Bhatt Rahul - Headley and I

S. Hussain Zaidi

with

Rahul Bhatt

Foreword by Mahesh Bhatt

You have a choice, son. Either you go through life whining like a victim, wearing your troubled childhood like a badge on your sleeve and earning sympathy from people who dont matter or care, or you become a survivor. You use your pain and your rage as fuel to hurl you to the top of the heap. I did the latter. That is why I am where I am. Do you know, all said and done, you and I do have one thing in common. A childhood without a father

I was talking to Rahul as we travelled through the vast, awe-inspiring landscape of Spiti. This was literally Gods land. Thanks to my daughter Pooja, who was shooting her first directorial venture there, we were in Kibber, the highest motorable village in the world. This had become a rare opportunity for Rahul and me to be alone together after many years. In fact, after that painful night in 1985, when I had walked away from his home, when he was barely three years old. Little did I know that, years later, life would deal him a hand whereby he would be forced to make that choice.

Why do you want to call him Mohammed, beta? asked my mother, who had spent most of her life concealing her Muslim identity. She feared that what we called a secular India still viewed Muslims as the other.

Because I want your Islamic legacy to continue through my son in some small way, I replied.

My mother finally prevailed by ganging up with my Anglo-Indian Christian wife and my very reasonable, sage-like Maharashtrian Brahmin neighbour, and my son was called Rahul, alias Sunny.

In retrospect, I shudder to think what would have happened to my son in 2009, if he had been called Mohammed Bhatt.

Rahul was born to help stitch together my relationship with my childhood sweetheart, Lorraine Bright (Kiran Bhatt), which was by then in tatters. And I remember embracing the role of fatherhood once again with all my heart and soul.

A rare, early memory of Sunny and me together surfaces. Dawn is breaking over Pali Hill. I am an unemployed, struggling film-maker. I am wheeling Sunny in his pram on the deserted slopes of an affluent Pali Hill, taking him for a morning walk. A very happily drunk actor of some repute, returning from a late-night party, appears on the scene. Seeing me in an unlikely parental avatar with my little boy melts his heart. Bending down to Sunny, and breathing alcoholic fumes all over him, he gushes, Will you remember how your father is taking you for this morning walk when everyone is sleeping? Or will you, too, like all sons, forget? Saying this, he slobbers a kiss on me and sways off to his car. Dont ask me why, but that very funny memory moves me today.

Memories Memories are the stuff of life. Man is memory after all. When I look within, I find that I dont have memories of me with my son. A flourishing career, a second marriage, my quest for truth, all perhaps contributed in a way to clutter my life up, and leave me less and less time to spend with my son. (I hardly spent any time with my two daughters from my second marriage either during this phase.) Though I always continued to be a provider in every way, and a parental figure who stood by him through thick and thin, I guess the small things were overlooked. I was not able to give him the time of day when it came to the everyday things, the mundane, the normal time that father and son get to spend with each other. Like the time I spent with him when I was a failure and unemployed. The bitter truth was that I had become what I hated. All my life I blamed my own father for not doing these things with me. And now I was doing the same. All I wanted was to be able to correct this. But I didnt know how.

And then one day fate intervened to give me what I wanted. In fact, it seemed like the entire universe, no less, had conspired to give me a very bizarre chance to realize this desire!

I think this David Headley that the intelligence agencies are talking about is the guy I got to know through my fitness buddy Vilas Warak. I am certain that the Rahul they keep referring to is me, said my son to me over the phone.

It was just another day, but with that the curtains to one of the most trying phases of my life opened. For the world, it was entertainment. For me, it was nothing short of a catastrophe.

What should I do? Pooja and Mummy are saying that I should seek your advice and go to the police. What should I do, Pops? he asked, trying to sound normal, but I could hear the dread in his voice.

It was bizarre. Of all the cities in the world, it seemed that a terrorist called David Headley had picked this one. And then, on top of that, of all the millions of people in this teeming metropolis, he had chosen my son to befriend! I was in possibly the biggest dilemma of my life. In this world, where we keep talking about courage and duty, parents, however, are programmed to steer their offspring away from danger and to avoid risks. Dont we train our children to seek out safety, to be wary of strangers, to fasten their seat belts, and to look all over the place before crossing the road? The very thought of losing them to some careless act of theirs or someone elses haunts us day and night, and propels us to hover over them continuously.

But you are what you do, not what you say you ought to do. The whole family was being tested. Were we going to be mute spectators, or risk the public glare and perform the role that destiny seemed to have chosen for us?

The first impulse was to push away this impending tsunami that seemed to be moving steadily towards us, and keep silent. One had seen innumerable accounts of how this phobic post-26/11 public mood was propelling investigative agencies to act in the most unjust and inhuman manner towards so many innocents, and in particular to so many poor Muslim boys who were incarcerated for no real reason. Also, the thought that right-wing forces, with whom I have been fighting bitter battles, along with their plants in the media, would seize this opportunity to tear me to shreds and harm my son, was daunting to say the least. I realized only too well that this was not some television show about some unfortunate guy out there that I could switch off with the press of a button. This was real life, this was my son, and he was at the other end of the telephone line, waiting for an answer that could change his life.

I asked him a question. Have you done anything that you are not telling me? Because if you have, you will have to bear the consequences of your own deeds, son. But if you havent, you have nothing to fear. Hold your head up high and go to the police.

Before he hung up, he laughed. Pops, Ive done nothing wrong. Trust me.

What followed were the best of times and the worst of times. The worst because the very culture that pretended to admire and express gratitude towards the men who had sacrificed their lives in the carnage of 26/11, turned around and put these two young men in the dock. Rahul, Vilas, our family and I became the staple diet of hungry news watchers, night after torturous night. Right-wing forces combined with news channels to deliberately create suspicion around my son and demonize him. What I could never understand is how, instead of applauding these two courageous boys for helping clueless investigative agencies gain deep insights into the actions of this double agent, everyone and anyone came to the conclusion that they were guilty of treason. In fact, they were heroes. Vilas even lost his job and has not got it back to this day.

It would be fair to say that the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Mumbai Police and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers behaved with tremendous dignity and applauded the boys privately if not publicly. But my so-called friends and relatives suddenly shrank into the background somewhere, fearing some kind of terrible crime was about to be uncovered. I, who had stood up for every Tom Dick and Harry, suddenly found myself alone. My brave and fiery daughter Pooja and I formed a firewall around Sunny and fought the battle on a daily basis, waiting for the tide to turn in our favour.