I’ve done my best.I have no regrets.” He says it without any trace of arrogance. Capt Amarinder Singh may refuse to rate himself as a CM—it’s for the people to do that, he demurs—but he is a man at peace with himself. The CM, who shocked the nation and his own high command by legislating the state out of the contentious inter-state river waters agreement, says it was all about walking the talk. The Akalis who fought the Dharam Yudh for river waters, never thought of taking this step when they came to power. He did, in the face of a furious Centre. “I was told, indirectly of course, that I could be sacked but I went ahead,” he shrugs. It’s his first rally of the day, and he is late by almost two hours but people don’t seem to mind. Later, you learn the delay is because of the foggy skies not because of a late-rising Maharaja. The Vikas Purush, as he is called at the rally, says his biggest achievement as a CM was that he moved on a very broad plank unlike his bete noire Parkash Singh Badal. “That Baba is only concerned about making money for his tabar (family), he has no time for development,” he thunders as the gathering titters. “From welfare measures for the poor, diversification in agriculture and industrial growth to the Nankana Sahib bus, we made the most of the resources at our disposal,” he asserts. He also made the most of his personal rapport with his counterpart in Pakistan Punjab. It was friendship driven by pragmatism, he says. “Four of my districts were totally destroyed due to tension at the border. Now they are blossoming.” All that Badal got from across the border, he takes another dig at his rival, were bhedus (sheep). Though the CM insists he has no regrets about all that happened in the last five years, the mud-slinging on the Reliance farm-to-fork project still stings. “They were going to work on just 2.5 per cent of the land, and the hubs would have started a movement in diversification, but the media and the opposition raised a stink. Now the project has fallen behind by a year or two,” he frowns. There are other things like cooking and gardening that also fell behind in the last four years. A smile lights up his eyes as he tells you about his passion for whipping up a good meal. “I enjoy cooking, it’s a family passion. Do you know we have 140 recipes for pulao alone,” his smile deepens. The recipes may have been consigned to the cold storage, but his writing continued. The former soldier who has two books to his credit is now ready with his third one. “It’s on the Anglo-Sikh wars. It starts with the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1839 and ends with the annexation of Punjab by the British in 1849”. May be, that is why he found it easier to lavish time on army dos or his much-touted coterie than on the common man. But mention the C-word and a frown clouds his brow. Looking straight ahead, he snaps: “If at the end of five years, the only charge the Akalis can drum up against me is that of being inaccessible, I will take it as a compliment. Besides, if I were so inaccessible why do people still like me?”
