• Sharad Pawarji, how do I describe you? Agriculture Minister? Head of NCP? Chairman of BCCI? What is the most important?

Agriculture Minister is enough. (Laughs)

• And somebody who knows Mumbai as no one else does?

Ya, I know a little bit of Mumbai. Mumbai is not a simple city. But I know this city and I owe this city. This city has given so many things to me, so it is my responsibility to associate with this city in good and bad times.

• But, you know, very often your help has been sought in bad times here. You remember 1993, just after Babri, the riots, bomb blasts. It was your fate then to come and handle the crisis.

Yes. I recollect that when I was the defence minister, one day, I was called by the then Prime Minister Narasimha Raoji, and along with me was our senior colleague Salve sahib. And Narasimhaji spent seven hours to convince me to go to Mumbai because it was facing so many serious problems. The international community was worried about India because they know Mumbai is an important financial place. And if we were to restore the confidence of the investors then we had to normalise Mumbai. So, the then Prime Minister practically physically sent me to Mumbai and I came here on March 6, 1993. And I started improving the situation. The main problem was that there was a major, total, gap between Hindus and Muslims and Mumbai is a known cosmopolitan place, here the question of whether you are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, anybody, doesn’t arise...But that cosmopolitan character was practically disappearing in those days. It was our responsibility to see how we would be able to restore that cosmopolitan character. I started working, but I recollect on March 12, I was sitting in Mantralaya and at about 12-12.30 pm I heard a big noise, it was the explosion in Air India’s office. Within ten minutes I got a message that explosions had happened in 11 places, more than 365 people had died. I immediately realised that all these places were essentially dominated by Hindus. I guessed there must be some design, and that design must be that Hindus should react against the minority.

... contd.