A red shawl was hurriedly draped over a cotton shirt and dhoti as Adayappalam Ramanathan stood close to the dais from which Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was addressing journalists late on Friday.
The 84-year-old, who hails from a village in Tamil Nadu, had decided to pay the Capital a visit just to express his appreciation for the man who has become Delhi’s seventh Chief Minister.
His letter to Mr. Kejriwal earlier this month read: “I have already written two to three letters to you. I came to Delhi to see you despite the severe cold….”
Mr. Ramanathan said he had been warned by friends and family that his South Indian skin may not be able to handle the biting North Indian winter. “I was told I may not return alive since it was so cold here…” he laughed.
In his earlier letters, he had asked Mr. Kejriwal to accept his “heartiest congratulations” after the Aam Aadmi Party won the trust vote in the Delhi Assembly and likened the Chief Minister’s ascent to the ones seen previously by N.T. Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh and by N. Rangaswamy in Pudhucherry.
“Mr. Kejriwal is not like the others. He has said no to security, which I appreciate. Generally we never get to meet our Chief Ministers,” said Mr. Ramanathan, who has attempted to meet Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa several times.
His appreciation for Mr. Kejriwal goes back to the latter’s days as an RTI activist.
“He is an RTI activist just like me. I have filed over 100 applications in Chennai,” he said.
A copy of Swamy’s Compilation on Right to Information Act is his constant companion. Yet, before he showed up at the Delhi Secretariat to meet the Chief Minister, Mr. Ramanathan said he visited Chief Justice P. Sathasivam at the Supreme Court. “He asked me why I came all this way in the cold?”
With the weather being too difficult to handle, Mr. Ramanathan has decided to cut his North India sojourn short and return by the same Andhra Pradesh Express that brought him to the Capital. After all, he achieved what he came to do — appreciate Mr. Kejriwal and hand over all the paper cuttings that he so meticulously preserved since the party came to power.
“I have written ‘blessings to you and your Ministers’ [who are all young blood]. I also wanted to mention the old saying — new brooms sweep clean — ’ but I was afraid they might get offended if I call them a broom,” he said.
