BEFORE FREEDOM: NEHRU'S LETTERS TO HIS SISTER 1909-1947 Edited by Nayantara Sahgal, HarperCollins, Rs 395 THE SCOPE OF HAPPINESS: A PERSONAL MEMOIR By Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, HarperCollins, Rs 295 Letters reveal more about the author than any other kind of writing, especially when they are written to someone close. Before Freedom is a collection of Jawaharlal Nehru's letters to his sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, written over 40 years. The book opens with a 20 year old student writing to his nine year old sister: 'I am sending you a little teddy bear and a few other things...I love teddy bears.' It closes with a letter from a 66 year old prime minister: 'Today is Buddha Jayanti day and the full moon of Vaisakh will rise again as it did 2,500 years ago on the Buddha...May we prove worthy of the greatest of our countrymen.' In the intervening years, much changed in the lives of the siblings and in the world they occupied. The letters, thus, form a huge canvas on which Nehru paints a self-portrait - and brings to life, the son, the father, the husband and the brother. The turbulent external environment in the country naturally permeates the letters. But it is the routine exchange of notes between a brother and sister and what it reveals about them and the family that is more interesting. After a visit from his nieces in jail, Nehru writes: 'All of them - Rita especially - reminded me of how my hair was all going grey, a fact of which I was fully conscious. Chand, very tactfully, said that this of course was no sign of old age!' Some years later, the subject crops up again. 'Indu is 27 1/2. I just can't grasp that and each time I have to calculate from the date of her birth in order to assure myself... Now I am 55 1/2 - astonishing. I do not take kindly to this rapid passing of time.' The letters are always lively. In one written to his niece, Rita, after the birth of his grandson, Rajiv, he says: 'The babe, I understand, has got powerful lungs and makes a lot of noise. He is rather perverse, but then the poor fellow has had little chance to learn manners so far. Let's hope he will learn to behave himself soon. He is nearly two weeks old now and he ought to realize the responsibilities of age.' The book reminds us that people who become 'icons' also have human faces. And if the letters we write are a mirror of what we are, then Nehru must have been an interesting man to know. He was certainly very close to the sister he addresses these letters to and reveals himself to her in crucial ways. On a new year's eve, he writes: 'I write to you again so soon because I feel like doing so. The old year is passing as I write - it is almost the stroke of midnight - and the desire to write to you on this coming of the new year became strong within me. To send you all my love.' Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit reciprocated the affection. She dedicates her memoir The Scope of Happiness to the 'two men I loved, my brother Jawaharlal Nehru; my husband, Ranjit Sitaram Pandit'. Her book gives a vivid account of the family's life before and after the freedom struggle overtook them. Like the letters, Pandit's memoir underlines the strong family ties of the Nehrus. She is gentle even to the niece who shunned her. 'Indira, to me, is another daughter - in fact, my eldest daughter...' Pandit's daughter, Nayantara Sahgal, who has edited the letters and written a foreword to the memoir, wishes her mother had spoken more frankly about Indira. When she first read the letters, Sahgal felt as if 'she had chanced on scratches on stone revealing civilization'. Well-written and sprinkled with entertaining anecdotes, Pandit's memoir makes for gripping reading. Not least because it is the story of a vibrant woman who lived a happy life. 'I am at peace with myself. I have lived most of my life in the sunlight and enjoyed it. Now that the twilight has come, I welcome it...'