‘So long as life lasts one must meet it four-square’
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Jawaharlal Nehru’s is a life well chronicled in his hundreds of letters to family and friends. His letters, spanning from 1909 to 1947, to his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (affectionately referred to as Nan) have now been made available in their entirety for the first time. Excerpts from four decades of observances, worries, counselling and hopes.

London
2 July 1909
My dear Nanie,
I am sending you a little teddy bear and a few other things. The teddy is meant for baby (their younger sister Krishna). I hope she will like it. I love teddy bears. You will also get a paint box. This is a better one than you have. I hope you will go on painting postcards and other things.

You will probably not get these till a week or two after you get this letter.
I went to see some Indian tableaux a few days ago. They were very good.
With love and kisses,
From your loving brother

Dehra Dun Jail
6 March 1933
Nan dear,
...Mother gave me a bit of soap during her last interview with me, which she said had been made by you and Betty (Krishna) in the Lucknow Jail. I was not aware of this. Was it a freak effort or did you try to make much soap? Anyway the piece Mother gave me was remarkably good.

...During the last fourteen months or more I have written to Indu regularly and have hardly missed a fortnight. It has been a very one-sided correspondence as my letters have evoked practically no response. After about a couple of months of silence on her part a hasty letter would come with many apologies and excuses and with no reference at all to my letters of the questions I had asked in them. I have sent books for her birthday and on other occasions. They are not acknowledged and I have no definite knowledge if they reach her. I gather that Kamala is treated in much the same way. Now it does not matter much if an odd letter comes or does not come. Nor does it matter fundamentally if a joy that I might have is denied to me or Kamala. I can get used to that as to other things I do not like. But I am naturally led to think why this should be so. It is not casual; it is persistent, and in spite of numerous efforts it continues. I know that Indu is fond of me and of Kamala. Yet she ignores us and others completely. Why is it so? Indu, I feel, is extraordinarily imaginative and self-centred or subjective. Indeed I would say that, quite unconsciously, she has grown remarkably selfish. She lives in a world of dreams and vagaries and floats about on imaginary clouds, full, probably, of all manner of brave fancies. The world as it is has little to do with these fancies. Now this is natural in a girl of her subjective nature and especially at her age. But there can be too much of it and I am afraid there is too much of it in her case.

...You told me once about Indu being trained for writing. There can be no question of writing before one knows what to write. It is a method of expression. But to express what? It is desirable to walk gracefully as it is to write well, but again to walk where to? Or is it merely the drawing room variety of walking that is to be taught, and the drawing room variety of writing? It is about time we got rid of these mid-Victorian ideas. The world has outgrown them. But in spite of my dislike of them, Indu grows up into a languid, languishing type of girl! You should not be surprised if this gets on my nerves. Instead of teaching her writing and the like I feel she requires a course of field or factory work to bring her down from the clouds. Indeed I am more convinced than ever that children’s education must be closely associated with such manual work.

On purpose I wrote to Indu and asked her what she wanted to be — a doctor, engineer or what else? It was a very prosaic question meant to draw her down from the clouds. Of course I received no answer.
Your loving brother,
Jawahar

Ahmadnagar Fort
13 March 1944
Nan darling,
...As for Bapu’s (Mahatma Gandhi’s) advice to you not to observe the rigid orthodox conventions — well, well, is it necessary for him or anyone to advise you in the matter? Since when have we been rigid or orthodox or conventional? This business of widow’s weeds just irritates me. Life affects us, of course, and leaves its mark on us — on our minds and even on our faces. We grow to maturity thereby. Some conventions have, I suppose, to be observed in every social group or else there would be anarchy and the group would split up. Nevertheless this conventional business of adapting our private lives and feelings to what convention requires is not only overdone but, to my thinking, harmful. So long as life lasts one must meet it four-square and not only live it wholly and fully but take the most out of it.

I believe in the affirmation of life, and not the negation of it, whatever happens. It is an insult, I think, to those who have passed away, to mar and disfigure our own lives in a fake attempt to be true to their memory. I remember speaking to Kamala on several occasions (she did not like it at all and protested vigorously) that in case my death preceded hers, I would like her to carry on exactly as before. Indeed I went further. I told her that nothing could distress me more than the thought that my death would lead her to a narrow and joyless existence — I hold to that view strongly and I imagine you are not so different from me as to think differently. I want you therefore to get rid completely of all these conventional complexes and lead a perfectly normal, active, work-filled and joy-filled life. I do not see why you should do away with the “tika”.
Your loving brother,
Jawahar
(This letter was written soon after Ranjit Pandit’s death.)

10 April 1945
Nan darling,
Behold! I have been ‘repatriated’, as they say, and brought from foreign parts (Ahmadnagar Fort) to this home from home — Bareilly Central Prison! Three of us — Pantji, Narendra Dev and I — emerged from Ahmadnagar Fort on the evening of 28th March after nearly 32 months there and were motored to a small station far from Ahmadnagar, where we entrained. It was the night of the full moon and we remembered that the moon was just a day old when we had entered the Fort so long ago. Meanwhile it had waxed and waned thirty-three times, faded away and been born afresh again and again. It seemed somehow fitting that we should emerge out of that enclosure on Purnima day with the moon at its fullest as our companion. Everything looked lovely in that moonlight and yet somehow unreal, unsubstantial, as of something we had seen in a dream, familiar and yet strange and indefinite, without sharp edges or clear outlines. That of course is always so in the moonlight, but there was something more to it than that for our long confinement had given a novelty and strangeness to everything we saw. During that 24-hour railway journey we looked again at broad fields and distant horizons, and trees, and people moving about, and sometimes there was a bit of a crowd and familiar shouting. So we arrived at Naini the next night and got off the train and were taken to that old familiar place with so many memories clinging to it — Naini Central Prison.
Your loving brother,
Jawahar

(Excerpted with permission from Before Freedom:
Nehru’s Letters to His Sister, 1909-1947,
edited by Nayantara Sahgal,
HarperCollins India, Rs 395.)

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