Being a journalist, my father found himself drawn to the politics of the day and Jawaharlal and Kamala Nehru were my parents’ close friends. At this stage my parents decided to get married. The marriage, which took place on February 2, 1931, was unique. My father, a staunch Brahmin, married my mother, a Christian. The certificate issued to them was the first inter-caste, inter-religious certificate of those days — and its original copy now lies in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi.

I am emphasising this precisely because after their marriage the young couple went to meet Mahatma Gandhi, who happened to be living in Anand Bhavan at that point, to seek his blessings. It was a Monday — Gandhiji’s day of silence. But he wrote as a witness on their certificate: “May you both live long to serve the country.”

I grew up in times when the freedom struggle was raging. As a school child, I participated in a revolutionary march on August 9, 1942, and was jailed for a day. This experience made me extremely proud, young though I was. There were other children too. At school, I had as my classmates and schoolmates Gandhiji’s grandchildren — children of Devdas and Lakshmi (C. Rajagopalachari’s daughter). This meant that there was a great deal of interaction between our family and the Gandhi family. We attended prayer meetings at Birla House together and met Ba and Bapu.

But the day that stands out the most clearly in my mind was the day Gandhiji fell a victim to an assassin’s bullet. I could not believe that Bapu was no more. I remember the funeral procession passing below our flat in New Delhi’s Connaught Circus. We sprinkled flowers from the balcony as Bapu’s mortal remains moved on.

Thus ended an era. As we bid adieu to him, scenes of the freedom struggle came back to us, as indeed his words. I had met up with him at Birla House on January 28, 1948, and he had told me: “Beta, tum swatantra ke phal khao. Hum to ab chalte hain...” (Child, you enjoy the fruit of freedom. We will have to go away...”)That old man has never failed to inspire me all my life. He continues to do so today.