Eden Prairie woman’s new book documents her father’s life and delves into the early days of India’s independence.

By Leah Shaffer

Back in the mid-1990s, Rajshree Puri was watching a PBS documentary on the life of Jacqueline Kennedy when she saw some startling footage. The footage showed Kennedy walking down the steps of an airplane for a trip to India, being greeted by Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister and then she thought, “There’s my dad.”

In the midst of the scene was her father, Baldev Raj Chadha, who was the chief security officer to Nehru. Her father had died in 1972 and she never imagined that she would see a newsreel of him in America.
“That kind of got me started,” she said.

Puri, an Eden Prairie resident, eventually undertook a seven-year project to tell the story of her father’s life. The result is a newly published book titled “My Daddyji: Security Chief to India’s Nehru.”

The book, published in India by Ocean Books, documents her father’s rise from life in a town in what was frontier Punjab in India (now a section of Pakistan); to becoming an Indian Police Service Officer and eventually rising in the ranks to become chief security officer for Nehru along with the first and second presidents of India.

Though the book provides an intimate look at culture and life in India, it also offers a primer on a turbulent time of transition. These were the days up to and following India’s independence from British rule. In her synopsis, Puri writes: “Historical facts shaped the Chadha family. Events of India’s independence and the Partition of Punjab, the Indo-China War, the India Pakistan wars of 1965 and 1971, touched our lives in its own ways.”

She describes the chaos that descended upon her father’s hometown following the partition of Punjab:

“Chaos reigned supreme, and no help was in sight. Lallaji’s [her grandfather’s] tea stalls at the railway stations in the Northwest Frontier Punjab worked incessantly as trainloads of people came and went. At the same time, my father was on an assignment in Bengal in the East. He exhausted all resources of communication with his father. Yet, they were unable to make contact with each other. Daddyji was anxious and feared for his father’s life in the blood ravaged Frontier Punjab …”

The book smoothly incorporates gripping historical facts with detailed descriptions of her father’s personality: In one passage, she writes:

“When Daddyji returned home from work, he played with his children and showered his love and affection on them. Since he was not as lucky growing up, due to the unfortunate early death of his mother, he wanted the best for his children. None other than Baldev Raj realized the importance of parents’ love for their children.”

‘Journey of love’

Following her father’s death in 1972, Puri’s life took its own startling turn: She married Pardeep Puri and by January of 1973, at the age of 20, she moved to an apartment in Hopkins, Minn. It was a startling contrast from her childhood, where she was surrounded by dignitaries, government officials and lived a comfortable existence as the child of a high-ranking security officer. She recalls, as a child, visiting Nehru’s house, sitting on his lap, calling him uncle, “and not knowing that he’s a one-of-a-kind person.”
Coming from that world to a Minnesota apartment in the winter “was not easy.”

Yet, when she came to America, “that’s when I began to discover the real world.”

When I came here “everything was different,” she added.

She recalls the five feet of snow, subzero temperatures – even the toothpaste tasted different.

“I really had to discover my identity,” she said.

Like so many others who begin again in the United States, she came here, started her life ... “and I liked it.”

Puri eventually graduated with a master’s of English in creative writing, raised her family with her husband and is now a grandmother.
“Minnesota has been my India,” she added.

But, in her reminiscence of childhood, she realized it was extraordinary.

The early stages of her book included gathering facts and footage, a long and detailed process.

For the first three years, she did much of her research at the Library of Congress, digging out as much as she could such as old newsreels from the government of India. Then she went to India for further research, visiting the Nehru library and places of her father’s childhood and her own childhood.

“Then I had to reach out to people whom I had not reached out to for years,” she said.

She interviewed friends and family and acquaintances. She would call them and “it seemed like they had been waiting to talk about all this stuff.”

Puri describes it all as a “journey of love.

“I just had to do it.”

Daddyji

Puri was Chadha’s youngest daughter and though much of the book is a historical narrative of life in India and her “Daddyji’s” life, it is also tied to the impact he made on her. The book is a loving tribute to a caring father and talented officer. Puri notes that her father was the lone survivor of his father’s three marriages. He lost his mother at age of 5 and was raised by a step-grandmother. Puri said her father, when he was a child, would see an English officer on horseback, look up and say he would become that man of authority.

“He always talked about it till the day he died and he would laugh about it,” she said.

The book opens with a chapter detailing the sad days leading up to her father’s death. At the time he said to Puri, using her nickname “Nanae,” “I trust you. I do not trust this world.”

Her father gave her inner strength, along with the values of honesty and belief in oneself, said Puri.

“That value takes you anywhere.”

More information
Copies of the book “My Daddyji: Security Chief to India’s Nehru” can be found by contacting the author at nanae.feedback@gmail.com.

Click here for a review:
http://www.dayafterindia.com/dec209/book_review1.html

Click here for more about Nehru:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/pdf/prof_jawaharlalnehr...