In January 1889, or so the story goes, Motilal Nehru, a 27-year-old lawyer from Allahabad, travelled to the Hindu holy town of Rishikesh, weighed down by personal tragedy. Married as a teenager, in keeping with custom, he had soon been widowed, losing both his wife and his first-born son in childbirth. In due course he had married again, an exquisitely beautiful woman named Swarup Rani Kaul.
She soon blessed him with another son – but the boy died in infancy. Motilal’s own brother Nandlal Nehru then died at the age of 42, leaving Motilal the care of his widow and seven children. The burden was one he was prepared to bear, but he desperately sought the compensatory joy of a son of his own. This, it seemed, was not to be.
Motilal and his two companions, young Brahmins of his acquaintance, visited a famous yogi renowned for the austerities he practised while living on a tree. In the bitter cold of winter, the yogi undertook various penances which,
