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Mrs Kaul And The Atal Friendship
SARASIJ MAJUMDER
·
Atal
and Rajkumari knew each other since their college days.
·
Mrs. Kaul, as Rajkumari was better known as, breathed her last in May 2014. Mrs. Rajkumari Kaul died of a cardiac arrest. Her death marked the end of a friendship
unlike any Indian politics has ever seen or will probably ever see.
Four years before Atal Bihari Vajpayee breathed his last, at
his the then residence, Krishna Menon Marg in Delhi, there was another death,
which escaped the media glare. The day was May 3, 2014. Still, the house saw a
steady stream of visitors including the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi ..
Narendra Modi, who was busy campaigning for the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, could
not attend the last rites of Mrs Kaul, unarguably Delhi's 'most famous unknown
other half'. She was having blood relationship with Mrs. Indira Gandhi.
Top BJP leaders
including LK Advani, Amit Shah as well as Congress politician Jyotiraditya
Scindia attended the cremation of Mrs. Rajkumari Kaul, a longtime companion of
former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Rajkumari
Kaul was Atal Bihari Vajpayee's companion for many decades. Vajpayee adopted
her daughter Namita. He stayed with the Kauls for many years, through his rise
to being India's Prime Minister.
WHO
WAS MRS KAUL?
When
Atal Bihari Vajpayee passed away , the stories of the elusive Mrs Kaul came up
in discussions from drawing rooms to coffee tables. Who was Mrs Kaul, who was
known more famously by her husband's surname than as Vajpayee's companion?
There
is a history.
GWALIOR
In
the 40s, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Rajkumari Haksar went to Victoria College
(later renamed as Laxmibai College) in Gwalior. The youngsters often wrote to
each other to express their feelings. We must recollect that Atalji was a poet.
In the severely conservative environment in the then India, friendships between
girls and boys were not exactly appreciated, and blossomed. Vajpayee and Rajkumari's
friendship too met a similar fate.
Atal is said to have expressed his
feelings for Rajkumari in a letter that he left in a book in their college
library. Rajkumari replied in a similar fashion, but as fate would have it, the
book with the letter never reached Atal.
Around
the Partition years, Rajkumari's Kashmiri Pandit father Govind Narain Haksar
got her married to a Kashmiri Pandit, Brij Narain Kaul. Haksar did not want to
get his daughter married to the man who would later go on to change the course
of Indian politics.
Vajpayee
and Rajkumari Kaul then moved on with their respective lives in different
orbits. She moved to Delhi. He moved to Kanpur, and then Lucknow. BN Kaul was a
professor in Ramjas College in Delhi University and later went on to become the
warden of Ramjas hostel.
DELHI
Years
later, when the unmarried Vajpayee had become a full-time politician, his path
crossed with Rajkumari's in Delhi. Rajkumari was then Mrs Kaul, the wife of
Ramjas College professor BN Kaul.
In
the 60s, Professor Kaul was the warden of the Ramjas hostel. He frequently
played spoilsport in the plans of hostellers who wanted to stay late to sneak
in a drink or two. Someone devised a plan: complain to Mrs Kaul. When this
bunch of hostellers landed up at Mrs Kaul's door to speak about her husband and
his strict ways, they are said to have encountered Vajpayee there.
Over
the next few years, Atal Bihari Vajpayee remained a frequent visitor to the
Kaul household. He then ultimately moved into the Kaul house while the
professor was the Ramjas warden.
LUTYENS'
By
1978, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the external affairs minister in the
Morarji Desai government, Mr and Mrs Kaul and their daughters had all moved in
to his Lutyens' house at 5, Raisina Road. Atal adopted Mrs Kaul's daughter
Namita and later, her granddaughter Niharika.
Former
President Pranab Mukherjee told Hindustan Times in an interview, "We lived
next door and they made an entrance through a side wall so Vajpayee and his
family members could come easily to our place. He was very fond of fish.
Namita, his foster daughter, used to regularly play at our place. My wife and
Mrs Kaul (Namita's mother) had a very deep bonding. When Namita's marriage was
decided, my wife helped in preparations because the groom was a Bengali --Namita
married Ranjan Bhattacharya."
Atal
Bihari Vajpayee's friendship with Mrs Kaul was not spoken in the media. There was an unwritten protocol
that neither the media breached, nor Vajpayee ever felt the need to explain.
His
relationship with Mrs Kaul is best summed up in her own words to a women's
magazine -- the only interview she ever gave. Once the dirty rumours (about
Atal living in her house) began, she never felt the need to offer 'apologetic
explanations'.
In
the same interview, she also said that her friendship with Atal Bihari Vajpayee
was 'way too mature' for anyone to understand, and that her relationship with
her husband also was “way too strong” for these rumors to dent.
Atal
Bihari Vajpayee was bed-ridden when Mrs. Kaul died. He could not attend her last
rites. When he died 4 years later, Mrs. Kaul's daughter Namita lit
the pyre as
an entire nation watched in rapt attention, which was telecasted.
Reference:
'Jugalbandi’ : A book by Vinay Sitapati.
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