The Indomitable Lal Bahadur Shastri

He was small in height but the tallest in the leadership. I saw him in Allahabad now Prayagraj and heard his speech before the jam-packed ground of a College. He visited the city after the 1965 battle. A few months later, I was one of the crowd who followed his ashes to be immersed in Sangam. His words still rebound in my mind when he said, "I am a small man, and Ayub Khan is a tall person. He must have thought about what this small person could do but when I visited the battleground in Punjab, the distance was unending. I asked the General with me if we were still in Punjab. I was awestruck when he told me that we had crossed Punjab and were in Lahore."