But, if Benazir wasn’t so exasperating, she wouldn’t be such an original. She could swallow so much dust from the top of a truck, mingle with crowds, court danger, disease, inconvenience, anything. But read a disclosure in Pakistan’s National Assembly after her second term as PM — for the short term for which was in power she spent nearly $6 million of taxpayer’s money to import Evian mineral water from France for her household.

At a personal level, I was privileged to have not just access and attention from her, but also a degree of informality. In 1993, as results came in anointing her as the new PM, she sat chatting in her home with a small group of foreign journos she was friendly with and turned to one from a British paper. “Christopher,” she said in mock lament, “How awful I have to become PM now when so many great sales are on in London. I had to buy so much for my family.”

She came to attend Rajiv Gandhi’s funeral and was put up in New Delhi’s Ashok Hotel. She had her people seek me out and while we were walking though the grand lobby, she said to me,”What a great building and what a terrible hotel.” Then she added with a wink and a nudge,”Tell your friend Nawaz Sharif (Nwaz shreef much like a Punjabi that she sure wasn’t) and he will sell it to some private bidder in three hours.” Nawaz, then PM, was also in Delhi at that time.

... contd.