"It was Advani and he will be made to pay for it"

Politicians become much nicer beings when out of power, particularly if you are willing to go spend time with them in their years of wilderness. And I did that a few times with Rao, particularly during some periods of great crisis, notably the war in Kargil. I would land up in his Motilal Nehru Marg home (where Chief Election Commissioner Naveen Chawla now lives) and ask him: so how would Narasimha Rao have handled this crisis? He was out of politics, so I did not feel the pressure to be judgmental about him. But he was a wise man with six decades of experience and a remarkable memory. So as a student of political history you always learnt something. He was facing so many court cases, from corruption to bribery (he was eventually acquitted in all) and was left to fend for himself. Lonely, in a mostly empty home with some books, newspapers, an old treadmill and just a few pieces of creaky furniture and a computer as his only possessions, he was usually happy to see me. He enjoyed telling stories like a lonely grandfather. Sometimes he laughed at his own fate. His most memorable line to me, talking about the many cases he was facing, was: koyi kehta hai maine murgi churayee, koyi kehta hai murgi ke ande, par sab kehte hain ke hoon to chor (somebody says I stole the hen, some say I stole the eggs, but they all agree I am a thief anyway). And he would then laugh, almost giggle, for just about 15 seconds.

He knew I was always pumping him for information, and sometimes asked if I went home and noted it down some place. With time he dropped some reserve and spoke more freely about a lot that happened in the past, a political historian's delight. But on two issues he would go absolutely quiet: on what happened in the winter of 1996 when The New York Times said he had prepared to test at Pokharan but pulled back under American pressure, and second, when I probed him on how exactly did he lose control in Ayodhya. On Ayodhya, he would say, he will tell the commission whatever he has to say. On Pokharan, he would just say, arre bhai, kuchch to mere saath chita mein jaane do (leave something to take to my pyre).

But one afternoon, when I had dropped by in the middle of the Kargil war, he opened up on Ayodhya and gave his answers to the common questions listed earlier in this article. Why did he not ask the Central forces to open fire? What were the mobs attacking the mosque shouting, he asked, "Ram, Ram"? What would the soldiers opening fire at them have been chanting to themselves while following my orders to kill maybe hundreds — "Ram, Ram?" Reading the confusion on my face, he said, what if some of the troops turned around and joined the mobs instead? It could have unleashed a fire that would have consumed all of India. Then: why did he not dismiss Kalyan Singh? Mere dismissal, he said, does not mean you can take control. It takes a day or so appointing advisors, sending them to Lucknow, taking control of the state. Meanwhile, what had to happen would have happened and there would have been no Kalyan Singh to blame either. And why did he trust BJP's leaders? "It was Advani," he said, "and he will be made to pay for it." This was obviously a reference to how he had trapped a totally innocent Advani in the Jain hawala case. One thing you wouldn't associate with Rao was forgiveness.

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