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A party in house
By RANA SIDDIQUI
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There is more to life than just taking political decisions. There is kitchen. There is camaraderie. There are finances. See the sidelights of the life of Delhi's Chief Minister and her family.
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Photo: S. Subramanium.
One for the album... Shiela Dikshit with son Sandeep and grand children Tara, Kartik and Vinayak at their Delhi residence.
SHE IS inarguably the most loved Chief Minister of Delhi. Sauvé, polite and amiable. If you get to know her from close quarters, you will only find her like a woman next door; approachable, full of tales, even mischievous at times, the one who enjoys lavish food as merrily as she breaks into merriment seeing the first shower of the season.
"I feel like dancing in the rain," she chuckles like a small child. She still loves to cocoon in her bed reading Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter after her dinner. She hooks on to television to see films like Jewel Thief which she has "already seen 10 times", Bandini, Pyasa, Dilip Kumar's Devdas or Munna Bhai M.B.B.S and loves to recall the days when she and her husband would exchange "sweet nothings before marriage and enjoyed game of cross and knots on paper in a DTC bus".
Yes, one is talking about Sheila Dikshit. And guess what, her polite exterior is quite misleading. She reveals with a hearty laugh, "My children call me Hitler at home." Agrees her son Sandeep: "She was very strict at home. We weren't allowed to shout, scream or speak loudly before the elders when we were small. At any cost, we had to be together on dining table for at least one meal a day. She wouldn't be forgiven if we missed our homework".
Meeting Manekshaw
And Mom Dikshit doesn't mind giving out a few secrets about Sandeep, now a Member of Paliament from East Delhi. "He was awfully naughty in childhood. He would never come home without cuts and scratches on his cheeks and body. To prove his bravery, he would dash out of a glass window, drive his bicycle till late evening and what not! Once, he did not come home in the evening. We got all very frightened. A jeep was sent to hunt him. It was 9.30 p.m. when we saw him coming driving along with two small girls on his bicycle, wrapped in dirt and dust. `Where were you', I asked him. "I went to meet General Manekshaw". We couldn't believe that he had met him but he told us that he was so impressed with his stories of bravery in 1971 War that we used to discuss at home that he couldn't resist himself and went ahead to see him at his residence at Race Course without any appointment. He told that the General was very happy to see a 12-year-old boy coming to see him. He treated him lavishly with tea, etc."
For Sandeep, a lover of theatre who has also acted in several plays in Bhopal where he used to live till two years ago, and where he was associated with a non-governmental organisation called Sanket meant for underprivileged people and their sanitation, mention of father Govind Dikshit adds glint to his eyes. "I was very close to him. He was very cool about everything. He would never forget his promises. If he had promised someone to attend a party at his home, he would surely go even at midnight. Papa's cool attitude and mummy's restriction kept a very good balance at home," he says.
The CM is too good in her political life but mere mention of the word cooking scares her and backbiting "takes the goat out" of her. "My younger sister is a very good cook and she is Pam Mausi for all at home. Another younger sister manages all my finances," she says. One of her sons-in-law is a Muslim. "Religion was never a matter of rift in my family, so when my daughter decided for this boy, no one objected," she says. Her daughter and her daughter-in-law are social consultants.
While she spends her good time with granddaughters Aafia and Yamini, there are memories of her husband that keeps her in an encouraging stead.
"I was in the U.S. when I heard about his demise. He was coming to Delhi from Kanpur by a train in which he suffered a cardiac arrest during his sleep. Life became so unmanageable after him," and she agrees that politics was an escape to beat the worries and loneliness of life. "After I lost him, all my fears to lose anything in life vanished too. So I took the toughest and most rebellious decisions in my political life and always succeeded," she says. And she bestows all credit to her father-in-law for her interest in politics. "I am here only because of him," she adds.
And here, should we add that she is successful because of her amenable attitude?
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