You would think it would be difficult to beat Delhi where architectural excess is concerned, but here it was, this majestic home in Bikaner that could put any twin-staircase, Bollywood-screen villa to shame. We’d come in search of my wife’s niece who, so we’d learned, was visiting her in-laws who, in turn, had abandoned their family home to camp in this stone and marble heap hidden behind high walls and tall gates. In a tribute to bad taste, the circular drive curved around a garden pierced with fountains amidst which frolicked marble statues of women in various stages of undress and cupidity.
It was, so I learned, a rich man’s folly, a pleasure palace to which he came every evening — if, in fact, there was one redeeming feature, it was that he did not actually live here. Perhaps it was the house of his mistress. Maybe it was here he was entertained by nautch girls. Outside, delicate gazebos festooned the lawns; inside, chandeliers blazed in the impressive hall, the venue, no doubt for musical jousts and revelries.
For a brief while we were suspended in disbelief: Who would want to buy this mansion that seemed steeped in avarice? An imaginative hotelier, perhaps, who might want to preserve a slice of the bewitched past … but almost certainly not a political leader with a vast following through the state.
Yet here he was, clad in khadi, cronies and party workers surrounding him, planning his campaign for the forthcoming general elections. Surrounded by the lushness of his new home, he talked of politics and service, of democracy and socialism, of the dream of making a difference as a young man and the capitulation, in old age, to the idea that it made not the least difference what your ideology was — all that mattered was money.
His surroundings smelt of money yet, he said, he had made none from a political career of three decades. “In politics,” he sighed, “you must either be honest” — he laughed disparagingly at the hollowness of the remark — “or you must be rich”, which he clearly already was. “Intellectual people,” he looked sharply at me, “intelligent people, they have no scope in politics. They,” he clarified his stand, “can hardly speak in public, command the masses, sway the votes.”
Above, the stars had begun to shine, starlight and stardust descending on the marble maidens who, now claimed by magic, seemed more lifelike than ever. Oblivious of their charms, the politician seemed to awaken from a reverie. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was to talk — of the Congress and the BJP, of leaders in the fray, of their strengths and their weaknesses, of the rise and rise of provincial parties, the growing might of Mayawati, the clout of the castes, the whiplash of the underdogs.
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“Development, tchah!” he exclaimed, when I said that should be what politicians and their constituencies should fight for, “All people want is their own caste-leaders, caste-based reservations, caste-based policies. You,” he dismissed my look of astonishment, “are city people, you are journalists, you don’t know reality. This,” he spread his arms out, “is reality.”
Perhaps he wanted to indicate the gathered people — the supplicants and party workers and job-seekers — but I saw in his gesture a magnificent absurdity. His outstretched arms included the diorama of the garden and the foolishness of the palace filled with statues of seductive maidens, the worst European excrescence passing for a garden pavilion amidst the sandstorms of the desert. No wonder it hardly seemed to matter, the outcome of all the plotting and planning and khadi-wearing: For was not fate as capricious as the marble nymphs who eavesdropped so delightedly on these foolish conversations?