E-Paper
Rules of engagement
Need a lowdown on the ground rules for staging a kidnap? Ask Union Minister Vayalar Ravi, writes Kumkum Chadha.
Need a lowdown on the ground rules for staging a kidnap? Ask Union Minister Vayalar Ravi. He made a successful bid 30 years ago and has them on his fingertips: do not stop the car. At a red light or railway crossing, take a detour. Always have an escort car. Look tough and have goons follow you. Cordon off the area. In his case, over 2,000 villagers prevented the entry of outsiders and the ‘goons’ who escorted his car were prominent Congressmen: Kerala’s former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and leaders A.K. Antony and A.C. Jose.
Vayalar Ravi had kidnapped his present wife Mercy whose parents were dead-against her marriage to a non-Catholic. Worse still, he was a Hindu, belonged to a backward community and was penniless. But Mercy’s beauty had Ravi hooked and he wooed her for seven long years. For him, it was love at first sight: “She had big eyes and lot of (long) hair,” he says. After marriage, he declared that Mercy was the “most beautiful wife-of-an-MP”.
Mercy’s family was eager that she marry a well- settled Indian in the US. “Inform immediately” was Ravi’s diktat to her when he realised this. He, in the meantime, would shoot off letters in a coded language. He posed as Vatsala who used the ‘husband’ alibi to tell Mercy when and where to meet: ‘My husband’, Vatsala would write, ‘will visit his parents next week’. This meant that Mercy should go to a common friend’s house to meet Ravi.
Had Ravi not sensed danger from the US, it would have been a while before he popped the question. Taken by surprise, Mercy mumbled if marriage could wait, Ravi commanded: “Now”. He sent a telegram to his mother, feigning sickness. She cut short an election campaign only to find out her son was getting married, blissfully unaware of the kidnapping. By the time Mercy’s brothers came to ‘rescue’ her, she was married. Among Ravi’s prized possessions are her frequent ‘love letters’, poetic and long, which are safely tucked away under lock and key. A wedding ring is the only jewellery he wears and also shows off.
Life has had its share of misery. He lost his grandson the day he was to be sworn in as cabinet minister. His wife has been battling the adverse effects of a messed-up surgery where she lost a kidney.
Vayalar Ravi spent the better part of his childhood sleeping in the local Congress office. Even as an MP, he couldn’t afford a hotel: “Very expensive,” he says, opting for a friend’s house on grounds of “no payment and good food… hotels only when the government is paying.” Holidays for the family were unthinkable. It was only when his ‘flying miles’ accumulated, did he manage to send off his daughter to London for a holiday.
