While city votes, confident Congmen take nostalgia trip

It was as if each one of them in that audience sniffed an electoral victory in the air and although the results hadn’t come in as yet the Congress had already moved from debacle to revival.

There was party spokesperson Anil Shastri in a natty navy-and-red striped tie and his colleague Ambika Soni, elegantly clutching a shawl.

There was former speaker Shivraj Patil, in his usual well-pressed white bandhgala, and former minister Madhavrao Scindia in a stylish black outfit.

There they were, veterans and upstarts, bureaucrats and journalists, former defence personnel and current policy analysts at a very Congress celebration.

Their moment arrived with — need one say it? — the arrival of Sonia Gandhi amidst the flurry of anxious security men and fawning courtiers. The dust of the campaign trail was nowhere in evidence this evening. The lady glowed in a grey silk salwar-kurta, her auburn tresses swept back in characteristic fashion.

When the author’s turn came to speak, Pradhan made sure that his debt of gratitude to the Congress leader was duly paid. He recalled how Rajiv Gandhi had as Prime Minister personally supervised the medical care that Y B Chavan — the subject of this book — had received during his last days.

It was indeed fortuitous that the subject of the evening happened to be an old Congressman. Pradhan’s Debacle to Revival, brought out by Orient Longman, is a chronicle of his experiences as a private secretary to Chavan, when he was Defence Minister from 1962 to ’65.

As it happened it was tailor-made to pump up the mood of nostalgia for all things Congress, as speakers from newspaper columnist, Inder Malhotra to former minister, diplomat and luminary at large, Dr Karan Singh, waxed eloquent about the days of Nehru, Krishna Menon and Chavan himself.

At one point, Karan Singh recalled Chavan, who was his ministerial colleague in the Indira Gandhi Cabinet, and the story about the Kazi and his Dog that Chavan had once related to him to describe the peculiar heartlessness of Delhi.

Everyone enjoyed that one. There was a great deal of nodding at the end of the tale. Everyone agreed that Delhi was a cruel city to be in. But being there had its privileges, and each one of the people in the auditorium understood this.

After all who, apart from a handful in this country, could have related that story about meeting Nehru at first hand? And how the old man had commented after the China debacle and after Chavan was brought in to replace Krishna Menon: “I may lose my temper, but I don’t lose my nerve”.

And where but in Delhi could that snippet about how highly Chavan had regarded his air chief marshal, Arjun Singh, be related and where the former air chief marshal is himself part of the audience? Nowhere but in Delhi. In a Delhi, where power is just a handshake away. In a Congress Delhi, where the Nehru-Gandhis suddenly seem to have received a new lease of life.