(This article was originally published 20 August 2015. It has been updated and republished from The Quint's archives to mark Rajiv Gandhi's birth anniversary.)

Every assassination comes as a shock, but the bomb blast that murdered Rajiv Gandhi 29 years ago took more than his life and those of others around him. The loss of the man who would have been 76 this year meant far more than “just” the death of a former prime minister. I grieved that day not only for his family, but for the hopes he had raised in me, for the frustration and disappointment he had later evoked, for the potential he still represented.

When, in the anarchic aftermath of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s murder in 1984, her son was anointed her successor, my first reaction, like that of so many educated Indians, was one of dismay.