A better part of Vajpayee’s day was being spent with therapists, doctors and nurses. He watches TV and reads newspaper headlines. He understands everything, but cannot have conversation. The former PM’s taste for good food is well known and now his favourite food—Chinese and prawns—is now served in small proportion.

Bharat Ratna came to him too late: it should have come much early but the UPA government needlessly delayed it. It was a poignant moment when President Pranab Mukherjee drove to 6-A, Krishna Menon Marg, Vajpayee’s residence, on Friday to honour him as a jewel of India. Now 90, the former PM is ailing and could not personally go to Rashtrapati Bhavan to receive the award.

Vajpayee never married but adopted a daughter whose name is Namita. She is fond of Indian music and dance.

Vajpayee’s love for Hindi is well known and he is a poet of some repute. He became the first External Affairs Minister (in Morarji Desai’s government) and also the first Prime Minister to deliver speech in Hindi in United Nations. India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, impressed with Vajpayee’s parliamentary interventions, had, as early as 1960s, picked him out as one with a bright future in Indian politics and a man who could one day become Prime Minister—an insight that proved truly prophetic.

Despite being lauded as an able parliamentarian and a tall leader, Vajpayee landed in controversies many times. The former BJP general secretary, K N Govindacharya, for instance, sparked off a controversy when he contemptuously described Vajpayee as mukhauta (mask) and called him as a leader of no consequence in the organisation.

Another bête noir Subramanian Swamy, in his autobiography poured venom on Vajpayee and cast aspersions on his personal life. Swamy writes: “In Delhi, a Japanese minister organised a party. I was shocked to see Vajpayee, then External Affairs Minister, drunk … fully intoxicated.” The reason for his hostility against Vajpayee, as Swamy himself puts it, was former’s successful attempt to prevent Swamy from becoming the Finance Minister in the NDA government. The Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa was keen that Swamy should become FM and lobbied hard for him. But Vajpayee scuttled the move.

A cankerous leader, Swamy left no stone unturned in maligning Vajpayee. He even alleged that just to get out of prison on parole, Vajpayee had given an apology letter to Indira Gandhi and had created a bad precedence. He could not stomach the fame “I got as an emergency hero.”

Vajpayee would seek to placate the hawks in the RSS by stating that the writing of history should not be one-sided. At the same time, he would project a moderate “Nehruvian” image of himself as the archetypal liberal politician who would strive to attain a balance between conflicting viewpoints. (IPA Service)