Rajesh Pilot was christened by his father as Rajeshwar Prasad, we discover from his wife Rama Pilot, who has penned the biography of this six-time Lok Sabha MP. It’s her earnest homage to the former Union minister who died in his prime in an unfortunate road accident. Flying was his passion, profession and later, his identity, when midstream he changed horses and switched to politics.
Rajesh Pilot, an extremely charming and gregarious person who rose from a humble background, shared with Rajiv Gandhi a passion for controlling the steering wheel even as a minister and a senior Congress leader. Like Rajiv, he shared a zest for adventure. Pilot’s jeep had a head-on collision with a truck coming from the opposite direction while he was driving in his home constituency Dausa, near Jaipur in Rajasthan. I travelled with him in the worst of times through the Kashmir valley; he always drove the car himself.
Pilot once told a group of journalists how he came to be named as Pilot. He said when he went to file his nomination first time to...

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