Square peg in a round hole
Indiraji: Through My Eyes, Usha Bhagat, Viking, Rs. 595.
SO much has been written about Indira Gandhi that not much can be expected from any new book on her. To be fair, Usha Bhagat — who worked for Mrs. G. in various capacities over three decades — concedes the point at the outset itself and makes no attempt at finding a perch for her book on the bookshelves of scholars or political analysts. Her book is anecdotal; punctuated with the little chits through which "Indiraji" preferred to communicate and the sketches she used to make during meetings.
Though Bhagat offers her own assessment of Mrs. G. and tries not to put her on a pedestal as is wont with her admirers, the strength of this book lies in the little-known facts of an otherwise well-chronicled life. One particular nugget of information that the author claims few people know is that Jawaharlal Nehru had kept aside a few ashes of his wife Kamla Nehru and father Motilal Nehru to be immersed along with his.
A particularly amusing insight — that only staffers can have — pertains to cabinet reshuffles. Narrating how Mrs. G. would spend a day off sorting out things, Bhagat writes: "A couple of times it so happened that the day after a session of cleaning up, there was a reshuffle of the cabinet."
Indira Gandhi being a stickler for detail is known, but how much of personal attention she paid to it comes out in this book. A particular case in point is the personal effort she put into sprucing up Himachal Bhavan for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ahead of the Shimla Accord. An easy read, Bhagat briefly lifts the shroud of privacy from a public persona deified and denigrated in equal measure.
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