India’s 13th prime minister had been absent from public stage for last fourteen years due to health issues. so New Millennium youth of India hardly know much about him. Gandhi is ancient so is Nehru or Indira or Jai Prakash Narain or say the great constitutional emergency of 1976. But his death in the year of 2018 is a living history of India to feel inspiration from.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was different from all these names of the history in many ways.
Its an old proverb that to know a man one should learn what he reads.
Vajpayee was fond of our beloved Hindi writer of colonial days Prem Chandji, and was equally fond of John Grisham the iconic legal battling fiction writer of America of 20th and 21st century. Both are masters of their craft and celebrated icons of their respective cultures, Prem Chand a great soul truly existentialist at heart like Dickens, wanting to survive the colonial slavery, Grisham is a man who abhors the greed, exploitation and corrupt practices of the mighty rich of the west destroying common American life and expectations.
In a state dinner in Washington in 1998 Atal Bihari Vajpayee praised Bill Clinton and also Christopher Columbus, “who set sail for India but landed in America. I wonder where we would be if he had actually reached India.”
President Clinton joked in his pre-dinner toast reply that Vajpayee, “when he’s not writing Hindi poetry, actually likes to read novels by John Grisham. I am actually related to the Grishams, but all Grishams with money are distant relatives.”
Such is the personae of Vajpayee that he felt inspiration from Prem Chand and was equally at home with modern ethics and social structure of a society that Grisham portrays.
The new Millennium youth of India are global citizens now traveling globe looking for best opportunities, be it America, Europe, china or Africa. They are comfortable with Prem Chand as well as with Grisham. And they should be more aware of who Vajpayee was, what he stood for and how he sacrificed his life for the country he loved so much. And how he lived in party offices and not owning and living in luxury properties. Not many leaders of today can live in poverty as mission despite being a national figure since 1951 and parliamentarian since 1957.
Vajpyee always lived in solitude. Never had many intimate friends. He was a warm-hearted poet who respected intellectuals. Prime minister Narsimha Rao was a friend whose photo he had in his room. Some one commented on their political rivalry, he snapped back, “”I don’t change my friends according to political fortunes.”
And he was so simple at heart. He loved dogs, gulal, fire crackers, children and good food. He also was fond of travelling around the globe. He wore traditional clothes in India and put on simple shirt, slacks and Jodhpuri for coat when abroad. His poems have a touch of irony and pain and frustration but never any trace of hatred, and always a show of great statesmanship. He never had a ‘I know it all’ attitude, always willing to hear the other side. Though parliamentary debates frustrated him some times, but he never gave up. The 1984 elections left his party with two seats but he was relentlessly rebuilding the base .
And he was never fanatic about any issues, even the reporters that would annoy him by writing totally irrelevant things about or on him. May be India was better off without those hot debates of present day 24 hour news channels with shouting matches for more eye balls.
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