As a young boy, when I voiced my interest in a political career, it was received by my elders with considerable dismay. As a family, we had a peripheral involvement in public life but not quite in electoral politics. Although an uncle had contested for the Uttar Pradesh assembly, my own father did not run for a Lok Sabha seat till 1984. Those were relatively easy times for the Congress, in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere. The late Rajiv Gandhi was an icon who attracted my generation—which otherwise thought of becoming doctors or engineers—to politics. Having stood my ground about taking up politics as a career, in 1989, the year of the shilanyas in Ayodhya, I stood for election to the Lok Sabha. An eventful roller-coaster ride had begun; I haven’t been able to get off that roller-coaster.
My years in politics have been tough, with a few comforting moments. Along the way, the Congress has suffered devastating blows—election defeats, the untimely, tragic deaths of outstanding leaders like Rajiv Gandhi, Rajesh Pilot,...
