New Delhi: A day after the India-Pakistan war erupted in 1971, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was so cool that she was changing the bedcovers on a divan when her personal physician walked in.
“I had the occasion to see the PM herself changing the bedcovers on the divan,” says KP Mathur, now 92, in his just-released book based on the many years he spent with Gandhi. “It was the day after the Bangladesh war started and she had worked late into the (previous) night,” says the book, ‘The Unseen Indira Gandhi’, brought out by Konark Publishers.
“When I went to see her in the morning, I saw her engaged in the exercise of dusting. Perhaps, it helped her release the tension of the earlier night,” says the 151-page book that is full of anecdotes recollected by the former physician of Safdarjung Hospital about his nearly 20-year association with Gandhi till her assassination in 1984.
According to Mathur, when Pakistan attacked India December 3, 1971, Gandhi was in Kolkata. She flew back to Delhi. “During the flight, she was cool and composed as ever; her mind was obviously occupied with the strategy of war, the future course of
action.”
But the same Gandhi used to be nervous soon after she took charge as prime minister in 1966, the book says. “During the first year or two of her becoming PM, she used to be very tense, a bit confused and not sure of herself. She had no advisors and was almost friendless… She would also get stomach upsets in the early days of being PM, which I believe was the result of the same nervousness,” writes Mathur.
He describes Gandhi as “a pleasant, caring and helpful person” who treated servants in her household well, addressing each one by his or her name. Gandhi lived a simple life with no sign of opulence. “Thrift was her guiding principle.” She refused to move into Teen Murti House and added “a couple of rooms” only after Rajiv Gandhi married Sonia in 1968.
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IANS
