Seix Barra!
Javier Moor The Red Sari This is a machine translation First edition: October 2008 Second impression: October 2008 Third impression: November 2008 Fourth impression: December 2008 Fifth impression: January 2009 Sixth impression: January 2009 © Javier Moor, 2008 Exclusive edition rights in Spanish reserved for all the world: © PUBLISHING 5ErX BARRAL, S. A., 2008, 2009 Avda. Diagonal, 662-664 - 08034 Barcelona www.seix - barral.es ISB~: 978-84-322-3197-7 Legal deposit: M. 58.902 - 2008 Form in Spain The publisher points out that all the possible one has become to locate to the possessors of copyrights of the images that illustrate this work, reason why it declares the reserve of rights of such, and expresses its disposition to rectify errors or omissions, if there are them, in future editions. The paper used for the impression of this book is one hundred free percent of I gild and is described like ecological paper. No part of this publication, including the design of the cover, can be reproduced, be stored or transmitted in way some neither by no eiectrico, chemical , mechanical, optical means, or, of recording or photocopy, without previous permission of the publisher. The infraction of the mentioned rights can be constituent of crime against the intellectual property (Art. 270 and following ones of the Penal Code). You were born with this book and to you I dedicate it, Olivia OPENING Conductance of the darknesses to the light, the death to immortality. Veda 1 New Delhi, 24 of May of 1 991 . Sonia Gandhi is not able to think that the man of his life is dead, that no longer will feel his caresses, nor the heat of its kisses. That it will not return to see that so sweet smile that a day snatched the heart to him. Everything has been so fast, so brutal, so unexpected that still it does not assimilate it. His husband has been falling in terrorist attack for two days. Rajiv was called Gandhi, he has been prime minister, and it was to point to return to be it, according to the surveys, if its electoral campaign had not been truncated of so tragic way. It was forty and six years old. Today, the capital of India is had to dismiss the rest of this illustrious son the mother country. Feretro that contains the body is tended in the great hall Teen Murti House, the residence palaciega where its childhood lived when his grandfathers, Jawaharlal Nehru, were prime minister of India. He is palacete colonial, white, surrounded by a park with great tamarinds and flamboyanes, whose red flowers emphasize on a yellowish turf of as much heat. Originally designed to lodge to the British Commander-in-chief of a branch of the armed forces, later of independence it happened to be the residence of the maximum agent chief executive of the new India nation. Nehru settled there, next to his Indira daughter and her grandsons. To the gardeners, cooks and other members of the service who today, next to thousands of compatriots, come to render tribute to the assassinated leader, cost to them to think that the mortal rest that they lie in this ardent chapel they are those of that boy who played the hiding place in those rooms great like caves, with ceilings of six meters of height. It seems to them that still the echo of its laughter resonates when it pursued persecuting to its brother by those long corridors, while their grandfathers and his mother took care of some head of government in one of the halls. A great photo of Rajiv with a white garland is placed on feretro surrounded in a flag saffron, green white and, the national flags. Its full smile of freshness is the last image which the thousands of people who march past by Teen Murti House, in spite of the 43 degrees take in the memory that mercury marks. It is the image that also will take their relatives, because the body of this man who the women found so handsome has been so destroyed that the doctors, in spite of to have tried to reconstruct it, have not been able to give form to the amorphous mass of meat that has left the pump. They say that in the effort to embalsamar to him, one of them faint. So that they have been limited to put cotton and bandage, and much ice so that it holds until the day of the cremation. "Please, they are careful, do not make damage", says to its widow using a pain face to him to which they periodically come to replace ice because the heat raises, inexorably, and it will continue doing it until the first days of July, until which they unload monzonicas rains. Its only consolation - that had been able well to finish equal if it had accompanied to him, as so many times for it does not serve to him because at this moment it wanted to also die. It wanted to be with him, always with him, here and in the eternity. It wanted to him more than to itself. It is certain, has its children. The small one, Priyanka, of nineteen years, colored person, discharge, is a strong girl as much of character as physically. One has taken care of the preparations of the funerales and is very pending of its mother. It insists to him for which it eats something, but the simple evocation of food produces nauseas to him. It has been two days with water, coffee and juice of Lima. Her old friend the asthma, that that accompanies to him since she was very young, has returned to appear. Two nights back, when they notified to him that his husband had been victim of an attack, had a so violent crisis that it almost lost the knowledge. Her daughter looked for her antihistamine ones to him and she occurred them, although she was not able to console it. It fears that of the heat and the pain one suffocates again. Rahul, the greater one, is veintiun years old, and finishes arriving from Harvard, where it attends his studies. In its son it recognizes its husband: the same smooth factions, the same smile, the same expression of kindness. She watches to him with infinite tenderness. Young what seems to him to ignite the funeral pyre of their father, as it corresponds to him to the son according to the Hindu tradition. To the one of afternoon, the arrival of three generals, representatives of its respective armies, indicates the beginning official of the funeral of State. Just before the military raise feretro with the aid of Rahul and other friends of the family, Priyanka approaches to caress it, as if it thus wanted to take leave of his father before this one undertakes the last trip. Her mother, who been has occupied in saluting to so many personalities, stays to certain distance, watching the scene with tears in the eyes. It goes dressed in sari white unpollluted, as it corresponds to the widows in India. It takes more than half of its life living here, so India feels. In last February, it celebrated its twenty-three years of marriage with Rajiv having supper in a restaurant in Tehran, where it accompanied to him in an official trip. It continues being very handsome, like was it to the eighteen years, when it knew him. The black hair, grained of white incipientes, carefully is combed backwards, gathered in a monkey and is covered by an end of sari. If they were not swollen by the weeping, their eyes would be great. They are of dark brown color, with long eyebrows finely shaved. It has the straight nose, the fleshy lips, the very white skin and a marked affluent jaw. Today it seems one of those afflicted heroins of an overproduction of the Indian cinema, although their silhouette and its arrogant bearing evoke some goddess of the Roman pantheon, perhaps because sari that takes with great soltura seems to the tunicas of the women of the antiquity. Or perhaps by its physicist. He has been born and servant in Italy has itself. Its name as a single person is Sonia Maino, although they know like Sonia Gandhi, now the widow of Rajiv. Than more average million people they defy the heat to see pass the courtship funeral that one goes to the place of the cremation, to a distance of about ten kilometers, behind the walls that the emperors mogoles erected to protect to the old Delhi, in splendid gardens located to borders of the Yamuna river. Escorted by five squads of thirty and three soldiers each one, the platform on wheels that feretro adorned with calendulas takes is towed by a military truck also place setting of flowers. In the sidewalks of its interior they go seated the chiefs of staff. They follow the automobiles to him that transport the family. Some peculiar one guesses right to see Sonia take off its enormous sun glasses to go a handkerchief through the face and, with trembly hand, to dry the tears. The courtship lines up the Rajpath avenue, bordered of well-taken care of gardens where generations of delhiitas have taken a walk in the shade of their great trees, in their majority jambules of more than one hundred years, with black fruits like higos. Most of trees they were planted to fight against the heat, when the English decided to make of Delhi the new capital of the Empire in damage of Calcuta. They raised to an pleasant city garden with wide avenues and huge perspective, as it corresponded to one imperial capital. The great central Vista of Rajpath, rebosante of a multitude carrying clavelinas oranges, the sacred color of the Hindus, now brings memories to him to Sonia of a past of happiness, so next in the time and nevertheless so distant... In this same avenue and in front of the Door of India, local version of the arc of Parisian triumph, was last the 26 of January, day of the national celebration, being present at the military parade next to Rajiv... How many times has been present at it? Almost so many as years take in India. All a life. A life that finishes. In order to add sarcasm to the tragedy, its car stops and it is not able to start again. The motors suffer at that rate with this temperature and. Sonia and his children leave the vehicle and the multitude rushes itself immediately on them, forcing the Black Cats, the special commandos of security dressed black, to unfold quickly and to form a human chain to protect to them while they change of automobile. Soon the courtship starts again, to the rhythmic rate of the honor guards. Later, the narrow streets near Connaught Place, the multitude becomes human tide ready to invade it everything, as if it wanted to devour the courtship, and the security system is with great difficulty able to maintain it to ray. The faces of that multitude show exhaustion, they drip to per them of sweat, and the glances of black eyes stop before four full military trucks of journalists of the entire world. Old men and women, children and with semblantes of grief and tears in the eyes throw petals of flowers to feretro. The courtship arrives at the place of the four cremation to and average from afternoon, with one hour of delay on the predicted schedule. There is as much people which today parterres is not seen flowery, only the great trees, like sentries of the eternity who project their benevolent shade on the assistants, many dresses with black suit, like John Majar or the prince of Wales, others of military uniform, like Yasser Arafat, all chorreando sweat. The funeral pyre composed by ten quintals of wood is ready. Behind, in a platform specially constructed for the occasion that dominates the pyre, the nearest relatives are placed . To about three hundred meters of distance towards the north are the mausoleos of Nehru and his Indira daughter, getting up in the exact location where their cremations took place, and that already never will be able to be destined to another use, so and as it indicates the tradition. Rajiv will have his soon, in stone worked with form of leaf of loto. The family reunited in the death. Soldiers remove the body from Rajiv of feretro and they place it on the funeral pyre, the head oriented towards the north, according to the ritual. Soon, the generals of the three armies carefully fold the flag that surrounds the mutilated corpse and cut the cords of the white shroud that retains it. The family is standing , elbow with elbow. The priest, old with beards luengas and white like the snow that seems removed from an old story, sets the standards of the Vedaic rites and says one short oration: "Conduceme of the unreal thing to the real thing, the darknesses to the light, the death to immortality... " An old one Is known: also he presided over the funerales of Indira. To Rahul, white dress with one kurta, gives a small water full jar to him sagrada of the Ganges. The young person, barefoot, crestfallen and become absorbed in thought after his black paste glasses, gives three returns to the pyre while she is spilling drops on his father, fulfilling therefore the purifying rite of the soul. Soon one kneels down before its rest and it cries on the inside, without nobody sees him. It cries by a father who always was tolerant and compasivo and that adored its children. They bring forth dry tears of a wound that, intuits, never will heal. Their mother and her Priyanka sister, whose worthy serenity affects to the presents, approach the pyre and meticulously place trunks of wood of sandalo and accounts of rosaria on the body, in gestures that are recorded by the televisions of the entire world. The hour arrives to take leave. Sonia deposits an offering on the body to the height of the heart. It is done of camphor, cardamom, nail and sugar and assumes that it contributes to eradicate the imperfections of the soul. Soon it touches to the feet in signal of veneration, as it is custom in India, together its hands to him to the height of the chest, one inclines for the last time before its husband and one retires. Through the television cameras, the world discovers this stoic woman that Kennedy remembers before to Jacqueline twenty-eight years in Arlington. Five and the twenty of afternoon are. Five minutes later, his Rahul son, serious and decided, gives three returns to the pyre before planting the ignited torch that takes in the hand between the wood trunks of sandalo. The pulse does not shake to him: he is his to have of good son to help to that the soul of its father is freed of its mortal wrapper and reaches the sky. During seconds, it seems that the time stops. One does not see smoke nor flames, only hear the Vedaic songs between the multitude. Sonia has returned to protect the face behind his sun glasses. That they do not see it cry. It is necessary to stay finds out, since it has done it until now, costs what costs. It finds out as Rajiv stayed when it was called on to him to ignite the funeral pyre of his Indira mother Gandhi, only seven years ago, while the small Rahul cried in its arms. It has been finding out soon like the own Indira when it attended the cremation of its Jawaharlal father Nehru, and to the one its son Sanjay, its right eye, its heir designated, died when crashing its small plane a sunny morning of Sunday, for already eleven years. A date that Sonia cannot forget because as of that day nothing returned to be like before. It has had to remove forces from deepest of its being being today here, because the Hindu priests refused to that she was present at the cremation. It is not custom that the widow attends, less still if it is of another religion. But in that Sonia one was inflexible. It reacted since her Indira mother-in-law had done it, not letting itself dominate neither by prejudices nor by archaic customs. Under no concept it would remain in house while the entire world was going to attend the second death of its husband. Thus it said it to the organizers of the funeral. Nor at least it had to threaten taking to the case to the Maxima authority to them of the country because before the force of its determination, they were climbed down. Sonia Gandhi deserves an exception well. But now it is necessary to be to the height. Not to vacillate, not to desmayar themselves, not to decay. To continue living, although is difficult to do it when what one wants it is to die. What difficult not to let itself drown by the emotion when the Vedaic psalms take step to safe of tube and soldiers, perfectly formed, presents/displays their arms and aims at the ground, in mourning signal, doing to sound their bugles. When the dignitaries arrived from the entire world, the generals with colorful his chamarras of as much decoration and the representatives of the Indian government, with their clothes of cotton wrinkled and soaked after to have waited for as much time in the dog days, rise in unison and they remain immovable, of stone, in a brief and last tribute. When the friends, come from Europe and America to give the last good bye, are not able to contain the weeping. Sonia recognizes among them Christian von Stieglitz, the friend who presented/displayed to him to Rajiv when they were students in Cambridge, and that has come accompanied To pound, its Spanish woman. And soon the murmur that raises suddenly, like a ground swell that comes from distant spot, the borders of the city and perhaps of the four corners of the immense country, and that becomes a single shout, frightful, guttural, the shout of thousands of throats that seem to become aware from the irreversibilidad of the death when the bonfire pledges suddenly in an explosion of flames and in few minutes it surrounds the shroud in a fatal hug. Rahul takes steps towards back. Sonia staggers. Her daughter passes the arm to him over shoulders and she maintains it until she recovers forces. Through wall of flames, the three attend old and tremendous the spectacle to see how the person that they want more consumes and she becomes ashes. It is like another death, slow, penetrating, so that the alive ones always remember that nobody escapes to the inevitable thing of the destiny. Because it is a death that enters by the five senses. The burned scent to, the diaphanous colors of the alive ones behind the burning air that raise of the bonfire raising ash eddies, the flavor to sweat, dust and to smoke that the lips are had left patch, and soon the shouts of " Alive Rajiv Gandhi" that they appear of the multitude they conform a renewed and eternal scene simultaneously. As the flames ascend, Rahul is arranged to carry out the last part of the ritual Armed of a bamboo wood of about three meters in length, gives a symbolic blow to the skull of its father, so that its soul ascends to the sky awaiting its next reincarnation. For Sonia, words do not exist to describe what it is seeing, the staging of the atrocious feeling of loss that tears it on the inside, as if an invincible force was destroying the entrails to him. Never since at this moment it has understood the deep meaning of this ancestral custom Remembers that it made a face of misfortune when, nothing else to arrive at India, it found out the existence sati. What horror, what barbarism! , it thought. Formerly, the town adored the widows who had the value of throwing themselves to the funeral pyre of the husband to undertake next to the being loved the trip towards the eternity. Those that they were given to the flames heroically they happened to be considered like divinities and to being venerated like such during years, some during centuries. The rite of sati, that has its origin in the noble families of the Rajput, the chaste single- breasted uniform jacket of the India of the North, soon became popular to the humblest classes, and finished corrupting. The English prohibited it, as soon also the first government made democratic of India, by the abuses that were committed in their name. But in the origin, to become sati was a test of supreme love that it only can include/understand a woman when it sees burn the corpse with the husband who adores. Like Sonia at this moment, who sees the fire like a liberation, like the only way to end that so total pain that it obstructs its soul. "It reacts", is said to itself. It is not necessary to let itself drag by the death. The life is a fight, knows she well to it. The physical contact with its children comforts it. Then, with renewed forces, they bring forth found feelings: justice anxieties , desires of revancha reason why have made their husband, and a deep revolt because what it has happened he is unacceptable. Had been able to avoid? , it is asked incessantly. She tried in the measurement of her possibilities, scrutinizing the faces of all those that approached their husband in the electoral meetings, trying to guess the revealing bulk of a weapon under a shirt, or the suspicious gesture of a potential assassin. Because it always knew that something could happen thus. It knew it from the day in that Rajiv yielded to the request of its mother, Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, and put in policy. For that reason, when two days ago less it sounded the telephone eleven to the ten at night, one hour so unusual, Sonia occurred the return in the bed and she covered the ears like protecting itself of the blow that knew was on the verge of receiving. The worse news of its life was at heart the awaited news. The era still more since Sonia found out that the government had retired to Rajiv the degree of Maxima security that corresponded to him for being prime minister. In the bureaucratic slang, it had category Z, and that gave right the protection of SPG (Special Protection Group), which had protected to him of the terrorist attack. So that they retired it, no matter how much it demanded it? By laziness? Or because that tried "forgetfulness" satisfied the aims with its political adversaries? A dry , hard, indescriptible noise, gives back it to the reality. It sounds like a shot. Or a small explosion. All those that have attended a cremation know that it is. They lower to the head others watch the sky, others so are captivated by the spectacle that seem hypnotized and continue watching. The skull has exploded by effect of the pressure of the heat. The soul of the deceased already is free. The ritual has finished. People send petals of flowers to the flames, while another disturbing vision arises. The long and fine hands that equal caressed their children as they repaired to an electronic device ° signed international agreements are in the open, and show black fingers who raise themselves and they twist, in a heartrendering goodbye from beyond. Good bye, until always. Sonia breaks in sobs. Where is the consolation? In what God it is necessary to look for it? What God allows that a good man as Rajiv jumps in thousand pieces by the fanaticism of others hombres' that also have family, that also has children, that also know to caress and to want? What sense to give all this tragedy? Their children, worried because the mixture of smoke, ash and intense emotion causes a new attack to him of asthma, are placed each one to their side, while she calms and contemplates, broken on the inside, how its dream to live long years on happiness next to its husband becomes smoke. Ciao, amore, until another life. India finds out will remember it thus, standing up and immovable like a stone, stoic, other people's to the shouts of the crowd that is delirious, while the fire consumes the corpse of its husband. It is the alive image of the contained pain. The roar of an army air corps helicopter drowns the canticos and the shouts of the multitude. People raise the Vista towards the off-white heat sky and dust to receive a rain of rose petals that fall from the apparatus that gives returns on the pyre. While the body finishes burning, the family lowers the steps of the platform. With walking vacillating and disturbed faces, they receive words of condolencia of the president of the Republic. In a very Indian disorder, the other personalities are crowded. All mean words to him to Sonia: the North American vice-president, the king of Butan, prime minister of Pakistan, of Nepal and Bangladesh, old prime minister Edgard Heath, the vice-presidents of the Union Sovietica and China, the old friend Benazir Bhutto, etc. But nobody is able to approach the widow because suddenly the chaos explodes. And it is that the corpse not only belongs to the family, or the foreign dignitaries. The multitude, that in his first rows is composed by militants and responsible for the party of Rajiv, feels that it also belongs to them to them. They are only one very small part of forty affiliated million of of the party that under the banal and little showy denomination of Congress Party (Started off of the Congress) represents the greater democratic political organization of the world. It was born to half of century XIX like an association of political grupusculos to demand equality of rights between English Indians and within the Empire. The Mahatma Gandhi transformed it into a divided solid whose goal was to obtain independence by the route of the not-violence. Nehru was his president, later she was it his Indira daughter, and Rajiv has been the last one. Even though of the burning and irrespirable air, now the militants want to close by see the mortal rest of their leader turned ash. All want to lick the flames of the death and of the memory, so that they take the metallic fences as if they were straw strings and they are rushed towards the bonfire to the shout of: " Rajiv Gandhi is immortal" The Black Cats, the elite commandos, are themselves forced to take part. They form a human barrier around the family, and decide to fight itself in retirement, step by step, between the shouts of hysteria of a crowd untied, until arriving at the automobiles and putting to them out of danger. The following days, Sonia, in shock state, takes refuge in itself. It lives become absorbed in thought in its memories with Rajiv, breaking to sob when it leaves the ensohacion and one is as opposed to the terrible reality of its absence. It cannot let think about its husband, does not want to stop to think about him, as if to do it it was another form to give death him. Not even it wanted to separate of those two ballot boxes that contain ashes, but is part of the ritual that the death returns to the life. Four days after the cremation, the 28 of May of 1991, Sonia, accompanied by their children, raise a special compartment of a train that takes to Allahabad, the city of the Nehru, where everything began more ago than one hundred years. In white the fabric compartment totally covered sprinkled of flowers of daisy and jazmin, the ballot boxes are placed in a estrado species of next to the framed photo of a smiling Rajiv. Sonia, Priyanka and Rahul travel seated in the ground. The train stops in a rosary of jammed stations of people who come to render tribute to the memory of her leader. The emotion underflow exhausts Sonia, but by anything in the world it would let greet those poor men of huesudos faces stained of sweat and tears that to weighing of everything smile to offer their consolation to him. The smiles of the poor men of India are an immaterial gift, but that nests in the heart. Nehru, his mother-in-law and her husband said to it: the confidence of the town, the heat of people, the veneration and, so that no? , the love that they profess to you compensates all the sacrifices. That one is the true food of a race politician, the justification of all its sinsabores, which gives sense to its work, to its life. During the twenty-four hours that the train baptized by the press with the name of heart-break express - the express of the broken heart takes in crossing the six hundred kilometers of passage, Sonia is able to measure the intensity of the affection of the town towards its political family - "the family", as the Indians know, so popular that it is not necessary to need which treats. A family who has governed India for more than four decades, but that has been four years outside the power. Sonia contemplates to his Rahul son, who has remained slept between two stations. Hopefully never she returns the family to the power. Priyanka watches with absent air, also is exhausted. It has a great similarity with Indira, he himself bearing, such shining and intelligent eyes. God protects to us. In Allahabad, the ashes are deposited in Anand Bhawan, the ancestral mansion of the Nehru, who Indira, when was named prime minister, turned opened museum the public. A patio of Moorish style with a source in center remembers the original proprietor, a Muslim judge of the Supreme Court that in 1900 sold the mansion to Motilal Nehru, the great- grandfather of Rajiv, a shining lawyer who made as much money who) says the legend, sent his clothes by boat to one tintoreria of London. That man corpulento, that took always thick moustache and that dressed as they gentleman, that was extroverted, splendid, have vivant and dicharachero, adored to his son Jawaharlal, perhaps because he was last that it had left, being the lost one two children and one daughter previously. That love, intense and reciprocal, was in the origin of the fight by the independence of the sixth part of the humanity. Motilal wanted that his son developed all his potential, which meant to give the best possible education him, although that implied to separate of him: "I never thought that it wanted so much to you as when I had dejarte in England for the first time, in the internal school", wrote to him, because it was not able to recover of the anguish of to him to have left single, so far, to the thirteen years of age. What Motilal in a year won had been enough to put a business and of solving to him the life to him for siem.pre. But for the father that was a easy and egoistic position: "I think without vanity spying some that I am the founder of the fortune of the Nehru. I see you you, son mine beloved, like the man who will be able to construct on those foundations that I have created and I hope to have the satisfaction to see arise a day a noble company that will be raised towards the sky... " The noble company finished being the fight by the independence of the country, in which father and son became jumbled with all the force of their convictions. The life of the Nehru changed when Jawaharlal presented/displayed to its father a lawyer who finished returning of South Africa and that was organizing the resistance against the colonial power of the English. He was a singular man, dress with dhoti, trousers of woven crude cotton by hand. It had very out of proportion long arms and legs that made look themselves him like a long-legged bird. Their black ojillos were closed when, behind its glasses of metallic mount, its typical smile used, between malicious and kind. Venerated like santo by its disciples, he was nevertheless a capable politician who had the art of the gestures simple able to communicate with the soul of India. The young person Nehru considered a genius him. Thus the Mahatma made contact Gandhi with enemy with that family, and it transformed it for always. The outlandish Motilal left sophistication by simplicity, changed to its suits of franela of Saville Row and the hats of glass by dhoti, like Gandhi. It offered its house and its fortune to the cause of independence. The enormous hall was transformed by Motilal into room of meeting of the Party of the Congress. The home of the Nehru little by little became the home of whole India. Always there was multitude of supporters in the iron door wishing to see the father and to the son, wishing to have his they darshan, the old tradition of religious origin that consists of looking for the visual contact with a person highly venerated thus to receive its blessing, for want of being able to touch to him to the feet or the hands. Towards the end of its life, Motilal, aquejado of fibrosis and cancer, it shared cell in the jail of Nainital with its son, who took care of to him as he could. The patriarch died without getting to see independence, without knowledge that his son, who the world would know like Nehru, would be chosen Head of State of the new nation. It died in this house of Anand Bhawan, a day of February of 1931, accompanied by its woman, her son maintaining to him the head in its lap. The cream and rooms, painted blue celestial, conserve such movable, such books, the same photos and memories on which they lived in them. The one of the Mahatma Gandhi it has a long cushion in the ground, comfortable and a one rueca that used to spin cotton and that turned symbol of resistance against the English. The room of Nehru has a simple wood bed, a carpet, many books and a statuette of the three monkeys that symbolize the Buddhist orders: you do not see badly, you do not listen badly, you do not say badly. Sonia remembers the first time that visited east place. She was its Indira mother-in-law who was it. In that occasion, it did not repair in the tremendous symbolic load that has this house in the history of India. Simply, it visited the home of the ancestors of its political family, the house where they had been born and they had married Nehru first and soon its Indira daughter. He had not been able to calibrate in its measured joust all the meaning that the walls of this mansion locked up, to weighing of which Indira taught the secret quarter to him of meeting, in a cellar, that Nehru and his companions of the Divided incipiente of the Congress used when they hid to escape to the casts of the British police. Now which it returns with ashes of its husband, it sees everything it with other eyes. This Victorian mansion is not the simple scene of intense a familiar life; their walls count you intrigue them, the dreams, the hopes and the misfortunes of the fight by independence. Their walls are modern India. The ballot box with ashes of Rajiv, the last object that today comes to add itself to the others, is like a point to the end of one long phrase that began to write Motilal Nehru in century XIX when it founded here the local section of a political organization called Party of the Congress. The circle is closed. At noon Sonia and his children, accompanied by a small courtship, leave the familiar house to go to the outskirts, to the Sangam, one of the most sacred places of the hinduismo where the brown waters of the Yamuna are united to the clear ones of the Ganges, in the confluence of another imaginary river, the Sarasvati. They arrive at an enormous sand esplanade that is going to give to the border, dominated by old a hard Muslim one whose walls are covered with ivy and that contains in their interior ficus bengali centenary that, according to the legend, is able to release of the cycle of reincarnations all the one that it jumps from his branches. In this esplanade the Kumbha Mela, a festividad is celebrated successively every three years to which travelling million of of all India washing their sins go, turning it the more multitudinal religious concentration of the world. Today there is much people also, but the place is so immense that it seems desert. In a platform on the river, a priest friend of the family, pandit Chuni Lai, makes an offering and intones orations on the background noise of the tintineo of thousands of bells and the echo of the conches, before giving the copper ballot box to Rahul. The boy the taking in his hands, approaches the border and he spills it slowly, scattering ashes in the calm waters that reflect the golden rays of the sun, the same waters which they welcomed ashes of Motilal, those of the Mahatma Gandhi and also those of Nehru. Certain distance, Sonia and Priyanka observe the scene, the irritated characteristics, and soon they approach Rahul and, squatting, they caress the water with the hands. The witnesses of the scene, between which is the secretary of his husband, will take in the memory the image of the three together to the edge of the water, Rahul sobbing on their mother, Priyanka supporting their head in the shoulder of Sonia and she, inconsolable, with the eyes bathed in tears that form another affluent who is united to the Ganges, the great river of the life. 2 "Lady, these are the schedules from the flights to Milan." Sonia does not remember to him to have asked that information the secretary of his husband. Perhaps it did it, in the confusion of the principle, when before the enormidad of the tragedy it looked for protection. When suddenly it thought about fleeing from this country that devours its children, to look for the consolation of its family, the heat of his, the security of the small city of Orbassano, to the outskirts of Turin, where its youth lived until the day of its wedding. It remembers that nothing else to return of the place of the attack in the south of India, with the mortal rest of its husband, it spoke on the telephone with its family in Italy, that was shaken. Her sister greater Anushka said to him that no longer she took the telephone because journalists of the entire world called asking details of which it had happened and she did not know what to say to them. "Still it is not known - it explained Sonia- to him, can be sijs which they killed Indira, or the Hindu fundamentalists which they killed Gandhi, or Muslim extremists of Kashmir... veto that is to say. It was in the black list of at least a dozen of terrorist organizations... " And now measured greater Sonia regrets to him not to have forced to demand the protection government. Rajiv did not believe in them: "If they want matarte, they kill", said to you. When he had to his mother to the other side of the telephone, Sonia crumbled. The mother was in Rome, in house of Nadia, the small, separated sister of a Spanish diplomat. "Perhaps you would have to return to Italy", said to him. - I do not know... - Sonia with the difficult voice by the weeping responded to him. The doubts Are so many! It seems to him that to leave it would be like killing a part of itself, but is certain that it came to India, adopted its customs, fell in love with its people by love to Rajiv. Now, what sense must remain? Is not tired to live besieged by bodyguards who when arriving the fatidica hour are incapable to avoid the worse thing? The memory comes to him from when Rajiv, worried about the security of the children, thought about sending them to study to the American School of Moscow. To Sonia it did not make any grace him separate of them. The British tradition, soon adopted by the well off classes of India, to command to the children to a boarding school hit completely its Italian condition of mamma. So that they left them in house, Nueva Delhi, and first all the mornings came tutorial and soon they went escorted to the school to be educated in an atmosphere "norm! ", which in the society considered a boldness act, such era the weight of the threats that were hung over the family of prime minister . The suggestion of its mother to return to Italy touches a sore that hurts. Sonia faces a conflict that is incapable, so far, to solve. A cruel conflict, because on the one hand it is the Maxima preoccupation, the security of his children, and would seem logical to undertake a change from return to Italy, a total change of life, the abandonment of all the familiar tradition of his husband, and by another one the inertia of so many years here taking the overwhelming weight of the Nehru-Gandhi last names, and to stay oneself as they are, in the same house, like guardians of the memory, surrounded by the faithful friends of always, of the affection of so many, knowing the difficult thing that it turns out to escape of the spiderweb of the India policy. In sum, to choose between the security, the anonymous life and the uprooting of self-imposed exile or to follow in the candlestick, which could take to one of its children to be a day prime minister and, perhaps, to being also assassinated. Like Indira or Rajiv. Then it yes thinks that, that better to change of life to be saved, to forget the policy that it detests, to flee from the power that always has scorned and that is destroying it. But... can be fought against the destiny? India feels very, it has learned to love the people of this country, and it is known wanted by them. How to break that nexus of union with the memory of its husband that represents the friends, the companions, the affection of the people of India? He would be a little like desalmar itself. In addition, the body does not lie: its gestures, their form to walk, to move the head of side to side to say that yes seeming to say that not - so typical of the Indians, its way to join the hands, to watch, to listen to its accent... all its corporal language evokes genuinely to the one of a person India. What would do she in Italy? What life the delay in Orbassano, aside from the company of its nearer family? Here it is its circle of friends, is its world here, here they are twenty-three years of life intense - and happy. In addition, their children no longer are young... And they, will want to go to live to a place who have only visited of vacations? After having itself bred in the houses of two prime minister of India, the one of the Indira grandmother first and the one of its Rajiv father, yet what that means, will be able to be accustomed to an anonymous life in the suburbs of an Italian city of provinces? It is certain, speak Italian with fluidity, are average Italian, but Indians by the four flanks feel. Here there are servant, have learned here of its father to want this immense, difficult and fascinating country; here they have assumed the values of the great-grandfather Nehru, the great hero of independence and founder of modern India, values that they have to do with integrity, the tolerance, the scorn to the money and the cult to the service to the others, mainly to the most needed. Here there are servant, like a great family India, in the house of the Indira grandmother, who the same gave a push them while she took the tea with Andrei Gromiko or Jacqueline Kennedy who helped them to make the duties in the table of the kitchen. Would be satisfied their children to a prosperous and comfortable life in the best one of the cases, but moved away of everything what they have sucked since they were born? And, for her, would not be a defeat to return to the town of where left? - I believe that my life is here, mother... - it ends up saying Sonia to him when it recovers the capacity to speak. - Lady, has a visit. The secretary who has interrupted it remains in the threshold of the door until Sonia does a gesture now saying "I go", and then the man retires. She takes leave of her mother and hangs the telephone, drying herself the tears. When getting up itself one adjusts you fold them of sari and one goes to the office of its husband, in the ground floor of the colonial villa where they have lived since they left the residence of prime minister. When seeing all the objects in its site, its cameras of photos, its books, its magazines, its papers, its radius, it seems to him for a moment that he is still alive, on the verge of arriving from trip, that what it is living is not more than badly a dream, that the life follows equal because it is stronger than the death. But it is not Rajiv that enters by the door, smiling, tired and ready to embrace it, but three of its companions of party, three veterans with sad and heartbroken semblante, two of them dressed in shirts Indians high neck, the other with suit type safari. Because if this attack has devastated the family, also it has left to the Party of the Congress without head, and somebody must lead the Party. Who will be the next one? , that one is the question that gerifaltes that now visits Sonia hours have done after knowing the tragedy. - Soniaji - ji says to the spokesman of the retinue using the suffix that denotes affection and respect I want that you know that the Committee of Work of the Party of the Congress, reunited under the presidency of the old friend of your husband, Narashima Rao, you has chosen president of the party. The election has been unanimous. Enhorabuena. Sonia remains them watching, impassible. Is not the somewhat pure and sacred pain? The tears by the death of their husband have not let to him dry itself and they are already here the politicians. The life follows, and is cruel. Incapable to smile, it has neither desire nor forces to pretend that she is in favor honest of the result of the voting. - I cannot accept. My world is not the policy, already you know it. I do not want to accept. - Soniaji, I do not know if it give account to you of which the committee is offering to you. It offers the absolute power to you of the greater party of the world. And it does in silver tray. It offers the possibility to you of leading a day this great country. Mainly, it offers the possibility to you of assuming the inheritance of your husband so that its death has not been in vain... - 1 do not believe that it is the moment for speaking of this. . . - The Committee of Work is deliberate during long hours before hacerte this proposal. I assure to you that we have thought much to it. You have the free hands and accounts yet our support. We requested to you that you continue with the familiar tradition. It is your to have of good daughter of India. - You are the unique one that can overwhelm the emptiness that has left Rajiv - another one adds. - India is a very great country... - Sonia- responds. I cannot be the unique one between billion. - You are the only Gandhi... Sonia raises the Vista to the sky, as if she was waiting for that argument. - ... Without having your children, clear. - My children are very young still, and they are not either today for speaking of policy. - It is not little thing in India to be called Gandhi... - another one adds. - I know what you mean to me - it interrupts Sonia- to him. It is a last name that forces, but that also condemns. Sight which has happened. In fact, Sonia is called thus because her Indira mother-in-law married with parsi Firoz call Gandhi, not because had some relation of kinship with the father of the nation, the Mahatma Gandhi. Call Kumar, or Bose, or Kapur, or anyone of the common last names of India could be had. But the chance wanted that its last name agreed with the one of most famous of the Indians, the man more wanted by its town it to have guided by the way of the freedom. The man who became so intimate of the Nehru who was considered like one more of the family. Together they obtained independence and they made thanks to a powerful instrument, the Party of the Congress, that today is orphaned. That gives the Gandhi, including Sonia, a dawn before the masses that a incalculable value for the politicians of its party has. - It watches. . . You are the heiress of this photo. One of them indicates a photo on a small table next to the sofa. It is in a silver frame, and shows Indira, of girl, sitting next to the Mahatma. - I thank for much to You, really, that you have thought about me for that position. It is a great honor, but I do not deserve it. You know that I detest the notoriety. In addition I do not belong to the direct family, I am the daughter-in-law... - You married with a Indian, and you already know that here the daughter-in-law happens to form part of the family of the husband as soon as house... You have fulfilled our customs religiously. You are so India as anyone, and any India is not the woman of a Nehru-Gandhi. It watches this photo... that sari red which you had been the day of your wedding, is not the one that Nehru wove in the jail? - Yes, but that does not clear that she is foreign... - To the town it gives him equal where you have been born. You would not be the first foreigner of birth in being president - it interrupts third. He remembers that Annie Besant, one of the first leaders of the party and first in leading it at national level, were Irish. The idea is not so preposterous. - They were other times. I am too vulnerable to assume that position. You imagine the attacks of the opposition? they would instrumentalizarian to the town against me, and would be a disaster for all. - Soniaji, we do a supply to you without conditions... - the greater one of all, an astute politician known by its ability says in manipulating, and that seems to be on the verge of removing an ace of the sleeve... Perhaps most important for you it is that you are going to return to have the maximum degree of protection, like when Rajiv was prime minister . - I feel It, but you have called to the mistaken door. I do not have ambition of being able, never has liked that world, develop bad in him, detest being the attention center . To Rajiv it did not like either. If one put in policy, were because her mother requested itself. If no, it would continue being a pilot of Indian Airlines, would be alive today and we would be probably very happy... So, I feel much, but you do not count with me. - You are the unique one that can avoid that the party collapses. And if the party is broken, it is very probable that the whole country crumbles. What has maintained together with India from independence? Our party. Who is the guarantor of the values that allow that all the communities coexist peacefully? The Congress. Ever since we are not in the power, it watches how the old demons take terrain: hatred between communities, religions, the separatist temptations of so many states... The whole country runs towards the ruin, only you you can help us to save it. You have prestige and people want to you. For that reason we have come personally... to appeal to your sense of the responsibility. - Responsibility? So that there is to be this family the one that pays with the blood of its members a constant tribute to the country? Is that it has not been enough with Indira and Rajiv? Quereis more? - Piensalo, Soniaji. It thinks about Nehru, Indira, Rajiv... Your family is so intimately bound to India like a liana around the trunk of a tree. You are India. Without you, we are not nothing. Without you, there is no future for this great nation. This one is the message that we come to transmitirte. We know that they are bitter hours, and we requested pardon to you to interrupt your duel, but you do not leave to us. You do not throw overboard as much sacrifice and as much fight. You have in your hand the torch of the Nehru-Gandhi, you do not extinguish it. Words, words, words... Always there is a greater intention, one more a higher goal to the end of the way, one more a nobler reason, one better justification to adorn the last aim, that does not let be to take control of the power. The politicians always find arguments and excuses to speak of the only thing that interest to them, the power. By force of to have lived so many years in the shade on two prime minister , Sonia knows the percal. The desolation of all the heads of list imagines perfectly that were going to appear to the elections and that today also feel like orphans. The murder of its husband are broken the dreams of much people, not only his. One imagines all the conjectures, the maneuvers, the trips, the deceits of all those that fight by the succession of Rajiv in the party. It is much what is in game, for that reason come the big shots to render pleitesia to him, without losing a time apex. They do not think about her like being human, not even in these low hours, but like instrument to maintain the reins of the power. It is hour to position itself in the party because the power does not support the emptiness. In a country of limited resources, where the opportunities are few, the political power is the key of the individual prosperity. Sonia learned of Rajiv and Indira to maintain to ray the politicians, not to let itself use by them. But they are astute and think that Sonia will end up yielding, who will do it, if not by her, by their children, to maintain the name of the family alive, because the power is a magnet del that is impossible to escape. Does not say the Vedaic poets that not even the Gods can resist to the praises? The following day, Sonia sends a letter to the central seat of the party: " Deeply I am affected by the deposited confidence in me by the Committee of Work. But the tragedy that has been lowered on my children and me not allows me to accept the presidency of this great organization." He is jarro of cold water for the faithfuls who do not accept their rejection and who decide to continue pressing it with all means their reach. Each morning, supporters of the party pronounce themselves their address as opposed to, a colonial villa located in number 10 of Janpath, an avenue of the Nueva center Delhi. They take placards and they shout esloganes of "Alive Rajiv Gandhi; Soniaji president". Sonia, irritated, requests the secretary to him of his husband who throws to the demonstrators, whom aim to this spectacle that seems to him stupid and without sense puts. "That looks for a successor - it thinks. My family already has done enough... » Those that of truth they feel tranquilized when they read the news in the newspaper are their relatives in Orbassano, near Turin. "In the city we breathed all with lightening - a neighbor declares. Thank heavens which it has not accepted the position of its husband, it had supposed a great risk for her and her children." ACT I GODDESS DURGA RIDES ON A TIGER The own thing of the power is to protect. PASCAL 3 Sonia was eighteen years old, the age in which decided to go to England to learn English, when it fell in love with Rajiv. She was so handsome that people became in the street to watch it. It walked very raised, and its dark and straight brown hair framed its face of madonna. Josto Maffeo, a classmate which the week ends shared with her the passage in bus from the town of Orbassano, where lived with its family, until downtown of Turin, today turned a well-known journalist, remembers it like "one of the women more handsome than I have known in my life. In addition to handsome he was interesting, very friend of its friends, calm and balanced. It did not like to participate in juergas multitudinal and, that yes, always maintained a certain reservation with respect to the others". It is not to be strange then which the father of Sonia, a fornido man whose face of mountain dweller outdoors took the track of a hard past of work, was against with as much vehemence to that her daughter went to study English to Cambridge. The good one of Stefano Maino, with its short hair combed backwards, its thick moustache that tickle to its incarnated daughters when kissing them and their cheeks did, was plated to the old one. As much it is so years back, when settling in Orbassano and finding out that the school of the town was mixed, one refused to that their daughters frequented and chose to send it them to Sangano, a population to ten kilometers of distance, an exclusively feminine school. When they went away making greater, it always wanted to know in what place and with whom were their three daughters. Either him for much grace that left the ends week, and that that they were not nocturnal exits, which had not tolerated. They were exits to Turin, half an hour of train or bus, to take a walk under the soportales of its beautiful avenues or, if it made bad, to merendar with the friends in one of famous the cremerie of the city. Stefano was a man of strict principles and irremediably he hit its adolescent daughters. Who used to do to him in front was Anushka, the greater one, a girl of strong, rebellious character and peleona. To his side, Sonia was an angel. Smallest, Nadia, still did not give problems. Her wife, Paola, a woman with regular factions, a frank smile and refined air more, compensated with her flexibility the severity of Stefano. She was more open, more tolerant, more comprehensive. Perhaps for being woman, was more able to understand her daughters, although its adolescence was very different, in a mountainous village that did not arrive at the six hundred inhabitants, and at a time at which Italy was a poor country. Very poor. Their daughters have never had to milk cows by obligation, or to take care of the tasks of the field or to serve coffees in the bar as the family. They have been fruit of the postwar period, daughters of the Marshall Plan, the economic expansion, resurging of Italy in Europe. They have only known the poverty refilon, when they were small, because in the years of postwar period it was impossible to escape to the spectacle of disabled and the paupers that looked for the heat of the supported sun and the public charity in the walls of the seat of the town, and that contact marked them for always, mainly to Sonia. In Vicenza, the big city next to the village where they lived, the poverty was before seen arrive at the center, in those districts of shacks, where the children played naked or walked with done clothes shreds. - So that their mothers leave go thus, in leathers? - the small Sonia asked perplex. - Those children go thus because they do not have clothes. They do not go thus in vain, but because they do not have more remedy. Because they are poor. The girl understood the terrible thing for the first time that it was the poverty. In addition, it added its mother, some families passed hunger. Every month did not come the parish priest from the town to house to make storing of dust milk, food and clothes that soon distributed between the most needed? That parish priest knew that always he could count on the Maino family who, although also passed estrecheces, was catholic devotee and practiced the charity. - The Gospel says that the poor men will be first in entering the Kingdom of Skies... You has not taught it in the catechesis? Sonia asentia, while he helped his mother to prepare a package of used clothes. In house of the Maino, nothing was thrown, was not wasted anything. The small ones inherited of the greater ones. What it was not used gave the poor men. The memory of the war was too next like forgetting the value the things. The parents of Sonia were native of the region of the Veneto, in particular of the village of Lusiana, in the Asiago mounts, spurs of the Alps, a cattle zone that gives its name to one of appreciated cheeses more of well-known Italy and also by its marble quarries. The paternal family, the Maino, was of robust, honest, direct modales and very workers. A quality that did not escape to him to the mother of Sonia, Paola Predebon, daughter of an ex- customs officer who took the bar of the grandfathers in the village of Comarolo I gave Conco, at heart of the valley. Stefano and Paola married in the pretty church of Lusiana, consecrated to the apostle San Giacomo, with their tower extended like an arrow that aims at the sky and that seems minarete of a mosque, it influences without a doubt of the Ottomans who walked centuries ago that way. Nine Sonia was born to and average of the cold night of the 9 of December of 1946 in the civil hospital of Marostica, a very old and small city walled on the feet of the Asiago mounts. "And cream one bimbaaa! ", good the new one reached the village of Lusiana quickly, and the echo resounded in the stone walls of the houses, in the stables, the rocky escarpaduras and mountains of the environs until losing itself to the distant spot, in cascade. Like tribute to just the arrival and following the tradition, the neighbors tieed pink fabric bows in the iron doors of the windows and the doors of the village. To the few days it was baptized by the parish priest of Lusiana with the name of Edvige Antonia Albina Maino, in honor to the maternal grandmother. But Stefano wanted another name for his daughter. To the greater one, baptized like Ana, Anushka called, and to Antonia Sonia called. It fulfilled therefore the promise that had become to itself after escaping with life of the Russian front. Like many Italians anchored in the poverty, Stefano had let itself seduce by the facist ideas and the propaganda of Mussolini and at the beginning of the war had gotten ready in the infantry division 1 16 of Vicenza, reginliento that belonged to the body of bersaglieri, of great reputation in the Italian army and in which also it had served the Duce. Bersaglieri, which they were known by its fast cadence when marching past, more than one hundred thirty passages per minute, and mainly by the helmet of shining wide wing del that hung a plume of black pens of rooster and which they fell of side, was surrounded by a dawn of value and invulnerabilidad that the campaign of Russia swept with a stroke of the pen. The division lost three fourth parts of its men in the first collision with the Soviets. There were thousands of prisoners, between whom was Stefano, that he managed to save other survivors along with. They were able to take refuge in a farm in the Russian steppe, where weeks under the protection lived on a family of farmers. The women cured the wounds to them, the men provided food to them, and the experience, aside from saving the life to them, changed to them completely. Like thousands of Italian soldiers, they returned disappointed with the fascismo and thanked for the Russians to them to have saved. From then, Stefano let speak of policy; for him, it was done of lies. In tribute to the family who saved to him the life decided to put to its daughters Russian names, and not to discuss with its political family nor with the priest for whom the name of Sonia did not comprise of the santoral - Sofia was acceptable; Sonia, no, Stefano accepted to register it in the registry with totally catholic names. After the baptism they invited to neighbors and family to a plate of codfish to the Vicentina, the favorite of the region, with much polenta to dunk in the sauce. It was a luxury to obtain codfish because in those times of postwar period there was shortage of everything, until in Vicenza, the capital of the region located to fifty kilometers of distance, down in the plain. The joy of the Maino had been total but for the difficulties that Stefano had to remove ahead to his flood prole. In those years, it was very difficult to escape of zarpazo of the misery. They had to eat, to get dressed, and little more. The Maino did not have earth, only cows and a stone house that he himself raised with his hands, the last one of the Rua Maino, the street where generations of relatives his, that originally had arrived from Germany, had been constructing their dwellings. They were Spartan, but they had magnificent views to the valley. Stone light walls separated the meadows where the cows grazed, whose young was the main resource of the zone because the Earth was bad for agriculture, were too much stone and too many hills. Sonia and his sisters grew as opposed to the sublime spectacle of the valley of Lusiana, that she changed of color according to the stations. All the green and brown tonalities and shades of marched past before their eyes, of the color emerald of the trees in spring to the yellow of the fields in summer, happening through the cobrizo of the autumn and the target of the winter. For the children, the first Nevada of the year was like a great celebration who celebrated with joy; they played to make snowmen and to throw balls by the white streets. But to Sonia the mixture of physical and cold exercise caused a fatigue to him in the chest that forced it to return soon to house. It liked to take refuge to the heat of the iron stove fused of the kitchen, while the wind whistled by the cracks of the windows. Sundays in the morning, the tintineo of the cowbells of the cows was mixed with the campanadas ones of the church, while the endomingada family went to the mass that never skipped. They said so that Stefano found a job, so that the asthma of Sonia sent, so that the general situation improved, so that the children had all the necessary one and they grew up healthy and happy. At the beginning of the fifty, Stefano ended up finding a job, but not in his town, but across of mountains, in Switzerland. Its experience as bricklayer and his seriousness were worth to be contracted several seasons to him. A minimum of two months went away and returned with the full pockets of liras that lasted less than what it had hoped. In 1956, Stefano made the decision to emigrate, as their three brothers and so many countrymen were doing it. The industrial pole turines, that had grown around Fiat, acted of magnet for million of Italian that they wanted to flee from the poverty of the field. The Maino crossed in train all the north of Italy and they settled in Orbassano, an industrial town to the outskirts of Turin. Thus they did it because Giovanni, one of the brothers of Stefano, to whom they called " the Moor" by the sallow color of its skin, had married with a girl of a near town and assured that the boom of the construction needed many arms. In addition Stefano knew the region because in the Thirties he had worked of worker for the army in the rehabilitation of military forts in the border with France, in the Alps. It liked the piamonteses, perhaps because also they were mountain; direct, frank people, who do not waste the time in contemplations. Work, work and work, that one were the prescription of Stefano to prosper quickly. It did not make another thing, did not know hobbies him nor was fan to the sports, although it liked to go to the bar of Pier Luigi to see in the television the end of the Juventus. To that same bar her daughter went assiduously Sonia, because Pier Luigi sold best ice creams of the zone. "Era molto vivace, molto biricchina", would say of the girl. When it arrived at Orbassano, Stefano already was official and of he happened there to mount its own company of real estate construction. It began with reforms, soon constructed to villas, small palazzi and more ahead leaned houses. "Era a very straight man", said of him its friend Danilo Quadri, a mechanic who repaired to the failures of his concrete mixers and other machinery to him and that ended up becoming its great friend. Every day they were seen at the time of the coffee in the Bar as a child, the seat in front of the City council, a building of two plants with soportales, a clock in the facade and an Italian flag in the balcony. Alongside it was the church of San Juan Baptist, with its characteristic tower and its picudos tejaditos turquesa color, where Sundays with their respective families went to mass . Stefano was a man of fixed schedules, loving of the routine. Later of its daily appointment with its Danilo friend, it returned walking to house by the Route Frejus, flanked of buildings without grace nor style where a block of floors arose next to an old villa in a mixture very characteristic of the popular urbanism of the postwar period. Its house was in the number the 14 of the Route Bellinis, to a distance of approximately kilometer and means of the seat of the town. That villa of three floors surrounded by a small garden had been the dream of its life. When it had settled to the debts contracted when beginning its business, it looked for an expensive lot that it was near the station of the trenino and the one of buses and bought it to headress tiles. Stefano raised to his house in time record, with typical tavernetta that occupied all the ground floor. There was no a house that boasted that tavernetta did not have his, very well-taken care of, with its bar, its bar, its chimney, that the parents used to meet with friends or to celebrate anniversaries, and the children for his guateques. It made the great house with idea distribute it between its daughters when they were greater. Aside from the work, the family was a fundamental value in the life of Stefano Maino, like good Italian. And, by all means, the religion. Values all that Paola shared with his woman, and that made an effort in transmitting the children. Sonia was ten years old when she arrived at Orbassano. The change of a village from mountain to a suburb of a great city as Turin were impressive. It was a easy life much more, more entertaining, than it offered infinite possibilities. The only shade in that new life had to do with its origin. They were paesane, as it is called contemptuously to the immigrants of the field in the north of Italy. Estigma that made them feel less than the others and that created a complex to them that would last all the life to them. In the village never they had felt different; here yes, mainly at the outset, in the school, where other children dealed with them paesane to dress to the old one or in clothes "of town". Orbassano was not other people's to the clasista atmosphere of Turin, a preservative city where it lunches to twelve, the capuccino to five in great pastry shops is taken from style art deco and it is had supper to seven of afternoon. Where the ladies go always very repeinadas, and the gentlemen dress to the last one. Where the worker wants to live as the pattern and imitates it, the pattern like the rich bourgeois of whom it wants to comprise, and the bourgeois like the aristocrats to whom secretly they admire. Then, veleidades of rebellion did not exist; nobody wanted to hang the head, all wanted to be like him. The prosperity seemed not to have aim and allowed that all persecuted their dream of social mobility. Little by little and to measurement that the father prospered, estatus social of the Maino family was rising. Of daughters of "shepherd of cows and bricklayer", the children happened to be to daughters of a constructor who lived desahogadamente. Of farmer daughters immigrant to industralist daughters. Paola, the mother, one more a more sensible woman to the social surroundings that his husband, immediately caught the tastes of the Turinese bourgeoisie - the style to dress, the gestures, etc... -, and it transmitted its daughters, who quickly were made "young ladies". Never until the point of which they apostatized of their origins, they were too honest for that. But always they knew that never they would reach estatus of Turinese the genuine ones because they had not been born there. After finishing the primary one in the school of girls of the town of Sangano, Sonia had wanted to continue his studies in the school of Orbassano, but his father was against. "Nothing of state school for my daughters. For them, always the best thing." The best thing, according to the Maino, was the school of the sisters of Helping Maria in Giaveno, a beautiful medieval city to about twenty kilometers of house, well-known place of relaxation of many Turinese ones. There they would have the possibility of mixing itself with children of a "better atmosphere" than in the state school of Orbassano. Aside from which they valued much the religious education, also they wanted to take off the sambenito of paesane. So that they left to the children Mondays in the morning and they gathered Fridays. It was not a hard boarding school, to the opposite, was full of amiable salesianas nuns who immediately took affection to Sonia. "The greater one had much genius and was difficult, but Sonia was same kindness", would say of her the sister Domenica Rosso, who was assigned her tutor. "Che bel carattere, sempre gioviale", remembers the Giovanna sister Negri, before adding: "It studied to get out of trouble, but he was smiling and always very servicial." Sonia already showed a quality that would be revealed of great importance in its adult age: she was conciliadora. "It had a special talent so that two companions who fought themselves let do it, or to put in agreement a group and to make an activity in common. She was a very calm girl, from small, perhaps because of its problem, that made it mature before time... " The problem to which the Giovanna sister talked about was the asthma. It remembers that the cough attacks were of such intensity that they had to accommodate it in a single room. She was only the internal one that slept single, and it did with the windows opened until in winter, in spite of the glacial wind that blew of the Alps. The boarding school, that had two hundred students, was in a hill that dominated the city: the towers of their medieval churches emerged between a mosaic of old tile roofs, and across of the river there was a great risco whose top used to be snow cover. When the cough attacks yielded, Sonia, under his edredon of pens, remained watching that mountain, slightly illuminated by the reflection of the lights of the city and that remembered its native Lusiana to him. Sonia learned to ski, like all the piamonteses, for those who the ski is the king of the sports. But never she was a great fan, as it did not go it to any sport, because it feared that the exercise triggered an asthma attack. In order to compensate, to which yes much was become fond of went to the reading, a passion that would last all the life to him. At the outset, as era of rigor in the catholic schools read the lives of the saints. Mainly it liked histories of the missionaries who gave everything it by the poor men in distant countries. To be misionera seemed to him a heroic, full life of sense, because there was to give itself to the others, and exciting, because she was full of adventure. The nuns of the boarding school regularly projected films that counted the great ones you develop and myths of the Christianity - like the life of San Francisco de Asis, by example and which they left the children, mainly to Sonia, petrified of emotion. But the pleasure of books lasted more than the one of the films, and could reread them and recreate to the time that learned of the experiences and the thoughts of the personages. The reading opened the doors to him to the world. Thanks to her, and her innate curiosity, the adolescent Sonia developed a feeling that the nuns called love mundi, love of the world according to the exquisite description that had made of it San Agustin. In the classes it had to learn the life of the great heroes of the modern history of its country like the philosopher and Mazzini politician, that contributed to that Italy was a democratic republic; or the fates of the peculiar Garibaldi, idealist and soldier who fought by the unification of the country. She learned on the Risorgiraento, the nationalistic movement of century XIX, but of the rest of the world the nuns taught little. For example, of India, its fight by independence and its irruption as a modern State not even heard speak. The vague figure of Gandhi sounded something to him, but it had not either been able to say whom it was, like the great majority of students not only Italian, but European. Nehru, however, was more familiar to him. Sometimes the silhouette of that elegant man, hairdo with its characteristic cap, glimpsed it of way to the bed, already with the put nightgown, in the nocturnal reporter who their parents saw in the television. Of all ways, to Sonia history did not interest to him particularly, like either the scientific matters, or those that they had to do with the policy. Of always it liked the languages, for which it had a certain facility. His father had animated to him to learn Russian and a particular professor had paid to him. Sonia understood it and she spoke it, although she cost to him to read it. Also French learned, in house. In addition the languages served to travel, to know another people, other customs, other worlds, to discover those places that had been able to sight in the lives of the missionaries. Later, when it had left the boarding school of Giaveno and it was registered in an institute of Turin to make the precollege student, their infantile dreams went away transforming. They went away adapting to the reality. The idea of being stewardess of Alitalia, to gain the life traveling by the world, got to seduce it. It did not require an excessive effort and, when the baccalaureate had finished, it would fulfill almost all the requirements; she was well similar, of good modales, measured what had to measure, knew Russian and French, it had everything... Only it needed to perfect its English. - Papa, I want to go to England to learn well English... - Nor to speak. To Stefano, the idea that her daughter lived between airplanes and hotels of for did not do the minimum grace there here to him, and did not seem to him something serious either. If it wanted to learn English, it already paid classes to him in an academy, did not need to leave house. Had perhaps not learned Russian with a particular professor? Had perhaps not learned French without never going to France? Sonia, who knew the stubborness well his father, avoided to face him, but at heart he was equal of cabezona when she was convinced of which she wanted. From chaste it comes to him to galgo... So the support of its mother won and while it finished its studies, it worked sporadically in Fieratorino, the organization in charge of the congresses and the industrial fairs, as the famous Hall the Automobile Sonia made its pinitos of stewardess, and until of interpreter of Russian in a golf championship. It liked the contact with diverse people. The same curiosity that felt towards the languages felt towards the culture and the spirit of the people who spoke them. The world was definitively greater than the small Orbassano, plasters trabajitos widened the horizon to him. Little by little, its dream of being stewardess went transforming into the one of being professor of languages or, better still, interpreter in some international organism like the United Nations.
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