When Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s companion Rajkumari Kaur passed away in May 2014, Girish Nikam, who began his journalistic career with Star of Mysore and at that time working with Newstime, Hyderabad, had written an article titled “Mrs. Kaul here, you don’t know who I am?” which was published in Rediff.com. We are republishing that article as we thought it would interest our readers as the nation mourns the passing away of the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Today, Girish Nikam is also no more with us as he had an untimely death on Nov.7, 2016 at the age of 58.
Rajkumari Kaul’s death over the weekend brings back memories of phone conversations at a time when landline numbers were still in vogue, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee was yet to become Prime Minister. Those were my early days in Delhi as a journalist. Having come after from stints in Mysore, Bangalore and Chennai, the capital was a challenge. And I was assigned the Bharatiya Janata Party beat. Working for a regional group of newspapers (Eenadu and Newstime), which had no editions in the capital, it was challenging to establish political contacts and build on them. One way of establishing political contact was not to miss any occasion to meet the leaders, interact with them, ask questions (sensible ones) at press conferences, and be noticed. The other was to be in touch with the leaders on phone to get quotes or crosscheck stories inevitably late in the evenings or even at night. And this had to be done by landline as mobile phones were not available yet. It was on such a process of familiarisation that I stuck a rapport with Vajpayee. In 1995 Vajpayee was still smarting under the shadow of the towering Advani. Vajpayee, who was then a resident of 6, Raisina Road, would be available for journalists and visitors in the evening after his nap and tea, quite freely. Or many a times at his office in Parliament, which he had as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. So frequent meetings, many of them unscheduled, had led a special rapport between us. It was this rapport which would frequently encourage me to call up his residence at all hours in the evening and night, sometimes even after 11 pm. Once, in that late hour, Vajpayee picked up the phone himself and confirmed some news I was checking on. Only to reprimand me in his usual witty manner the next day when we met, “Nikam saab, aap toh sote nahin ho, lekin hamein toh sone do (Nikam saab, you don’t sleep, but allow us to sleep at least),” with a twinkle in his eye and mischief in his voice.
