House of spirits

But all that was a long time ago. In 1970, Indira Gandhi dedicated Anand Bhavan to the nation and handed it over to the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund Trust which runs it as a museum. Swaraj Bhavan next door is run by the Kamala Nehru Memorial Trust. Sonia Gandhi is the chairperson of both.

Jagdish Prasad, one of the oldest employees at Anand Bhavan, does not remember the days of Nehru but fondly recalls Indira Gandhi who frequently visited her childhood home when Prasad was a little boy. His maternal grandparents lived in the servants’ quarters behind the Bhavan. In 1972, he was employed by the trust and for the past 32 years has worked as an ‘‘attendant’’—dusting the huge collection of books belonging to Nehru and Indira Gandhi, polishing the colonial-era furniture, and keeping an eye on the streams of tourists who visit the museum daily.

Indira Gandhi, he remembers, knew all the old employees by name and they in turn always addressed her as Indu bhaiyya or simply bhaiyyaji. Long before she was labeled ‘‘the only man in the cabinet’’, the Anand Bhavan staff thought of her always as a bhaiyya, never behen.

Jagdish Prasad and his colleagues remain Gandhi family loyalists and—like the rest of the Congress base in UP—too rue the changes that befell their lives after the decline of the Congress. ‘‘We were really happy under Indiraji and Rajivji, but now times have changed— we no longer get the benefits we used to,’’ they say.

Their main complaint is that the JNLF Trust has followed the way of the government—since 1992 permanent jobs have been sealed and employees are only hired on contract, and they haven’t received a wage hike for five years. In February, an employees delegation met Sonia Gandhi on the issue and were promised a 10 per cent increase in DA but they remain dissatisfied.

That dissatisfaction, though, has not affected their loyalty to the family and the advent of Rahul and Priyanka on the political stage has given them new hope.

Jagdish Prasad is too old a family retainer to speak against Sonia Gandhi but a younger attendant says that Priyanka alone can revive the fortunes of the party, not Sonia. And she should contest from Allahabad. ‘‘Let the mother and son look after Rae Bareli and Amethi—but Priyanka must fight from Allahabad. This is where her ancestors lived and she must carry on that legacy.’’

It is a refrain many residents of Allahabad repeat—‘‘Priyanka ko yahan se ladana chahiye—is baar nahin to agli baar.’’