Race Course Road: A Novel Read online

  RACE COURSE ROAD

  Also by Seema Goswami

  Woman on Top

  {162}

  RACE

  COURSE

  ROAD

  A Novel

  SEEMA GOSWAMI

  ALEPH BOOK COMPANY

  An independent publishing firm

  promoted by Rupa Publications India

  First published in India in 2018

  by Aleph Book Company

  7/16 Ansari Road, Daryaganj

  New Delhi 110 002

  Copyright © Seema Goswami 2018

  The author has asserted her moral rights.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from Aleph Book Company.

  ISBN: 978-93-86021-90-8

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  For sale in the Indian subcontinent only.

  Typeset in Garamond by

  Special Effects Graphics Design Company, Mumbai

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

  For my husband, Vir

  For all the wonderful adventures we’ve been on—and those still to come

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER : ONE

  CHAPTER : TWO

  CHAPTER : THREE

  CHAPTER : FOUR

  CHAPTER : FIVE

  CHAPTER : SIX

  CHAPTER : SEVEN

  CHAPTER : EIGHT

  CHAPTER : NINE

  CHAPTER : TEN

  CHAPTER : ELEVEN

  CHAPTER : TWELVE

  CHAPTER : THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER : FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER : FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER : SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER : SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER : EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER : NINETEEN

  CHAPTER : TWENTY

  CHAPTER : TWENTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE

  Prime Minister Birendra Pratap Singh paused at the bottom of the steps and took a deep breath. The air was still cool even though they were now in the first week of April. He tuned out the roar of the crowd as he readied for his pre-rally ritual. The entourage behind him fell silent as Singh recited the Gayatri Mantra below his breath. Then, he folded his hands, bowed to an invisible God and bounded up to the stage.

  The cheers grew louder still as his head emerged into view. And then, as he bent down and touched his head to the stage as a sign of reverence, the audience went completely wild. The slogan: ‘Desh ka neta kaisa ho? Birendra Pratap jaisa ho!’ began resonating in the grounds of Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan.

  Birendra Pratap stepped up to the microphone and took a minute to soak in the approval of the crowd. The venue was full up, jostling room only. He waved to every section, he joined his hands in a namaste, he bowed low to acknowledge the warmth of his welcome.

  And then, he held up his hands in that universal sign asking for silence. Only when the cheers had died down completely did he begin. ‘Mere pyare saathiyon,’ he said in that thrilling baritone he had employed to such effect through the course of his political career, ‘aaj aap ko dekh kar, aap kay utsah ko dekh kar, bahut achcha laga.’ (My dear friends, it’s great to see you today, to see your enthusiasm.)

  The cheers began again. Birendra Pratap allowed them to build up to a crescendo before raising his hands again to ask for silence. And then, he began the speech that would launch his campaign for the next general election, scheduled a year from now.

  First came the achievements of the government, some of them real, others entirely imaginary. Then came the promises for the next five years, only some of which were even within the realms of possibility.

  Not that the crowd cared about such details. They were just happy to see their leader, resplendent in a sparkling white kurta-pyjama, his trademark tricolour scarf wrapped around his neck, do what he did best: ride the waves of rhetoric to weave a beautiful picture of the idyllic future that awaited them, so long as they had the good sense to vote for him.

  And what a splendid picture he made as he stood onstage. Standing tall at just over six feet, Birendra Pratap had the kind of aristocratic good looks that only generations of breeding can achieve. A high forehead (now framed by a receding hairline), a strong aquiline nose and a pugnacious jaw that hinted at the steel that lay at the core of him. And then, there were those piercing brown eyes that made people feel like they were the only ones who mattered when they were focused on them. A cheap politician’s trick, but one that no one performed better than the Indian Prime Minister

  It was with a rousing cry of ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ that Birendra Pratap bid farewell to the crowd. He turned and did a namaste to the party faithful lined up behind him on the stage, all of them applauding loudly to indicate just how much they loved him. Birendra Pratap’s lips twisted into a cynical smile as he allowed his Special Protection Group (SPG) contingent to sweep him off the stage. Each one of these bastards would knife him in the back without a second thought if they believed they could wrestle the leadership of the Loktantrik Janadesh Party (LJP) from him. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

  He felt a twinge in his knee as he clattered quickly down the stairs. There were days when he felt every one of his sixty-five years, and today was one of those days. But it was amazing how the energy of a cheering crowd could revive him.

  Birendra Pratap turned one last time to wave to the adoring faithful, who were calling out his name in an incessant chant. His grin grew wider as he saw a young boy perched on his father’s shoulders, holding a placard that read, ‘Singh is King.’

  Singh had always had a soft corner in his heart for children (though, God knows, he didn’t get much joy from his own). On a sudden impulse, he turned and began making his way in their direction. His SPG guards looked alarmed and immediately fell into a ring around him, effectively imprisoning him.

  ‘Out of my way,’ snapped Birendra Pratap, ‘I want to shake hands with that boy.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ came the apologetic reply from Shankar Roy, head of the SPG contingent. ‘I don’t that’s a good idea.’

  Birendra Pratap looked down his aristocratic nose at Roy, incredulity writ large on his face. ‘Out of my way,’ he said, in a voice vibrating with barely-controlled rage.

  The SPG huddle parted and the Prime Minister walked up to the fortified railings holding back the crowd. He took a selfie with the boy with the placard, he hugged the proud father and then walked on to shake hands with those further down the line. He was halfway down the line when he felt a pinprick on the flat of his palm. He looked down at his hand; it seemed fine. There was no blood, no bruising.

  Birendra Pratap was just telling himself that he must have imagined it when he suddenly felt his legs give way beneath him. He sank down to the ground and allowed the darkness to engulf him.

  ▪

  There was nothing Shankar Roy hated more than political rallies, especially those held at Ramlila Maidan. And never more so than when the Prime Minister was addressing them.

  There were just too many variables for him to feel like it was worth the risk. First there was the route from Race Course Road to the venue: fairly predictable and almost impossible to guard entirely even if they placed
uniformed cops every 200 yards. (Those neon pink ID cards they wore on their chests were a dead giveaway that a ‘VIP movement’ was on; talk about giving away the plot!) Then, there was the problem of the outer perimeter security, which was down to the Delhi Police—Roy did not have the best opinion of their capabilities. And then, there was the fact that the Prime Minister would be a sitting duck for an hour or so as he stood at the podium, with just a lectern protecting him from an assassin’s bullet.

  No, Shankar Roy didn’t like political rallies. And what he loathed even more was the fact that every Prime Minister he had ever worked for took special delight in plunging into the crowd afterwards, never sparing a thought for how difficult this made things for those guarding him.

  Roy was a veteran of the SPG set up to protect Prime Ministers and their families. The catalyst for its formation was the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. Gandhi had been gunned down in her own home by her own guards, two disaffected Sikhs who wanted to avenge the attack on the Golden Temple, a military assault that she had authorized (ironically, she had been asked only weeks earlier if they could be reassigned on security grounds, and had refused to allow that).

  After Gandhi’s death, the government set up a special committee to look into the security arrangements of Prime Ministers. And this led eventually to the formation of the SPG, an agency tasked specifically with the protection of the Prime Minister and his family. Its members were handpicked from across services like the police and paramilitary forces, and headed by an Inspector General (IG) of police, who was designated as the director.

  The way the arrangement worked was that the SPG would provide physical security for the PM while the Intelligence Bureau (IB) would provide intelligence to the operational agencies.

  This system had been in place ever since Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister. And after he was assassinated in a suicide bomb attack after his SPG was withdrawn because he had demitted office, a further change was implemented in the law. Now all Prime Ministers and their families were entitled to SPG protection for ten years after they left the confines of Race Course Road.

  Shankar Roy himself had put in a five-year stint in Delhi Police after passing the Civil Services Exam and joining the Indian Police Service (IPS). A high-flier, he had been seconded to the IB for a couple of years before being moved to the SPG. By now, he had been part of the security detail of three Prime Ministers, but none of them had been as challenging a charge as Birendra Pratap, who fancied himself a ‘man of the people’.

  This was the first rally in which Roy was working since his promotion to become head of the Prime Minister’s security detail, and he desperately wanted things to go well. Which is why, against his better judgement, he fell back when Birendra Pratap snapped ‘Out of my way’ at him. But he stayed close to the PM, one arm positioned lightly around him while the other stayed free to grab his firearm should he need to.

  His eyes, hidden behind his Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, constantly scanned the crowd in the immediate vicinity of the Prime Minister. All he could see were smiling, happy faces, flushed with excitement at seeing the PM up close. There was some amount of pushing and shoving as everyone vied to shake Birendra Pratap’s hand. But Roy was not unduly worried about that; he knew that the barricades would hold firm.

  He hurried the PM up imperceptibly by moving faster along the line. He could see the exit now, where the prime ministerial convoy stood waiting, engines already fired up. Then, just as Roy was turning around to head for the cars, he felt Birendra Pratap slump against his arm. Thinking that the PM had lost his footing, Roy propped him up and propelled him forward. The next thing he knew was that the PM was sprawled on the floor in front of him, a look of bewilderment on his face.

  Roy knew instantly—and instinctively—that this was no ordinary fall.

  The SPG detail immediately sprang into action, the training of years taking over in a moment of crisis. They closed in around the Prime Minister, two of them lifted him by his legs while two grabbed his arms, and the others threw a protective cordon around them. Propelled by force of habit, they ran towards the armoured BMW in which the PM usually travels before Roy shouted out, ‘No, the ambulance!’

  Roy gestured to the PM’s personal physician, Dr Dipesh Saxena, to follow them in. Saxena scrambled into the ambulance which took off at top speed, sirens blaring so loud he felt they could be heard all the way to their final destination, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

  By now, the crowd could tell that something had gone very wrong. There was a moment of stunned silence followed by the most infernal noise as 50,000 people tried to make their way out of the grounds at once. There were screams from those being trampled over on their way to the exit, panicked shouts from those who found themselves penned into the enclosures.

  The media, which had been positioned on a small, elevated stage to the side of the ground, couldn’t really tell what was going on from their vantage point. But the cameras continued to roll, focusing on the panicked crowd and the prime ministerial convoy that was driving away at top speed.

  The Delhi Police, who were guarding the media enclosure, insisted that no one could leave. Not until they had been given the all-clear by the SPG. But Manisha Patel, fiery reporter-turned-editor of the All India Television News Network (AITNN), was having none of this. She slipped across to the back of the enclosure, gesturing to her cameraman to follow, while the rest of the media party gawked uselessly. She tied her dupatta to one of the planks of the stage and began clambering down its length, jumping when she was a few feet short of the ground.

  Her cameraman looked a bit dubious. Subhash Tulli had covered countless demonstrations and a few wars. But truth be told, he was no longer a young man. He was about 20 kilos heavier, for one thing. And that dupatta didn’t look like it was going to take his weight.

  So, to put off the moment of truth, he tied his camera to the dupatta and lowered it first, watching heart in his mouth until Manisha grabbed it securely. Then, taking a quite literal leap of faith, he began his own descent, opening his eyes only when he was on terra firma.

  And then, the two of them were off, making their way to the front of the jostling crowd, hoping to find someone who had actually seen what happened and could make sense of it for them.

  Manisha kept her eye on the ‘Singh is King’ placard, which, incongruously enough, was still held aloft. She elbowed her way through the crowd and zeroed in on the father of the young boy, who was now wailing loudly. Subhash focused his camera as best he could as Manisha asked, shouting to be heard above the roar of the crowd, ‘Kya hua? PM ko kya hua?’ (What happened to the PM?)

  Before the man could answer, voices piped up from among the crowd around him. One said that Birendra Pratap had fainted. Another insisted that he had been shot. Yet another shouted out that he had been slashed by a razor.

  Clearly, nobody knew anything. So, Manisha made a quick calculation. Her best shot lay in following the story. And that meant following the Prime Minister to his next destination. And if SPG was following protocol, Birendra Pratap’s ambulance was headed for AIIMS in south Delhi. That’s where the Prime Minister of India is supposed to be treated in case of illness or injury. That’s where a wing is kept in readiness for him at all times, with the best specialists on standby. And that’s where Singh’s personal physician (also attached to AIIMS) would be headed, having called ahead to get things organized.

  With a quick word to her cameraman, Manisha began sprinting towards the parking lot, where the AITNN Outside Broadcasting (OB) van was stationed.

  ▪

  Dr Dipesh Saxena often wondered what had possessed him to volunteer to become part of the team of physicians attending the Prime Minister. For about a month, it had been exciting to shadow the Prime Minister, going to places and seeing things that he wouldn’t otherwise have been able to. But after a while the job began to pall; there were just so many hours a man could waste waiting for something to hap
pen while willing that nothing would. Also, he couldn’t help but feel that it was a criminal waste of resources to have a doctor and four paramedics shadow the PM at all times, when they could easily be doing something more useful with actual patients.

  But that was the arrangement that had been in place for years now. And it wasn’t likely to change. After all, nobody wanted a repeat of what had happened when Indira Gandhi had been shot in her Safdarjung Road residence by the very men who were assigned to protect her.

  The driver of the ambulance stationed at her house had gone off on a tea break at that exact moment, so the bleeding PM had to be bundled into the backseat of a car (her head nestled in the lap of her daughter-in-law, Sonia) and rushed to AIIMS. In the commotion, nobody had thought to warn AIIMS that an injured Prime Minister would be arriving, in need of urgent surgery. By the time the car had cleared security and a surgical team had been assembled, it was all over. Indira Gandhi was dead. (She had probably died the moment she was hit—but that wasn’t an admission that anyone wanted to make.)

  That kind of thing was unimaginable now. The Prime Minister was never more than a few feet away from medical help, no matter where in the world he was. He had a fully-staffed medical unit assigned to him, with doctors and paramedics taking shifts to shadow him.

  Dr Saxena had been on the PM’s duty roster for a year now. And he still had another year to go. My God, but the tedium would drive him insane well before that, he thought, as he headed for the ambulance, which was all set to drive off at the back of the prime ministerial cavalcade.

  The paramedics seated inside were playing some sort of video game on their cell phones. Dr Saxena idly wondered if it was Candy Crush; and how he could block the many invitations that came his way on Facebook to play it. That’s when he heard an almighty commotion break out on the rally grounds. He turned around to get a better look and saw the SPG squad carrying Birendra Pratap and sprinting towards the ambulance.