Goradia strove heroically to conquer stage fright and at the age of forty, learned to learned to deliver speeches in Urdu, having lived all his life in Bengal since the age of seven. He found himself drawn towards Hindutva, his form of cultural nationalism which meant upholding Hindu values, though not at the exclusion of other communities.

Such valiant efforts found him a place in Parliament, although his tenure as a Rajya Sabha MP of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was cut short—a happening for which he holds no one culpable. What this writer avers is that even though he did not renew his role as a parliamentarian, his political thought processes continue as before.

For a man whose life has spanned princely times, wartime rationing, Independence, the grisly spectacle of Partition, new threats on the Indian horizon and the purblindness of some of the nation’s leaders, Prafull Goradia has plenty to write about.