Penned by Aakash Karkare on life after the loss of his father, IPS officer Hemant Karkare, in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Aftermath: Life in the Shadows of Headlines and History is a memoir that’s as raw and poignant as it can get. And yet, there’s nothing maudlin about it. Aakash was just 17 and a few months away from his Class 12 board exams when his father, the head of the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), fell to the bullets of terrorists during the 2008 mayhem.
The book is brutally honest. So much so that you approach it assuming the author will present a glowing portrait of his father, who was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra for his bravery. But you’re disabused of this notion in the first few chapters itself as Aakash writes about his martyred father, warts and all.
He writes about his father’s temper and the uneasy relationship he shared with him. “On most days, Pappa existed in fragments at home: long silences, sudden yelling, nothing in between.” Also, about his parents’ difficult and unhappy marriage, marked by constant fights and his sense of alienation as a child in a family of five.
The slaying of a distant father he barely knew and his mother’s death just six years later, following a brain haemorrhage, understandably had a deep impact on the youngster. Not merely because he was now an orphan, a word the author himself uses while informing his sister about the passing away of his mother, but also because of the baggage he carried post these losses of being Hemant Karkare’s son.
It appears to define his existence as Aakash is “turned into a spectacle for the onlookers: ‘Come look, he’s Karkare’s son. The boy whose Dad got shot.” At another point, the author writes, “I didn’t have to be forever linked to a tragedy. I was ordinary.” There’s much poignancy in these words as the author not only had to navigate life without his parents at a young age but also be the subject of incessant curiosity and insensitivity. “It never seemed to occur to people that badgering the son of someone murdered nearly six years ago might be cruel.”
The narrative also offers a glimpse into the vilification campaign that was launched against the senior police officer by the BJP, Shiv Sena and other Hindutva outfits, after the ATS probe he was leading into the 2006 Malegaon terror strikes led to the arrests of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Shrikant Purohit.
The author reveals his mother had asked then Gujarat chief minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had wanted to come to pay his last respects to his slain father, not to come three times as he belonged to the BJP, “which had launched a smear campaign against Pappa in the months leading up to the attacks.” And yet, writes the author, “Modi showed up regardless”.
Even more tellingly, the author says that even though Modi had claimed he offered his mother Rs 1 crore, which she turned down, the meeting between the two actually never happened! He also recalls his father telling his mother once, “Terror has no religion”.
The media also does not come out smelling of roses, often intrusive and insensitive in its interactions with Karkare’s family, aside from getting its facts wrong several times.
The author also lays bare his struggle with anxiety and depression as he grapples with the pain and grief of losing his parents and a callous world unwilling to allow him to move on beyond the tragedy.
All in all, the memoir makes for a moving read despite the stark narrative style.