Now that Shashi Tharoor has introduced the “L” word into the political narrative, we can only imagine the havoc it will cause. “My wife is worth more than the Rs 50 crore that Mr Modi imagines. For me she is priceless. But I guess you have to love someone to know that,” he said.
Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of politics in this country knows that even more potent than the “C” word that Arvind Kejriwal wields is the “L” word’ and all that it conveys. Politics and love in India have never had an easy relationship. Tomes can be written about the loveless lives of our leaders: the dysfunctional marriages of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Atal Behari Vajpayee’s “bachelorhood” and the love lives of other worthies like Lal Bahadur Shastri and Chandra Shekhar.
As for Morarji Desai and Sardar Patel, did anyone love — really love — them? Not in the “masses adulating their leader” way of children’s history books, but in the way that we all know love? Unfortunately, what passes for love — lust and its ugly brothers: rape, exploitation, adultery, crimes of passion — are far more common in the political sphere.
You have politicians who abandon their wives, who cohabit with young women, who prey on girls and boys and then use their clout to make them disappear when they become unmanageable, who father illegitimate children, who indulge in orgies and who marry for electoral reasons of caste and community. Women-fearing politicians, misogynist politicians, homophobic politicians and, of course, politicians who have such wretched relationships with their inner selves that they take it out on the entire nation. (Note to self: research Hitler’s love life — did he ever love?) In the electorate, too, the love-shove business is given short shrift: khaps rule against it, community elders rail against it, constitutional laws declare it a crime among certain communities and, of course, one ageing reactionary, regional satrap has spent a considerable amount of his time attempting to eradicate Valentine’s Day!
So what does Tharoor’s introduction of the “L” word into the polity spell for us? Will it allow men and women to set aside its more sordid expressions and recognise it for the real thing that it is? To love each other, regardless of gender, caste and public censure? To love mankind and, above all, to love themselves, that person they face each morning in the mirror?
I am reminded of a story told to me by an attractive female in the media about her encounter with a powerful married politician. “His attraction for me was an unspoken subtext of our friendship. Each time he came to town he would make it a point to lose his security guards and come over to spend time with me — just to talk. Nothing more. One evening, over dinner at a restaurant, he grew wistful. He turned to me and said, ‘You need someone who is not on the fast track; some one who can devote his time to loving and nurturing you. You deserve nothing less.’
“We never spoke about it again,” she said. “But we knew what he meant, he was saying he could not be that person. He had chosen another life — or another life had chosen him. I appreciated him for his sensitivity in recognising his limitations and my needs. It took maturity and courage.”
“Do you meet now?” I asked her.
“No,” she replied. “I see him on TV.” And then she smiled: “He looks like he could do with some loving.”
Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com
