Homeward Bound: The Tale of Pidi's Dogged Loyalty to RaGa

I first met Pidi in December 2017, bang in the middle of the Gujarat elections. The venue was 12 Tughlaq Lane and the occasion was an interview I was doing with Rahul Gandhi.

The pet dog became famous when the Congress leader took a dig at the BJP and trolls by tweeting an image of Pidi and gave him credit for the witty tweets from the @RahulGandhi handle.

Pidi became famous after this tweet. He also inspired memes and then became a tool for further attacks on Rahul Gandhi.

Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who had quit the Congress in a huff, responded: “Sir, Rahul Gandhi, who knows him better than me. Still remember you busy feeding biscuits to him while we wanted to discuss urgent Assam issues.”

Now both Pidi and Rahul Gandhi will move out of 12 Tughlaq Lane. There is no clarity on when Pidi joined Rahul and started sharing his house but the former Congress president shifted to this type 8 spacious bungalow in 2005, just after he became a first-time MP from Amethi.

Only a select few have been lucky to visit his home of 19 years. Being an intensely private person, only close friends and family had access to the residential portion of Rahul’s accommodation.

The bungalow begins by opening into a huge hall where visitors are frisked and made to sit in a waiting area. At times the wait is long and ends with no meeting. Many who have left the party have complained about this. The room opens into a small area which many may have seen as the spot where photographs were taken either when new leaders joined the party or Rahul had distinguished guests like Kamal Haasan recently.

The bungalow boasts a huge lawn as such accommodations usually have. We met Rahul Gandhi twice on this lawn when he used to have those rare media interactions.

Sources say his home which has been out of bounds to most (as he preferred to have his meetings in a small office that he had set up inside) has a well-equipped gym. It’s a routine he rarely gives up. He also, like his mother, had a large study with a huge collection of books. Rahul Gandhi is a voracious reader. Not much is known about the decor of his home but sources say he had done it up simply, mostly in white. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was the chief interior decorator.

But after trucks loaded his belongings and rolled into mother Sonia Gandhi’s residence, 12 Tughlaq Lane stands as testimony to the second power centre it became as Rahul Gandhi increasingly began to make decisions in the party.

Today, once again, the eviction from this official residence has become a shelter for politics. “Mera ghar aapka ghar” is the campaign the Congress ran to make the point that Rahul Gandhi lives in the hearts and minds of party leaders. 12 Tughlaq Lane has now become the address the Congress is using to assert that the BJP is scared of him as he is the only one who looks the Prime Minister in the eye.

In 2019, after the crushing defeat of the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi had driven down with Pidi by his side. The former Wayanad MP sets off on another journey from 12 Tughlaq Lane to 10 Janpath, and a yatra for 2024. Pidi will, of course, be by his side.

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