Bimla Kashyap: Breaking glass ceilings one after another

On a cold morning in a narrow lane of the Lower Bazaar, people are waiting at a small sweet shop for piping hot doodh jalebi and aloo puri. Inside, there are a few tables and chairs and in a corner, from behind a high glass counter displaying sweets, a woman is busy giving last minute instructions. But she is no regular shop owner. Soon, she would have a completely different role to play.

A Rajya Sabha MP from BJP, she will soon leave for Delhi to attend the ongoing winter session of parliament. For Bimla Kashyap, running the 114-year-old mithai shop was as much of a bold step as making her maiden speech in parliament.

"I am surprised you are interested in my story," she said laughing. She said she felt an emotional attachment to the shop started by her father-in-law and his brother and later run by her husband and her brother-in-law. Once the session would be over, the focus would be back on the shop, simultaneously discharging her responsibilities as MP.

Kashyap, now 72, began her political career in Shimla as a grassroots worker. It all started in 1979 when she used to go to people's homes to distribute voting slips instead of for her husband Shravan Kumar, an RSS worker, as he was busy at the shop.

And then there was no looking back. Her work got appreciated and she went on to become president of the Shimla Mandal Mahila Morcha and then state Mahila Morcha president and state vice-president. But, in 1992 when the then chief minister Shanta Kumar suggested that she fight the assembly elections, her husband was against the idea.

"I never asked for anything. In 2010, I was sent to Rajya Sabha. When I went to the House, I used to feel bad seeing only a couple of people sitting there. I would sit there all through and my children made fun of me saying it was like I was in school and would leave only when the bell rang," Kashyap recalled.

Sitting there with ear phones to hear the Hindi translation, she learnt how to make speeches in parliament. Once when SS Ahluwalia, who was then deputy leader of opposition in the House, asked her to speak on Sikkim, she told him she had never even visited the state. "He told me I also belonged to a hill state. I had only an hour. I wrote a speech keeping in mind the concerns of a hill state and spoke. Party leaders later praised my speech," she said.

Asked how she felt when she first walked into parliament, she said, "more than me, my children were worried. But, they don't know what all their mother has done in the Mahila Morcha," she said similing.

It was in the mid-1990s that she worked closely with prime minister Narendra Modi, who was then state in-charge. "He remembers everything — this shop. He used to love Pahari food, particularly Mandra, a yogurt-based gravy."

She had never gone to the shop, which was famous for its sweets, till her husband was alive. It was forbidden for women, who used to step out in a ghungat (a veil). It was after her husband died in 2003 and later her brother-in-law died that she realised there was nobody but her to take charge of the shop.

"When I went to the shop I notice that it was in such bad condition. It was just six feet high. So I got the ceiling changed, making it higher. We got it renovated," she said. There are CCTV cameras at the shop so she can monitor it while she is away.

When she recalled her childhood in Chail, where she was born, her voice cracked. After her mother expired when she was nine, she had to take care of her three younger sisters and walk five kms to school. She did well in school but could not go to college so did her graduation privately from Punjab University.

As she talked, a procession of school children passed by holding banners against drug abuse. "Its a big problem here," she said. Kashyap has raised concerns over apple imports, sought a mono rail to Shimla and an airport at Kandaghat. Into the last year of her term in Rajya Sabha, she said her stint would be successful if she could get a train to Shimla. "I will continue to work for the party after my term is over," she said.