‘Casanova’ of Maharashtra
It was early eighties. The press had just learnt the importance of being unshackled. Political gossips earlier just a susurrus, were slowly uncoiling in the staid mainstream media.
The first case which took the country by storm was the “Bacchanalian Casanovian” escapades of England educated Maharashtra’s then deputy chief minister Ramrao Adik.
The reports of his painting the aisle of a Germany-bound aircraft and Hanover Industrial park red, in a sloshed condition came as a comic relief to post-emergency India.
Close to then Premier Indira Gandhi, the suave and debonair barrister-at-law, was one of the upcoming political personages, from Maharashtra, leading an Indian delegation to Hanover Industrial Fair.
Mediapersons onboard the Air India flight watched Adik down peg after peg, stumbling across the aisle harassing co-passengers. Media reports then stated ‘he just couldn’t keep his paws off females in the aircraft.’ The cabin crew finally had to handcuff him.
At the Hanover park, Adik, again high-on-spirits prowled the rolling greens chasing gorgeous skirts. The foreign press called him “a drunkard and a Casanova,” stating in their reports, “High-level diplomatic efforts by the Indian Embassy in Bonn managed to keep Adik out of jail after he got into a fight with a taxi driver and upset many women with his forwardness.”
The Hanover ‘hangover,’ killed his political career; and for the rest of his life till his death in 2007, he devoted himself to the beauties of legalese curves in legal tomes.
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