Guruji, so addressed by Indira Gandhi, was Pandit Gaya Prasad Shukla, a freedom fighter. It was he who had first written an opinion piece in Navjivan, a Hindi daily published from Lucknow. The newspaper was founded by Mahatma Gandhi—on why Indira Gandhi must contest from Rae Bareli. In 1930, when she made her maiden visit to the district, she was 12 and everyone called her Indu.

That rented house, with its large front yard marked by a furrowed, leafy neem tree, would go on to become the hub of the Congress politics (and the designated central congress office). The terrace was the venue for meetings. In kitchens, leaders like Sheila Kaul helped Shukla’s daughter-in- law to roll out chapatis or chop vegetables.

Guruji is no more. His son Jagdish Narayan passed away a year ago. Yet, on May 3, led by Preeti Shukla, the 73-year-old daughter-in-law of Guruji, the family organized the hawan and puja that is mandatory before a member of Gandhi family files the nomination.

After the puja, Preeti Shukla dropped into one end of the sari Palla and both Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi made the traditional offering of rice, jiggery and turmeric and gave every family member some money as blessings. “My father-in-law had first asked me to do it for Indiraji (sister-in-law), who he called bhauji (sister-in-law)”, she said. “It is like Sudama’s offering, but they have always received it with respect. What more do we want”?

That reference to Sudama, Krishna’s childhood friend, who thought as too modest his gift of rice, till the later priced it out, as the underlying emotional note of this election in Rae Bareli. Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving president of the Congress, in a letter to the electorate which chose her five times wrote, “I know that you will, in every challenge, take care of me and my family as you have done till now…”

K C Shukla, 35, one of Guruji’s three grandsons said, “Rae Bareli owes its identity to the family. It is not just about politics”.

Rae Bareli, both town and district, is a dusty speck that hovers somewhere between the imagined glories of past and its not fully imagined future. Its most recognizable institutions, such as the Rajiv Gandhi institute of Petroleum Engineering Technology and the Feroze Gandhi Institute of Engineering and Technology, bear the family name. But since the congress fell out of favour in the state (the last chief minister from the party was N D Tiwari in 1988), Rae Bareli straddled an uncomfortable Cusp.

For example, most of its sugar mills have shut down, those displaced for the rail coach factory have not received any compensation, a spice park lies abandoned and even the National Institute of Fashion Technology is unable to pay the rent for its temporary premises. (IPA Service)