Two Encounters with Indira Gandhi, Seven Years Apart.
Since we seem to be in a season of personal recollections, family anecdotes and intimate revelations, not all of which necessarily have much to do with facts or history, I thought I might add two of my own. I met Indira Gandhi twice. The first time I was eleven. The second, eighteen. The first meeting came about in rather unusual circumstances. In November 1971, my father had moved us to Damana, Jammu and Kashmir, a few kilometres from the Pakistan border. By December, war had broken out and, like any child growing up in a military family, I was witnessing events that were extraordinary, frightening and, in their own way, exciting. In my fortnightly letter to my grandparents In Delhi, I described what we were seeing and experiencing. It was quite a brave little letter. Written with the uncomplicated patriotism of a child who knew her country was at war and whose family was very much part of that reality. My grandfather read the letter aloud one evening to a good family friend who dropp...
