My father would often bring home people like Vinod Khanna, Sujit Sen, Satyadev Dubey and Suraj Sanim, his friends from the film fraternity, sometimes as late as 3 or 3.30 a.m. He would wake up my mother at that ungodly hour and order her to make food for all of them. She never refused. She would get up and religiously cook. And after dinner, Mr Bhatt and his friends would get drunk and sleep till noon.
This continued for a while, until my mother told my father that she couldn’t take it any more. Finally, they took the decision to part ways and live separately.
Things could have ended there, and I don’t know what would have happened. But for some reason, my father decided to reconcile with my mother. Maybe one can attribute this to the influence of U.G. Krishnamurti. UG had apparently told him to reconcile with my mother and suggested that having another child was a way to do that. The family was complete again—my parents didn’t fight as much for a while; my sister was happier, and I was born.
The moment my father found out that his wife had given birth to a baby boy, he decided to name him Mohammed, in keeping with his secular ideals. In vain did people try and reason with him to choose another name, a Hindu one. Maybe it was the consequence of his Islamic background, since he grew up under the care of a mother who was a Shia Muslim. Her name was Shirin Mohammed Ali. She belonged to Lucknow and had come to Mumbai before Independence. His father, Nana Bhai Bhatt, was a Gujarati Brahmin film producer, mostly of B-grade Bollywood movies. Despite being a Shia Muslim, his mother encouraged him to maintain the gotra of his father, Bhargava. I am not sure whether it was this religious duality, or simply a secular defiance against communal forces that was on his mind, but he was adamant that his son should be called Mohammed Bhatt. It was only after some neighbours from a Vaidya family intervened and reasoned strongly with him, telling him that in these times of turmoil and riots, his expression of secularism would not be appreciated, and that his son would suffer greatly for it, that he finally relented and named me Rahul Bhatt.
However, his understanding of U.G. Krishnamurti’s philosophy didn’t seem to translate into real life. He had fathered a son, but seemed to have no feelings for him. Throughout my childhood, as far as I can remember, I never really felt my father’s presence in my life. I believe that every child finds compassion in his mother and strength and power in his father. I found a lot of compassion and unconditional love in my mother, who has remained my bulwark against the world. But whenever I needed his strength or power, my father figure was absent. So what would you call someone who has a mother but not a father? A bastard, right? I felt that I was Mahesh Bhatt’s illegitimate child.
I watched my mother struggle. I watched how she took care of my sister, me, my studies, my daily activities, my home, meeting my teachers, arranging my tuitions, taking care of my clothes, my requirements, tiffin—in short, everything—as my father continued to remain absent. My mother must have come to terms with this. I remember Mr Bhatt telling her that what she was doing for Pooja and me was something every mother did for her children, and that she was not doing anything special. But he himself never contributed, unlike other fathers around him. And I felt helpless when I saw my mother’s pain. Imagine that you are a kid, watching your mother suffer in front of your eyes. There is nothing you can do. There were times when she didn’t eat, when she just sat staring into space. It was only with great difficulty that I could get through to her at such times, as if reaching into an endless abyss to pull her out. Mr Bhatt did that to her. Yes, my father did give my mother money regularly and did take care of our expenses to an extent, but he never satisfied my psychological and emotional needs.
I did many unusual things for a child of my age. When I was ten, I acquired my first Rambo knife. Looking back, I realize that not many boys of my age, even those who were interested in guns and weapons, would have actually acquired such a weapon. I suppose it was my immature way of trying to say to the world that it hardly mattered that I did not have a strong fatherly presence in my life, that I didn’t need one.
He showered love on Pooja, though, and to be honest, I could never understand why he was so besotted with my sister and gave her so much affection while abandoning me completely. When Pooja was sixteen and I was seven years of age, my father cast her in a movie with Anupam Kher. The film was titled Daddy and it gave Pooja her first break. Pooja, you fit the role to a T, Mr Bhatt said, and that is why I decided to cast you in that role. The movie got a lot of critical acclaim, although I don’t know how successful it was commercially. It hurt me a lot, immature child that I was, that my father always used to give so much love to Pooja but never to me.
After I turned ten, I started slipping into depression, which manifested itself in a huge craving for food. I began eating everything I could lay my hands on, be it junk food or anything remotely edible. As a result, I started putting on weight, and slowly grew to become a very fat child. By the time I turned sixteen, I had become an unusually obese and depressed boy. I spent lonely hours thinking about my father, imagining that he was around, and making up stories and movies in my mind about him. I made up movies in which he would be a perfect father to me. He would return from work and I would go up to him and demand chocolates and toys like every other normal child, and he would pat me on the head, put his hand on my shoulder or hold my hand, as if he were just another normal father. I used to feel good when I dreamt up such things.
The reality, however, was harsh. Whenever I actually met him, he was either not in his senses, or was angry or busy, or else simply not bothered about paying me any attention. I realized that he was disinterested in me and seemed to want to disassociate himself from me.
He was never around. Not when I wanted a toy, not when I wanted to play; he didn’t even bother bringing me a gift on my birthday. I was nothing to him. I couldn’t be angry with him, even though I could see what he had done to my mother. I wanted him, I needed him, and I was trying to love him like a son should love his father. At least he could have tried too. If he had faked some affection and attention, it would have made everything so much better. But he didn’t even pretend. I sat in front of him, and felt non-existent. Gradually, I grew angry. I knew how unhappy he was making my mother. Every time he visited, it ended with my mother crying for hours. And every time I saw my mother’s swollen face, her eyes red with tears, I knew that her life was coming apart. There was nothing I could do to console her, to lessen the pain and grief that her husband was causing her.
The final blow came when I had just turned sixteen. Pooja had done a nude photo shoot, wearing nothing but body paint, for the cover of Stardust. Suddenly, we became targets for the moral police. Activists from Hindutva groups gheraoed our building, shouting slogans; some even threw stones at our house. Finally, the police had to be called in to bring the situation under control.
Throughout this episode, Mr Bhatt was conspicuous by his absence. Of course, he gave quotes to various media houses and magazines, supporting Pooja and us, and condemning what the maniacs outside our house were doing, but not once did he actually come to the troubled area and defend his family on the ground. I was the only man around to handle the situation. Overnight, this fat, depressed kid, who was himself confused and unsure of who he was, had to become a pillar of strength for the two women in the family.
I had not had a proper childhood, and was totally unequipped to handle the situation. To top it all, even the police, who had come to restore law and order, were looking at us accusingly. Their eyes said that through Pooja we had brought this ‘shame’ on ourselves, and that we had only ourselves to blame. So I was thrown into a situation where, on the one hand, I had to deal with mad mischief mongers, accusing cops and the simmering tension, and on the other, I had to make sure that my family was safe. If only Pooja had thought of the repercussions before she agreed to that photo shoot!
But I can’t blame her, because she was only trying to further her career. I felt very sorry for my mother, and hated the fact that she was being sub
jected to such embarrassment. But in that situation, at that moment when I had to let go of my boyhood and become a man overnight, it struck me that more than anything else, the most potent feeling that I experienced was one of intense hatred towards Mr Mahesh Bhatt.
He had given his approval, albeit unspoken, to Pooja’s photo shoot, but had washed his hands of the whole matter afterwards. It was because of his absence and his inability to stand up for us on that fateful night that I came to hate him like I hated no one else. His absence, his partiality towards my sister, the fights that I had witnessed between him and my mother, and her swollen, tearful eyes afterwards, my sense of abandonment—and now this! My hatred of him was overwhelming, it consumed me.
FOUR
The coffee cup was empty, and it seemed that Headley was wide awake now. For the merest fraction of a second, Behera wondered what would be done with the cup, and found the answer to his unspoken question almost immediately. Without any discernible prompting from within the room, the door opened, and the man who had brought in the coffee walked in again, and like before, without uttering a single word, picked up the cup and walked out without looking at anybody, shutting the door behind him.
So this must have been a daily routine for the past eight months, thought Behera, noting that neither Headley nor either of the two CIA men had shown any change in their calm demeanour, which could only mean that they had been interrogating Headley as thoroughly as only the CIA could. It also meant, he realized, that Headley must have given the CIA a wealth of information, of which they were being allowed a glimpse of just a fraction. It angered him to see that the West was treating India with its usual arrogance and disdain, even when someone purportedly theirs had made India the victim.
But there was no time to dwell on that now. Behera quickly brought himself out of his musings and into the reality of that tiny interrogation room, where Headley continued to speak, revealing more details about his earlier days and what had driven him to jehad.
My hatred towards India is very old. The antagonism has its roots in my childhood.
I grew up in Pakistan. My parents Sayed Salim Gilani and Serrill Headley had come back to Pakistan from Washington. My father was one of the elite of the country; at least two-thirds of the population would have heard of him. Because of his status, I was enrolled in one of the best schools in the country, an elite military school called Hasan Abdal Cadet College, around forty kilometres from Rawalpindi.
The college and school were named after the city, which got its name from a Sufi saint. There was a Pakistani military base in the city, and the college was also known as Cadet College because of the military training it imparted.
I was an average student. But I was very interested in sports, which was encouraged in Hasan Abdal. It was because of our common interest in sports that I made friends with Tahawwur Rana in Class 7. He too was very interested in sports, and also came from an upper-class Pakistani family. We hit it off quite quickly, and by the time we left school years later, we were close friends.
In the school, children were given military training from a very young age. But nobody was radical; nobody gave provocative speeches or propagated inflammatory ideas, not even when the 1971 war was going on and our country was fighting with our neighbour India.
But everything changed one day. And that day altered my life completely.
I was in Class 9. Pakistan was at war with India. There were bombings almost every day. That day, India bombed my school. I heard much later that the two bombs that fell on my school were not intended, but I still don’t believe it. My school was hit and a portion of it was destroyed. Two people were killed, though I never found out who they were.
That day, for the first time, our teacher gave a very provocative speech against India. He explained at length about the war between the countries, and how by bombing our school, the Indians had shown that they were targeting not only military installations but civilians, and even children in schools. He said that Indians wanted Pakistanis to remain backward and uneducated, and did not want our country to prosper.
Our teacher’s speech touched a raw nerve, and that was when I first experienced a feeling of intense hatred towards our neighbour. I had always thought that as neighbours we were supposed to be cordial towards each other, but that day I felt that the Indians had nefarious designs, and clearly wanted to destroy every Pakistani, including children. The seed of hatred had been sown in my mind, and slowly, with time, this hatred grew to encompass others too—kafirs as well as anyone who was against Pakistan and wanted to harm her.
I grew up normal in every respect, but with that intense hatred lodged deeply and firmly inside me. Life around me was changing too, and not for the better. My parents kept fighting, and slowly, as I grew older, I realized that the idyllic love that had brought them together had died. They were constantly at loggerheads because of the different people they were and their contrasting backgrounds—elite Pakistani and high-society American. Their cultures were vastly different, and their love couldn’t bridge the yawning gap that was opening up between them. Finally they separated, and my mother went back to Chicago, heartbroken because she had to leave me behind.
By the time I turned seventeen, my education in Pakistan was over. My father had remarried, and unfortunately, I did not get along well with my stepmother. My father too had grown distant from me, and more attached to his children from his second marriage. After finishing school, I was left almost alone in Pakistan.
My neighbours had given me a sobriquet, ‘gora’, which was a pejorative used for Americans or Britons. Unlike the average Pakistani, I was fair-complexioned, almost like an American. I did not like the term, and thought it was humiliating. Strangely enough, the unusual fairness I initially despised gave me an advantage later in my life.
It was at this time that my mother contacted me from Chicago. She had been to a bartending school in Bryn Mawr, and had used her experience to acquire a pub on Second Street near Chestnut. She invited me to join her. ‘Who knows, son, you may actually enjoy yourself more here than in Pakistan,’ she told me. As there was really not much left for me in Pakistan, I decided to take her advice. At seventeen, I moved to Chicago to live with my mother.
When I arrived, I was given the reception of a prince. In fact, people there actually started calling me Prince. I saw that my mother led a very different kind of life here in Chicago from what she was used to in Pakistan. It was a very social, hectic and active life. Her business was doing very well, mostly because of her own resourcefulness. She knew exactly how to attract customers. The first thing she had done upon acquiring the pub was to rechristen it the Khyber Pass Pub. It was an exotic name, the kind she knew would automatically attract patrons.
My mother used her background as a Pakistani wife who had lived in Pakistan for many years to her advantage, and would regale people with tales and anecdotes from her past life. It helped that she was a veritable lookalike of yesteryear Hollywood actress Rosalind Russell. She also had a memorable laugh—hearty and full throated. People came to listen to, and look at, this woman who had been through so much and had achieved such a lot, and this of course helped business. For the first time in my life, I was happy. At least one of my parents wanted me in their life; my mother, in fact, had given me the warmest welcome I could have hoped for.
But all this came at a price. After having spent most of my life in Pakistan, coming to Chicago and seeing the way my mother and the people around her lived was a severe culture shock. To be honest, most of it was due to my mother. I’d had an orthodox upbringing in Pakistan, and all my life I had seen women wearing burkhas. Now I watched my mother being friendly with nearly every stranger who came to her pub, touching people, hugging and kissing and laughing, and drinking wine and beer. It shocked me, and I felt torn between a strange revulsion and happiness at being accepted into that society.
In my heart, I wanted to go back to Pakistan, but in my mind, I knew there was nothing there for me. Mor
eover, I knew that my father didn’t want me there. Here, on the other hand, my mother did want me to be with her, but I felt like an outsider, a misfit in the milieu and social fabric of Chicago.
As the days passed, I became increasingly reclusive. I refrained from going out much. I did not have many friends. My mother tried getting me to assist her with her business and help her out in the pub, but I couldn’t. Drawing on the years she had spent in Pakistan, in a Pakistani family, she even spoke to me in Urdu, trying to coax me out of my shell and put me at ease. But it didn’t work. I withdrew from the hectic social life and started spending more and more time in front of the television. My mother even enrolled me in a school called the Valley Forge Military Academy to try and help me settle in and move on in life, but it didn’t help. I failed simply because of a lack of will and concentration, and couldn’t last even a semester. The same thing happened when she got me into accounting classes at the Philadelphia Community College. Here too I couldn’t focus, and failed to get a degree.
I wasn’t a teenager any more. But I was a confused young man, still perplexed, unsure and utterly clueless about what to do with my life. My mother came to my rescue once again. She thought that if she could get me into some sort of business, it would distract me from the turmoil and confusion I was going through. She helped me set up a video store called Fliks Video in Manhattan, New York. It was a well-equipped video store, and became quite popular in the neighbourhood. I enjoyed managing that store, one, because it kept me occupied, and two, because it took me away from my mother’s outrageously immodest behaviour with other people.
For a while, a couple of years maybe, I focused on the business. But whatever I did, I was still unable to fit into the American way of life. Soon, I started making the wrong kinds of friends, the kind that introduced me to dope. I started small, smoking pot. Gradually I moved on to cocaine and heroin. For someone who had never experienced such things before, and came from a background such as mine, it was hugely interesting. It provided me an escape from the real world. For a while at least I could lie back, feel my body go light and wispy, and let myself just drift away, leaving the brutal, cruel reality behind me. It felt as if I was becoming a different man. Surprisingly, the Islamic mullahs who regularly condemn liquor so vociferously had absolutely no opinion on drugs, which meant that I was not committing any sin.