The air was electric over Taiping on the morning of May 24, 1937 as 10-year-old Valliamai stepped into the Hokkien Hoay Kuan building where a large, expectant crowd had gathered.

Valli, also known as Annaleksmi, was puzzled by all the fuss. An older relative who wanted to see someone called Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru from India had brought Valli and her sister Mahaleksmi, 12, along.

Nehru, who was then Indian National Congress president, had come to Malaya for a rest but found himself meeting members of the Indian community most of the 13 days he was in the country.

As the crowd at the hall began to swell, Valli became edgy. There was hardly any room to stand comfortably. She was breathing in warm air in the packed hall.

Suddenly, some of those inside rushed out. Being a little adventurous, she pulled her sister along to peek outside and saw people surrounding a man. Many placed their palms together in the traditional Indian ‘Vanakkam” or “Namaste” greeting, some tried to shake his hand and others appeared happy just to touch him.

She stood on her toes to get a better view but failed. The girls tried to nudge their way forward in an attempt to see this man who, they realised, must be someone special.

Nehru had to literally squeeze his way inside the building where he was again mobbed on all sides by the mostly Indian crowd.

As Nehru struggled to walk through the sea of heaving humans, the shoving and jostling intensified.

Suddenly, someone stepped on Valli’s toes and a bunch of bodies squeezed her and Mahaleksmi. The girls screamed simultaneously, and began crying.

Nehru turned around, as did most others there. He barged through the crowd towards the source of the screams and found the frightened girls.

Valli now had a chance to see his face but she was too embarrassed and scared to look. He said something to the girls, which didn’t quite register at that time. All Valli can remember today are the words “It’s all right. It’s all right”.

The man who would one day become prime minister of India held the girls and ticked off the people around them for being careless. After telling them to stop pushing, he instructed someone there to find the girls’ parents or family members. By then, her relative had arrived.

Just before Nehru walked away, she took a good look at his face. Finally, she’d seen the man that so many people were fussing over.

At that time, Valli did not know that what happened in the hall, and to them, would make the news or that it would soon gain notoriety as the “Taiping incident”.

The Straits Times of May 25 reported that Nehru was “obliged to call an over-enthusiastic gathering of welcome to order by jumping on a table and shouting for silence”.

It said Nehru had arrived at the Taiping Hokkien Hoay Kuan building 50 minutes ahead of schedule and was mobbed by a big crowd and that no responsible person – meaning someone from the reception committee – was present.

The report quoted Nehru as saying he was disgusted with the arrangements and was “ashamed of the behavior of Taiping Indians”.

The Singapore Free Press reported that Nehru “created a scene” by jumping onto a table and calling the people to order and saying that he was disgusted with their behavior. This, it said, angered the people of Taiping.

If it were to happen today, I suppose it would set off a diplomatic storm.

Little Valli, of course did not know all this, and she wouldn’t have cared even if she had.

“When we returned home that day, my father Ramasamy Pillai heard what happened. He wrote a postcard to thank Nehru for rescuing us and got us to put our names on it.”

Days later, the train carrying Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi north to Penang stopped at the Taiping railway station where a large crowd had gathered. As Nehru alighted briefly to say goodbye, Valli handed over the postcard to him.

“My father carried me on his shoulder and held my sister by the hand. Mr Nehru read the postcard and smiled. He then said something to his daughter Indira and she went into the coach to get two garlands made of cotton. She then garlanded us both. I was simply thrilled,” Valli said.

My mother still has the garland that Indira Gandhi had placed around her neck on June 4, 1937. It is her most prized possession. When Indira Gandhi became prime minister of India, my mother was one of the happiest and when she was gunned down by her own bodyguards, my mother was one of the saddest.

Upon returning to India, Nehru sent Valli’s father a letter in reply to the postcard but it got lost. The postcard, however, was featured in a newspaper during the controversy over the “Taiping incident”.

My mother, now 93, told me this story many years ago. Recently, I decided to find out the details of what happened.

Nehru, 47, arrived in Penang by ship from Rangoon, in the then Burma, on May 23.

He had come for a rest but was obliged to meet the many Indians who wanted to say hello to the man who had been jailed several times by the British colonialists for fighting for the independence of India.

Newspapers reported that it was hero-worship in many places as he toured the country – going from Penang to Singapore and then back.

On May 24, Nehru and his entourage travelled to Taiping, which was then an important town. They arrived by car a little earlier than expected and the main officials of the Taiping Pandit Jawaharlal Reception Committee, including chairman SKM Kotwal, were not around to greet them.

That resulted in delays and confusion at the Hokkien Hoay Kuan building, with some reports saying Nehru was annoyed that the meet organisers were not present when he arrived.

Kotwal wrote to the Press a few days after what became known as the “Taiping incident” complaining about Nehru.

Among other things, the lawyer wrote: “The members of the reception committee and their helpers worked throughout the night of May 23, and worked for what? A public sound rating (published and blazoned abroad since) from the guest of honour Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, as their reward.

“My special thanks are due in particular to the trio Messrs Dogar Singh, Lee and Narayanan who worked so indefatigably and bore the brunt of everything so nobly.

“I have been told that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is temperamental – I agree.”

There was an immediate response from the chairman of the National Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Reception Committee, R Ramani.

He started by saying: “My attention had been drawn to a statement widely published recently in the daily Press, about what has now come to be known as the ‘Taiping incident’ with regard to Pandit Nehru.”

Ramani, who was in Nehru’s entourage, said they had arrived 10 minutes earlier than scheduled at the outskirts of Taiping and that Kotwal had been informed where to meet them but that there was no one there. The Nehru party then proceeded into town and the hall.

He said: “The chairman arrived when the meeting was about to finish and told me he was late because he had gone to Bagan Serai to meet the party, but surely even he could not have missed the procession of cars coming towards him.”

To refute reports that Taiping residents were angry with Nehru, Ramani said: “On the way back, a surging crowd met Pandit Nehru at the (railway) station and showed him an affection that did not suggest Taiping’s ‘resentment’.”

He cited the postcard from Valli and her sister to argue that Taiping residents were not angry with Nehru.

Nehru himself mentioned the “Taiping incident” when addressing a crowd in Singapore.

On May 27, the Press reported Nehru as saying: “May I say I have been slightly hurt and somewhat amused to read in the newspapers occasionally discussions of various antics of mine when I am facing crowds. I have been described as possessing flashes of temper. It has been said that at a certain place I was annoyed because the chairman of the reception committee was not present. I do hope that I am not all that. I may be occasionally liable to loss of temper but I hope that I am not so discourteous as to behave in such a manner.

“The fact is, I consider myself rather an expert on dealing with crowds. I have dealt with so many crowds, such enormous crowds too running into 100,000 and over at a time without any police help or any other help… and when I see a crowd of persons pushing and jostling one another, especially when there are children, the desire to curb them and produce order comes into me, and therefore I often jump down and go into the crowd backwards and forwards, and in this way occasionally divert their attention from one direction to another. And when I do this, the crowd of journalists seem to mistake it for rage on my part.”

Nehru added: “At Taiping, I was annoyed because two little girls were in danger of being hurt, so that was why I barged into the crowd.”

And that is the story of how little Valli met Pandit Jawharlal Nehru, one of the giant statesmen of the last century, and set off, or at least contributed, to the “Taiping incident”.