Some three decades later, even as he leads a firmly retired life, there is no reason to believe that his view has undergone any significant change.

Notwithstanding that Vajpayee, drawing on his soul as a poet and inquisitiveness as a former journalist, developed a decidedly reasonable and moderate approach to public and private life. Having interacted with him frequently throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I can say with some certainty that he imbibed the essence of Jawaharlal Nehru’s humanism more than any other Indian politician who followed him. And yet he retained his distinct right-of-centre political ideology. It has often been said of Vajpayee that he is the right man in the wrong political party. Once you get past the cleverness of that wishful thinking you realize that he is very much emblematic of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) he conceived of in his mind along with Lal Krishna Advani.

“Virdohi dalon me mere mitron ko mere bare mei lagta hai ki aadmi to acchha hai lekin ghalat dal mein hai. Unko main kahunga aadmi bhi sahi hai aur dal bhi sahi hai (My friends in the opposition like to think that I am a good man in a bad party. Let me tell them that I am the right man in the right party),” Vajpayee told me in 1990.