he knew, the blue rock cones, the little town on the coast. They had all pretended that the world had been made safe; but deep down they all knew that the war was coming, and that one day the roads would disappear.
One day, at the beginning of the insurgency, they had played this game at their Sunday lunch. Let us assume, they said, that we have cut off the world. Let us imagine what it would be like living here with nothing coming in. First, of course, the cars would go. Then there would be no medicines. Then there would be no cloth. There would be no light. So, at the lunch, with the boys in uniform and the four-wheel drives in the sandy yard, they had played the game, imagining deprivation. And it had all come to pass.
Willie, full of shame in Berlin at the thought of his behaviour in Africa, thought, “I mustn’t hide any longer. Sarojini is right.”
But, following old habit, he didn’t tell her what he was thinking.
THEY WERE WALKING one afternoon below the trees in one of the great shopping avenues. Willie stopped in front of the Patrick Hellmann shop to look at the Armani clothes in the window. Twenty years before he had known nothing about clothes, had no eye for cloth or cut; now it was different.
Sarojini said, “Who would you say is the most important person in the world?”
Willie said, “Armani is pretty great, but I don’t think you want me to say that. You want me to say something else?”
“Try.”
“Ronald Reagan.”
“I thought you would say that.”
Willie said, “I said it to provoke you.”
“No, no. I think you really believe it. But I don’t mean powerful. I mean important. Does the name Kandapalli Seetaramiah mean anything to you?”
“Is he the most important man?”
“An important man is not necessarily a powerful man. Lenin in 1915 or 1916 wasn’t a powerful man. An important man in my book is someone who is going to bend the course of history. When, in a hundred years, the definitive history of twentieth-century revolution comes to be written, and various ethnocentric prejudices have disappeared, Kandapalli will be up there with Lenin and Mao. Of that I have no doubt. And you haven’t even heard of him. I know.”
“Is he part of the Tamil movement?”
“He’s not a Tamil. But Kandapalli and the Tamil movement are parts of the same regenerative process in our world. If only I could get you to believe in that process you will be a changed man.”
Willie said, “I know nothing of French history apart from the storming of the Bastille. But I still have an idea of Napoleon. I am sure I’ll understand about Kandapalli if you tell me.”
“I wonder. Kandapalli’s towering importance as a revolutionary is that he did away with the Lin-Piao line.”
Willie said, “You are going too fast for me.”
“You are being provocative. You are pretending. You must know about Lin-Piao. The whole world knows about Lin-Piao. He gave us the idea of liquidating the class enemy. It was simple and exciting in the beginning and it seemed the way ahead. In India we also liked it because it came from China and we thought it put us right up there with the Chinese. In fact it destroyed the revolution. The Lin-Piao line turned the revolution into middle-class theatre. Young middle-class exhibitionists in the towns putting on peasant clothes and staining their skin with walnut juice and going out to join the gangs and thinking that revolution meant killing policemen. The police had no trouble in wiping them out. People in that kind of movement always underestimate the police, I don’t know why. I suppose it’s because they think a little too highly of themselves.
“All of this happened while you were in Africa, where you were witnessing a real war. Afterwards here people would say that we had lost a whole generation of brilliant young revolutionaries and would never be able to replace them. I felt like that myself, and was cast down for many months. Intellectual advance is slow in India. I don’t have to tell you that. The landless labourer moves to the town, and his son perhaps becomes a clerk. The clerk’s son perhaps gets a higher education, and then his son becomes a doctor or a scientist. And so we grieved. It had taken generations to create that pool of revolutionary talent, and the police in a short time had destroyed the struggle and intellectual development of