It Happened a Long Time Ago

It happened a long time back, I was studying in the third or fourth grade, Pandit Nehru was visiting our city. It was not the first time he was doing this in fact Allahabad being his hometown he did this quite frequently. Our school was situated very close to Anand Bahawan, Nehru’s ancestral home. Built on an eight acre plot and based on the then contemporary British architecture it is an imposing building. Pt. Nehru would arrive by plane and alight at Bamrauli, the city’s civilian airport and from airport to his residence he will lead the cavalcade of cars standing atop a open jeep, waving at the crowd majestically and looking quite happy and pleased with himself. I never saw Indira accompany him during any of the journey; if she did she must have been sitting in some other car, in any case at that time nobody was interested in her, we were all busy in waving back to Nehru and desperately trying to make eye contact with him. There was a big reward waiting if one could make the eye contact, a beatific smile and a personalized wave of the hand. And whenever he spotted a Mother or a Teacher among us the waving switched over to a smart namaste. The Teachers would swoon and the Mothers would vainly try to preserve their stern and unsexy look. He charmed everybody, impressed quite a few and inspired some. His charm carried even after his death and Congress did not lose a single election (local, state and national) till well into the mid seventies. Although we had been told that Pt. Nehru loved children and that was why we were there to welcome him, his visits however, were a nightmare for us. Immediately after assembly we would be marched out of the school, classwise and hightwise and made to stand on either side of the road in front of the school. Nobody had any idea when he was due to arrive but our Mother Superior was not the one to take chances. So, there we were standing dutifully and minding our discipline very well to avoid the cane that was frequently spared. I don’t know why, but we did not carry water bottle to school (my daughter carried hers’ till she passed out of the school and joined college). We were not allowed to leave the class between the periods and during the periods as well. Thus, at the lunch recess there would be a big unruly crowd of about hundred to two hundred brats trying to gain access to half a dozen taps. Out on the street we of course had no water and worse, it appears that Pt. Nehru always chose the wrong period of the year to visit Allahabad, when the sun is at its fiercest. I am not able to recall any visit of Pt. Nehru during the winter months. My memory says it used to be month of August (or may be late July) when he use to visit us. August is the worst month; the raging temperature of June gives way to humidity, temperature ranging in the mid thirties and the sun beating down harshly on you. It was the weather, which did not cause sunstroke but sunburns. Within minutes we would all be feeling thirsty and dried up. No one complained, the few who were foolish enough to do so were promptly rewarded with a few of the best ones. The waiting would stretch into hours; sometimes well past the lunch break, in which case we were not allowed to break for lunch. While we stood there in the sun, constantly shifting weight from one leg to other to give them some rest by turns, shirts and vests wretchedly drenched in sweat, the teachers would move under the shade of the huge tamarind tree and the senior most monitor would be instructed to signal the teachers when Mother Superior was about to come out. Every now and then teachers in one and twos would go inside and (and I don’t know it was our jealous eyes or otherwise) look refreshed. The observant among us would notice tiny droplets of water hanging on loose strand of hairs. We would be talking among ourselves, first in whispers, which would gradually grow louder and when it got too loud a teacher or two would move out of the group and randomly spank a handful of students. From time to time shouts of ‘he has come, he has come’ would go up, much like ‘tiger, tiger’ in the fable. Finally he would arrive. We didn’t break ranks or crane our necks to have a glimpse; we stood quietly in a single file, waiting for the lead teacher to signal for us to shout ‘Chacha Nehru zindabad’. Though we were under instruction to shout at the top of our voice but by that time we would be too tired and exhausted for that. We would be desperate for the torture to end and get back to the school and quieten our thirst. I have never voted for Congress in any of the elections.