Family connection
How a ‘nephew’ of the Vice-President was given charge of his security
This happened on April 14, 1950. I was about 18. It was a hot summer day in Madras (present day Chennai). My parents, elder brother, younger brother, and I were sitting on our terrace. My mother had poured buckets of water in the evening, so that the terrace would cool down by dinner time. Amma had prepared a potful of curd rice for dinner.
Those days it was common in all households to sit in a circle on the terrace floor (dining tables were unheard of back then). Amma would put a ball of curd rice in our outstretched palms, by turns.
That day too this happy dinner ritual was going on, when suddenly I saw a bright dazzling light go up to the sky! The others could not see it because they had their backs to the direction from where this occurred.
When I exclaimed and pointed to what I had witnessed, my father said, “It must be some fireworks going on.” But those days, except on Deepavali and Karthika Purnima, nobody lit fireworks. We discussed this for some time but did not know what it was.
Next morning, when my father opened The Hindu, there it was in bold letters, “A meteor of unusually big size and brilliance was seen in the sky exactly at the time when Bhagwan Sri Ramana attained Videha Mukthi. The devotees gathered at Ramana Maharishi’s Ashram were thrilled by the sight of the phenomenon, and its coincidence with the sage’s passing away.”
I have read that when Saint Tyagaraja shed his mortal coils, thousands of people saw a brilliant divine Jyothi going up in the sky; he died nearly two centuries ago. This, it is believed, happens when divine souls shed their lives and merge with the Lord. I feel I was blessed to see this phenomenon.
In September 1989, I was working as subdivisional police officer at Mangrol in Junagadh district of Gujarat. The Superintendent of Police, Surinder Kumar, one day, called me to discuss the security arrangements for the annual Kharwa fair at a coastal village in my subdivision.
Mr. Kumar told me that traditionally, there was a lot of drunken revelry at the fair and the participants also indulged in gambling. Whenever the police tried to stop it, the merrymakers clashed with them resulting in violence. The SP said the party in power wanted to avoid violence at all costs because the Lok Sabha election was due, and it wanted to keep the Kharwa community in good humour. He asked me how I proposed to handle the issue.
I said that with prohibition in place in the State, allowing liquor or any other illegal activity at the fair was out of the question, but that I would need at least one company of the State Reserve Police Force to enforce the law. The SP shook his head and said his request for the same had been turned down by the head office.
Mr. Kumar said if I agreed, he would depute me to handle the security of the VicePresident’s visit to the Somnath Temple at Veraval in the adjoining subdivision, scheduled around the same time as the fair, and bring an experienced Deputy SP in my place to handle the law and order of the fair.
So, I went to Veraval to supervise the security of the VicePresident’s visit. While I was there, someone spread a rumour that I had been deputed to be in charge of the VicePresident’s security because I was his nephew. Shankar Dayal Sharma was the VicePresident then. He was from Madhya parents can reconcile themselves to the word ‘normal’, when it comes to mean ‘average’ as far as their wards are concerned. Ironically, their initial concern for the normal functioning of a child soon turns into a passion to fulfil their dreams through them. Hence, children wilt under parental pressure.
By and by, as we step into the material world of jobs or business, our mind is focused on income and the visible trappings of success. Here of course, many of us would love to have the prefix ‘ab’ to the word normal – as we look for an exceptional gain in
Pradesh and I too had joined the IPS from there. Obviously, someone had put two and two together and made five.
Mr. Kumar’s scheme worked. Though the police had to look the other way, the Kharwa fair passed off without incident. And so did the VicePresident’s visit. When I met the SP later, he asked me if I had heard the rumour about my being a nephew of the VicePresident. I said yes and was about to tell the truth when he raised a hand to stop me and, with a broad smile, said, “No, don’t clarify, neither to me nor to anyone else. It would do you no harm.” Well, nobody asked and I nearly forgot about it.
Two years later, after Sharma became the President, I happened to meet Mr. Kumar again. On seeing me, he asked with a smile, “Where are the sweets? Your uncle has become the President of India.” the form of a windfall like a lottery prize or an unexpected inheritance or a booming stock market. However, the salaried middle class tends to be quite realistic. All we want is a reasonable cash flow every month.
But what is considered normal can keep changing with the times. While we grapple with life’s challenges, we realise that the trickiest area happens to be dealing with relationships. Time was when it required many mutual adjustments for relationships to be normal. But with the advent of the mobile phone, it is easier to sustain connections without being physically present. With social media platforms taking the lead in reminding us of birthdays and other important events, half the job is done. The rest is about making all the right noises through calls and text messages. Whether we like it or not, this is the new ‘normal’.