Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, known to be a man who likes reading, manages to find time for books from his essential reading of numerous government files and daily newspapers. Eight volumes of a book that once filled Mr Kumar’s idle days in Delhi had seen him getting a windfall soon after he finished reading it.
“I was back to the pavilion after just seven days during my first stint (as chief minister, in March 2000). I was unemployed here (Bihar) and had done the foolishness of resigning as a Central minister before that. So I spent my days in Delhi reading the eight-volume, 2,400-page autobiography of Sri Krishna presented to me,” said a cheerful Mr Kumar with self-deprecating humour at the Patna Book Fair 2010 on Friday.
Regaling an audience of book lovers listening to him in rapt attention, the 59-year-old leader said: “After I finished the book and fell asleep, the phone rang, and it was prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee asking if I was in Delhi. I said yes and fell asleep again. I woke up to hear that many people and journalists had called up. I learnt I was once again becoming a Central minister...”
Mr Kumar, who became chief minister of Bihar for the third time last month following a landslide victory, had lasted only seven days — March 3 to 10, 2000 — in his first stint because he did not have a majority. He had resigned as the Union minister for agriculture just before becoming chief minister. He regained a Cabinet berth and the same portfolio two months later.
While many at the book fair, which Mr Kumar inaugurated along with deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi, were left wondering who was the Sri Krishna whose eight-volume “atmakatha” (autobiography) the CM mentioned, they learnt soon afterwards that it was a book on Lord Sri Krishna, presented to Mr Kumar by Prabhat Prakashan’s publishers.