When Vajpayee broke into tears

A poet, a politician, a statesman and an orator. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was all this, and also had an emotional core.

Senior Congress leader and former journalist Rajiv Shukla recalls that Vajpayee wept during an interview with him, on the eve of him taking oath as the prime minister, at the thought of having to stay away from the public.

"I interviewed Vajpayee in 1996 when he was going to become the prime minister. I said that Atalji you're now going to be the prime minister and from tomorrow you'll have a security cover and you will be able to meet the public from a distance. While talking about this, he began to cry," Shukla told PTI-Bhasha here.

Expressing grief over the demise of Vajpayee, he said, "His politics was about taking everyone along. Although his ideology was different, but as a prime minister, he used to take everyone along. Opposition parties also felt very comfortable with him. He was not hostile towards anyone. That was the reason why everybody loved him."