(Three time former Delhi chief minister, Shelia Dikshit, passed away on 20 July 2019. This interview is being reposted in that context.)

“I didn’t want to get into politics, I didn’t have the desire,” says India’s longest serving woman chief minister. Sheila Dikshit was a reluctant heir to the veteran Congress leader Uma Shankar Dikshit.

Unlike her son, Dikshit’s entry into politics was not owing to being born into a political family – hence trained into the trade – but effected by her marriage. She recalls: