Now look at Gudia: she is enjoying the idea because she knows exactly what I am saying. When I take a shower I really take a shower, and I splash not only the floor, but even the walls, and if you have to clean, then of course it is a problem for you. But if you clean with love, as my cleaners do, then it is better than psychoanalysis, and far better than transcendental meditation. I cannot now change anything.

Now, what Masto was talking about has happened. What was future then is now past. But I am the same, and I have remained the same. In fact to me, it seems that death happens not the moment when you stop breathing, but when you stop being yourself. I have never for any reason allowed any compromise.

We went the next day, and Jawaharlal had invited his son-in-law, Indira Gandhi’s husband. I wondered why he had not invited his daughter. Later on Masto said to me, “Indira takes care of Jawaharlal. His wife died young, and he has only one child, his daughter Indira, and she has been both a daughter and a son to him.”

In India, when the daughter marries she has to go to her husband’s house. She becomes part of another family. Indira never went. She simply refused. She said, “My mother is dead, and I cannot leave my father alone.”

This created the beginning of the end in their marriage. They remained husband and wife, but Indira was never part of Feroze Gandhi’s family. Even their two sons, Sanjaya and Raju, came to belong naturally, because of their mother, to her family.

Masto told me, “Jawaharlal cannot invite them together, they would start fighting then and there.”

I said, “That’s strange. Even for one hour can’t they forget that they are husband and wife?”

Masto said, “It is impossible to forget, even for a single moment. To be a husband or a wife means a declaration of war.” Although people call it love, it is really a cold war. And it is better to have a hot war, particularly in a cold winter, than to have a cold war twenty-four hours a day. It even starts freezing your being.

We were again surprised when he invited us the third day. We had been thinking of leaving, and he had not said anything the second day. The morning of the third day, Jawaharlal phoned. He had a private number which was not listed in the directory. Only a few people, those who were very close, could call him on that number.

I asked Masto, “He called us himself; can’t he just tell his secretary to call us?”

Masto said, “No, this is his private number; even the secretary has no knowledge that he is inviting us. The secretary will come to know only when we reach the porch.”

And that third day Jawaharlal introduced me to Indira Gandhi. He simply said to her, “Don’t ask who he is, because right now he is no one, but someday he could be really somebody.”