Confessions of an Unknown Congressman

Mahesh Manzar did not quite make it as a politician, but did make a name for himself as a poet and as a Congress Party organiser. Interestingly, a chance encounter with Sanjay Gandhi in the early 1970s, when he was a student at Delhi University, led him to join the Congress Party. Blessed with the gift of the gab and the ability to churn out some witty and thoughtful couplets, he quickly moved up the ranks of Congress activists till he was walking in and out of the party’s offices and in the Prime Minister’s house as a resourceful, talented party worker and a key campaigner of several big-ticket Congress wins such as of Rajesh Khanna and Sheila Dikshit. Rajiv Gandhi made him a member of the Campaign Committee in his first election. Later, Mani Shankar Aiyar sought his help in preparing speeches for Sonia Gandhi with poetic phrases in Hindustani that the masses would love. In his autobiography, Confessions of an Unknown Congressman, Manzar chronicles his life from his childhood in Old Delhi to his seventieth birth anniversary in Delhi’s elite Defence Colony, spinning a riotous tale of both his personal and official brushes—with princesses, intellectuals, top Congress Party bosses, Prime Ministers and Presidents. He virtually spills the beans on several political shenanigans and brings alive the many human stories and foibles behind the big names of Indian politics from the 1970s to the present times.