If we read the autobiographical tale of Kunwar Natwar Singh, titled One Life Is Not Enough, we will find it is mostly about a disgruntled man who was humiliated and robbed of his innocent affair with his master.
If we read the autobiographical tale of Kunwar Natwar Singh, titled One Life Is Not Enough, we will find it is mostly about a disgruntled man who was humiliated and robbed of his innocent affair with his master.
An India Today article rightly puts it: He talks about the many hours he has spent in her company, discussing books (she introduced Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to him in 1988), people (she told him things she said she hadn’t told even Priyanka and Rahul) and political gossip (they discussed Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky).
“She would even pass chits to me, with jokes, in the middle of state dinners,” says Natwar. He spent many sessions with her working on her speeches, travelled with her to foreign destinations, and even ran sensitive errands for her, such as working on Congress leaders to accept her prime ministerial choice, Manmohan Singh.
Singh spent 31 years in the Indian Foreign Service and 24 years in the Congress. Yet he was ousted by Sonia or, as he says, was “fixed” by Sonia. He was removed as the minister for external affairs on 6 December 2005 when a controversy came to light over his alleged involvement in the UN Iraqi oil-for-food scandal. The Paul Volcker committee gave a damning report on 27 October 2005 that the minister and his son Jagat Singh were part of the scandal.
“Allegedly, they, along with Jagat Singh’s childhood friend Andaleeb Sehgal, were associated with a company called Hamdan Exports, which acted as an intermediary for illegal sales of oil to a Swiss firm named Masefield AG. In return, Masefield had to pay kickbacks, (termed “surcharges”) partly to Saddam Hussein’s regime and partly to Natwar Singh and others. It was alleged that such surcharges were Hussein’s way of securing support from politicians around the world and that this influenced Natwar Singh to lobby against US policies in Iraq (in particular, US sanctions on Saddam Hussein). This controversy heated up when Anil Mathrani, then Indian Ambassador to Croatia, and a close aide to Natwar Singh alleged that Natwar Singh had used an official visit to Iraq to procure oil coupons for Jagat Singh from Saddam’s regime.”
Thus, the same Natwar Singh, who once enjoyed the company of Madamji, now uses words like “authoritarian”, “capricious”, “Machiavellian” and “secretive”.
Now he also has a problem with Madam Sonia’s non-Indian origin.
“She has been in India since she was 19, she has imbibed everything Indian, and has never put a foot wrong. But there is 25 per cent of her which can never change,” he tells India Today. He even says that Sonia has a very un-Indian core which shows the way she cuts people out of her life.
Now, won’t we call it a lover’s tiff?
