When Vajpayee won over Lahore with his oratory

We waited at the Wagah border to await the arrival of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the bus from New Delhi to Lahore. Before noon we were at Wagah, on the Pakistani side anxiously waiting for the bus to arrive.

Once the bus rolled in, Prime Minister Vajpayee came out of the bus, waved to the onlookers and walked on Pakistani soil. The Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan G Parthasarthy and KC Singh from the Ministry of External Affairs were visibly tense while monitoring the arrangements.

From Wagah we were to go to Governor’s House. On our way we faced several protests, mostly organised by Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing. On the entire route there were protests and it appeared as if the protests were staged managed by the Pakistani agencies.

At the Governor’s House, however, it was a completely different scene. Never before had I seen so many black Mercedes at one place. Minister after minister was getting down from their black Mercedes. Before the arrival of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, we were seated on tables allotted to us.

When Atal Bihari Vajpayee started speaking, he mesmerised the audience. I had never been witness to such eloquence before. And only President Obama’s address many years later at Cairo matched Vajpayee’s in sheer brilliance.

I have no recollection of how long Vajpayee spoke. It was undoubtedly a long speech but nobody complained. We had been cast a hypnotic spell. I remember hearing people praise the Indian Prime Minister. Atal Ji had spoken extempore but with a force and elegance that caught even the Indian delegation by surprise.

I could sense that Vajpayee had provided the media several possible headlines for the morning newspapers. I also remember my confusion as I tensely debated what to put in my opening lines, out of the several important strands that the Prime Minister had touched upon.

It was much later that the full import of that evening sank in. I had witnessed Vajpayee use his oratorial skill to disarm the enemy. The protests were forgotten in the glow of his speech as people animatedly discussed what the PM had said.

After the speech, journalists were taken for a joint Press conference to be addressed by Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart Mian Nawaz Sharif. Vajpayee, master of words, handled the press conference in his own style and made friends even among the hostile Pakistani media.

His defeat in the 2004 elections indicated that he had been less successful as PM. Several of his decisions would always be questionable. The Qandahar incident and the 2002 Gujarat riots haunted him.

But on that euphoric evening in Pakistan, Vajpayee was the winner. He had won the battle of wits and won over Pakistanis who listened to him.

There was another memorable encounter that I find it hard to resist sharing. Though, it was my first journalistic assignment on foreign soil, once we reached Lahore, it felt like reporting from any other city of Indian Punjab as people appeared more comfortable speaking in Punjabi. After checking at Pearl hotel of Lahore on 19th February 1999, some of the journalists decided to go to Anarkali Bazar. Our host arranged a bus for us and two stunning ladies to show us around.

As I and my Sikh friend, Ravi Ranjan Singh, were heading towards the Bazar, a youth on a bicycle asked Ravi to give him his ‘Kada’ (which every Sikh sports). We were both taken aback to see the young man whine like a child and plead, “Paa ji, ae mainu de dan” ( Will you please give it to me as a gift ?)

His elders had advised him to wear a ‘Kada’ but could not get the right size from Gurudwaras in Pakistan. Ravi obliged and handed over his ‘Kada’.