The Moors Last Sigh

Christ.’
    ‘Miranda,’ said Abraham, rising, ‘that’s enough.’
    ‘And I’ll tell you something, Mr Big Businessman Abie,’ Vasco said, beginning to giggle. ‘Let me give you a tip. Only one power in this damn country is strong enough to stand up against those gods and it isn’t blankety blank sockular specialism. It isn’t blankety blank Pandit Nehru and his blankety blank protection-of-minorities Congress watch-wallahs. You know what it is? I’ll tell you what it is. Corruption. You get me? Bribery, and.’
    He lost his balance and fell backwards. Two bearers in gold-buttoned white Nehru jackets held him, preparing to remove him from the party at Abraham’s signal. But Abraham Zogoiby paused, and allowed the scene to play itself out.
    ‘Jolly old damn fine bribery and grease,’ said Vasco, in tearful tones, as if speaking of an old and beloved dog. ‘Backhanders, payoffs, sweeteners. You follow me? Abie-ji: are you with me? V. Miranda’s definition of democracy: one man one bribe. That’s the way. That’s the big secret. That’s it.’ His hands rushed to his mouth in sudden alarm. ‘Oh. Oh. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid Vasco. It’s no secret. Abie-ji being such a bleddy big shot, of course he knows it all. Such a bleddy big grandmother sucking so many bleddy big eggs. Apologies. Please to excuse.’
    Abraham nodded; the white jackets hooked their arms under his armpits and began to drag him backwards.
    ‘One more thing,’ Vasco roared, so loudly that the bearers faltered. He hung in their arms like a stuffed doll, waving an insane finger. ‘Piece of good advice for you all. Get on the boats with the British! Just get on the bleddy boats and buggeroff . This place has no use for you. It’ll beat you and eat you. Get out! Get out while the getting’s good.’
    ‘And you,’ Abraham asked, standing with steely courtesy in the shocked silence. ‘You, Vasco. What advice do you have for yourself?’
    ‘Oh, me,’ he sang out as the white coats bore him away. ‘Don’t worry about me . I’m Portuguese.’

11
    N OBODY EVER MADE A movie called Father India . ‘Bharatpita?’ Sounds all wrong. ‘Hindustan-ké-Bapuji’? Too specifically Gandhian. ‘Valid-e-Azam’? Overly Mughal. ‘Mr India’, however, perhaps the crudest of all such nationalistic formulations, that we did latterly get. The hero was a slick young loverboy trying to convince us of his super-heroic powers: no paternal connotations there, neither bouncy India-Abba-man nor patriarchal Indodaddy. Just a made-in-India runty-bodied imitation Bond. The great Sridevi, at her voluptuous-siren best in the wettest of wet saris, stole the movie with contemptuous ease … but I remember the picture for another reason. It seems to me that maybe, in this trashy extravaganza, as worthless in its gaudy colours as the old Nargis mother-vehicle was sombre and worthy, the producers did unintentionally provide us with an image of the National Father after all. There he sits, like a dragon in his cave, like a thousand-fingered puppet-master, like the heart of the heart of darkness; commander of uzied legions, fingertip-controller of pillars of diabolic fire, orchestrator of all the secret music of the under-spheres: the arch-villain, the dark capo, Moriartier than Moriarty, Blofelder than Blofeld, not just Godfather but Gone-farthest, the dada of all dadas: Mogambo . His name, filched from the title of an old Ava Gardner vehicle, a forgettable piece of African hokum, is carefully chosen to avoid offending any of the country’s communities; it’s neither Muslim nor Hindu, Parsi nor Christian, Jain nor Sikh, and if there’s an echo in it of the bongo-bongo Sanders-of-the-River caricatures inflicted by post-war Hollywood on the people of the ‘Dark Continent’, well, that’s a brand of xenophobia unlikely to make many enemies in India today.
    In Mr India’s struggle against Mogambo I recognise the life-and-death oppositions of many movie fathers and sons. Here is Blade Runner’s tragic replicant crushing his creator’s skull in a lethal filial embrace; and Star Wars’s Luke Skywalker in his ultimate duel with Darth Vader, as champions of the light and dark sides of the Force. And in this junk drama with its cartoon villain and gimcrack hero, I see a lurid mirror-image of what was never, will never be a movie: the story of Abraham Zogoiby and myself.

    On the face of it he was the very antithesis of a demon king. The Abraham Zogoiby I