By Sudeshna Sarkar
Kathmandu, March 21 (IANS) India had a unique place in the heart of Nepal’s Girija Prasad Koirala, an extraordinary leader and statesman. Few know that he eloped and married in India, loved Tagore songs and found a role model in Mahatma Gandhi.

Born in Bihar in India, partly educated in Varanasi and New Delhi, former Nepal prime minister Koirala - who passed away Saturday - had a special attachment to the subcontinent.

While many know of the hero’s greeting he was given by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his state visit to New Delhi in 2006 after an end to the army-propped regime of King Gyanendra and the restoration of democracy, few are aware of the significance the Botanical Gardens in Shibpur, West Bengal held for him in his personal life.

It was there that he exchanged wedding vows with his wife Sushma after his mother and other members of the family opposed the match.

As a young trade union leader, Koirala first met Sushma when she came to his hometown Biratnagar at the invitation of his sister-in-law to run a school for girls.

There were few educated and trained women available and Sushma, a graduate of the Benaras Hindu University, arrived from Varanasi to take charge of the Nari Jagriti School.

After they became close, it was she who proposed that they get married. Initially, he asked her to wait, planning to get married on the day India became independent.

Koirala mentions in his memoirs that his mother was against the marriage, probably because Sushma had been married once earlier, and some of his elder brothers also did not favour the union.

So he decided to elope and get married in Kolkata. The wedding was a simple ceremony at the Botanical Gardens, attended only by four people, one of whom was his kid nephew.

“I garlanded her and she garlanded me back,” he recalls. “The wedding was over.”

After the quick wedding in 1912, when the pair returned to Biratnagar, his family decided to accept the couple and the Nepali Congress party held a feast for the newly-weds.

Koirala loved to listen to Rabindranath Tagore’s songs and sent his daughter Sujata to study fine arts at Kala Bhavan in Vishwa Bharati university founded by Tagore.

Besides Tagore, his favourite song was “Kuch to log kahenge” sung by Kishore Kumar in Hindi film “Amar Prem”, the 1971 hit love story that saw Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore in an unconventional relationship.

Besides Kishore, Koirala’s other favourite singers were Jagjit Singh and Anup Jalota.

In politics, to which he gave nearly seven decades of his life, his role model was Mahatma Gandhi. “My life’s philosophy is based on Mahatma Gandhi’s saying that you have to eschew seven sins,” he had said.

The seven sins were wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice and politics without principle.