When Meena Kamble of Valmiki Nagar, Panvel, stepped out of her house on Thursday morning, she told her daughter Kavita that she would get a glimpse of Rahul Gandhi who had passed their neighbourhood and would probably return the same way.

When she returned to her small dwelling, Gandhi came with her.

“Rahul Gandhi stopped my mother and asked her to take him to our home. My mother tried to talk him out of it, telling him our house was far away, but he insisted on coming,” said Kavita Kamble, 19. “He entered our house like he was one of us, without any air of superiority or aristocracy.”

“He asked how we managed to live in such a small place. He asked us where we work,” said Kamble. The daughter is a nurse, her mother a hospital help.

The house is not more than 50 sq metres and within this space the Kambles manage the functions of a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom. Their home for 15 years, it has a TV set, a table fan and a single plastic chair.

“We offered him the chair. Before my mother could prepare tea, some people accompanying him told him he was getting late. He drank water and tasted the sugar my mother offered,” said Kavita.

The visit was set up, unwittingly by Vikas Parche, 20, when he waved at the leader’s cavalcade. Gandhi not only waved back at him but also stopped for a chat. “He asked me about myself. I told him I studied till fifth,” said Parche, who drives an auto but did not tell Gandhi that he does not have a driving licence.

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