we are proud of our smart future prime minister mr raul vinci (aka gandhi)

A Nice Boy To Know (Really)

The historysheet of a man now comfortable in his political skin

SHEELA REDDY ON RAHUL GANDHI

For a man who has lived most of his 38 years in a fish bowl, Rahul Gandhi's private life is almost impregnable. There's a conspiracy of silence in which everyone seems to abet—from booksellers and restaurant owners in Khan Market to friends and associates in his Shining New Politics movement across the country. Ask them what the Congress crown prince is really like, and they back off in a quaint mixture of alarm and loyalty, as if you had asked them for a state secret, or worse.

He even managed to keep his visit a few months ago to one of the country's most famous addresses, E 49 Sujan Singh Park, out of the public eye. Others came before him, including his father and uncle, to visit the man who is self-confessedly the world's worst keeper of secrets—Khushwant Singh—but it was the fifth generation Nehru-Gandhi scion who prevailed on Khushwant never to write about it.

The expectations, at least on Khushwant's side, were minimal—some laboured conversation, perhaps? Else, a man in search of a mentor, a tendency Khushwant is inclined to snub in anyone, especially those in public life. Instead, the young man seated by his sofa was neither overawed nor full of himself. Tea was ordered, and arrived in the usual mug. "Are you an admirer of Chavez?" Rahul wanted to know, pointing to the curly-locked Venezuelan leader's visage on the mug. Khushwant laughed—one supposes from surprise as well as pleasure at finding someone from the Nehru-Gandhi clan so well-informed—before going on to explain that the mug was a gift from a Chavez admirer.

The conversation soon got intense. The Congress general secretary wanted to know what Khushwant thought were the weak points of the Congress. An absence of cadre, was the prompt reply: "The BJP has the RSS and Shiv Sena cadre, volunteers who take voters to cast their ballot, unlike the Congress, which suffers as a result." Rahul agreed fervently.

Taking him through the conversational paces, Khushwant now confesses he was pleasantly surprised. "I found him an intelligent man, very well-informed and clear-headed, singularly free of any bias." And best of all, not looking to Khushwant for either advice or mentoring. "It was the conversation of two equals," says Khushwant, ranging from the Akalis—"a pity the Congress is unable to shake the Akalis in Punjab, considering what a communal party it is," remarked Khushwant. Rahul: "Take it from me, my whole family feels very warmly to the Sikhs". To his acute awareness of the risk of being assassinated any day: "I believe in building up a group of leaders because who knows when I get killed." And the inevitable, "You worked with Nehru—what was he like?" from Rahul. "A misfortune," Khushwant said with his customary candour, "I tried to never go near him because of his short temper." Rahul found this assessment of his great-grandfather as funny as Khushwant did.

Others vouch for Rahul's wide reading. Booksellers in Khan Market claim he's a regular customer, dropping in to pick up an eclectic range of books. Two books he's been caught reading lately: Obama's The Audacity of Hope and America and the Islamic Bomb by David Armstrong and Joseph Trento. Books he's mentioned on Twitter include Hot, Flat and Crowdedby Thomas Friedman, Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs and Bruce Chatwin's books in general.

But Rahul has something even more valuable in a politician than mere intelligence or well-informedness, according to Sonia's biographer and journalist Rasheed Kidwai, who has closely followed Rahul's career since his St Stephen's days in 1989. It is an instinctive courtesy that touches whoever encounters it. Kidwai gives two instances: the first, at a political rally in Hisar in 1999, where he accompanied his mother. The podium was very small, Kidwai recalls, probably for security reasons. Besides Sonia, only four or five other leaders could be seated. As a result, the then CLP leader Kartari Devi, a portly, sixtyish woman, was left with standing room only on the podium. Rahul, hovering somewhere below the podium, saw her discomfort, and snatching a chair from the front row, climbed up the stairs to offer her the seat. It was an act of chivalry the CLP leader never forgot, Kidwai says.

The second time Kidwai saw a woman being deeply moved by a simple gesture Rahul made came eight or nine years later, in a small hamlet in Madhya Pradesh. Rahul entered the woman's hut to share a meal with her. He stopped at the doorway, and removed his shoes before entering the mud hut. "So many upper-caste persons come into my hut," the woman later told Kidwai, "but not one of them has ever bothered to remove his shoes before entering."

Kidwai's first reporting assignment was to judge Rahul's credentials as a pistol-shooter in the wake of the controversy that broke out over the prime minister's son being admitted to St Stephen's for a BA Hons course in history under the sports quota. His findings, he now recalls, led him to the conclusion that while Rahul probably wasn't the best in that category, he wasn't a bad shooter either. In hindsight, he says, all that shooting practice has served Rahul well in his present job. "Few realise shooting is really a mind game, requiring all your mental faculties—you need a high degree of concentration and determination." That partly explains the way Rahul now conducts Youth Congress meetings—"very focused, target-oriented, and very clear-thinking," as one fresh recruit puts it.

A year senior to Rahul in St Stephen's, Kidwai also noted that Rahul was very intent on being just a "regular guy"—eating his ande ka bujia in the canteen with everyone else. He cheerfully submitted to ragging by his seniors, responding adeptly to that trick question: What did Akbar do to save the Taj Mahal when Agra was flooded? He seemed, even then, to have a good radar for social climbers, according to Kidwai, politely avoiding them, and soon settled in with his own gang of friends, chosen for their singular disinterest in networking.

Sycophancy probably goes with the Nehru-Gandhi family legacy, but Rahul's tolerance for it is famously low. Few have seen him lose his temper, but the one time it happened in public view, one of his recruits says, was when a politician was laying it on too thick. "Usually he's able to nip it politely in the bud but this one kept on going despite Rahul's displeasure." In his book,Sonia: A Biography, Kidwai recounts how Rahul, a fitness freak who jogs when he can't get to a gym, has had to change his gym constantly. "Trainers would wait for the Gandhi scion to climb on to the treadmill and turn up speed, and then approach him.... They knew once they had Rahul on the treadmill they had a captive audience."

Similarly, Kidwai writes, in Parliament: "In one session, realising that Rahul was sitting right behind her, Renuka Chowdhury craned her neck and indulged in twenty minutes of acrobatic animated monologue. The minute Renuka paused for breath, Rahul gave her one of his dimpled smiles, politely picked up his headphones, tuned out Renuka and tuned into the proceedings."

While Rahul may have an inbuilt radar for detecting sycophancy and other forms of humbug, many say he has his mother to thank for not going the way of most politician's sons. "Sonia Gandhi was very strictly brought up, with strict Catholic values," points out Spanish writer, Javier Moro, whose recent book on the Nehru-Gandhi family seen through Sonia's eyes has become a bestseller in Spanish. In '05, while researching the book, he rented a flat in Delhi, hoping—futilely—to break through Sonia's "fortified bastion" and meet her in person. He gave up after a few months, and settled for talking to anyone connected with the Nehru-Gandhi family, both in Delhi and abroad. Sonia, according to Moro, has not only instilled very good values in her children, but is very protective of Rahul's reputation, especially the rumours of a Latino girlfriend, Juanita. Moro says he made enquiries both in Spain and Bogota, but could find no trace of such a person.

Rahul himself confessed a few years ago to the relationship, and as Kidwai points out, even went on a holiday with her to Kumarakom resort in Kerala, accompanied by his sister Priyanka and her husband Robert Vadra. It led, Kidwai says, to a bizarre police complaint by a retired professor against Rahul for indulging in immoral trafficking.

Whether Juanita exists, is still in his life or not, Kidwai is certain of one thing: "Rahul will marry, and it will be a girl of his choice, not an arranged marriage." For Kidwai, the sight of Rahul turning up for the CPP meeting in the trademark white khadi kurta and denims is significant: it's a sign that Rahul is now comfortable being himself even under public glare. It's the real coming of age.