Tprime minister attends to files at his 7, Racecourse Road home in New Delhi.

What was the most thrilling moment in your life, Goel asked him. "When President Shankar Dayal Sharma called me to form the government despite our party being in a minority," Vajpayee recalled of that summer day in 1996. That BJP government lasted just 13 days.

His most agonizing moment? "When we lost by one vote in the Lok Sabha (April 1999)."