Salman Rushdie Midnight's children Salman Rushdie Midnight's ...

man on his little podium. Commander Sabarmati told the policeman, 'I have
only now killed my wife and her lover with this gun; I surrender myself in
to your…' But he had been waving the gun under the policeman's nose; the o
fficer was so scared that he dropped his traffic conducting baton and fled
. Commander Sabar mati, left alone on the policeman's pedestal amid the su
dden confusion of the traffic, began to direct the cars, using the smoking
gun as a baton. This is how he was found by the posse of twelve policemen
who arrived ten minutes later, who sprang courageously upon him and seize
d him hand and foot, and who removed from him the unusual baton with which
, for ten minutes, he had expertly conducted the traffic.
A newspaper said of the Sabarmati affair: 'It is a theatre in which India w
ill discover who she was, what she is, and what she might become.'… But Com
mander Sabarmati was only a puppet; I was the puppet master, and the nation
performed my play only I hadn't meant it! I didn't think he'd… I only want
ed to… a scandal, yes, a scare, a lesson to all unfaithful wives and mother
s, but not that, never, no.
Aghast at the result of my actions, I rode the turbulent thought waves of
the city… at the Parsee General Hospital, a doctor said, 'Begum Sabarmati
will live; but she will have to watch what she eats.'… But Homi Catrack wa
s dead… And who was engaged as the lawyer for the defence? Who said, 'I wi
ll defend him free gratis and for nothing'? Who, once the victor of the Fr
eeze Case, was now the Commander's champion? Sonny Ibrahim said, 'My fathe
r will get him off if anyone can.'
Commander Sabarmati was the most popular murderer in the history of Indian
jurisprudence. Husbands acclaimed his punishment of an errant wife; faithfu
l women felt justified in their fidelity. Inside Lila's own sons, I found t
hese thoughts: 'We knew she was like that. We knew a Navy man wouldn't stan
d for it.' A columnist in the Illustrated Weekly of India, writing a pen po
rtrait to go alongside the 'Personality of the Week' full colour caricature
of the Commander, said: 'In the Sabarmati Case, the noble sentiments of th
e Ramayana combine with the cheap melodrama of the Bombay talkie; but as fo
r the chief protagonist, all agree on his upstandingness; and he is undenia
bly an attractive chap.'
My revenge on my mother and Homi Catrack had precipitated a national crisis
… because Naval regulations decreed that no man who had been in a civil jai
l could aspire to the rank of Admiral of the Fleet. So Admirals, and city p
oliticians, and of course Ismail Ibrahim, demanded: 'Commander Sabarmati mu
st stay in a Navy jail. He is innocent until proven guilty. His career must
not be ruined if it can possibly be avoided.' And the authorities: 'Yes.'
And Commander Sabarmati, safe in the Navy's own lock up, discovered the pen
alties of fame deluged with telegrams of support, he awaited trial; flowers