Illiberal India: Gauri Lankesh and the Age of Unreason by Chidanand Rajghatta

Author:Chidanand Rajghatta [Rajghatta, Chidanand]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Westland Publications
Published: 2018-05-26T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

TO THE LAST BREATH

ON 25 JANUARY 2000, P. Lankesh passed away in Bangalore following a heart attack, his self-abnegation of later years—when he had moderated and then stopped smoking and drinking—insufficient to overcome years of excess. He was only sixty-four, with plenty of creative juice left in him.

Girish Nikam, our journalist friend from Rajya Sabha TV, who also passed away in 2016 of a heart attack—again, caused by the reckless, high-stress lifestyle many journalists succumb to—phoned me in Washington DC to inform me of Lankesh’s death and to ask me to call Gauri, who was working in Delhi with Eenadu Television at that time.

She was inconsolable on the phone and I listened helplessly, also grieving the loss of a friend more than a one-time father-in-law. Lankesh may not have been a great father in the traditional sense but he was an immense figure in Gauri’s life, and an inspiration. She lived in awe of his literary flair and intellectual verve, and was his #1 starry-eyed fangirl, notwithstanding his seeming aloofness, especially when he was lost in the fog of creativity.

Gauri once wrote that her father didn’t even know what grade she was studying in at any given time; when visitors who came home asked, he would turn to her to find out. His absentmindedness and lack of interest and concern about workaday things was a joke with the kids. He didn’t even know how to work a television besides pressing a single on/off button on the remote. If the TV was on a channel other than the one he wanted to watch—usually the sports channel; he never bothered to watch news channels—someone had to surf it for him. I was actually amazed when he bought a car and learned to drive. Their first car was a red Maruti-lookalike called Dolphin, made by the now-defunct Sipani automobiles.

When Gauri flew home from Delhi, the last rites were already underway. Again, I could not make it to Bangalore in time. Relatives from Lankesh’s side, whom she had very little contact with, were plying all kinds of rituals on the mortal remains of a man who was avowedly agnostic and dismissive of superstition, ceremony and prayers. Not once do I recall him invoking gods, uttering a prayer, or going to a temple. He barely even had the patience to sit through our abbreviated wedding ceremony, and had to be coaxed by the priests to do the basics.

Gauri and her sister Kavitha kept vigil so that the funeral did not descend into a religious tamasha. They interred him with his favourite things, including some books and a bottle of whisky, much to the disapproval of the orthodox members of the family.

Gauri later related how they went to Appa’s farm to feed his favourite food—lemon rice and holige (a sweet bread)—to the spirits, hoping crows would be the via media. They were not really believers but I suspect they did it for their mother. But the crows just wouldn’t come down to peck at the food.

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