Byline: Abantika Ghosh

She is the face of the Congress government and the only CM with two successive terms. But politics - says Sheila Dikshit in a freewheeling chat with Times City on the eve of her 70th birthday - was never in her scheme of things during her days at Convent of Jesus

Seventy and still going strong. What has been your biggest achievement/biggest failure?

There is no one moment. I have had my ups and downs but by nature I am an optimist. There were many highs - the day I learnt to ride the cycle, when I flew an aircraft, the day I met my late husband, the coming of the first rains. Good music always gives me a high. I love Western and Indian classical music. There have been many lows as well - the death of my parents, my husband, the moments when I have felt lonely in a crowd.

With your kind of background, how easy or difficult was it to adjust to politics?

Politics was never in my scheme of things, people like Nehru and Gandhi were distant icons. My family talked me into sitting for the civil services examinations but it was a bore, so I found the easier way out by getting married to a civil servant. In 1969, when the Congress split, I had my first taste of 'action' politics playing peon to my father-in-law.

You mean playing the nice bahu?

That's putting it euphemistically. But between then and 1984, I just got back to playing the nice housewife, bringing up my children and involving myself with folk craftsmen wherever my husband was posted.

Were you keen on active politics?

I was never keen. Politics is still not my passion. I have a passion for interiors. In those days there was no option of becoming an interior designer but if there was I might have become one.

How did it happen then?

Rajivji (Rajiv Gandhi) asked me if I would contest from Kannauj and I took it up. The greatest decisions of my life have always been taken without thinking: I fell in love, married without realising it. Had my children without planning for them.

Do you take your chief ministerial decisions that way too? Do you regret any of them?

I can't say all my decisions as CM have turned out the way I wanted them to be. But it is for people to judge. My stint as CM has definitely been more satisfying than my role in national politics because the real action is here.

You are very different from the average Delhi politician. How do you cope with it?

When given the task of administering a state, handling the job responsibly is what matters. Differences become immaterial and the swings of life as a politician, the variety and number of people I meet every day excite me.

You were one of three daughters in a Punjabi family. Do you think the stock of daughters in north Indian families has declined over the years?

My mother was a Punjabi, my father a Dilliwalah. But even as children we were never given the idea that it would have been better if we had a brother. I drove to college as a 17-18 year-old. ('Isn't that a year early?' 'Ya I cheated for a year but I had a learner's licence.) I played tennis, badminton, football and did riding.

Where do you see yourself on your next birthday?

I never look that ahead. Who knows where I will be.

Do you ever think of retirement?

I will retire the day I feel I have nothing to contribute. Looking back, though, I don't know how I have managed given that I can't operate a computer and my grandchildren - who are six and 10 years old - give me a complex. In fact, the entire thrust of e-governance was almost a hunger for what I don't know.