The Uses Of An Obituary

For many, Rajesh Pilot's death would have come as a shock. But as days pass the shock recedes, bombarded as we are by new waves of shocks-a new scandal in cricketgate, the latest massacre in Bihar, the hooliganism of British football fans or the discovery of frozen illegal immigrants in Dover. But Pilot's death halted me in my tracks. The inexorable finality of death forces you to stop and think and experience regret. He was one of the few politicians I genuinely liked. A man of action, he was a doer, not a talker like most of our politicians and that was his most endearing quality.

When Babri Masjid was destroyed, Rajesh Pilot was livid-not as much with the vhp-BJP-Bajrang Dal combine as much as with his own PM, P.V. Narasimha Rao. He was livid because he was convinced it was preventable. "How could anyone have stopped tens of thousands of crazed kar sevaks without a bloodbath?" I had asked him. "If the state is determined to prevent something, believe me nothing can stop it. Let no one underestimate the might of the Indian state," he'd remarked. "The trouble is, often the people holding the levers of power are lazy, incompetent or too corrupt to do the job." Flushed with their success at demolishing the mosque, the Hindu combine had threatened to storm the Parliament two months later. Without the usual fanfare and fuss, Rajesh Pilot, then minister of state for home, displayed the power of a determined state. Everybody waited with bated breath for D-Day. But Pilot dispersed the raiding Hindu mobs, not with bullets, but with water-cannons. The whole affair turned out to be a hilarious damp squib. The sight of some of our great leaders, hair plastered, spectacles askew, clutching their dripping wet dhotis and running for cover was a sight to behold-the only time I have laughed till my belly ached while covering a news assignment.

Another of Pilot's endearing qualities was that he was completely devoid of pretensions. He was a son of the soil and was proud of it. He started his adult life selling milk in the same fashionable neighbourhood in New Delhi where he eventually lived as a minister. But he was a farmer at heart, a farmer who believed he could change things for the better-in his constituency, in the Congress party, in his ministry, in India.

Why am I saying all these nice things about Rajesh Pilot? Because he is dead? Never saw a reason to praise him in public in the past? But I really regret that I never informed him of my impressions. For hard-nosed journalists, praising politicians is an unnatural act. Like most Indians, I have a healthy disrespect for politicians and having seen them at close quarters for more than two decades, my disrespect is often edged with disgust. But there are a few politicians who I like and admire, but I've never praised them even verbally, let alone in writing.

And perhaps that is being unfair. There are politicians who do their breed proud because they don't conform to the stereotype. But the only time it seems natural to praise a politician, if at all, is while writing an obituary. So now I want to make an exception. The rest of this column is dedicated to the few living politicians I like, respect and admire, not necessarily for their politics, but for the kind of human beings they are-normal, simple, genuine people who are as kind as they are bright. There is Ramakrishna Hegde, a gentleman to the core, the epitome of an old-fashioned gallantry that's dying, if not already dead. The kind of gentleman who even when he was commerce minister would personally rush to get an ash-tray to take the seed of a litchi from a guest just as he was wondering what to do with it. Or P. Chidambaram, a man of awesome intellect and elephantine memory, who even as the finance minister always answered his residence phone himself and lived amazingly frugally. And Atal Behari Vajpayee, a wonderful raconteur who is as compassionate as he is erudite, a politician who's not forgotten his journalistic background because he is still a good listener, which in turn makes him a humane and highly effective politician.

And there's Ram Jethmalani. Clearly my favorite. Brilliant lawyer, loyal friend. He has his views and even if they are unpopular or politically incorrect, he'll express them. There isn't a shred of hypocrisy in the man. Public impressions of a person are often based on media depictions, which sometimes are inaccurate and never comprehensive. As a politician, Ram is controversial and plain-speaking, but perhaps not many people know how wise, well-read and witty he is. I've never met another person who remembers as many jokes as Ram does. Every turn of phrase, every occasion, prompts a joke out of Ram and in the 15 years I've known him, he's never repeated a joke.

And unlike most Indian ministers, he travels light. Recently he spent five days holidaying with us in our home in Norway. And here I want to share the human dimension of an Indian politician, rare dimensions that we journalists never get down to writing. Ram is 75 years old, but insisted on carrying his own bags. Leave alone convoys and escort cars, he had no trouble taking the airport train into the city, enjoyed eating ice-creams like a teenager ("The joy of eating an ice-cream lies not only in the taste but in the fact it makes you feel young," he says), watching a 3-D film in the local theatre, taking tram rides to unknown destinations just for the heck of it or sitting cosily by the fireside in the evenings and philosophising about life. For Ram, cocooned by affection and anonymity, it was a relaxed vacation as a normal person and not as the important minister he is every waking moment of his life in India. As we were driving to the airport to drop him off, I asked him what the high-point of his holiday was. "Living in your home. These days life is all about living in hotels and dying in hospitals," he replied. Alone, sometimes suddenly, often without family or friends by your side. Like Rajesh Pilot.