The show must go on

Does anybody know what
we are looking for?/

Another hero, another
mindless crime/

Behind the curtain, in the
pantomime/Hold the line/

Does anybody want to take
it anymore?

Queen’s sad but hopeful ‘The Show Must Go On’ was lead singer Freddie Mercury’s grand finale, released in 1991 only weeks before he died from HIV/AIDS. Mercury (the Parsi-born Farrokh Bulsara) was never able to perform it live.

I generally stick to the 1960s and 70s when it comes to music, but Queen – true icons of 1970s rock – remain eligible to be grandfathered in at any time. Besides, something about the song mysteriously resonates with our topic.

December 6 marked Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Mahaparinirvan Diwas. He died a Buddhist on that day in 1956, his grand public conversion having taken place some six weeks prior. Actually, according to his second wife Dr Savita Ambedkar (née Sharda Kabir), Babasaheb had, along with her, converted to Buddhism in a small private ceremony as early as May 1950. In her autobiography, recently translated into English as Babasaheb:My Life with Dr Ambedkar, she wrote:

“Both Saheb and I had personally taken the deeksha and been initiated into Buddhism…we had both embraced Buddhism well before we went to the Buddhist conference. One day, at 6 am, we…presented ourselves at the Buddha Vihara in the Birla Temple complex in Delhi. There, at the hands of Bhante Aryavansh, the two of us took the trisharana and panchsheel and embraced Buddhism. Only a very few people know about this.”

Not many people know either that for years following Ambedkar death, Dr Savita was the target of a conspiracy theory blaming her for his death. The suspicion exerted a lasting, negative influence on the rest of her life.

A common rendition of the accusation was that Dr Savita had conspired with Ambedkar’s leading physician, Dr Malvankar (her senior from Mumbai) to overdose Ambedkar in order to prevent his conversion away from Hinduism. They had the means (insulin), the motive (both being Brahmins) and the opportunity (Ambedkar’s frequent illness and need for injections). Why else, this conspiracy theory ran, would Sharda Kabir have agreed to enter into this pratiloma inter-caste marriage, other than to ensure that Ambedkar would remain within the Hindu fold?

Dr Savita’s anguish, and perhaps her ire, over this absurd accusation markedly impacted her autobiography, marring what would otherwise have been a delightful read. Unless, of course, you are into scatology: “…Doctor Saheb had off and on been suffering from loose motions from very early days. I have given excerpts of his letters in which he makes mention of this condition. Another such memory is from Aurangabad…As we were stepping out of the lift, the putrid smell of faeces struck me hard. When I looked down, I saw his trousers and even his shoes stained with stool...”

TMI! The German philosopher Hegel once quipped, ‘Es gibt keinen Helden fuer den Kammerdiener’, there are no heroes for nurses or valets. And, of course, Dr Savita had spent nine years nursing Ambedkar as his personal physician.

As a physician, of course, this kind of scatological description was just ordinary shoptalk, nothing to be shocked at or embarrassed about. But as his physician, she was professionally bound by confidentiality about her patient. Why did she violate that confidentiality over and over again in her memoirs?

It was certainly not because she had committed to producing a totally transparent text, exposing everything. For, as she stated while explaining why she had decided to withhold their private correspondence from publication, she wrote: “It is altogether personal, and therefore also confidential.” The reason that she violated Ambedkar’s patient confidentiality in her memoirs was that the book was not simply an unmotivated record of her “companionship with Babasaheb” (as the original Marathi title ran). It was meant to serve as her defence against the conspiracy theory.

Throughout her autobiography, Dr Savita adduced numerous letters from the 1920s onwards in evidence of Ambedkar’s frequent illnesses and their progression, and recounted in the most graphic of detail every episode of ill-health that he had ever suffered. So much so that her book often morphed into a memoir of morbidities, a gothic disease diary. But who could blame her? This was the best strategy available to her in defence against those awful allegations. Ambedkar was gone, but she had a life to live. The show had to go on.

The show must go on, yeah/

Inside my heart is breaking/

My makeup may be flaking/

But my smile, still, stays on.