A Turning Point

1977

The Emergency Lifted
After such an eventful year, the next was tame on the personal front. But it was an important year for the country, as Indira Gandhi, to everyone's surprise, announced national elections suddenly. I had never voted before [due to my location shifts and not apathy], but this time I was determined to vote against her and her party, even if I had to travel. No one was more caught up with election fever than little Adit, who enthusiastically joined the shouts of opposition rallies, “Inquilab Zindabad; Indira Gandhi Moradabad!' [Long Live Revolution; down with Indira Gandhi]. I used to shut him up hastily – who knows who was listening; after all, the emergency could be reimposed! My vote went to none other than Vajpayee, though I was not too keen on his party, the Janata Dal. It was not as right wing as the BJP that it metamorphosed as later, but it still was not my cup of tea. But anyone against the party that brought in the emergency was ok for me at that time!

The historical defeat of Indira and the Congress was followed by the disappointingly inept two years of the JD rule, to be inevitably cast aside just two years later. But the revelations of the extent of the misuse of power and the torture of so many during the emergency had shocked the nation and it was clear that something like that would not be tolerated again. Once the new regime was in power, we had other types of problems with it, but for our everyday existence, the tension was gone.

Move my office too to the bathroom?
Space in UNICEF Delhi was rapidly becoming a scarce commodity. We were spreading to more houses in the Jor Bagh locality where we had just a few years earlier, when I joined, been in just three houses. Now we were in four adjacent ones, plus another one in a locality a little way off. Even all these acquisitions apparently were not sufficient. One day our Admin officer, KGR, called me and asked me to share my office with a colleague in our section. I bristled. We had had better rooms in the main building and now were in the next one, with the bathtub in the bathroom next to my room housing a file cabinet. I retorted sarcastically, should I move my office too there? Or should I pitch a tent in the lawn in front? He was affronted but I would not budge. No, I could not share my room even with a section-mate as we would disturb each other when visitors came in or when dictating to the secretary. He left me in peace after that – I guess he got some other room for whatever purpose he needed it.

Sometime in the 70s, a new Indian National Plan was being formulated. Dr. Vina Mazumdar, who had established the Centre for Women's Development Studies [CWDS] in Delhi, came to me one day and said that she wanted to get the Plan to have a separate chapter on Women and for this, she wanted to organise a seminar with senior Planning Commission and Government officials as well as academicians and NGOs. Would UNICEF support this in view of its support to the UN women's decade and its own focus on mothers/women. I thought this was an excellent idea and we worked together on the programme, apart from getting UNICEF funding for the event. It did have an impact and for the first time, the National Plan had a whole chapter on Women.

An annual winter visitor to NYHQ
That is what my HQ colleague, Ed Lannert, used to call me, as for some unfathomable reason, from this year on, there was some meeting or the other for which I used to be called to New York in winter. What I hated about this was that I had to wear shoes or even boots in which my broad feet would feel so cooped up! As I stomped into the office, Ed would always make fun of me. Other than that, the visits were always enjoyable. Two years in a row, I was in a retreat at Sterling Forest in upper New York State. Though it was a big sprawling mansion, we still had to share rooms, and the first time, it was with Shahida, my Pakistani counterpart, who I had become chummy with the year before in the Staff Seminar. However, almost at the beginning of the retreat, she got the sad news of her husband's sudden death, and flew back home. Other than that, the seminars were very engrossing and the ambiance of that and of Mohonk that was the scene of a retreat a couple of years later, were most refreshing.