Mumbai: December 12, 2002 is etched in Shobhana Sathe’s memory. Ms. Sathe (52), then a teacher in Dombivli’s Sister Nivedita School, received a letter signed by former Prime Minister late Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s officer on special duty Sudheendra Kulkarni inviting her and her students to New Delhi for Mr. Vajpayee’s birthday on December 25. Ms. Sathe’s students had prepared a special gift for ‘Atalji,’ which the PM had appreciated. He wanted to meet the group that had come up with the idea.
“It was unbelievable at first, when the PM’s office confirmed our meeting. I had come up with the idea of writing articles about various aspects of Atalji’s personality. Our school library was gifted various books on Atalji from Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini. My students read those books and wrote about him being a poet, speaker, politician, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker and prime minister,” Ms. Sathe, now retired, said. A few of the Marathi articles were translated to Hindi, while the rest were in English. Each one contained a sketch of Mr. Vajpayee drawn by artist Nilesh Jadhav.
When Mr. Kulkarni learnt about it through the then Thane Member of Parliament and Shiv Sena leader, the late Prakash Paranjape, and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, the late Pramod Mahajan, he met Ms. Sathe and told her the PM would love to visit her students and accept the gift.
On the appointed day, Ms. Sathe was to get a pleasant surprise, besides the realisation that she was meeting one of the finest politicians of India. “One wouldn’t believe what he asked me after exchanging pleasantries. He asked me the whereabouts of Abasaheb Patwari, the first municipal council president of Dombivli,” said Ms. Sathe, who was accompanied by 12 of her students, a member of the school management, and the headmistress.
Mr. Patwari was the BJP’s first head of the Dombivli municipal council. For decades, Dombivli has been one of the strongest bases of the RSS, with the organisation controlling a number of educational institutes, banks and so on.
For Ms. Sathe, who also comes from an RSS background, it was unexpected. “He was the Prime Minister of India. He not only remembered Abasaheb but inquired about him. Great leaders never forget their colleagues. When I told this to Abasaheb, he was flabbergasted,” she said.
Ms. Sathe still cherishes the memory. “When the students gifted him the articles, he asked them to do the same exercise for national heroes from the past,” she said. There was more to it, though: Mr. Vajpayee wondered whether he was deserving of the praise showered on him. “One rarely sees this humility in a politician.”