New Delhi: Former Delhi Chief Minister
Sheila Dikshit is coming out with her autobiography, "Citizen
Delhi: My Times, My Life", publishers Bloomsbury India
announced today.
The memoir which will be unveiled on January 27 at the
11th edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival, will take
readers through the "lifelong journey of the only female
politician in India to be part of a select, overwhelmingly
male, band".
"When I look back, I see an Indian woman, with what many
may call a modern attitude even today, choosing to take the
important decisions of her life and be accountable for them,"
Dikshit said.
The memoir documents how a girl who loved cycling along
the tree-lined avenues of a brand new Lutyens' Delhi, five
decades later, went on to govern, and transform, Delhi as its
chief minister not once, but thrice consecutively -- from
1998 to 2013.
Dikshit made her debut in electoral politics in 1984 as a
member of the Indian National Congress, contesting and winning
from the Kannauj parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
"When a politician like Sheila Dikshit, with a career
spanning over three decades, chooses to let the reader get a
glimpse of her life's journey, the opportunity brings along an
element of surprise.
"In a fascinating account of her life, contoured along
the life of the nation and her political party at critical
junctures, she creates a richly patterned universe with deft
touches, seamlessly moving between the home and the world, the
past and the present," publishers said.
The book also sheds light on how Dikshit never wanted to
be in politics.
She credits the turn of events to destiny shaped by her
liberal upbringing in a Punjabi household.
As the wife of an IAS officer and daughter-in- law of
well-known freedom fighter and politician, Uma Shankar
Dikshit, with his long association with the Nehru-Gandhi
family, she saw governance from both ends.
When she began assisting her father-in- law from 1969,
her up-close view of politics eventually became a springboard
for her own entry into the arena in December 1984,
inaugurating a 30-year-long career in politics.
"The narrative foregrounds a question that the author
considers crucial for democracy how does one deal with the
constant tussle between the dictates of governance and the
here-and-now preoccupations of party politics?" Bloomsbury
India said.
PTI
