1949
House of Power
My own earliest memories date from this period and to this very venue. The earliest ‘picture’ I have in my mind is of walking on one of the cream and red sandstone walkways of Mughal Gardens with my aunt, Namagiri, Periamma (elder mother), as I called her. Some herons or egrets, I am not sure which, walked across our path, and I tried, in boring conformity with what all kids do, to chase them, in vain, upon which Periamma asked a liveried staffer following us dutifully, to go to her room and fetch a clay heron that she had there—a gift from someone or other. It was brought within minutes. ‘This one you can hold, and keep,’ she said, in her quaint Hindi (I knew no other language at the time). ‘It won’t fly away.’ The thing remained with me for decades, losing its beak first, then getting its legs to snap and buckle over until I do not know what happened to that companion of my first recollection before it was binned.
Subbulakshmi had come in March of 1949 for a couple of concerts in Delhi, one of which, as Keshav Desiraju (1955–2021) tells us in his stellar biography of the singer, was attended by Prime Minister Nehru. Speaking after the concert, he said, ‘Who am I, a mere Prime Minister, before this Queen of Song?’ Subbulakshmi, with her husband and his daughters from his first marriage—Radha and Vijaya—called on Rajaji and Namagiri in Government House, and I remember watching the ‘Queen of Song’ in total amazement as she walked in the gardens and was photographed with all the others in her family and ours. I was all of four and could be imagining that I remember the fragrance of her jasmine floret, the whisper of perfume on her silk sari, that March afternoon. Her connection with that building was to continue till the late 1990s and climaxing in 1998, with my being again around, at age fifty-four, but more of that, later.
At his father-in-law라이브 바카라 official residence, Devadas was careful not to be identified as a live-in son-in-law, which he was not, for his home continued where it had always been—above the ‘shop’ in Connaught Circus. Rajaji also knew the shape of etiquette라이브 바카라 cutlery and never bent it for Devadas and Lakshmi. His sharp-witted and sharp-tongued but uncommonly caring daughter Namagiri was officially the ‘hostess’ in Government House; his son Narasimhan and the family of deceased son Ramaswami were with him there, as his ‘dependent’ family. Devadas and Lakshmi were invited and included in events as much for being what they were in society as for reasons of kinship. Rajaji chose for himself a small room, which had been that of the vicereine라이브 바카라 chambermaid, next to that of the vicereine라이브 바카라, which Namagiri moved into. A painted picture of Sri Ramakrishna came up on one of the walls of this room as did, in a beautifully carved wooden frame, that of Alarmelmangamma, (1888–1915) his wife, long since in another world.
This was the time when Nehru was identifying and appointing ambassadors and governors consulting Patel and Rajaji. The prime minister라이브 바카라 very able and stunning-looking sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, had been appointed India라이브 바카라 ambassador—the first—to Moscow. Was this nepotism? It was and was not. She had been a prominent freedom fighter and minister in the United Provinces and was unquestionably ‘somebody in her own right’. But she was also Nehru라이브 바카라 sister, and that was her first and foremost identity.
Her stint in Moscow was not particularly successful if an equation with the country라이브 바카라 top man is the test. She was unable to meet Stalin even once. When the first ambassador to the US, Asaf Ali (1888–1953), was to be replaced, Nehru sent Vijaya Lakshmi to Washington. This required finding a successor for her in Moscow.
Jawaharlal wrote to her in February 1949: ‘Moscow continues to be a big headache...we feel that it might be a good thing for Devadas Gandhi to be sent there. We have not yet mentioned it to him or to anyone else, and I have no idea what his own reaction will be. Obviously, he has no experience, and he is not brilliant, but taking it in all he will be suitable. Anyway, I cannot think of any other suitable person.’
‘No experience (in diplomacy)’ was a correct description, but ‘not brilliant’ would have surprised the person being described had he come to know of it. And ‘…cannot think of any other suitable person’ was only a default compliment paid by the prime minister to Devadas. Vijaya Lakshmi wrote to her brother saying Devadas was not suitable for Moscow. Be that as it may, one afternoon in early 1949, Nehru rang and asked Devadas to come over for a chat, bringing Lakshmi with him. This was not unusual, but its abruptness was a bit unexpected. They were received cordially by the prime minister in Teen Murti House, and after a few minutes of conversation on usual nothings, he left Lakshmi to talk to Indira (who combined this with giving laundry to their dhobi, counting the items carefully, Lakshmi recalled, as the items were bundled up) and took Devadas to a side room. The two emerged soon enough. ‘What did you two talk about?’ Lakshmi asked her husband in the car on their drive back home. ‘Jawaharlalji asked me if I would go to Moscow as India라이브 바카라 Ambassador.’ ‘Oh, isn’t that nice!’ Lakshmi said. ‘I hope you agreed.’ ‘I have asked for time to think about it, but I am not inclined,’ he replied.
Rajaji and Patel were told about the offer by Devadas, and both of them advised him to say yes. Patel was even more emphatic than Rajaji. But Devadas grew more and more certain that his disinclination was right. He told the PM soon enough that his heart was in running the Hindustan Times, and that he would not do justice to the embassy in Moscow. Nehru heard him matter-of-factly, and that was that. The offer was not reiterated, nor was it substituted by any other, and he told his sister, now packing up in Moscow, that the idea of appointing Devadas had ‘fallen through’. Patel did not hide his disappointment.
Excerpted with permission from Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Aleph Book Company
