Arun Jaitley and I became friends well before we met each other in Delhi University in 1977. Quite surprisingly I got a postcard, checked and stamped by Tihar Jail authorities from the president of Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU). The contents were brief and only requested me to raise the issue of permission to the interned DUSU president to take his MA Final Exams in Law, permission which required clearance from the University’s Academic Council of which I was then a Student Member. Although I did not personally know Jaitley then and our college, namely, St Stephen’s, was not remotely involved in University politics, I thought it to be my democratic duty to help an unfairly interned opposition leader to be allowed to sit for his examination.
Despite some opposition in the Academic Council, Jaitley’s plea was granted and I shortly received another postcard conveying his thanks. Mercifully the Emergency too was gasping for breath by then and in mid-January that year, it was formally relaxed and many friends were released from custody.
We became good friends thereafter, especially as I was a University Coffee House aficionado and progressively he too became one. This was despite our political differences (I was a Leftist those days, the Calcutta effect had not worn off) but this did not come in the way of our deepening friendship. I have changed political persuasions several times since, but Jaitley and I have been steadfast friends regardless.
A multi-talented, multi-tasking person, he was equally fluent in English, Hindi and Punjabi which probably gave him the confidence to contest the Lok Sabha poll from Amritsar in 2014 which unfortunately he lost to Captain Amarinder Singh, current Chief Minister of Punjab. But unfazed as always, Jaitley rose up the political ranks, becoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s confidant and India’s second most important political personality, at least till the rise of Amit Shah. He was adept at managing party affairs across the country and combined affability and authority in equal measure. His one weakness was food, especially Punjabi cuisine, a passion he was forced to abandon due to mounting diabetes some years ago. A friend of friends, he meticulously kept in touch with them no matter how busy he might have been.
A crusader against corruption, Jaitley would be burning the midnight oil with officials like Bhure Lal who was VP Singh’s self-appointed anti-corruption bulldog.
In 1977 when the Janata Party came to power, he was named as the nascent party’s National Executive member, a rare honour for such a young man. But the next day’s newspapers frontpaged the headline that he had turned the offer down. Many friends were astonished. Bewildered, I asked Jaitley why he spurned the honour. He called me aside on the Coffee House courtyard and said, “Remember, you should get involved in politics only on your own resources, otherwise there will always be the temptation to accumulate easy money and you may go down the slippery slope and lose the respect you enjoy.”
These are nuggets of the wisdom that the ever articulate Jaitley always bequeathed to his friends over time. That is why he is incomparable and unforgettable.
