I heard it at a place of worship and I was soon humming: ``Lootna hai to loot le/ desh tera hai loot/ Phir pache pachhtauge/ Jab kursi jaigi chhoot.'' (If you want to loot, go forth and loot, for you will regret it later when your seat of power is snatched away.)

A screaming newspaper headline said, "IAF burned Rs 23 crore for `Defence Minister of Luck-now'"; another said, "Ace pilot Mulayam." Defence Minister George Fernandes stated that all the trips had been certified as official. But out of 634 days as Raksha Mantri, Mulayam Singh Yadav was absent from Delhi for 297 days and in UP for 284. Just another manifestation of ``lootna hai to loot le...''

Yadav said he had to use IAF aircraft as Indian Airlines flights are late and he couldn't keep the troops waiting. Rather hard to swallow! But when it was pointed out to him that his successor George Fernandes travelled by IA flights and even by train, he quipped that he could go by cycle or bullock cart if he wished. Ironically, the cycle is Yadav's election symbol.

As a young Lieutenant, I have seen senior British and Indian officers cycle to office to set an example and conserve precious petrol for the war effort. Heading the list is the late Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, who was Commander-in-Chief of India until 1947. Of course, he didn't cycle many miles as he resided in what is now the Nehru Museum. Commodore Jeffort, the Navy's Chief of Personnel and very liberal in his proportions, cycled and panted to A Block Hutments each morning. Sir George Dundas, a former Governor of the NWFP, then Defence Secretary, parked his cycle near South Block. Nearby was that of Philip Mason (better known as the author Philip Woodruff), also a senior ministry man. Mason went to serve on Mountbatten's staff in Sri Lanka and the latter always referred to him as "my civilian general".

In K. Natwar Singh's The Magnificent Maharaja, I came across a picture of the Great Gama in a wrestling match with the then world champion, Zebisko. Gama humbled him to earn India the world title and as a school-going kid in Lahore in 1928, he proudly showed us the special belt that had been given to him by George V. I mention this because Mulayam Singh Yadav bears an uncanny resemblance to Gama. And Yadav was a wrestler in his younger days. A great performance before the socialist MLA Nathu Singh got him an opening in politics. And after that, the sky was the limit and Harkishen Singh Surjeet openly said that he was preferable to I.K. Gujral as prime minister.

As a young Lieutenant I was one of the six officers to escort Gandhiji's ashes in the special train from New Delhi to Allahabad in February 1948. The urn was received by Chief Minister Govind Ballabh Pant. Sarojini Naidu was Governor of UP. But look at our Chief Ministers of recent vintage -- Yadav, Mayawati, Kalyan Singh and the midnight wonder, Jagdambika Pal.

On becoming world champion, Gama was given the title Rustam-i-Hind and if Yadav had gone into wrestling, he could well have been a Rustam-i-Bharat!

Clearly a case of missing his true profession for in his interview in The Indian Express on June 28, Mulayam Singh Yadav said, ``When I used to go to the akhara, I never thought I would be defeated. When the people clap, the wrestler's morale gets a boost." We would have preferred to give him a clap in the akhara rather than in South Block!