‘I’d always disliked politics’ | An excerpt from Sonia Gandhi’s ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’

With Rajiv gone, everything around me echoed and re-echoed my loss. While I found some solace in the tasks centred on his memory, I was confronted with my fragility whenever the need arose to make public appearances. They couldn’t be avoided: there was the work of various memorial trusts that I headed, which had to continue — international conferences and lectures. At such functions I was required to welcome the guests with a speech. I would have to wrestle with my agitation in the preceding days and the fear that tears would overwhelm me suddenly while I was addressing the audience. That would happen also when visitors condoled with me. I remember when His Holiness the Dalai Lama came and asked me in his usual matter-of-fact manner, “Do you feel vengeful towards those who killed Rajiv?” I replied, “No, I don’t,” and burst into sobs.

That vulnerability remained with me for a long time, but slowly, slowly, the days began to feel less empty and endless. Sleep returned. Rajiv became a presence within me rather than a piercing absence in my life, though the anguish returned in force every time we — Rahul and Priyanka as well as I — shared something important, a rite of passage in which he would have been a vital participant — like their graduations, his daughter’s wedding, later the birth of his grandchildren.

Priyanka graduated with a degree in psychology in 1993 from Jesus and Mary College. Rahul graduated with a master of philosophy (M.Phil) degree from Trinity College in 1995. Priyanka and I decided to attend his convocation, and my mother and younger sister joined us with two of my nieces. Rahul could barely contain his happiness when we turned up; beaming from ear to ear, he embraced all six of us.

(L-R) Sonia Gandhi with son Rahul Gandhi and daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. | Photo Credit: PTI

To be walking again the narrow streets of Cambridge, still thriving and thrumming with students, passing by old haunts — the Varsity restaurant, my old language school, Rajiv’s lodgings on Kimberley Road and mine on Tenison Road — brought back memories of when he and I first met, of our blissful time together. During the moving graduation ceremony in the Senate House, as Rahul received his degree, I struggled to suppress my tears. Rahul and Priyanka were similarly overcome. How they missed their father at that special moment, how proud Rajiv would have felt of his son.

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Time flowed on. As I gradually emerged from seclusion and became a little more active, once in a while Rajiv’s former colleagues would visit — some for a courtesy call, or to invite me to a family function, others with pleas that I take an active interest in party affairs. To the latter I would listen quietly but not heed their request.

The 1996 election results were disappointing for the Congress Party. It had not been able to form a government on its own. It was plagued by splits and factional disputes. In 1995 I had been asked to support one particular group, in which the main actors were Arjun Singh, N.D. Tiwari, and Mohsina Kidwai, who’d been party members for decades and had held important positions and ministries. I had refused. They broke away and formed another party, followed the next year by senior Tamil leaders G.K. Moopanar and P.C. Chidambaram, and a younger Congress member, Madhavrao Scindia, who’d joined in 1980. All of them set up separate parties. In 1997 Mamata Banerjee left, due to differences with the state leadership, and formed her own party, the Trinamool Congress. I had become a primary member in 1997 when I was invited by the Congress President Sitaram Kesri to the party’s 80th Plenary Session in Calcutta, but as the party’s situation seemed to be worsening, the pressure on me was increasing to take over its leadership.