It was May in the year 1991, when Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister, came to Muzaffarpur - a town in Bihar - to deliver a speech to locals as part of the election campaign for the INC. The programme was organised in a large open field in Chakkar Maidan. A special bullet proof glass case, well equipped with loudspeakers and microphones, was arranged for. The roads had been cleaned laboriously, and barks of all trees in the town had been smartly painted in the typical 'geru' and white colour. In short, Muzaffarpur was ready to welcome the Prime Minister.
On the scheduled day, Rajiv Gandhi arrived in a helicopter, dressed in white kurta-pyjama. Quite a crowd had gathered to listen to him. People were seated in front of his podium on the ground. A lot of people were standing. A few others were at the boundaries of the ground. among these few others was a family of 4, consisting of a husband, a wife, a daughter and the wife's younger sister. The daughter was 1 and a half years old. The little girl could not understand anything but she could hear a fair man in white clothes speaking from a glass case. Her mother told her that the case was bullet proof. This was all she remembered of that incident.
A few years later that girl, for some strange reason, thought that she had heard Mr. P.V. Narsimha Rao speak in her town that day. A possible explanation for this belief could be that Mr. Rao was the Prime Minister then, and most politicians dressed in white clothes. It was only when her mother clarified that she realised who it actually was. The girl was to learn after a few years that Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated just a few days after he delivered that speech in Muzaffarpur.
Being a typical north Indian family, which migrated to Bombay in 1994, politics was a special interest and a topic of regular discussion in that girl's family. But still nothing can explain why and how that girl remembers that particular incident so vividly till date. It's not that it was an episode which she was reminded of regularly, but then such things do happen in life. People do remember strange or particular incidents of their childhood. Such was the case about Rajiv Gandhi's speech in 1991 which that little girl (who is no more little now) remembered and will always remember.
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