Seven things I rediscovered after reading The Emergency

Coomi Kapoor's The Emergency: A Personal History tells you several things about both the Emergency and contemporary journalism. My earliest memory of the Emergency was travelling in a DTC bus with my father, and pointing to the graffiti wall which was liberally sprayed with slogans such as "Talk Less, Work More" and "Hum Do Hamare Do" and asking what these were. I was glared at by fellow travellers and told by my father that he would explain later.

He did. An Emergency was in place, Fundamental Rights (which we had just been introduced to in civics in school) were suspended and Mrs Gandhi, a politician my family had long-admired, and who had liberated Bangladesh (I still remember the newspapers we had to put on our windows after switching off all the lights during the air raids in the 1971 war), had turned into an autocrat. Her son, Sanjay Gandhi, was blamed as was a certain small car called Maruti.

There has been much literature on the Emergency but none as poignant as Coomi Kapoor's and here's why:

#1. We're here because of women like Coomi Kapoor: Women journalists like me stand on the shoulders of trailblazers like Coomi, whom I had the privilege of working with in The Indian Express, my home, off and on for 11 years. Slight, birdlike, always ready with a piece of advice or encouragement, The Emergency shows the sacrifices she made so that political journalism would no longer be a male preserve. Crime, DESU (Delhi Electric Supply Undertaking), election rallies, Coomi did it all, while having babies, living with a husband in jail and a brother-in-law on the run from an oppressive regime. She quotes Swamy finally surfacing in Parliament after sneaking in and raising a point of order, reminding the Rajya Sabha chairman, vice president BD Jatti, that "He had not included democracy in his list of recent deaths". Ah Swamy. Always dramatic.

#2. The establishment stars of today are the so-called extremists of the Emergency: Then DUSU (Delhi University Students' Union) president and convener for Jayaprakash Narayan's student and youth-wing organisations, Arun Jaitley, has always loved to tell the tale of his great escape from the police which he says was sabotaged by his former friend and my former editor Prabhu Chawla, but until Coomi's book, we didn't fully understand the horrors these political prisoners had to live with. Coomi's husband, journalist Virendra Kapoor, a brooding figure with a booming voice familiar to most journalists in the city (and to me, though I have always timidly tried to stay clear of his equal opportunity anger), was placed in solitary confinement for a period with his leg in irons.

#3. The heroes of yesterday can be the fallen of today: This was well-known, yet it was interesting to see it repeated in today's context. Coomi writes about Sushma Swaraj and Swaraj Kaushal fighting for George Fernandes' freedom in the Baroda Dynamite Case. Writes Coomi: "Although elections were announced halfway through the trial, Fernandes had no faith that the elections would end Indira Gandhi's reign of terror. His letters, smuggled out to opposition party leaders by his lawyers Sushma and Swaraj Kaushal, urged them not to fall into the trap of fighting the poll." And now Swaraj Kaushal and their daughter fight for Lalit Modi. Tragic sign of the times.

#4. The collaborators of that day are the notables of today: Katherine Frank's 2002 book, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, tells us a lot about the period and the people involved. But Coomi's book shows exactly how deep the involvement was of the lieutenant-governor Kishan Chand's aide Navin Chawla and the Youth Congress president Ambika Soni, both of whom rose high and fast in the UPA years.

#5. Delhi will never be the same again: I have always wondered at the monstrosity that Palika Bazaar is. Now I know why. It was built where Rambles used to be and India Coffee House where journalists and activists hung out, much to Sanjay Gandhi's disgust. Such disgust that he demolished it. Coomi also mentions the courtly Jag Pravesh Chandra, who used to occupy a table at the lovely Embassy Restaurant, which would fairly buzz with debate, discussion and good old-fashioned gossip.

#6. Yet some things never change: Coomi recalls the "Byzantine atmosphere of intrigue surrounding Indira's court that her ministers, in turn, were convinced she was spying on them." Jagjivan Ram feared his phone was continuously tapped. Another minister put a tea cosy over his telephone for he feared that it was bugged. Hmm. Sounds familiar?

#7. The love of speed runs in the Gandhi family: Robert Vadra and Rahul Gandhi apparently love - or at least used to love - racing motorcycles. Perhaps Rahul has inherited that from uncle Sanjay Gandhi, who according to Coomi, had a penchant for driving cars not necessarily his own. And that much before Delhi saw Sanjeev Nanda and the BMW crash, there was Adil Shahryar, who was found unconscious after crashing a stolen motorcycle in May 1964. Fascinatingly, India Today did a story in 1982 of Shahryar being arrested in the US for alleged fraud (for which he was later released after an intervention by Rajiv Gandhi). Guess who did the story for India Today from Homestead, Florida, where Shahryar was detained? A certain Rohini Nilekani.