How Pranab Mukherjee was a fount of advice and lessons for netas

When in a chatty mood, Pranab Mukherjee would mesmerise his audience with recollections that went back several decades. In a relaxed conversation, not long after he demitted office as President, he recounted instances from the first general election in 1952, how a candidate in West Bengal chewed up a ballot paper marked in favour of his rival in a tied vote and actually won the recount.
A hearty laugh later, Mukherjee came up with another gem. A voter in a village, who supported a candidate with a banyan tree symbol, went to a big specimen after casting his vote and left the ballot in the trunk of the tree. No Google search is likely to reveal such nuggets — a never-ending stream of anecdotes — from a short statured man with a keen mind and an elephantine memory, qualities that made him indispensable to his party, government, journalists and scholars.

Mukherjee knew his Sanskrit shlokas as well as the Constitution. He began the day with two hours of uninterrupted prayers — reciting the Chandi path and performing rituals. He also had a copy of the Constitution in a black attache and said, “We are actually using this book each and every moment of our lives.”
Once in the Lok Sabha during AB Vajpayee’s tenure as PM, Mukherjee intervened on a current controversy to remark that scriptures indeed contained references to gods savouring intoxicating beverages, provoking protests in BJP ranks. Mukherjee rattled off the relevant Sanskrit references to seal the debate.

In his early years, Mukherjee favoured pipes, a habit he gave up on health grounds. Photos of his time in the Indira Gandhi government — he wrote voluminously of his experiences in politics — almost always have him puffing on one. He could be and often was temperamental. Mukherjee could easily give an earful to an uninformed journalist or colleague. “Why don’t you do your homework, am I here to educate you? first know your facts, do some homework,” he would fume turning a bright shade of pink. But, he would cool down too, providing useful information, as regulars at his durbar figured out and became adept at keeping quiet and allowing the storm to pass.
Pranab Mukherjee: From Mirati To Rashtrapati Bhavan
When he was in government, late night appointments at his home office at 13, Talkatora Road, were common. Before retiring, he unfailingly wrote a page or two in his closely guarded diary. A keen student of history, he knew the importance of diaries as primary source material for a future study.
A voracious reader since childhood, the man who began as a teacher at Vidyanagar College, Howrah, in 1963, Mukherjee could never sit idle without reading. Official files, books on history, politics, economics or diplomacy, a biography or a memoir, a newspaper or a magazine, to a bestseller in English or Bengali.
For someone who was not a mass leader, having lost many elections before he won in Lok Sabha in 2004, Mukherjee knew more about politics than many a veteran.