ICONIC LADY
| Date :08-Aug-2019 |
EVEN though she was unwell, just a few hours before she breathed her last, Mrs. Sushma Swaraj wrote a congratulatory note to Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi for his successful execution of the new move on Kashmir. Then she collapsed, and a massive cardiac arrest took her away. This is the quintessence of the life and personality of the woman whose journey from the point of being the youngest legislator in Haryana to becoming Delhi’s Chief Minister to becoming India’s successful Minister of External Affairs had epic dimensions.
In her untimely passing away at a relatively young age of just 67, the nation has lost a person whose life was fully dedicated to the cause of scripting the story of New India. All of us will miss this illustrious daughter of India as the country marches towards more glorious days. She was one of the visionaries who saw the well-defined dream and worked for its fruition. What an imprint has she left behind! ‘Iconic’ is the right word to describe the personality and achievement of Mrs. Sushma Swaraj at the highest level. She did everything with aplomb, unique in every manner, putting her stamp, her signature on each of her endeavours. She was beautiful in a traditional manner.
She dressed well. She spoke well. She did her job well. She was a terrific human being -- a good wife, a great mother, a trusted colleague in political matters and public affairs, an admired administrator, an adored leader of the rank and file of the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as of people, a tough Minister of External Affairs handling her equals with panache ...! But Mrs. Sushma Swaraj was something more than all this. She often basked in a sensation of Divine blessing all the time. She believed that she had been divinely ordained to achieve certain task and she must not fail in its fulfillment. This sense of Divine duty marked Mrs. Swaraj’s life and work.
And that also explained the easy grace she often exuded in her walk and her talk and her commitment to public cause and national endeavour. As one of the front-line leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party for the past quarter of a century, Mrs. Swaraj became an integral part of metaphor of collective national leadership. The nation looked to her -- like it did to a few others -- in crucial times. As the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha for one full term, she led the organisation in crafting a strategy that often kept the Government guessing what the next move could be to corner the Treasury Benches. Yet, the BJP and Mrs. Swaraj did not indulge in political games just to block the Government without rhyme and reason. Whatever she did had a sense of focus and purpose from which she never allowed any diversion.
Later, as the Minister of External Affairs under a hard-driving Prime Minister, Mrs. Sushma Swaraj simply excelled in an atmosphere of daunting diplomatic challenges. But as the determined Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi made his critical moves, Sushmaji was always by his side, taking care of the nitty-gritties, handling details, masterminding diplomatic logistics, offering the world an appropriate point of contact for soft-landing on hard grounds of respective national interests. As Mrs. Swaraj lived her fruitful life with grace, with virtue, her superb oratory among one of those.
That she knew many languages, was only a matter of detail. What mattered more was the fact that Mrs. Swaraj knew the culture of all those languages. From that came her choice of words, her choice of tone and tenor of the statement, and certain lyricism that characterised her speech. Listening to Mrs. Sushma Swaraj -- on any and every issue -- was a treat. That endeared her to every one, no matter on which side of the divide one would be. Once she said, half-amused at herself, “Every time I stand up to speak, I create a phalanx of admirers, nay friends!” Had she been just an orator, Mrs. Sushma Swaraj would not have won so many friends across the board. But she was more than that; she was a voice of conscience -- of her own as well as of the society.
The political part of her expression apart, she achieved a rare success in uniting minds that otherwise might have gone astray due to insoluble differences. This extraordinary talent of hers was in evidence not just in Parliament but also in public rallies across the country, on platforms such as the United Nations, or the forums such as the Organisation of Islamic Countries where she was just a few months ago invited as a special guest. In person-to-person conversations with her international counterparts, or in diplomatic dialogues in a formal set-up, or in intense political confabulations in hushed tones behind closed doors, Mrs. Sushma Swaraj marked herself differently because of her talent of fine, respectful expression that made everybody feel important, special.
Her indifferent health impeded Mrs. Sushma Swaraj’s last years of life. That also finally kept her away from the Government. Despite that, despite her waning stamina, Sushmaji communicated a sense of endless, limitless, fathomless energy. Her smile never paled. Her face always had a rare glow that came from within. Her movement had slowed down, but not her intellect that remained razor-sharp until the end. That explains why and how she connected with Mr. Narendra Modi just four hours before she finally passed behind the curtain of time. It is a massive task to assess the contribution of a person of the character and calibre of Mrs. Sushma Swaraj. For, whatever she did had a sense of the Divine, a sense of history, and also a sense to leave for the future a legacy that would endure itself through the vagaries of changing times. The reason for this may be simple to describe, but hard to emulate: Mrs. Sushma Swaraj believed firmly that she had to stand up and get counted as the Divine’s representative on a certain mission of immense importance. “That is what I am supposed to be like”, she had once said to an interviewer, leaving him spellbound, in total awe of her, almost mesmerised. That is Mrs. Sushma Swaraj in quintessence!