Tales of former PM's humility echo in the corridors of power

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- Saubhadra Chatterji

NEW DELHI: It was July 2003 and the Congress brass had gathered in Shimla for a party chief ministers' conference. Senior leaders were lodged at a five-star hotel close to the venue. Hours before the inaugural session, one of Pranab Mukherjee's aides came rushing down the stairs to help his boss prepare for the day. As he took a turn on the corridor leading to Mukherjee's room, the aide was gobsmacked. There, outside the closed doors of the hotel room, Manmohan Singh, then the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, was waiting patiently with a bunch of documents in his hand for Mukherjee to come out.

Tales of Manmohan Singh's modesty, grace and humility are folklores in the corridors of power. As a Rajya Sabha member, Singh loved to come to the old Parliament library to spend some quiet time and read articles on economy in foreign and Indian magazines. One day, he ordered a glass of lassi at the Delhi milk department counter outside the Central Hall, but at the time of payment, Singh—not the one to carry wads of currency notes—found himself short of cash.