Vajpayee was popular for his simplicity

Atal ji had come to Kanpur in 1946 to pursue MA in political science from the DAV College. He lived in the hostel.

His father KK Vajpayee, who had retired as the district inspector of schools (DIoS), also joined LLB with his son Atal ji at the DAV College. Both the father and the son lived in the same hostel room. Initially they were in the same section but were later allotted separate sections.

Their sections were changed because whenever Atal ji’s father did not attend the class, the teacher would ask him where his father was and whenever he himself could not attend the class, the teacher would asked his father where Atal ji was. The students laughed over such questions.

One day Atal ji went to deposit the fee of his father but the clerk did not believe him and got agitated.

The clerk asked Atal ji to come along with his father and he would report the matter to the principal. Later, other clerks told him that Atal ji was not joking but in fact his father was also pursuing the same course. The clerk then deposited the fee.

Dr MM Pandey was Atal ji’s favourite professor and Triloki Nath Srivastava was his close friend.

He joined law the same year with his father but to my knowledge he did not complete the course and left the college.

Atal ji was popular among fellow students and teachers about his simplicity, friendliness and sense of humour.

I still remember when he held the post of prime minister for 13 days, I went to meet him. He warmly greeted me and asked me to visit him at his home for a cup of tea as he was busy in a high-level meeting at that time.

I went to his house. While we were talking about college days, hundreds of his admirers reached there and shouted slogans in his praise. He came out of his house and told them that he would meet them after some time as he was with his classmate. We had tea together and he came up to the main gate to see me off. I was overwhelmed by his simplicity and affection for a classmate.

I was junior to him by one year. I had joined the college in 1947 for MA (political science). There used to be a combined class for three of the papers of the subject and during these classes I came in contact with Atal ji.

He was very soft spoken and even talked very little, either in the classroom or outside. He was stage shy and never faced the college audience at any programme.

Atal ji always came to college in white ‘dhoti-kurta’ and sleepers (‘chappals’). There was nothing about him which could make one feel that he was a genius.

But he was very conscientious, hardworking and a self-made man.

He was in the habit of doing homework on the topic that was to be taught the next day and after the class was over, no one could find him.

Whenever other classmates asked about his disappearance from the hostel and college, he would just smile and would not utter a single word. He simply said he was busy writing articles.

One day, my old friend Mohan Sharma, who was the in-charge of the ‘shakhas’ of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) met me and said that Atal ji was a committed RSS worker and he attended ‘shakhas’ every day and wrote articles for RSS journals.

But Atal ji neither spoke about his association with the RSS nor did he ever try to influence his friends and classmates about joining the Sangh.

(As told to Haidar Naqvi in 2014 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was conferred with Bharat Ratna. Dr Ram Mohan Singh, who was a classmate of Vajpayee during his days in Kanpur, passed away in July 2016.)