To Rahul, With Thanks

It is difficult to put in mere words the profound gratitude I feel this February evening towards Rahul Gandhi. Today is the day he visited Mumbai for some hours and traveled by local train, withdrew money from an ATM, and offered flowers at an Ambedkar statue that has become the symbol of the Sena and BJP animosity towards Dalits, even if they are Marathi manoos.

Thank you, Rahul, for finally and comprehensively driving the Amar Singh story off the airwaves.

SRK began this noble mission, but it needed you, with your dimpled dignity, to push this verbose monstrosity into well-deserved (albeit, unfortunately short) obscurity (given the tendency of our media to pander to this long-winded self-promoter).

Thank you, Rahul, for bringing simple things like good manners and courtesy back into public life. This thanks has been coming to you for some time, what with reports of your thanking drivers who took you places and ordinary gestures of good behaviour that have become so remarkable for us, with the daily spectacle of graceless netas being part of our normal fare. Of course, thanks for this should partly be shared by your parents, who obviously brought you up right. At least, as a mother who is herself partly responsible for a young man whose manner towards less privileged people bears certain similarities with your own, I cannot help get misty-eyed when I see you go places. Thanks for making it fashionable for young people to be decent and good-hearted, for making cynicism look crass.

There are so many other things for which to thank you. The list is only beginning. But I also feel afraid. I ignored all the initial hoopla about your entry into politics not only because I found the dynastic angle abhorrent. I was also afraid to get too attached to you - the way I had become to your late father. The tears I shed at his untimely death shocked me with their intensity, the sheer sense of loss. I did not want to take such a risk again, in case the hate-mongers got you too. Better to stay indifferent and not be bothered, I thought.

But that can never be, can it Rahul? As an Indian and a patriot, I cannot help but notice the path you have chosen to succeed in your father's footsteps. A longer, more difficult, but also much more change-bearing path. How can I then stay indifferent, or not burst out into wild cheering when I see TV coverage of your Mumbai trip? How can I pretend an intellectual superiority when I do not feel it? I feel a sense of great kinship with your mission, to make goodness and honesty and a concern and caring for people the basis for a career in public life. Thank you for your quiet courage.

Wishing your vision stays clear and uncontaminated, and you become the longest-lived Gandhi-Nehru of five generations.