be indistinguishable from its past, and from its destiny, was gone. She was dead.
I had to think. I had to calculate the danger. Security forces across the country would be on special alert. There would be ramifications-riots, killings, looting, and burning, as revenge exacted on the Sikh communities for her murder. I knew it. Everyone in India knew it. On the radio, the announcer was talking about troop deployments in Delhi and in Punjab aimed at quelling anticipated disturbances. The tension would bring new dangers for me, a wanted man, working for the mafia, and living in the country with an expired visa. For a few moments, sitting there as Didier sipped his drink, as the men in the restaurant strained in silence to listen, and the early evening blushed our skin with rose-gold, my heart thumped with fear.
