Arun Jaitley and the art of communication

A politician par excellence, a brilliant orator, a legal luminary and a journalist's delight, Arun Jaitley was all this and more. His ability to connect and communicate effectively with people from all walks of life turned him into a larger-than-life figure. You were lucky if you got invited to Jaitley’s durbar in Parliament where he would engage in endless gup-shup with journalists, sharing his wisdom and getting insights into trends shaping up in your world. He knew most journalists by name, others by face. Conversations with him were always freewheeling — they would start with politics, transition to cricket but often end with food. 

They say everyone has an Arun Jaitley story to tell. As I look back, one of my most special memories is of a dinner he hosted at his residence for a select group of financial journalists, a few months after the BJP government came to power in 2014. I felt privileged to be among the invitees as there was a surprise guest at the dinner — Prime Minister Narendra Modi who wanted to reassure us that all was well with the economy. We sat in Mr Jaitley’s living room — a dozen business journalists with two of the most powerful men of the country. 

Arun Jaitley understood the significance of the media more than any other BJP leader, and had an amazing art of building relationships with his off-the-record chatter. The fact that he was Narendra Modi’s closest confidant, his go-to person and the master strategist of his massive victory was all very well-established. But at that dinner we got a chance to witness the camaraderie, chemistry and comfort between the two leaders first-hand. Mr Jaitley would either finish a sentence the PM started, or use his clever oratory skills to divert the subject each time an uncomfortable question was raised. 

After the one-hour discussion on the state of our economy came the real treat — simple home-cooked food with a few specialities from Delhi’s famous hot spots thrown in. And that's when Mr Jaitley's unending food tales began. A proud Delhiite, his face would always light up when he talked about food. He talked about his regular visits to eat chaat sold by the roadside vendor at Shah Jehan Road, how Gopala Sweets makes the best rasgullas in town, and why he loves samosas more than any other Indian snack. He was on a restricted diet those days as he had undergone a bariatric surgery a few months earlier. When his plate arrived, he told us in his usual witty tone: “I’m eating all the wrong things for a few days but I promise I'll be back to my good old ways soon.” 

With no airs of a Finance Minister, he went around the room, ensuring our plates were full with all the special items he wanted each one of us to try. His warmth and hospitality made the evening feel nothing short of a family dinner, impossible to believe were being hosted by a man who was literally running the country. 

If Mr Jaitley had a connect with food, he also had a connect with the camera. He was a true headline-maker, and knew exactly what the TV journalist wanted him to say. I recall the time spent in Davos: my seventh year of covering the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, and the first one since the BJP government came to power. I was standing outside his hotel in sub-zero temperatures, doing a live link and waiting to film the footage of his arrival. As Mr Jaitley was walking in, I requested him for an interview, and he obliged immediately. No preparation, no agenda, no travel fatigue, no egos. And the magic began. It was the kind of magic you’d witness each time a mike was put in front of him. As expected, in 3 minutes flat, I got the big headline I was looking for — his plans to discuss the hot-button black money issue with his Swiss counterpart. Ask any TV journalist and they'll tell you, it didn't matter if you interviewed Mr Jaitley for two minutes or twenty, he would decide your headline even before you’d asked the first question.

As I switched careers from journalism to public policy, the purpose of my meetings with him changed. But his style didn’t. He continued to be informal, chatty and yet focused on the task at hand. That's when I discovered another side of his personality — his ability to use anecdotes to effortlessly sell the India story to visiting foreign business executives. During one such meeting with a top global executive of a ridesharing firm, he talked at length about the scale and grandeur of India’s weddings, and how he had invited 1500 guests to his daughter’s wedding, thus planting the idea of a ridesharing product for weddings. We chatted about the possibility of launching driverless cars and flying taxis in India. He was fascinated with the pace of technological advancements, but said none of these innovations would possibly come to India during his lifetime. He was right. RIP India’s Communicator-in-Chief, you will be missed.