The day my father met Nehru…………!
It was 1955 and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was on
an official visit to the Christian Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) to
inaugurate a medical ward dedicated to Kamala Nehru in the hospital campus. My
father was the Executive Office (EO) of a village panchayat Dharapadvedu which
is located just after the Katpadi Railway Junction and exactly on the only road
that took anyone to Vellore. The erstwhile first Prime Minister of independent
India was to pass by that route as he travelled by train from Madras.
As the administrative head of the region, my
father had all responsibilities to take care of the safety and security of the
Prime Minister as he would travel in an open car greeting the crowd of people
who had assembled there to get a glimpse of this greatest son of Indian soil.
The Cavalcade was on its way and my father, a
freedom fighter himself decided to to hold the party for few minutes honour the
Prime Minister on his way by garlanding him and offer him a specially made
orange juice. He did stop the cavalcade and honoured Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, one
of the founding fathers of our nation, with a garland and a glass of juice. Panditji,
without any hesitation took this in public and shook hands with my dad. I wasn’t
even born then.
Nearly thirty years later, in the year 1984 his
son, myself was to get the most coveted
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Award for academic excellence by the
Government of India. It is now 60 years since this nostalgic incident happened
but it is so fresh in the memories of my family through the diaries of my great father.
Well done dad………….I hope you will be happy wherever
you are and proud of me on this national award as well.
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