The Solitude of Emperors by David Davidar Read Free Book Online

became an integral part of the editorial team, I no longer had much time to read because there was always work to do, research for Sakshi and Mr Sorabjee, sub-editing under Mr Desai’s expert guidance, correspondence to be dealt with, phones to be answered and files to be kept up to date. As the two most junior people in the office, Meher and I quickly formed a bond. We would help each other out and often take a few minutes during the morning tea break, when Divakar the peon served us all tea and Marie biscuits, to chat and joke and trade harmless gossip. But even my liking for her and my appreciation of my other colleagues paled into insignificance when compared with the presence of Mr Sorabjee in my life.
    I had never really had such a role model before, nobody in my family or my immediate environment had possessed the requisite stature, and I found myself craving his approval and attention. He dealt mainly with Sakshi and was otherwise well protected by Mrs Dastur, but it was enough for me just to have him around, and on the days he singled me out for praise I was exhilarated. If Sakshi had sparked my interest in religions it was through Mr Sorabjee that I began to understand just how insidiously faith was being politicized and perverted in the country. ‘We should consider ourselves fortunate that the two religions that have dominated India’s history, Buddhism and Hinduism, are two of the most benign and inclusive religions ever conceived by man. That is why, no matter what they do, the fundamentalists can never change the basic nature of our country. But they can do plenty of damage and that is why we must never stop speaking out,’ he said to me one afternoon while discussing the forthcoming issue’s cover story, a brilliant essay on Indian identity by a famous economist. That day, on my way home, thinking about the single-minded purpose that had informed his life, I wanted it for myself. And gradually, what had started as a desire to emulate Mr Sorabjee evolved into a genuine belief in the ideas and philosophy that motivated my mentor.
     
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    The seasons wheeled and turned in their heedless way, the brief spring was followed by summer and then a particularly severe monsoon. The city’s services broke down almost immediately. Gutters overflowed, houses and apartment buildings fell down, parts of the city flooded, drowning cars, lorries and the occasional drunk, and after a few weeks of this, my health began to give way. I had a cold or a mild fever almost constantly, and for the first time since I had arrived in the city I began to feel low. I found my night shifts especially trying. In the badly lit streets around the press it was impossible to avoid wading through stretches of stagnant water polluted by sewage, muck and industrial waste. One night on my way home, in weather so foul that even the most desperate whores and street people had been driven to find shelter, I was subjected to a final indignity: I fell through an open manhole, and was plunged up to my throat in foul-smelling sewage. Fortunately I wasn’t hurt in any way and managed to scramble out, but that night I caught a chill and was laid up for four days with a high fever.
    My room-mate, an advertising executive called Rao who spent most of his nights out drinking and sleeping with an assortment of girlfriends, could only care for me in an abstracted way; his assistance, for which I was not ungrateful, consisted of buying me some strips of Crocin from a local pharmacy and bringing me tea and a couple of slices of toast from the mess in the morning. Thankfully I was befriended by Deepak, my next-door neighbour, who I discovered was originally from a town not far from K—. He would look in twice a day, once in the morning before he set off for work, and once in the evening when he returned, usually bearing a packet of food—baida rotis from Bade Mian, uppuma from the Udipi on the corner or mutton korma from the Afghan restaurant behind the