Mumbai, It was a chilly early morning on September 30, 1993, when the Latur earthquake badly hit the sleeping Maharashtrians at 3.56 am.
The same evening, this reporter (then with the Indian Express, Mumbai) was called by its chief reporter D.K. Raikar had sent an East West Airlines cargo flight to Solapur, which soon reached the affected area.
That night he came to know that in addition to the then Chief Minister Sharad Pawar in the house bungalow in the side of the house * ++++++++++++++++++ +++ No one came and later, showing some courtesy, this reporter managed to put his vehicle in the group of CM's convoy vehicles the next morning.
It was an educational, fast-paced journey with Pawar as he roamed from village to village, meeting earthquake-affected people, wiping people's tears, comforting them. Gently, he used to give instructions to the officers present with him.
Wearing white shirts and trousers, gumboots, he would run into debris, blood and mud, water and accidentally fall on the corpses and when the motorcycle returned in the evening, Pawar's costumes would tell the story of the day.
Late last night, when he came back, he agreed to an interview request. He had a simple lunch at around 1 pm. He answered this reporter's questions for more than two hours, during which he spoke to the Prince of Wales, the Nepal Army Chief and other global veterans on the hotline regarding the help.
Today, on the eve of his 80th birthday (12 December), Pawar's enthusiasm for the people of Maharashtra has not diminished and he has continued to serve the state with the same enthusiasm that this correspondent had for the first time in that big natural Saw during the disaster.
Since then, a lot of water from the Godavari river has flowed, Pawar broke away from the Congress to form his own Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in 1999 and became more of his friends and admirers.
He hit the headlines in both the state and the center in a single year, silencing critics - perhaps the fastest progress to bring any new political organization to power.
Looking at the current scenario, Indian politics is still incomplete without Pawar who would probably be the best PM of India yet to be elected by India.
With 55 years of political experience under his belt, he has not lost a single Assembly or Lok Sabha election since 1967, became CM three times, as well as three times Union Minister, Leader of Opposition in the State and Center, Leader of Parliamentary Party Served in other top positions.
Like many great leaders of the stature of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, Indira Gandhi or Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Pawar has a good personal rapport with top political leaders. Cut across party lines - including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who once called him a political guru, and many people seek his advice on difficult political issues.
Pawar addressed a rally in the Lok Sabha by-election in Satara in October 2019 amid rains, just like Latur 27 years ago.
In November 2019, Pawar achieved another Mission Impossible - taking Uddhav Thackeray to the Chief Minister's chair by snatching power from under the noses of top-tier leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party like Modi, BJP President and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
In his political career, the unpredictable Pawar has acquired many titles such as Chanakya, Bhishma Pitamah, Willie Fox, Machiavelli, etc.
During the epidemic in April, his daughter, Supriya Sule, MP, shared a video of her father in which he was seen singing Ramayana hymns but barely four months later he targeted the PM for showing haste to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya. But his (Pawar's) reputation remained intact.
In a letter to his late mother Sharadabai on 14 November, Pawar recalled her inspirational memories of how she felt the passion of new youthful energy to perform satisfactorily in her public life, which gave her the abysmal engine of politics Is making, which is still in a long haul.
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