Aam Aadmi

This article appeared in New Indian Express. I wish all of you read this . 

An aam aadmi from a different era

By Radha Padmanabhan

He was sitting there all alone in a third class waiting room of the Calicut railway station. We had expected the room to be crowded with dignitaries belonging to the government, with news reporters and others. So we almost missed him. He was reading a newspaper and his back was turned towards us. We thought he was someone else not the man we had come to meet, until he put down the newspaper. The room was dirty, dusty and not spruced up as it is now. He did not ask for help nor were there any toadies round to curry favours because favours he would give none. He was waiting at the station for a connecting train that was expected in a few hours. 

This was way back in the early '60s.

We got a trunk call from Sadasivam, M S Subbalakshmi's husband. They often used to stay with us whenever MS gave a kutcheri. We had gladly agreed to go to the railway station and deliver a simple lunch to the man as he could not digest hotel food. The meal I had prepared was simple, with rice, sambar, tomato rasam, vegetable and curd. 'You should not have taken all this trouble' he said to us as we started to serve him his lunch.'I could have lunched at the railway canteen'.

The simplicity of the man hit us with force. This man who a few years ago occupied the highest position in the land, from 1948 to 1950, the second governor general of India — C Rajagopalachari or CR as he was popularly known, a man of the highest integrity and the strictest of principles.

He was entitled to command the best government accommodation and his needs to be looked after, but he preferred not to. He was a freedom fighter and was awarded the Bharat Ratna. Gandhiji once said that he was the 'keeper of my conscience'. He was a close associate of Nehru and Patel and was respected by them although he had many differences with them. He was a staunch protector of his political principles and never hesitated to disagree with his closest associates. He therefore started a political party — The Swatantra Party.

He lived in a small old house in Kilpauk, in Chennai (then Madras). He could have easily got an allotment of a house with a garden—he did not. His family never earned the name of the first family. He did not believe in political dynasty, neither did the Mahatma and nor did his family benefit monetarily. As for Swiss bank accounts, property deals & get rich quickly—these were alien to his ways. Scam is a word that was not in his dictionary.

In some ways he is lucky that he did not live to see the present political scenario with all the scams that are being exposed. Rip-offs, fraud, trickery, swindles, amassing money by means of deception, fake-photos, non-existent addresses, non-existent directors of companies, companies without addresses...the list is endless. Election promises are made claiming to represent the aam aadmi. CR represented the aam aadmi — he was the real aam aadmi.