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Magazine
In CONVERSATION
Never-ending stories
ZIYA US SALAM
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The secret of his longevity as an author, Manohar Malgonkar believes, is his ability to tell a story well and communicate with people.
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“Most of the articles and books on the assassination were one-sided. When I began this book, I was merely reporting, trying to make it as interesting as possible.”
Modest, patient and successful: Manohar Malgonkar.
At 95, it is usually easy, perhaps even inevitable, to be a shade impatient. A shade upset too. Not so when you happen to be Manohar Malgonkar, a man we read in school, as did our parents. He is patient with queries, answering questions from journalists who were not even born when he retired! No pauses in his speech to catch his breath. Not much sign of fading memory either. The pre-Independence years are green in his mind, and the year 1978 when his book, The Men Who Killed Gandhi first hit the stands, seems like yesterday. The work is still in print with Roli Books recently dishing out an updated 11th edition with unpublished photographs and documents. Then there have been half a dozen translations in other languages! Little wonder Malgonkar is still in demand. Want more proof? At a recent book fair in Delhi half way into the event, his book had sold 3,000 copies! He needed no long signing sessions, there were no sham reading sessions either, followed by cocktails!
Authentic attempt
Malgonkar, on his part, remains modest. “I don’t know the secret of the book’s popularity. May be because it is an authentic book. I have taken a lot of care. I was lucky to have access to the Kapur Report. Finally, I got the Savarkar Report too and I was able to add up all this for the book.”
Though it is regarded as a masterpiece in research on Gandhi’s assassination, it did not actually start off as a book in the first place! Malgonkar was only supposed to do an article or two for Life magazine to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Mahatma’s assassination. But his research yielded astonishing results, and soon he knew that he needed a book on the subject. “Yes, it started with an article for Life magazine. Then came the book as I had much more material.” Again, he is being modest. Actually he had access to the surviving members of the conspiracy who not only went down memory lane for him but also, in some cases, like Gopal Godse and his wife, shared their family secrets with him for the book. And Gopal loaned him his personal papers, some of which were used by Nathuram Godse too! That is okay but what explains his longevity at a time when most authors struggle to reproduce the magic of their first work in the second coming?
“I cannot say about that but somewhere down the line, I have been able to communicate to people. A book I wrote in 1963 is being published in France this year. Called The Princess, it was first published in France 30 years ago. Now there is a reprint. For many years, my books were out of print. Now I have found a good publisher. Over the last few years, four of my books have come out. I look at it as just my ability to tell a story. That’s all.”
But in the Gandhi book he has not just told a story. “Most of the articles and books on the assassination were one-sided. When I began this book, I was merely reporting, trying to make it as interesting as possible. But the book created awareness about the killers, showed a little window into their mindset with some of them even believing that they would get away with murder, life would go on normally. I have also created some sympathy for them. Their point of view has been represented. They — Godse and company — did not hate Gandhi but still assassinated him.”
Revealing mindsets
He went into the minds of the men who killed the Father of the Nation. “I found Vishnu Karkare a kind man. Nathuram Godse had a mixed up mind...” Amazingly, at one time, Malgonkar reveals, the killers had bought burqas with the idea of impersonating Muslim women in the murder bid before giving up the idea as Nathuram Godse did not get a free swing of the hand necessary for pressing the magazine pistol. And he saw Gandhiji’s mind too. “He had expectations from life. He expected to live up to 125 years.”
That is for the Mahatma. Ask Malgonkar for his picture, and he turns shy. “I am 95. I don’t make for a very good picture.” Never mind. He makes for insightful reading. Short sentences, precise words, sharp memory. And a journalist’s mind married to a monk’s patience. Along the way he has been at the right place at the right time. He was at the right place when the assassination took place: one bungalow away from the Birla House in Delhi. He has the right pedigree: a Marathi whose natural ease with the language encouraged the convicts and their families to open up to him. Malgonkar is now settled at Barbusa near Belgaum from where he interacts with publishers who come calling, and journalists who seek his opinion. The world comes to the wordsmith.
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