I will not repeat what I have written elsewhere today on the sad demise of this decent man in politics—his great lawyering, his skillful management of the Upper House of Parliament as Leader of the House, his magnanimity, his earlier stellar role for his party as the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, his amiable and genial nature and his foodie vices. Instead, let me talk of his great communication skills. This is what, anecdotally, a lot of his friends and associates were talking of when I visited AIIMS on Saturday, August 17.

Having opposed Arun in major speeches in Parliament and in major cases in the Delhi High Court and the apex court, what stands out is his ability to communicate effectively, simply, non-contentiously, analytically, wittily and calmly. A rare combination indeed! The ability to think on one’s feet and the capacity to encapsulate the essence of an adversarial issue in a penetrating one-liner which also sheds new light and a different perspective was a rare gift possessed by Arun in abundance.

His old friends recount the story of a BJP upcoming leader ( now an MP & ex-Minister) who was very keen to have a book by him released by then PM Vajpayee (ABV). Fearing a rejection of his request, he roped in Arun to get the PM to agree. Then a junior minister, Arun accompanied the author and a few others to ABV. As the PM was expressing disinclination, Arun told him that he must release the book since it was a unique book. At ABV’s query as to why this was so, Arun said that this was the first book ABV would be releasing which the author had not read (probably true, since it was widely believed to have been ghostwritten!) ABV, who had a great sense of humour, burst out laughing and immediately agreed to release the book.

Once, as both Arun and I were coming out of the Rajya Sabha after hearing our good friend Sitaram Yechury make an impassioned plea as to why practitioners like doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants, engineers and also industrialists, should not be allowed to be MPs for alleged conflicts of interest, we ran into Sita in the lobby. Before I could speak, Arun said: “ Sita wants a Parliament not only of the unemployed but also the unemployable!” This “Gagar Mein Sagar” talent, as the Hindi proverb goes, was Arjun’s special gift.

His criticisms were also laced with humour. Once when he had a run-in with a very senior BJP leader, and sulked for a few weeks before being reinstated, he told a small gathering in Central Hall, without mentioning that person’s name but yet making his identity clear, that there are some people who find promotion and success with each failure: the lower the party falls, the higher they go!

Having left practice since 2009, first as LOP & then as Finance Minister, he would frequently rib me whenever he saw me in Central Hall, saying that while there was no value of the time of public servants like himself, my time was very expensive and should not be wasted in Central Hall! I used to retort by telling him that since he was collecting over one third ( now 42%) of my expensive time, it was better to make him suffer some deprivation while I gossiped in Central Hall.

His one-liners came spontaneously and most appositely. He once preemptively told a retired judge, about to seek some post-retirement sinecure, that as Law Minister he was finding it difficult to also run the largest employment agency in India! The impending request was cruelly and automatically aborted! Phrases like “perennial pessimists” and “eternal naysayers” were his gift to the political lexicon, used like a scathing but effective scalpel. His wit and sense of humour did not leave him until the end.

On the subjects of his interest, his knowledge and recall were legendary. I recall a strong speech by an opposition member barely a year ago in Rajya Sabha on the opportunism and failures of the BJP-PDP coalition in JK. Though he was not slated to speak, I could see that Arun was straining at the leash to intervene, since JK was close to his heart, apart from being his “Sasural”. Exercising his right to do so as Leader of the House, he made an impromptu, extempore and masterful intervention for over twenty minutes, reeling off historical sequences, dates and events since the fifties, coupled with penetrating analysis, displaying his legendary memory and also his ability to collate complex historical data into a simple, lucid and prima face convincing narrative, even for the opposition.