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In Cephalonian Waters
At the round about near the large house where you used to play as a child, I stood in the blistering heat of May with eight busloads of irate pressmen. They sweated and shouted and complained that by being put at the end of the motorcade they would miss getting a "flavour" of the procession of death that we awaited. I pleaded protocol, Defence Ministry rules to little avail and in disgust finally said "Sorry, this is not primarily a media event". And just then in a grey Ambassador car with the windows rolled down your wife and your daughter passed slowly. Your gun carriage with your pitiful remains which I had seen two days before in that narrow vertibule in the house in which you used to play and where your mother lay seven years ago passed in front of me. I raised my folded hands and smiled sadly as your wife and daughter as they passed me on their way. And then I bundled my sweating steaming journalists into their buses and tortuously followed the line of cars past the Army house, the British High commissioner’s and then in front of the building where you sat and ruled this country for five years and more and where we met from time to time. Then a blue and white helicopter, one of those machines you loved so much flew over our heads over and over again scattering rose petals that withered as they fell gently to the parched pavement below. Long lines of quiet crowds stood patiently in the merciless afternoon blaze to catch a glimpse of your carriage for the last time. At Shaktisthal, as far as the eye could see beyond the artificial lakes and the man-made mounds covered with the greenest grass were thousands and thousands of patient people scorched by the sun, their eyes transfixed on the raised red brick platform where you would be laid.
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