Mahesh Manzar did not quite make it as a politician, but did make a name for himself as a poet and as a Congress Party organiser. Interestingly, a chance encounter with Sanjay Gandhi in the early 1970s, when he was a student at Delhi University, led him to join the Congress Party. Blessed with the gift of the gab and the ability to churn out some witty and thoughtful couplets, he quickly moved up the ranks of Congress activists till he was walking in and out of the party’s offices and in the Prime Minister’s house as a resourceful, talented party worker and a key campaigner of several big-ticket Congress wins such as of Rajesh Khanna and Sheila Dikshit. Rajiv Gandhi made him a member of the Campaign Committee in his first election.