By Sumit Kumar Singh, IANS,
Rampur Bangar (Uttar Pradesh): It is an occasion villagers here are unlikely to forget — a night Rahul Gandhi spent with them.
As the sun went down, the Congress leader, seen by many as a future prime minister, did away with the day’s sweat and fatigue by bathing on the open terrace of farmer Vijay Pal Sharma’s single-storey house.
After relaxing for a while, Rahul went for simple dinner: home-made rotis with dal and vegetables. He politely declined the puris.
An enthusiastic policeman kept whispering the details to the sub-divisional magistrate.
Like others in the village, Sharma’s house gets electricity only at night. But when they knew who their guest would be, a generator was quickly arranged.
But Gandhi, who spent Tuesday night here amid his padayatra against the Uttar Pradesh government’s widely flayed land acquisition policy, was not the only one to be fed.
There were around 100 security personnel — policemen and safari-clad commandos. There were also plenty of Congress activists.
And there were two dozen hungry journalists who had been chasing Gandhi through mud tracks from early morning, as he trekked from one village to another, interacting with villagers.
Village women — the young and not-so-young — were clearly bowled over by the Gandhi they saw.
“He is so handsome!” gushed one girl, Rita, as she tried to take a closer look at the Congress general secretary.
“It is a matter of pride that Rahul Gandhi came to our village,” said Arvind Sharma, a villager.
The young man who served Gandhi food couldn’t stop raving about it.
The son of farmer Vijay Pal Sharma initially gave away tea and cold drinks to the army of journalists and security personnel.
But that wasn’t enough to kill the hunger pangs. And the nearest ‘dhaba’
was three kilometres away.
As the sub-divisional magistrate, a police inspector and I lay down on three coats under the sky, came the good news: dinner was on the house!
And so the ‘mud chula’ continued to be in use, with half a dozen women in attendance, till about midnight, churning out loads of rotis and puris.
The cooking went on till midnight.
But once it became known that the rotis that Gandhi ate were also made in the same ‘chula’, television cameras got into the act.
On persistent requests, the ‘chula’ was again lit at 2 in the morning, and the woman who headed the band, Usha Devi, gave away sound bytes.
Amid all the excitement outside, Gandhi slept peacefully in a village home not far from Delhi.
(Sumit Kumar Singh can be contacted at [email protected])