SUDDENLY, a whole lot seems to make sense in Supriya Sule’s life. She’s 38, claims to have a great marriage with her techie-businessman husband Sadanand Sule, has two kids, has been anointed a political princess with her induction into the NCP, is prospective inheritor of her father Sharad Pawar’s political legacy, and is tipped to become a Rajya Sabha MP next month.

She manages several vanguard schools for adivasi girls and suburban children, is involved in youth wings and new wave self-help groups for women in western Maharashtra, and is beginning to discover that self-realisation and political zeal can mix with nurturing a family and a flourishing career.

At least this is what Sule— Supriyatai, sister, to her colleagues, admirers, fans, enthusiasts, groupies—would like us to believe as we zip through the Mumbai-Pune Expressway on a five-hour dawn ride to her first major public meeting in Indapur, near her father’s pocketborough of Baramati.

It does not take long to discover Sule is achingly modest and trendily PC (politically correct), a Deccan BoBo (bourgeois-bohemian), born to political royalty and given to cutting-edge philanthropy.

“I discovered quite early I was born for this life,” she says breezily, from the front of the car. “I think anyone who is sensitive, observant and conscious of one’s surroundings will want to do something. Of course, it helps I come from a political family, I would be foolish to deny I have privileges because of who my father is. But the party can help tremendously to promote my causes of education and health. The party will give me direction. Anyway, I have to live up to the expectations of my father and party too.”

... contd.