Indira Gandhi liked her meal straight and simple

Vikram Doctor  : ET;

It’s not uncommon abroad for people to scrutinise the eating habits of their leaders. Michelle Obama’s decision to plant a vegetable garden in the White House was seen as a presidential endorsement of healthy, locally grown produce. The garden has provided over 430 kilos of vegetables so far, divided between the White House kitchens and a homeless shelter. The criticism this has drawn from the industrial farm sector clearly shows how the political point is hitting home.

Indian politicians generally escape such attention, which in some ways is a pity. Quite apart from the signals they could give out about proper eating habits — if nothing else, the number of party workers who will immediately adopt the same habits will have some impact — it can also provide interesting insights into their personalities. We all have to eat, and seeing how others eat, their habits and likings humanises them. It has nothing to do with whether they are gourmets or not; in fact, it’s often the more ordinary foods that say the most about them.

Indira Gandhi, is  being remembered, doesn’t seem to have been hugely interested in food. Some of those now remembering her talk about her liking for regional foods, and how she always showed great interest in the foods of regions where she was campaigning.

This could quite possibly have been a genuine interest, but it could also have been smart politics, since what could endear you more to your voters than showing an interest in their food.

Personal accounts of her don’t reveal much, either because the writers were too awed by her public persona to note what she ate, or simply because she was so guarded, even on this. One person she was not guarded with was her father, and in Two Alone, Two Together, a fascinating and moving collection of the letters between them, edited by Sonia Gandhi, one gets occasional glimpses of the food she ate. For example, in 1932, from Panchgani where she was in a school run by friends of Nehru, she wrote that he would like their food: “We have the usual things: vegetable, fish, eggs, etc, but our salad is extra good. We get fresh leaves every day and everybody eats more of it than anything else.”

One of the advantages of Panchgani was that she was close to Pune where Mahatma Gandhi was in jail. Nehru encouraged his daughter to meet his mentor, and later that year Indira was by Gandhi’s side at the end of his epic fast. This was to convince Dr Ambedkar not to press for separate electorates for the Depressed Classes, but instead have reserved seats for them in the general electorate. It was an issue whose consequences are still being felt today, and Indira was not only at Gandhi’s side at his moment of ‘victory’, but she bought and squeezed the oranges for the juice with which he broke his fast.

Yet despite this closeness, it’s interesting to note that neither Indira nor Nehru seem to have followed Gandhi’s proscriptions on diet. Gandhi relentlessly showered diet and health advice on close associates like Vallabhai Patel and GD Birla, but such advice to the Nehrus is almost nonexistent. They even ate meat — apart from the fish Indira ate at Panchgani, a couple of years later she announced she was eating meat again, persuaded it seems by Feroze Gandhi, who had already become a friend; he had set up a plan, she wrote to, “make me consume vast amounts of food-stuffs.” Returning from the North-West Frontier Nehru would write to her how a meal of roast lamb he was given by the Afridi tribe was, “one of the most satisfying meals I have had...”

It’s an interesting indication of how, for all Gandhi’s political closeness to the Nehrus, perhaps he didn’t count them among his personal disciples, whose health and diet he supervised. Nationalism was one thing, but the Kashmiri love for good food and meat was another! It’s also true that Indira’s poor health in her teens would have made her parents intent on feeding her in every way possible. Much of her time in those years was spent in Europe, either with her mother at the sanatoriums she went to in an attempt to cure the TB that finally killed her (Indira was also treated), or at college in Oxford. Good, plain food was a major part of the TB treatment, and Indira must have had to force herself to eat a lot of it.

The right person to speak about Indira’s eating habits is, of course, Sonia Gandhi. Katherine Frank’s biography of Indira says that she quickly formed a very close bond with her Italian daughter-in-law because of Sonia’s evident quietness and preference for cooking over politics (although in one ugly incident later, where Sanjay throws away a plate of eggs that Sonia hasn’t cooked to his liking, she just remains quiet and shaken, a sign of his influence over her). But until we see her memoirs, one can only go on the basis of a few personal accounts like two that have been told to me.

One is Bhicoo Manekshaw, the cookbook writer and doyenne of Delhi’s catering scene, who was once asked to arrange a small dinner for Indira. This was during the Emergency, at the notorious height of her powers, and also a time when there were strict curbs on gatherings. Dinners could not be for more than 25, otherwise “only potato snacks could be served,” Ms Manekshaw recalled in her wonderful cookbook Feast of Love. Since she knew Indira didn’t like chicken, she decided on duck a l’orange and hot lobster soufflé for starter.

Dinner was at 8.30 pm and Ms Manekshaw had timed the soufflé for that, but when the time came Indira hadn’t arrived. Just in time, she came — but then, to Ms Manekshaw’s further irritation, insisted on coming into the kitchen to apologise. Not one to take any nonsense, Ms Manekshaw told her sternly, “Madam Prime Minister, a hot soufflé will not wait even for a prime minister. Please go in...” Indira took the reproof in good spirit, and insisted that Ms Manekshaw join them for dinner.

The other story comes from a friend of mine, who was a young air steward in Air India around that time. Prime ministers flew on regular flights then, and Indira didn’t even have the first class to herself — just a group of eight seats. The staff knew she was fond of small open sandwiches of smoked salmon and had some onboard for her. But during the meal service she was asleep, and my friend concluded she wasn’t hungry, so being young and hungry and fond of smoked salmon, he ate the sandwiches himself.

At which point, of course, she woke up and asked for some, and my friend’s supervisor almost had a nervous breakdown. He insisted my friend go and confess his crime, so he duly went up to the PM. “Madam, you’ve asked for the smoked salmon sandwiches, but I’m afraid they are all over,” he said. Indira looked surprised: “Not even one left?” My friend steeled himself. “No madam, because I’m afraid I ate them.” Indira looked at my friend — and it must have helped that he would have been as handsome and personable then as he is now — with a twinkle in her eye. “Well, I hope you enjoyed them,” she said, and smiled and left it at that.