Rekha Mahajan at Apollo Hospital in Delhi on Friday. Telegraph picture

June 2: She would have remained blended into the background through her life, if it had not been for the disasters that struck her.

All that one remembers are the TV cameras zooming in on the crumpled, tear-strained face of a small woman, who can barely stand as her husband’s body is taken away in a grand procession.

Very little is known about Rekha Mahajan, except that she was the wife of the late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, who was shot by his younger brother Praveen. Today, she is in the news again because her son is struggling for his life at a hospital after probable drug abuse.

Her private life has become a public spectacle that she cannot control, even as it is scary to wonder what she is going through.

“Her husband’s death was unexpected, violent. It must have caused her extreme grief. And now, barely a month later, her son is seriously ill,” says Dr Bharat Shah, a psychiatrist with Lilavati Hospital, Mumbai.

“She must be going through her trauma again on visiting her son. The hospital scenes would bring back the memory of her husband’s death. There is too much focus on her family, too,” he adds.

“It is a double disaster. She must be in a state of shock,” said Mumbai-based psychiatrist Dr Harish Shetty. “She must be shattered. She should be left alone and only close members of the family should be near her. She needs emotional, mental, spiritual help,” he added.

But life for Rekha began on a far less dramatic note. She was born Rekha Hamine and lived in Ambejogai in Marathwada, about 500 km east of Mumbai, in a low-income family. Joining Yogeshwari Mahavidyalaya seems to be the first turning point in her life.

She met classmate Pramod there. They used to act together in college plays. It appears that Pramod ? who had a stage fixation; he chose a young woman named Sarangi as Praveen’s bride when he saw her dancing at her college ? also fell in love with his future wife when she was performing in a play. She was also reported to be the better actor.

Pramod and Rekha married in 1972. They had two children, Rahul and Poonam, both trained pilots. That is where the curtain came down on Rekha’s story.

As Pramod rose and fell and rose again ? from the BJP’s flamboyant funds collector, to a “visionary” techie to scandals linking him with women and moneybags, to Prime Minister-in-waiting ? Rekha was backstage.

Except for file shots that show her, in jewellery and silk sarees, attending a wedding, an inauguration, a naming ceremony, smiling, and always by her husband’s side. A woman who wouldn’t be noticed if it wasn’t for the famous man beside her.

Perhaps, she had grown comfortable there; she had her own life as Mahajan’s wife that did not encroach on what he did outside.

But she must have tempted the fates; they decided to line up tragedies for her and drag her through a woman’s worst nightmares.