National

L.K. Advani

If love means never having to say you're sorry, then what is hate?

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L.K. Advani
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I find it amusing that my party colleagues are perplexed by my recent letter of apology to Sonia Gandhi. For the record, I had indeed written to her expressing regret that the BJP task force report on black money accused her and her late husband, Rajiv Gandhi, of having Swiss bank accounts. Ever since, several people have been ringing up wondering what prompted me to write the note. Well, there is a little story here that will put things in perspective. You see, the other day, while rummaging through old papers I chanced upon a poster which set me thinking. It was sent to me by a US-based novelist, Erich Segal. Or was it Saigal? I can’t remember although I recall Atalji remarking then that many Indians settled in America prefer firang names. “Arre, Advaniji he must have been Eknath Saigal. Wahan ja kar Erich ban gaya (Once in the US he must have become Erich),” he observed in jest. Anyway, I understand Segal (who is no more) wrote a novel called Love Story which was made into a Hollywood hit. (Many years later when I went for a special screening of 1942-A Love Story I asked director Vidhu Vinod Chopra if any Saigal-Vaigal was involved in the scripting. He outright denied it.) Anyway, that’s straying from the point. Let me get back to the poster. It came with a simple message: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry (a line from Love Story).” And it suddenly caught my attention after all these years. In fact, I mulled over the words of wisdom for two full days. And then on a rather bright February afternoon, while sipping chai on my lawn, I arrived at a rather unusual conclusion. I asked myself, if love is never having to say you’re sorry, then what is hate? Surely, it would be having to say you’re sorry. Which, incidentally, explains my apology to Soniaji. Indeed, if I did actually respect her, I wouldn’t have expressed my regrets. Interestingly, I rung up a former advisor, Sudheendra Kulkarni, and sought his opinion on my love-hate theory. “Advaniji, I suggest you put together a shortlist of people you hate and apologise to them. It has a Gandhi-Christian touch to it,” he said.

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Well, I will certainly follow up on his suggestion. Meanwhile, I went through Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations to see if there is any mention of Erich Segal/Saigal. I drew a blank. Ditto 1000 years And 1000 People Who Shaped The World (a book I relaxed with during the 2009 election campaign). Well, I guess I’ll have to ask my daughter Pratibha to do a Google search....

Finally, are there enough people on my hate list? I reckon there will be more than a handful (some in my party, some in the Congress...some even in the RSS). But, before I convey my regrets, let me say sorry to myself. Reason: As Oprah Winfrey (this one’s sourced from The Golden Book Of Great Quotations) once put it, “You cannot hate other people without hating yourself...”.

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(As imagined by Ajith Pillai)

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