When he was offered his favourite dishes after knee surgery

LUCKNOW:‘ There was a time when around 50 people from Lucknow travelled all the way to Delhi to offer Atalji’s favourite dishes to him after he underwent a knee transplant surgery.

Recalling the incident, Riddhi Kishore Gaur of Shubh Sanskar Samiti said, “I remember it well. Due to his knee transplant surgery, Atalji was unable to come to Lucknow for over two months. So, he called up Tandonji (Lalji Tandon) and asked him to come and meet him along with all of us. Around 50 of us went to Delhi to see Atalji and carried along his favourite dishes. He didn’t disappoint anybody and tasted a little bit from every delicacy.”

Many iconic food outlets of the state capital are bemoaning the loss of their prestigious customer. One among them is ‘Raja Thandai’ of Chowk area, where the former Prime Minister was a regular.

Guddu, owner of Raja Thandai, said, “My father used to wait for him whenever he was in town. I was a child, but understood even back then that a great man was one of our customers. When he became the Prime Minister, I realised who he was and to whom we had been serving our ‘thandai’ all this time.”

Recalling his long association with Atal, veteran BJP leader Lalji Tandon said, “I first met him in 1944 at an RSS camp in Kalicharan Inter College. As I was the youngest , I was given the responsibility of serving food. Atalji was fond of food and knew how to make good dishes out of simple ingredients.”

“He was fond of ‘lapsi’ ( halwa of wheat flour). Whenever he came to my place, he used to request for ‘lapsi’,” said Tandon.

“During those days, neither did we have the money nor the resources to visit hotels for lavish dinners. That’s why we moved around the streets in Chowk and ate ‘chaat’, ‘khasta’, ‘poori’, ‘chhole-bhature’, ‘makkhan-malai’ and after that went to have ‘thandai’,” said Tandon.

He said Atal was fond of ‘gillori’ from Ram Asrey sweetshop. The former PM also loved the ‘paan’ from Sharma paan shop in Sadar, near the ‘akhara’ at Sanskrit Pathsahala, where he went to play ‘kabaddi’ with RSS workers.

Sarvesh Chandra Dwivedi of Rashtradharm Prakashan said , “Atalji was the editor of ‘Rashtradharm’, ‘Panchjanya’, ‘Swadesh’ and ‘Vir Arjun’. He was fond of home-made food and many of us shared our food with him. He was so simple and down to earth.”