Busy Pranab Mukherjee takes out time to jot down impressions in diary

NEW DELHI: Despite his busy schedule, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has been a keen diary writer, who notes down his impressions of the world surrounding him and the account of things happening around him everyday.

The chief troubleshooter of the UPA coalition had done away with the practice for some time in the late 80s when the basement of his Greater Kailash house in South Delhi had got flooded damaging several of his diaries as also books in his study there.

He revived the practice in early nineties at the insistence of the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao.

After becoming PM, Rao had come to his residence to invite him to join the Planning Commission as the Deputy Chairman. He knew that Mukherjee had been maintaining a diary for years and asked him whether he continued to do so.

Mukherjee then had sought to ignore the query but his wife told Rao about the incident of flooding in the basement that led to the discontinuance.

Rao insisted that Mukherjee resume the practice and the next day sent a new diary as a gift to him.

Mukherjee said that he has no plans to publish the diaries.

"That job will be done by my daughter",he said indicating that since diaries are truthful account of events seen by an individual, it is always better that they could be made public only after he is no more.

Mukherjee smiled away suggestions from reporters at the dinner hosted by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal last night that he would get more than adequate time in Rashtrapati Bhavan to write a diary.

"My simple answer to all these questions is wait and see," he said in response to questions on the next President of India.