As a child Gandhi was a perfectionist and would go on making efforts to improve. A deft motor mechanic, who at the slightest excuse would lie under his car to mend it, an expert cameraman according to Simi Grewal, for whom the young prime minister was no less than a professional who guided her own cameramen.
He was the man who polished his own shoes.
Even as a pilot he was always busy with one manual job or another. That he was better off than many other Indians and was a privileged scion of the Nehru clan did not seem to matter to him. He was an airline pilot - granted he had the advantage of being the prime minister's son and grandson of another - and showed others that they didn't have to be an obsequious khadi-clad type to make it to the top.
