Maya's parents celebrate quietly

New Delhi: BSP chief Mayawati, who began her career as a teacher, is now the reigning queen of Uttar Pradesh.

Jubilant party workers are having lavish celebrations in UP but in a middle-class neighbourhood in Delhi’s Inderpuri, the firebrand leader’s parents, Ram Lata and Prabhu Dayal, have their own humble ways of celebrating their daughter’s victory.

There is a beeline of people waiting outside Mayawati’s parents’s house and they can’t stop thanking the world.

Many of the visitors are from a slum cluster a couple of kilometers away from where Mayawati grew up. In humble household, away from the shutterbugs, the modest family and their neighbours celebrate Mayawati’s landmark victory.

It was a unique social engineering and ideology, which boosted the BSP to victory, a triumphant Mayawati declared on Friday. But Mayawati’s parents’ house is an example of simplicity as compared to their daughter’s Z-class security and cars with red beacons.

The local tea-stall owner and vegetable vendor called in with a box of laddoos while relatives spoke of the would-be CM’s never-say-die attitude.

The only symbol of Mayawati’s political side are the walls which are plastered with pictures of Dalit icons like BR Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram, Periyar and Sri Narayana Guru and of course, Mayawati herself.

Mayawati’s father, who was a supervisor in the telecom department, says that he was confident of his daughter’s success.

“We knew your behenji would win. Both of us went to meet her on Wednesday and she was confident. She has been a confident girl from her childhood,” The Indian Express quoted her father as saying.

The BSP supremo has done her LLB and BEd but can milk buffalos and do house work with equal ease, her proud parents told the national daily.

While Mayawati’s nine other siblings revere their elder sister for her accomplishments, they also say that years ago a sadhu had predicted that she will make a mark in the world of politics.

With fighting spirit in her blood, Mayawati, whose grandfather was a soldier who had fought in Italy in World War I, is all set to take on the likes of the Yadavs once again and this her family feels is just the beginning.

“She is a fighter, her grandfather was a soldier who fought in World War I. She has all his qualities and we always encouraged her. In our family, girls were never discriminated against,” The Indian Express quoted her father as saying.