Devageet, I think you are being affected by something. You have to be unaffected. Right?

“Right.”

Otherwise who is going to write the notes? The writer has to be, at least, the writer.

Okay.

These tears are for you, that’s why they are on the right side. Ashu missed. A little one is coming on the left for her also. I cannot be too hard. Unfortunately I have only got two eyes, and there is Devaraj, for whom I will weep from both eyes together. He is of those few for whom I have been waiting, and not in vain. That is not my way. When I wait, it has to happen. If it does not happen, that only means that I was not really waiting, nothing else. Now, back to the story.

I never wanted to meet Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of Indira Gandhi, for two reasons. I had told Masto, but he would not listen. He was just the right man for me. Pagal Baba had really chosen the right man for a wrong man. I have never been right in anybody’s eyes, but Masto was. Except for me, nobody knew he was laughing like a child. But that was a private affair, and there were many private things which I have to make public now.

We argued for days whether I should go to see the first prime minister of India. I was as reluctant as ever. The moment you ask me to go anywhere, even to God’s house, I will say, “We will think it over,” or, “We could invite him for tea.”

We argued to no end, but he not only understood the arguments, but who was arguing, and he was more concerned with that.

He said, “You can say whatever you like, but,” as he always said when he could not convince me with rational argument, “Pagal Baba has told me to do this, so now it is up to you.”

I said, “If you say that Pagal Baba told you, then let it be so. If he was alive I would not leave him in peace so easily, but he is no more, and one does not argue with a dead man, particularly a loved one.”

He used to laugh and say, “What happened to your argument?”

I said, “Now, you shut your mouth up. The moment you bring Pagal Baba in, a dead man out of his grave, just to win an argument…. And you have not won either, I have simply given up. Do what you have been arguing about with me for these last three days.”

But those arguments were tremendously beautiful, very minute, subtle and far reaching – but that is not the point, at least not for today…perhaps in some other circle.