For years anyone could come to his garden at about 8:30 in the morning and bring grievances, or just talk to, or look at, him for half an hour or so.
From then onwards he worked through the day without let except for lunch and dinner -- state papers, staff, political and other conferences and committees, interviews, visitors of every conceivable variety, sitting in and running Parliament or Cabinet, giving decisions, writing minutes, and letters, and, several times a week, not unoften several times a day, making speeches.
Lunch and dinner, especially until the last five or six years, were used as occasions for talking to, or receiving, or showing attention to, people. At 10:00 or 10:30 at night, when he parted from his dinner guests, he would go the office in his house and work until about midnight or 1:00 in the morning.
The minutes memoranda and letters he then wrote, tersely and with effect, must add up to hundreds of thousands of words over the years. He usually read for ten to thirty minutes in bed until he dropped off to sleep.
Anyone associated for some years with government in Delhi became so familiar with Nehru's capacity for sustained effort that he took it for granted. And Nehru's example somehow affected his departments of state. You could always tell whether he was in Delhi or not, without asking. There was a spring about the senior officials when Nehru was in town.
Image: Nehru with Seva Dal workers in Kanpur.
Buy Nehru, A Contemporary's Estimate by Walter Crocker
Also read: Let us now praise famous men
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