Reading articles about Madam Fori Nehru on her 100th birthday some time back, my mind went back about fifteen years. I had lost my wife to cancer and was trying to cope with life without her. And then my old mother who was staying with me in Bhubaneswar also passed away. I suddenly felt very alone and lonely. May be a change of place would do me good, I thought. So I applied for a deputation to the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. I was selected and I moved to Shimla. It felt great to be working in the lovely surroundings of the erstwhile Viceregal Lodge, amidst learned scholars researching the fundamental questions of life and thought.
This Institute has been modelled after the venerable Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, USA and was set up when the scholar philosopher Dr. Radhakrishnan, as the President of India, decided that this building be put to use for setting up an institute of higher learning rather than keeping it as the summer retreat of the President, to be utilized only for a fortnight during the year. In remembering him, the grateful IIAS holds a yearly lecture on his birthday and calls it the “Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecture”.
Around mid-summer, the Director of the Institute told me very excitedly that the next annual lecture would be by Mr. B. K. Nehru and that Mr. Nehru, who was leading a quiet life in Kasauli, had agreed to come up to Shimla for delivering this lecture in the first week of September. The entire academic community waited for September to come.
On the appointed day, Mr. and Mrs. Nehru reached the Institute around noon and were welcomed by the Director. I joined the Director in escorting them to their suite. In the afternoon, the full Conference Room of the IIAS listened to the old Mr. Nehru speak with amazing insight and candour. Mrs. Nehru sat near him and listened with rapt attention to every word that her husband spoke. She looked remarkably pretty and all the eyes in the Conference room were riveted on her and her husband alternately. There was a thunderous standing ovation at the end and the Nehrus, looking a bit exhausted, moved slowly out of the building toward the car which was to take them back to Kasauli.
By that time the sun was beginning to set. The path from the half a dozen stairs of the building till the car - just a few feet, was pebbled and hence a little uneven. I offered my hand to Mrs. Nehru to help her with the stairs. She stopped, looked straight into my eyes and said with amazing grace and motherly affection, “Young man, ever since I have come here I havn’t seen you smile. What is the matter? Why don’t you smile? I will hold your hand only if you smile!”. And that made me smile. She took my hand and slowly came till the car, boarded it and soon they left, leaving me still smiling and strangely content with life.
