T R SARI-2

 - 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. 

Like good mountain dweller, Stefano was authoritarian and rigid, 
but not as obstinate as not to realize necessity of his daughters. It was 
catched in a common dilemma the people of its generation: on the one 
hand it felt the necessity to have them under control and to educate them to 
the traditional way (the girls could make certain things; the boys, however, 
could do everything what they wanted) and by another one saw that the 
times changed and that no longer it was to hope to that they found 
husband, and, even so better than they were economically independent not 
to have to live under the rule of a man. So that before the pressure of its 
woman who was pawned on which their daughters had a profession, 
transigio, and accepted to become position of the trip and the studies of 
Sonia in England. But they were not arranged to that her daughter went of 
au to pair to live with any family in a city any. They chose Cambridge, 
cradles of one of the most prestigious universities and colleges. In the age 
in which she was Sonia, it was more worth to surround it by the best 
possible atmosphere... She thanked for it embracing to him and kissing to 
him like when she was small, looking for the tickle of her moustache. 

The 7 of January of 1965, took leave of their sisters and gave a 
strong push to Stalin, the old dog that had been its companion of games 
during all its childhood. Their parents accompanied it until the airport by 
Milan, to one oretta of distance. The fog in the morning took step to a sunny 
and cold day. Sonia struggled between the excitation to travel single for the 
first time and the fear to the stranger. It had eighteen years and the life 
ahead. A life that neither in its preposterous dreams the more had been 
able to imagine. 



4 

"For them, always the best thing... " Stefano never scrimped with 
his daughters. The Lennox Cook School was one of the best and more 
expensive schools of languages of Cambridge, located in a pretty street a 
little separated from the center. It presumed to have had famous writer E. 
M. Foster between his professors of Literature, although in those years was 
too greater and she was only going sporadically to give some to char it. By 
the price of the matriculation, the school was also in charge to look for an 
English family each student who asked for it, so that she could live like 
payment guest. 

Compared with the one of Turin, the climate of Cambridge 
seemed to him to depressing Sonia: the cold congealed the bones because 
of the humidity, fell chirimiri constant and it was made at night to four of 
afternoon. In addition it was a penetrating cold because, to save, the 
radiators of the house stayed most of the day dull. For its surprise, the one 
of its room worked only with currencies. It had thought that to live in an 
English family it would be like doing it with any Italian family, where 
everything shared. But that was to not know the local customs. To be 
payment guest was a business more and, like so, everything was entered. It 
discovered horrified that it had to pay every time that it wanted to occur a 
bath and that was going to leave expensive to maintain the level to him of 
daily hygiene to which she was customary. But the worse thing was the 
meals. It had never eaten col boiled neither meat with jam nor tortilla of 
potatoes accompanied by... potatoes. To rise in the morning and to be as 
opposed to one toasted with tomato sauce haricot beans cut the appetite to 
him. And toasted with espaguetis soft and sticky that they gave him a day it 
badly seemed to him a joke of taste, although when seeing that the others 
sank the tooth to him with fruition, that occurred to account of thus were the 
things in that so rare country. To this the difficulty was added that it had to 
express itself: he was incapable to maintain a fluid conversation with the 
welcome family. In fact, it knew less English of which one had imagined. 

At the outset, it thought that never it would be accustomed. Its 
timidity constituted an obstacle to be related. It avoided to see itself with 
other Italians because it was there for studying and does not stop to amuse 
itself. The first days it was dedicated to discover the city. The gothic church 
of the King's College and the full river of trays with tourists were two of their 
favourite places. But there were many interesting sites like the chapel of the 
Trinity College with its statues and plates in honor to the great personages 
who had studied or investigated there, like Isaac Newton, Lord Byron or the 
own Nehru; the "mathematical bridge", the first bridge in the world designed 
according to the analysis of the mathematical forces that act on their 
structure... It did not seem to him stranger who Cambridge was considered 
one of the most beautiful cities of England, but that did not stop being a 
poor consolation to its solitude. When coming out of class it used to ramble 
by the streets of the center. From time to time it entered one of the 
numerous bookstores, mainly in which they had foreign press, to leaf 



through some Italian magazine or newspaper. That fleeting contact with its 
country was like a balsam. It felt as much nostalgia, threw as much of less 
to his, that when returning to its fourth frozen one the soul on the feet fell to 
him. Pero so that demons will have felt like to me to come to study thus to a 
site? , he asked myself while he gave a strong one pierced to his inhalant. 

By very timid that was, it was impossible not to make friends to 
the eighteen years in a place like Cambridge, where one of each five 
inhabitants was student. There were them of all the nationalities and all the 
races and were dedicated to all type of activities during their free time, from 
the sport to the dramatic art, happening to listen to live music or to go of 
picnic to the Orchard Tea Garden, gardens in an idyllic place that seemed 
removed from a novel of Thomas Hardy and whose cafeteria served a 
delicious cake as cheese. Those that had printed to the city that 
cosmopolitan, amused and simultaneously interesting atmosphere, by that 
are they Cambridge was world-wide well-known, and many were like Sonia, 
is to say foreign without family nor friends. The others were needed an a. 

He was a German boy who spoke to him for the first time of a 
restaurant where he ate decently. Christian von Stieglitz was a Right 
student of the International in the Christ's College, a high boy, good looking, 
with eyes of blue an intense one and watched she itched. English means 
average German, spoke several languages, although it felt predilection by 
Italian and the French, and by Italian and the French, so that... what better 
way to unite the useful thing to the pleasant thing that teeming by the 
schools of languages, floods of handsome students! Thus it went as it knew 
Sonia, and it convinced it so that it proved the only place in Cambridge 
where one ate decently. He was not very expensive, and it was not either 
far from the school. The Varsity was well-known for being the oldest 
restaurant of the city and was boasted to have had as I illustrate 
companions at table to prince Faisal and the Duke of Edimburgo at its time 
of students. Ten years before Greek Cypriot had been bought by a family 
and since then she offered Mediterranean plates to its numerous customer, 
who included as much professors as students. One was in an old building of 
brick facade seen painted of target with two great windows cuadritos in the 
superior floor. It was announced by a discreet label of black letters. It was a 
local Straits and from the large windows that they gave to the street were 
possible to be seen the buildings of the Emmanuel College, another 
institution with much wall-plate where it had studied very same Mr. Harvard, 
and that served to him as inspiration to found the university that takes its 
name near Are enough. 

For Sonia it was an authentic revelation, and a consolation for its 
poor stomach. He was nearest the homemade food that had proven since it 
had arrived at the city. So soon it was become fond of to mezze, the 
appetizers that they included to wet bread in tarama, a cream done with 
huevas of fish and lemon, the thorns of meat roasted to the coal grill or the 
specialty of the house, the lamb to the furnace that melted in the mouth as if 
he was mantequilla. In addition it liked the atmosphere. One could go single 



to eat to the Varsity and not to feel single. More of once it had to be crossed 
a personage who cojeaba little at that time and always went loaded of 
books. It developed investigations on cosmology in the university and years 
later its name would give the return to the world. Stephen Hawking was 
called and also he was assiduous of the Varsity. 

Another personage who went there would jump to the world-wide 
fame, but for other reasons. Sonia had paid attention to him several times 
because she occupied, next to a group of bullangueros students, a long 
table next to hers. "One of those boys emphasized by its aspect and its 
modales --Sonia- would count. He was not as scandalous as the others, 
was reserved, more amiable more. It had great black eyes simultaneously 
and a wonderful, innocent and amazing smile." 

Days more behind schedule, while Sonia was having lunch with a 
Swiss friend in a table in a corner of the floor of above, it saw him approach, 
accompanied of Christian van Stieglitz, its German friend. After the habitual 
interchange of greetings and jokes, the European said to him: 

- Sight, I present/display my companion of floor, it is of India, it is 
called Rajiv... 

They occurred the hand: "As our glances were crossed for the 
first time - Sonia- would say felt to annoy my heart." Rajiv was it been 
throughout observing the lunch, captivated by its calm beauty. 

- You like? - Christian- had asked to him. She is Italian, I know 
it... 

- Then presentamela. 

The German was surprised because Rajiv was not specially ligon 
nor mujeriego, but distant and was rather diminished. "The first time that I 
saw - would count Rajiv-, I knew that she was the woman of my life." 

That same one behind schedule decided to go the four to Ely, a 
town to twenty kilometers of Cambridge known by their magnificent erected 
romanica cathedral within the walls of a benedictine monastery. They 
moved in the old blue Volskwagen of Christian, whose ceiling seemed 
perforated of smallpox. The person in charge of it had been Rajiv, that had 
given two returns of bell a day in which had left to give a return. To lead era 
one of its passions. As they did not have money to take it to a factory of 
plate and painting, to fix had it to put within the vehicle and to straighten the 
ceiling to kicks. By the others, the Escarabajo was the dream of all student 
because it supposed to have means of deprived transport to leave the 
routine and to discover the country at will. 

The stroll to Ely did not have anything of extraordinary, 
nevertheless he was most special of those than Rajiv and Sonia made 
together in all their life. The one that never would forget. It was behind 
schedule without rain, and seemed that the sun rays caressed the moss of 
the walls and illuminated the black and shining slate tile roofs by the 
humidity. Ely was a wonderful known town to still lodge the greater set of 
medieval buildings in use in all England, a magical place, where it was easy 
to lose between the old houses and the old gardens, where they enjoyed 



spectacular views on the English countryside from the stop of the towers. 
Christian, who knew it well, did of cicerone and she showed the prettiest 
and romantic corners to them, like a magician removing prodigies from its 
chistera. She was a behind schedule calm one, in that Rajiv and Sonia 
spoke little, letting itself rock by a fullness feeling that seemed to exceed to 
them. "The love of Rajiv and Sonia began there same, in the gardens of the 
cathedral, and at that precise moment. He was something immediate. I 
never saw two beings connect of that form, and for always. From that 
moment to the day of its death they became inseparable", would remember 
Christian later. 

Can the love arise almost from a so instantaneous, insolent way? 
When Rajiv took the hand to him while they took a walk in the shade of the 
very old walls of the cathedral, Sonia did not have forces to retire it. It 
thought about doing it, but it did not do it. That warm and smooth hand 
transmitted a security to him and, so that not to say it? , an immense and 
deep pleasure. As if all its life had been waiting for that surrounding contact. 
It could not retire it, although its conscience indicated to him that it had to do 
it. 

In the following days, it tried to fight against that feeling that put 
the heart to him to galope and that it caused certain anxiety to him because 
was uncontrollable. One insisted on dominating it, in not letting itself 
consume by that fire that the smile of Rajiv had ignited in its interior. The 
women do not yield before the attempts of seduction of the first that arrives, 
that had taught from 111 as tender childhood to him. And it had yielded, 
although she was only giving the hand him, taking a walk as if they were 
fiances of all the life. Did not have to be contained, to disguise the feelings, 
to put the pretendientes on approval? But everything what it assumed that 
had to do starred against that smile, that glance of aterciopelados eyes, that 
tender voice that became broken because Rajiv was almost as timid as she. 

- Quieres to behind schedule come this to the Orchard? 

- No, thanks, today not - it with a knot in the throat responded, 
without being able to separate her glance from the eyes of him. 

- It is only a short while, and we will return soon... 

She denied of new, this time with the head, and smiled like not 
discouraging to him, because in the bottom she was wishing to say yes that. 
Rajiv did not insist, remained planted there, without knowing how what 
expensive to put nor what to do with its hands, like a shameful boy who 
does not know how how to fit a refusal. It was not the prototype of the Italian 
pretendiente, rather on the contrary. He was a little patoso with the girls, but 
that, instead of diminishing it, increased its enchantment. Rajiv lacked 
malicia and vulgarity; the verborrea was not his. He was a serious boy, and 
its smile seemed frank. But for Sonia always the doubt existed... And if it 
wants to take advantage of me? 

During one season she decided not to go more to the Varsity not 
to fall in the temptation to find it again it. Better take drastic measure. But 
then its life returned to be as gray as before, a life without flavor... nor color. 



That attraction towards that boy, will be not to be single? , it was asked in its 
frozen room while it sank the tooth to an apple. How can be an authentic 
feeling, if we have almost not spoken? How can be wanted what it is not 
known? All these questions were crowded in their mind while it tried to be 
convinced that no, it could not be, his imagination him was playing bad a 
last one, did not feel anything by that boy. Soon, at moments of lucidity, 
account occurred of which he had to be very different from her in 
everything. It was of another country... And of what country! Neither of 
Europe nor of the United States, but of a distant and exotic place del that 
she did not know anything almost... A Indian, nothing less! Of other race, 
with skin a little sallow and which surely it professed another religion, that 
would have been bred with other customs, almost medieval... Would be a 
madness to enamor to me with somebody thus! , it was said then. Was not 
the full world of histories of Indians or African strained by European who) 
once obtain them and they take them countries to its, they finish of slaves? 
It saw itself suddenly like the fleeting whim of an Eastern prince, or 
something of the sort. Then for a moment one forgot everything and it 
returned to be she herself, a lost Italian student in Cambridge, wishing that 
the vacations arrived to return to house and to end the vertigo of the 
solitude and the uncertainty that, without knowing it, was turning it adult. 

But the memory of that smile did not disappear with the mere will 
to erase it, as if it was enough with pushing a button to issue orders to the 
heart. The smile of Rajiv was strained by the mysteries of its mind and, in a 
confusion, it returned to occupy a central place in its imagination. Like he 
was much more pleasant to let itself take by the ensohacion that to be 
fighting against the dictation of the heart, finished giving loose rein to its 
wanderings... What had that smile that seduced so much to it? Era the 
refinement of its modales and their way to express itself what it arrived to 
him at the heart? Era its composure of Eastern prince? Rajiv spoke with the 
best English accent, as if its life in Cambridge had lived all. He was 
courteous and galante, a little to the old one, qualities that they were scarce 
between the other students. Christian, who knew him or several months 
ago, finished finding out that del was grandson that outside prime minister 
of India, and that is something that it impresses, or at least urges on the 
curiosity almost as much as the fact that Rajiv had not mentioned it before. 
Who asked to him, Rajiv explained that its last name did not have relation 
some with the one of the Mahatma Gandhi, but abstained to communicate 
its kinship with Nehru. Indeed which it enjoyed more in England it was of the 
tranquillity that it provided to him to live on anonymous way. All its life in 
India had been the grandson of the first governor of independent India, an 
icon venerated by million people. Now that could be he himself, it wanted to 
enjoy it to the maximum. 

In spite of being the one who was, it did not have money to 
leave. It had wanted to invite it to one of the little nocturnal clubs where live 
music could be listened and that was called Them Badly Fleurs du, but the 
budget did not reach to him after as much. Christian it surprised the 



abysmal difference to him that was between both great groups of Asian 
students in Cambridge, the Pakistanis and the Indians. First they used to 
have much money and they wasted it, but the Indians were all in the last 
ones. The reason was due to the restriction imposed by the Indian 
government to its citizens to limit the currency purchase, not being able to 
change more than 650 pounds whenever they went on a trip. "The beauty of 
Cambridge - Christian- would remember is that he was great a leveling one 
of social and economic classes." 

The nocturnal life practically nonexistent era because they closed 
the doors of colleges to eleven. It was necessary to leave by day, and the 
distractions were very simple: to take a walk, to go in tray by the Cam river, 
to happen afternoon in digs of one or another one... The second time that 
Rajiv proposed to him to leave, it accepted, and were listening to music in 
the very small lodging of students that shared with Christian and who was to 
overflow with friends and discs. Sonia finished that with the certainty that 
behind schedule Rajiv really wanted it. It gave until pain to see so enamored 
it and so impotent to express its feelings. Sonia perceived that he was 
imprisoned of a torrent of feelings that revolvian to him by inside as much 
as to her. They had that day not taken the bicycles because it rained, so 
that it accompanied it walking to his house, a good stretch, because she 
lived more near the center. So they were become absorbed in thought in its 
conversation that was lost by the desert city while it opened his heart to him. 
It confessed that it enchanted to him to live in England because here felt 
frees by first time in its life. It told him that from boy it had lived escorted by 
guards on security in the house of the Nueva center Delhi where his 
grandfathers exerted of prime minister. It told much him that it displeased to 
him to be recognized like son of the family to whom it belonged, because it 
clipped its movements and their freedom, because it never knew who were 
really their friends, since people approached to him with second intentions 
by her proximity the power. It spoke to him of the so placentera sensation 
that it experienced the first time that lead old Volkswagen de Christian and 
who made him feel frees like never before. Also it spoke of the death of its 
father, happened four years to him back. Of the one of its grandfathers the 
previous year, that hurt to him still more because it loved like a another 
father to him. "Yes-Sonia said timidly, that I decide to me." Sonia vaguely 
remembered to have seen the previous year in the reporters of the 
television images of the funerales of Nehru, huge, solemn and sad. 

Rajiv spoke to him of a whole little, mixing it everything, 
overturning in disorder memories with desires, nostalgias with hopes, 
yearnings with grief. Sonia understood that, more there of the nationality or 
race difference, that boy belonged to a world to which she never had had 
access, not even mere knowledge. More than the fact of being of India, 
which separated to him more of him was the orbit in which it turned, so far 
from the life of middle-class of an Italian of Orbassano like the Earth of the 
moon. Everything separated to them, and for that reason nevertheless, and 
perhaps same, the mutual attraction era still more fort. It symbolized for him 



everything what longed for: to have a normal life. It was not India, she was 
not English, he was not identifiable in any step of the social hierarchy. It 
represented the anonymity of the Inedia class; in other words, the freedom, 
that is what it could more wish a boy of veintiun years that had grown in a 
golden cage. 

It told its passion him by the photography, by musicians of jazz 
like Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Jimmy Smith, although also it appreciated to 
the Beatles and Beethoven. But its authentic passion was to fly, and had 
arisen to the fourteen years, the day in which his grandfathers Nehru took to 
give a return to him in glider: "The sound of the wind, the sensation of total 
freedom, the impression that you are outside everything... he is something 
fantastic. I enlisted for always." and the beauty to fly on the plains of the 
north of India, with its winding rivers, its pueblecitos surrounded by green 
and brown fields where the most mini piece of earth is cultivated... As a 
result of that experience member became of the Flying club of Delhi and 
whenever it returned from vacations, it left in glider to occur a return and to 
forget the world. Now it had desire to prove the flight with motor and played 
with the idea to become pilot. 

To Sonia, this boy opened the doors to him of a unknown world 
and that shone as the stars in the firmament. He was a warm, practical and 
simultaneously a little boy sohador, and mainly it inspired confidence to him. 
It spoke with total naturalness, and it was not conceited don't mention it 
because it did not need it. He was the opposite of fanfarron, the opposite of 
typical ligon Italian that knew so well. Walking next to him, it seemed 
suddenly to him that those streets were not those of always, that were in 
another much more pretty city that the one that had known until then. Rajiv 
made dream, removed it from its shell, it made forget him itself and 
nostalgia that had felt until then. That night when leaving it in his house it 
declared itself to him to his a little clumsy way, saying to him that she was 
the first girl whom it had really liked, and that it hoped that she was the 
unique one. It said it with as much candor that was difficult not to believe to 
him. 

But even so, Sonia continued fighting to clear it to it of the mind, 
because she was stubborn and because its heart oscillated like a 
pendulum, torn between the reason and desire. Prey of an eddy of 
contradictory feelings, felt vertigo as if it was a precipice in front of, 
titubeando, with fear to fall. What pinto I in the world of that boy? What I 
have who to see with a mimado boy to whom his famous grandfathers took 
a walk in glider? So that I let myself dazzle? Sonia boasted itself to have the 
Earth feet, and she had them. But the more it was obsessed, the more 
distant was with him, and that apparent coldness was for him a still greater 
incentive to seduce it. The reality was that it thought about him day and 
night, as if had become its own breath. When it was not with him, it looked 
for the company of the girls of its class with the single aim to speak of him 
and his captivating enchantment. The feeling that obstructed it served to 
him as stimulus to learn English and more quickly better, such era the 



necessity to be to the height, of not losing the shades of the conversation 
with Rajiv and its friends. Does not have like the love to learn a language 
well! , it was said surprised when noticing that it understood a conversation 
suddenly, a reporter, an article in the newspaper. 

But he was exhausting to always live to the con, a little while to 
question that attraction that filled it of hope and, later, of doubts and fears. 
Tired of that swing that took it to the melancholy of the euphoria, a day let 
fight and it giveave in its arms, when still the music of Gerry resounded in its 
ears Mulligan from the interior of a bar of the concurred Sydney Street. 



5 

Of the arm of Rajiv, the life acquired another tone, another flavor. 
The strolls by the river in a tray that took he like an authentic gondolero 
behind colleges, the views from the stop of the church of St. Mary that 
enjoyed seated in the turf and eating a sandwich, the scent of the parks 
after rain... Most anodyne it received an unexpected relief. "Some night 
they went to Them Fleurs du Badly to listen to live music and to dance twist, 
the rate that made rage at the time and that Sonia danced very well. 
Cambridge was suddenly the most romantic city of the world, and no longer 
it wanted to be in no other place to enjoy the present. A present that 
consisted of seeing itself , to go in bicycle of one house house of the other 
every day, to go of picnic, to formulate plans of weekend... Rajiv was very 
fan to the photography and soon he, their Minox camera and Sonia formed 
an inseparable trio; it had found to perfect his musa and it did not stop to 
portray it. The romance reached such intensity that the owner of the Varsity, 
Charles Antoni, said that never he had seen "a pair so enamored... it 
seemed of novel". 

The present also was to travel in the Volkswagen Escarabajo that 
Rajiv ended up buying to its friend by a handful of pounds. They crossed 
the English countryside, they visited London and they enjoyed a freedom 
that then seemed not to have aim. When the windshield was broken to 
them, they continued using the car but surrounded in blankets. 

Rajiv lived like any English student, working in its vacations to 
obtain extra money. He had been ice cream salesman, another year had 
worked in the harvesting of the fruit, having loaded trucks or making the turn 
at night in a bakery. "Cambridge gave a vision me of the world that it had 
never had if I had had left in India", Rajiv would remember later. In Sonia it 
found a perfect ally. It was enemy of the estridencias and the extravagances 
and aspired to which there was well-known, to a calm and stable life without 
frights nor scares. If Sonia perceived the so great difference that she 
separated to him of him, also saw the points that they had in common. Both 
were of timid nature and they did not look for protagonism of any type. 
Neither the honeys of the success nor the notoriety called the attention to 
them, rather on the contrary, was something of which the more it was worth 
to flee. "It did not interest the outer world nor the worldly life to them... They 
valued the privacy first of all", would say Christian. Both had a very similar 
concept of the familiar life, perhaps because in her respective cultures the 
family is the supreme value. Rajiv lacked political ambition, it liked the 
technical questions and the manual activities. It confessed to him that if it 
had delivered the attack to enter in the Trinity College, had been to please 
its grandfathers, who had studied there and who lodged the illusion of which 
one of its grandsons followed its steps. But now that had died Nehru, Rajiv 
was thinking seriously about leaving the Trinity College and dedicating 
themselves to its true vocation, to be airplane pilot. It still did not know how 
to say it to it to its mother. 



What yes it knew to say by letter to Indira, in March of 1965, 
month and means to him after the encounter in the Varsity, is that it had 
known Sonia: «... You always ask to me on the girls who I know and if there 
is some attracts to me specially. Then now I say to you that I have known a 
girl very special. Still I have not requested it, but she is the girl with whom I 
want to marry." In her answer, her mother remembered to him that the first 
girl who one knows necessarily is adapted. It wanted to adjust the passion 
of its son. To the aim and the end, only it was twenty years old. But in its 
following letter, Rajiv confessed to him: "I am sure that I am enamored with 
her. I already know that she is the first girl with that I leave, but how to know 
if one is going to know other than it is better" To mail return, Indira 
announced to him that it finished accepting his first official position, that had 
done it a little grudgingly, but that already was: she was minister of 
Information of the government of India. Like so, it had the intention to make 
an official trip to London at the end of year and it would like to take 
advantage of that opportunity to know it. To Sonia a knot in the stomach 
when finding out the news was done to him. As far as telling it his, he was 
totally incapable to arm itself of the necessary value. It did not want nor to 
imagine which would be the reaction of its father... 

But the news of the arrival of Indira made forget the present for a 
moment him. Of soon it had a feeling nubarrones in the horizon of its 
happiness. They returned the fears and it was wondered what future it had 
in that romance. He was too pretty to last. No longer it doubted its feelings; 
on the contrary, she was in favor crazy of Rajiv, never had known a fit 
similar, but it intuited that the so enormous difference that there was 
between its origins would finish making an impression on the relation, and 
could perhaps ruin it completely. Little which knew of India it had learned it 
of a friend who had described like a country distant and immense town to it 
of elephant and snake charmers and anchylosed by the poverty and the 
delay. A country that lacked the most basic comforts, a country punished by 
an implacable climate, a dirty country where the cows stood out to their 
wide ones and more were respected than the members of chaste the more 
losses, really a difficult and exciting country... for an anthropologist or yogui, 
but it does not stop a girl who aspired to work in an international organism 
and to have a familiar life without problems. Where fitted Rajiv in that 
picture? The Nehru, had explained him that friend who was not either too 
much to the current, were of aristocratic origin, of Kashmir. Of some way 
they dominated the society of its country, and until certain point they had 
been controlling the world-wide policy... To its side, what were the Maino? , 
Sonia thought. Paesani, was said to itself. What could contribute to Rajiv 
the daughter of a small Italian constructor of provinces? She was sure that 
the mother of Rajiv would become the same question, and that caused a 
great frustration to him. Sonia was conscious that their families "could not 
be more different", according to his own words. It was not either able to 
imagine saying to him to its father who had fallen in love with a sallow man 
of skin, that above was Indian and that in addition it professed, at least 



officially, the Hindu religion. No, that one was a pill that the good one of 
Stefano Maino was not going to swallow with taste, by very prime minister 
who had been the grandfathers. 

Its nature introvert prevented him to share its fears with Rajiv. It 
did not want to break the happiness, that it could be as fragile as the finest 
crystal. With him it was of a full dulzura of reserve and the eyes with which it 
watched to him were loaded of questions. He was Indian, but in its gestures 
and their way to speak it saw to an English. He was distinguished and 
simultaneously one behaved with an amazing simplicity. Sonia, in fact, 
experienced a strange and definitive change that led the blind acceptance, 
total, of which she could, because of Rajiv or thanks to him, to happen to 
him more ahead. It felt that to the distant border of its own one to be 
everything it had been fixed beforehand by the destiny, before at least of 
that had been born. 

A week end Sonia knew Sanjay, the only brother of Rajiv, two 
years smaller, than it was making a course of learning in the house Rolls- 
Royce in Crewe, to three hours of way, and that it used to go to Cambridge 
to amuse itself from time to time. He was very handsome, like its brother, 
but with attractive a different one. Sanjay had an oval face, heavier and 
sensual lips and entered incipientes. Like his brother, exhibited impeccable 
modales and spoke with smooth voice with a perfect British accent. Both 
were frugales in their habits. Sanjay ate little, but it spoke much of policy 
and they enchanted the parties to him. To Rajiv it liked neither to smoke nor 
to drink, did not interest anything to him the policy, rather it apostatized of 
that world and it preferred a calm supper with friends to a noisy celebration. 
Sanjay was colder than its older brother, did not come off that sensation of 
calm calidez, good person who as much security gave Sonia. And their 
glances were different. Rajiv did like acariciandote with its almendrados 
eyes. His brother, however, had a distant glance, something makes 
insolent. One noticed to him the other way around very proud of being the 
one who was, that its brother. 

It was the wonderful year, perhaps happiest of its lives, if by 
happiness it is understood the almost total absence of preoccupations and 
problems. But the course arrived at its aim, and the vacations of summer 
were going to interrupt idilio of Cambridge. 

In 1965 July , Rajiv and Sonia separated for the first time. Sonia 
returned to Italy. Chiquilla had arrived months back like one, now returned 
like a woman, with the firm idea to make its life with Rajiv. It did not know 
how nor when, but she was determined. It was a happy and disquieting 
goodbye at the same time because, although they were convinced that they 
would return to be, Sonia feared the reaction of its parents. The future it was 
seeded of incognitos. 

It filled of satisfaction to realize to him much that had improved its 
English when they left works to him interpreter in the fairs of Turin. What 
differentiates, what soltura... At least, the signor Maino had not thrown the 
money. It was the good news for its parents. The other, the important one, 



was not able to verbalizar it. No matter how much it tried it mentally, it did 
not leave to him. "I want deciros that I am enamored with a boy... No, thus 
no, is ridiculous! - it was said, before trying another way: I have known 
somebody very special and I am wanted to marry with him... Pero how I am 
going to say that to them? ", it returned to say itself desperate. When the 
moment arrived for facing it, it remained paralyzed. "Although eramos a 
family very united - Sonia would write late more, they were very 
conventional, specially my father who was a patriarch to old usanza. In that 
type of families, the contact between boys and girls strictly were watched 
and controlled." 

Rajiv did not understand the reluctance of Sonia to speak with its 
parents. She tried to explain herself: How to tell them of sopeton that there 
was been living an enthusiastic history of love all these months without to 
them to have communicated nothing? It did not know how to break the ice. 
"It does not seem that he is able to say it to it - wrote Rajiv to its mother. I 
cannot understand it. It must be something very peculiar. It only does what 
the father says." Clear that Rajiv did not know Stefano Maino, never it had 
seen its reddened face, its rudas factions of mountain dweller, never had 
heard its hoarse voice nor its sharp tone when something it did not like. 

"It took long time to Me to do to me with the value sufficient to 
speak to my parents of my feelings towards a boy who stops they not only 
was a stranger but a foreigner also," the occasion took place after the 
wedding of Pier Luigi, the owner of the bar-monopoly in Via Frejus. Pier 
Luigi, who had seen it grow, had wanted that she was witness of his 
wedding. It was the great event of the summer in the district. A celebration 
with music and much drink in the bar, that was to overflow with people, so 
much as in the annual appointment that reunited to the neighbors ritually to 
see in the television the Festival of San Remo. 

- I am enamored, I want to him - it said to them after explaining to 
them who was the boy and how they had been known. 

- What age you say that it has? 

- Twenty years... 

- He is too young - her mother intervened. 

- And above is of that way! - the father added. 

So and as had imagined, did not show it the minimum 
enthusiasm. They reacted with a total disdain, as if her daughter had been 
imprisoned of a fleeting attack of madness. There was nothing in that 
relation that they could like: the boy was hardly two years old more than 
Sonia, was foreign, but he was not English nor French but of a country that 
only left in the news by its disasters, he was terrone, as those of the north of 
Italy call to the immigrants of the south, with aggravating of which not even 
was Italian. And it had another important defect: he was not catholic. For 
them, Sonia had drowned the restlessness to feel for the first time single in 
a foreign country falling in arms of first of turn. 

- One will already go to him... 



But one did not go to him. Until the mailman it joked with the 
family because now it brought daily letters, all with letterhead of England, all 
for Sonia. The "girl" went long hours in her quarter, responding her 
volunlinosa correspondence, or waiting for anxious a telephone 
conference. Soon they were the sisters, who understood that Sonia really 
was enamored. "Already one will go to him" of the parents gave rise to " and 
if it goes in serious" of Anushka and Nadia. The only thing that dulcifico the 
position of its mother was to find out at least that the small era "of good 
family". Of something had served to send it to the most expensive school of 
Cambridge! That he was the grandson of Nehru, who her Indira mother was 
in the government to Stefano left him indifferent, but Paola yes was sensible 
to it. And the sisters also. They were already seen marching past backs of 
elephant in the gardens of some Indian palace. For them, history had 
something of fairy tale ; an Eastern prince had fallen in love with his sister... 
He was exciting. 

The battle horse went the return to Cambridge. His father did not 
want that she returned. According to him, already it knew sufficient English. 
In fact, it wanted take drastic measure idilio of its daughter. Pero Sonia was 
pawned on obtaining its title, the Proficiency in English, and for it it needed 
a year more. As always, the influence of Paola was decisive. She and their 
husband knew perfectly that her daughter wanted to return because she 
was enamored, but Paola insisted on the importance from which she 
obtained a title. Sonia stayed signs. It said to them that if did not want to 
help it, it was arranged to do like many girls who studied there English, 
would look for a work and one would become independent. To anybody it 
likes to face its parents, to Sonia still less because it did not go with its 
character of docile girl. But it could plus the love. 

Their parents finished yielding, thinking that to be against to the 
romance of his daughter he would not do more than to exacerbar it. Better 
than it returns to England, thought. At least it would return with a title. They 
were sure that that history of love, that they saw like an eccentricity, would 
not hold the passage of time... The only thing that could make era advise to 
him: eye where you put, you do not hurry. 

Sonia was so respectful with the familiar traditions, and so little 
she blankets of the confrontation, that promised to them to have them to the 
current of everything. So that, from return to Cambridge and before the next 
arrival of Indira, that had shown desire to know it, he thought that it was 
better than their parents knew it. Rajiv, that was wishing to put itself in 
contact with the Maino, took advantage of the occasion to send a letter to 
them and to request permission to them so that the encounter between its 
daughter and Indira Gandhi took place. A pasmados archiformal and very 
respectful letter that left the Maino, but what were going to do, to refuse to 
it? Stefano had not doubted nor a second to it, but her woman convinced to 
him so that she gave his authorization. 



6 

It was winter and the highway shone in the rain. They were 
arriving at City in the Volkswagen weakened of Rajiv when Sonia a panic 
attack entered to him. Suddenly, the perspective to go to a reception in the 
embassy of India and to be with the mother of its fiance in an atmosphere 
that did not know terrified it and it paralyzed it. What I there am going to do? 
, it was said suddenly. A torrent of questions, some serious ones, other 
trivial ones, acted hastily in their head: How is necessary to treat it? I will be 
dressed suitably? What I must say to him? And if it despises to me? And if 
is aggressive it? 

- You do not say trivialities - Rajiv repeated to him. 

Suddenly, to Sonia the world fell to him above. It seemed to him 
that the months last in company of Rajiv had been a dream that was on the 
verge of becoming pieces. It thought that it was not prepared to know its 
mother. In addition, that encounter would mean to commit itself still more, 
and how could do it if their own parents had been so obstinate his idilio? 

- But if they are to the current, if your father has given permission 
you... Now you lie down back? 

Rajiv did not understand anything. Sonia was scared. It thought 
that perhaps his father was right and had arrived the moment for stepping 
on the brake, for calming themselves, for giving reverse gear ... 

- Sonia, we have been, are hoping to us... 
- 1 feel It, I do not go, I cannot. 

Sonia lost the stirrups, was incapable to control itself. The efforts 
of Rajiv to calm did not give it result, so that it had to call to his mother and 
to invent an excuse to cancel the appointment. 

They later posponed it for days, when Sonia had calmed itself. 
This time was promised itself to behave well, but it continued being a drink 
difficult to happen. The legs shook when it raised the steps to him of the 
residence of the ambassador of India, where stayed Indira and its friend of 
the soul, Pupul Jayakar, that had helped him to organize the tribute to 
Nehru. The two still were excited because the eve, after a poetry recital of 
Allen Ginsberg and other poets of the generation beat, had finished to the 
one of the dawn in a Spanish restaurant eating covers and seeing dance 
flamenco. To its return, they had been with the ambassador 
preocupadisimo; it was to point to call to the police because it thought that 
something had passed them. 

Indira received to them in its room, slightly perfumed of incense. 
Sonia was in front of a surrounded woman of fragile aspect in elegant sari of 
silk. It recognized in its eyes black and almendrados those of Rajiv. The hair 
gathered in a monkey let see in the forehead a tuft of abundant white hair in 
spite of its forty and eight years. That tuft, that would become its sign of 
identity, conferred an undeniable distinction to him. It had a full smile of 
enchantment, delicate ways and a prominent nose that it tried to disguise 
with maquillaje under the eyes to attenuate the shades. In fact and 



according to it had confessed its Pupul friend to him, which it had really 
liked had been to operate that nose. 

" I in front of was perfectly normal a human being - Sonia- would 
say, in front of a warm and cosy woman. It did all the possible one so that it 
felt to me to pleasure. It spoke to me in French when it noticed that I 
dominated plus that language that the English. It wanted to know of me, my 
studies." Rajiv had of having counted to its mother something to him on the 
attack of nerves, because Indira said to him that "it also had been young, 
terribly timid, and enamored, and who understood to me perfectly". 

Sonia, relaxed, enjoyed that first encounter, that finished of the 
possible most familiar way. In effect, the pair had to attend a celebration of 
students and Sonia requested to change of clothes in a quarter of the 
embassy. But nothing else to leave, encountered and the heel of its shoe 
tore the backstitch of its suit at night. "The mother of Rajiv - Sonia- would 
count took control of a needle and black thread and, faithful to its slowed 
down style, that it would observe close by later, was put to sew the 
backstitch. Was not exactly that what my mother had done? All my doubts 
disappeared, at least at the moment." 

An affection current happened between those two so different 
women in everything, except in the love by Rajiv. Indira had not 
communicated its son, but the idea to have a foreign daughter-in-law 
someday had a little disturbed. Now, after knowing it, their reserves had 
dissipated: "Aside from handsome - Dorothy Norman- wrote to him to her 
North American friend is a healthy and direct girl." 

Dorothy was glad to receive those news of her friend. Finally, it 
seemed that Indira left the deep existencial crisis in which it struggled from 
the death of its Firoz husband four years ago, and from most recent Nehru, 
its father. Widow first, and later orphaned one. In addition, as their children 
were in the foreigner, it had remained single. The day in which Rajiv had left 
to Cambridge, Indira had written to Dorothy: "I feel sad. He is a little while 
heartrendering for a woman when his son becomes a man. It knows that no 
longer it depends on her and who from now on he is going to make his own 
life. And although sometimes they let it throw a look to that life, always will 
do it from outside, the distance of another generation. My heart suffers." 

To Indira it cost to him much to recover behind schedule of the 
death of Nehru, happened in a warm one of the 27 of May of 1964. In her 
last days, it had not left him nor to a second, always pending of her 
necessities, administering to him medicines, supervising her diet, separating 
the visits. The last photo which them they made together, in that is seen it 
its side squatting, shows to an expression of deep sadness and great 
tenderness in its face. Indira had spent the last years stuck him, organizing 
the agenda to him, coordinating the visits of foreign dignitaries like the Shah 
of Iran, king Saud, Ho Chi Minh or Krushchev. It had gotten until a to make 
of communication channel between him and its ministers. The own Nehru, 
the named being maximum agent chief executive when India became 
independent in 1947, had asked to him who assumed the role of "first lady", 



since her wife had passed away time back and he needed to somebody 
confidence that knew to run the house to him. Indira had accepted with 
reluctance at the outset, soon with authentic devotion. It had done it not 
only because she was a obedient daughter India, but because its marriage 
crumbled. She was fed up with the acts of infidelity of Firoz, its husband. In 
fact, they practically lived separated time, so that it and its children ago 
settled in Teen Murti House, the pretty residence of prime minister of the 
Nueva India in center Delhi. The first that did Indira was to off-hook the 
collection of pictures of imperial heroes and to send them to the Ministry of 
Defense. Soon, it replaced them by India crafts, and troco the heavy French 
curtains by visillos of crude cotton, the weave that rueca of Gandhi turned 
autarky symbol. It fixed the quarter of its father with a low bed surrounded 
by its books and favorite photographies. A day confessed that it had liked to 
be decorator of interiors, but the destiny had reserved another paper to him. 

If the death of Nehru had prevailed to the world of a giant - he 
had been the unquestionable leader of the movement of countries 
nonaligned that grouped to more than half of the world-wide population; if it 
had left to India without the symbol of its fight by the freedom and without 
prime minister, and to the Party of the Congress without its Maxima 
authority, to its Indira daughter it had left it in the middle of an immense 
crater, like if its death had been a pump that had devastated everything to 
his around. Nehru had been the presence and the dominant force in his life, 
the light that had guided its steps. Perhaps that passion by its father was 
consequence of much that had missed to him of girl, since it spent almost 
more time between grates than in house due to his political activism. But 
when it returned, its presence filled of joy the familiar mansion of Anand 
Bhawan, in Allahabad. Then it was already a legend of meat and bone, 
always relaxed, by much tension that was to his around, with a face that 
seemed carved by a chisel, a provided affluent body, a timid and inquisitive 
glance to he himself time, a frank laughter and a natural elegance that 
stood out taking to a rose in the eyelet of the third button of his sherwani. 
Their great culture, his sharpened sense of humor and its dowries of orador 
won the affection there to him where it was. One developed with the same 
facility in the halls the high society that in the jails of its graceful Majesty. It 
got to have of interlocutors from its professors from Cambridge to heads of 
government and virreyes, from the very same king emperor of England - 
and his jailers to tribal heads of Afghanistan. 

After which his father, the great Motilal, him left single to the 
thirteen years in the boarding school of England, Nehru remained to seven 
years learning Political Sciences and being interested in the last 
technological advances. It returned from England in 1912, transformed into 
a British horseman. It began to work in the writing desk of his father, and 
this one was very satisfied with the substantial income that now to him his 
son provided. The rest of the time distributed between the library of the 
School of Lawyers and the institution to it that could not lack in colonial 
India, the club, where it spent and tedious hours seated in the armchairs 



long to Chester of the overloaded halls discussing legal subjects with old 
members the British administration. A boring life, according to the own 
Nehru, whom it changed as a result of an apparently insignificant fact, when 
it received the visit of a group of farmers who requested aid to him against 
landowners who used cruel and expeditious methods to expel them from 
their legitimate earth. Nehru acceded to accompany them to his village to 
explain the case. It was a vain trip of three days that transformed to him of 
timid lawyer and that, according to its words, did not know the conditions in 
whom the great majority of Indians lived and worked, to revolutionary. 
"Seeing with its misery and overflowing gratitude them, I felt a mixture of 
shame and pain - it wrote, shame of my easy and comfortable life and the 
politiqueo of the cities that ignores to this vast multitude of children and half- 
naked daughters of India, and pain before as much degradation and 
unbearable poverty." 

To this the news that arrived from the city santa to him of 
Benares, to borders of the Ganges- was united . Mohandas Gandhi, that 
lawyer who still was a stranger, had caused to an authentic commotion 
when doing an incendiary speech against the inequality and in favor of the 
poor men in the occasion of the inauguration of the Hindu University. "The 
jewel exhibition that you offer hoyes to us a splendid celebration for the 
Vista - had said to an audience made up of colonial authorities and Indian 
aristocrats, but when I compare it with the face of the million poor men, I 
deduce that there will be no salvation for India until you take off those jewels 
and you deposit them into the hands of those poor men." The hearing 
reacted with indignation. Princes and dignitaries left claustro of the 
university. Only the students applauded the words of Gandhi. But the echo 
of that intervention resounded in whole India, and Jawaharlal Nehru wanted 
to know him. 

"Era as a powerful fresh air current - Nehru de Gandhi- would 
write; like a light ray that crossed the dark; like an eddy that questioned 
everything, but mainly the way in which the mind of people worked. It did 
not come from above, it seemed to emerge incessantly from between the 
million Indians, speaking its language and turning aside the attention 
towards them and to their pressing necessities. " Its force was transformed 
in a concept that it coined in 1907 whose name derived from the sanscrito, 
satyagraha, that means the force of the truth, and whose intention implied 
the idea of a powerful but not-violent energy to transform the reality. For the 
masses Indians, satyagraha represented an alternative the fear. She was 
the bengali poet and Nobel prize of Literature, Rabindranath Tagore, that 
Gandhi granted the title by which would be known. Tagore called Mahatma 
to him: "great soul". 

But the great soul needed a great lieutenant. That one became 
his disciple and friend Nehru, and although they did not have anything in 
common, the combination of forces that arose from that intense friendship 
would end up changing the world. Because Gandhi was a faith man, of 
religion; Nehru was a rationalist one, an falsified product of Harrow and 



Cambridge that as soon as she spoke the native languages of India. Their 
years in Europe made see him like ridiculous many customs of their 
compatriots, like the one of not leaving house in considered days little 
propitious. In the most religious country of the world, he was an atheist 
whom it despised to santones and yoguis, people in charge according to 
him of the delay, the internal divisions and the dominion of the foreign 
colonizadores. Gandhi found too much him gentleman for his taste and did 
with him what did with other members of the high class. It sent them to the 
villages to recruit new members for the Party of the Congress and step to 
know the true face its mother country. The majority had never seen the 
poverty of its own compatriots. But that one was the beauty of the 
movement of Gandhi: it put in contact to the high class with lowest, than 
they began to exist to eyes of the rest of the society. By first time, India was 
imprisoned of an ample popular movement that rejected the way to live 
imposed from distant London. 

During thirty years, Nehru crossed India, in cars of oxen, in train 
on foot, galvanizing to the population. But Gandhi dreamed about an India 
of villages that lived in autarky, an India without discrimination of chaste but 
deeply religious, Nehru did with a released India of his myths and the 
misery by the industry, science and the technology. For Gandhi, those were 
indeed the misfortunes of the humanity. For Nehru, they were its salvation. 

Their differences of opinion and vision never put in check the 
friendship and the deep respect that both men professed themselves. They 
agreed in the fundamental thing; to obtain a united and independent India 
without bloodshed . Nehru was convinced that Gandhi was, aside from 
santo, a genius. It valued its extraordinary political ability, its art to speak 
with gestures that arrived at the soul of the town. When both were eeted 
again, they chatted long short while, they interchanged points of view, they 
evaluated the last advances in the fight, or the last misfortunes. They 
discussed on strategies, got upset, soon they were ed ***reflx mng or simply 
they meditated. Gandhi always made clear that the torch of its combat 
would spend a day through the hands of Nehru, and him aupo to the 
presidency of the Party of the Congress in three occasions. 

Indira grew up in that atmosphere where the border between the 
familiar life and the political life was nonexistent. To Gandhi it told its secrets 
him of chiquilla, said to him much that it was strange to its father, spoke to 
him of its solitude, of its complexes for being a girl feucha. Nehru passed a 
total of nine years locked up, interrupted by short periods of freedom. The 
familiar life was suffered as much of it that once Indira had to say to him to a 
visitor: "I feel It, but my grandfathers, my father and my mother are all in the 
jail." 

From the death of Nehru, to Indira old memories of their 
childhood came to him to the memory, when it was disguised of Juana de 
Arco and it emulated his father saying: "Someday I will lead my town 
towards the freedom", while it harangued an imaginary multitude. Or like 
when "first political action" committed his) as it would call it later, that went 



to attack an English police that burst in into the house of Anand Bhawan to 
obstruct objects and furniture because, as a matter of principle, its father 
and his grandfathers, as well as the members of the party, refused to pay 
guarantee whenever they were arrested. It wanted to enter in the Congress 
to the twelve years, but like it was not the prescribed age, was rejected. The 
bull by the horns reacted to its way, since it would later do it in the life, 
taking. It reunited in the gardens from that mansion to several hundreds of 
children of the district. Indira went to them since his father had done it, 
conminando to them to fight by the liberation of the mother country in spite 
of the dangers. Thus the "army of the monkeys " created, that were children 
who made workings of spy, stuck posters, made flags and they infiltrated 
behind the police lines to pass messages to members of the party. Its army 
got to count with several thousands of children who supported substantial to 
which they fought. What happy felt when his father was proud of her...! 

Their relations always were marked by the suffering of the 
distance, that only the letters were able to mitigate: "I want that you learn to 
write letters and that you come to see me the jail. I throw to you much of 
less", wrote Nehru to him when she as soon as it was six years old. For his 
thirteenth birthday, Nehru wrote to him: " What gift I can mandarte from the 
jail of Naini? My gifts cannot be material nor solid. They only can be facts of 
air, the mind and the spirit, like whom it would grant a fairy to you, things 
that not even the high walls of a prison could retain." 

Indira dived in those letters - they were hundreds of letters, a 
touching and interesting correspondence, because both wrote very well to 
prepare the commemorative exhibition, that one that came to inaugurate to 
London. It wanted to emphasize the compasiva facet of its father as well as 
his incredible value and entereza with the help of photos and objects and of 
illustrating them with extracted legend of its writings and speeches. Of all 
the projects that it had undertaken from the Ministry of Information that now 
directed, in this one turned upside down with special devotion. Not only by 
the sentimental question, but because it thought that to give to know and to 
raise the memory of Nehru it was important for the world and India in 
individual, a new nation needed the example of leaders who forged their 
unit. 

Rajiv accompanied Sonia to visit the exhibition on Nehru. It was a 
way to introduce to the Italian young person in the complex history of its 
country, a way to explain who were he and its family to him. Sonia stopped 
long before the suit of fiancee of the grandmother of Rajiv, Kamala, and 
observed the ritual utensils that are used in the weddings of Kashmir. The 
photo foot explained that the woman also had been in the jail and that died 
of tuberculosis to the thirty and six years... Sonia thought about Indira; with 
a father in the jail and an ill mother. . . What childhood had been hers? 

- Sad - Rajiv- said to him. In addition my mother also became ill 
of tuberculosis. It was long seasons locked up in a sanatorium where they 
advised to him that one did not marry and did not have children... - Less 
badly than it did not make case. . . - she with a smile said. 



- One was saved thanks to the discovery of antibiotics. It had 
more luck than the grandmother... 

Sari was other exhibited, red pale, with a silver-plated festoon. - 
That one is sari that my grandfathers in the jail for the wedding of my 
mother wove... I hope that someday you to it take... - it said to him with 
guasa. 

Sonia ed ***reflx mng itself, little convinced. One did not imagine 
surrounded in that fabric, that had been made inside a cell reconstructed 
there same for the occasion with extended photographies: the camp bed, 
the notebook in that was seen phrases of their newspapers of prison could 
be read, rueca with which Nehru had spun that sari in a gesture that 
combined the love towards the daughter and the love towards the country... 
Gandhi had turned rueca a symbol of fight by independence. The English 
had ruined the rich textile industry India having put rates disturbed to Indian 
products for, however, selling they woven industrialists made in England. 
Rueca was a revolt symbol , a way to say that it was not necessary to buy 
concerned textile products because each one could spin its own fabrics. 
There was a letter that Sonia read. It was written by Nehru from the jail and 
it directed it to its daughter, who was going away to marry: "At the outset, to 
spin he is very boring but as soon as you put yourself to it, you discover that 
it has something of fascinating. I dedicate to him half an hour to the day. As 
it is not long time, I produce little although I am enough express. Ever since 
I have begun, for seven weeks, I have been spinning almost ten thousand 
meters. I have understood that thousands for sari are needed thirty. Within 
four months, can that has sari for you" 

That sari was not only a fiancee suit, was also a flag. For Sonia, 
a fiancee suit had to be white, with veil, like which it saw all Sundays of 
spring in the fiancees who married in the church of San Juan Baptist of 
Orbassano. Sometimes it forgot that Rajiv was Indian. 

Shootings of the celebrations of independence were exhibited, 
that on board showed the last parade of the virrey Lord Mountbatten and its 
Edwina woman of a vehicle literally besieged by the multitude. " Young 
Llueven! ", it said scared Pamela, the daughter of the virreyes, because the 
women sent their babies to the air to avoid that the multitude squashed 
them. Rajiv told him that her mother saw how a woman decided that his 
baby would be safer with Lady Mountbatten and went it. Edwina had in its 
arms long short while. It was seen Nehru walking literally over the crowd, 
shouting so that they raised the flag saffron, green and white of the new 
nation that incorporated a singular shield in center: one rueca. Mountbatten 
fought to separate to children and young people average in a faint by the 
racket and to put them out of danger. The flag was received with a 
tremendous uproar of joy. A cannon shot was listened to and soon, like by 
magic art, a rainbow arose in the sky, giving rein to the most many-colored 
interpretations on the meaning of that "act of God". 

But also there were photos and shootings of the tragedy that 
accompanied independence. Rajiv told Sonia who Nehru made his famous 



speech of independence with the destroyed heart. A recording reproduced 
its voice that night of the 15 of August of 1947: "Many years ago, we gave 
an appointment to the destiny and has arrived the hour to fulfill our 
promise... To the edge of the midnight, when the men sleep, India will 
awake to the life and the freedom... " To listen to therefore the voice of 
Nehru it caused that Sonia shook. Rajiv explained to him that his 
grandfathers knew that while announced the greater news in the history of 
India, the city of Lahore, old capital of the empire mogol and the most 
cosmopolitan city of sub continent, that had happened to belong to 
Pakistan, he burned in one orgia of violence. It was the principle of a 
tragedy of gigantic dimensions well-known like the Partition. The 
independence of both countries triggered a movement of ethnic and 
religious cleaning without comparison in history. The Hindus, that lived 
generations ago in which now it was Pakistan were forced to flee. To the 
inverse one, the Muslims of India fled in opposite direction. The shootings of 
those columns of refugees and the story of the committed atrocities - 
families burned alive in its houses, women sent from trains in march for 
being of the mistaken religion, violet daughters forehead to its parents... - 
they left surprised Sonia. 

- And the not-violence? - Sonia asked timidly, whom that saw 
their ideas preconceived on the Pacific character of the Indians came down. 

- Gandhi was able to stop great part of the violence with his 
uninformed ones... - Rajiv- responded to him but in the end nor he himself 
could escape to the religious fanaticism. 

Then it told him that to the four years her mother took a day to 
him to visit the Mahatma in house of the Bir it, a well-off family who lent 
lodging and support to him whenever she came to Delhi. Gandhi very was 
depressed by the declarations of Hindu extremists who accused of treason 
to have defended the persecuted Muslims to him, and by all the tension that 
the country supported, although the violence of the partition had stopped 
already. "I cannot continue living in this madness and in this dark", that 
same morning was this Gandhi to him to the photographer Margaret 
Bourke- White. Gandhi, who was like of the family, was very affectionate 
with Rajiv. While the adults chatted and tried to relax the atmosphere with 
some joke, the small Rajiv played with flowers of jazmin that her mother had 
bought to him to the Mahatma. In a photo it was seen how the boy placed 
them around the toes of Gandhi. 

- It stopped to Me with a smooth gesture of his hand - Rajiv- 
counted. "You do not do that", said to me, " only put flowers around the feet 
of deads". 

It continued telling him that that same one behind schedule, while 
it went to the center of the garden for the oration, a man approached 
Gandhi and joining the hands Namaste saluted to him "! ", it said, soon 
fixedly it watched the eyes to him, it removed a Beretta pistol from the 
pocket and it shot three shots point-blank to him. He was a Hindu 
fundamentalist. 



The exhibition showed images of the chaos that followed the 
attack. Perhaps most dramatic it was the photo of Nehru raised in the 
ceiling of a car and calming the population with a megaphone in the hand. 
All wanted to approach to give a last greeting to the "great soul". A 
loudspeaker reproduced the words that Nehru directed to the nation by 
radio in that terrible night: "The light has been extinguished on our lives and 
there are no darknesses more. Our wanted leader, the father of the nation, 
has left us. I have said that the light has been extinguished, but is not 
certain. The light that has shone on this country was not an ordinary light. 
Within thousand years, it will continue shining. The world will see it because 
it will continue giving consolation innumerable hearts." Sonia felt chills when 
listening that voice that seemed to arise from beyond. 

- My grandfathers always were obsessed with maintaining united 
and lay India - Rajiv- explained to him. It said that the nation only could 
survive on those two values... and I believe that it was right. 

Other photos showed Nehru with Gandhi, smiling ones and 
obvious in agreement; other serious ones and differing; to Nehru with 
Chinese, Soviet, American leaders; with scientists like Einstein, writers like 
Thomas Mann and Pearl S. Buck... In the end, Sonia stopped long before 
the photos of the family reunited in Anand Bhawan, looking for seemed. 
Rajiv was finer than its Firoz father; it had the elegance of its mother, 
thought. Motilal patriarch looked itself like his own grandfathers, the father 
of Stefano, with his wide face of strong and square jaw and the equal 
moustache of thick. It did not repair in the text of the photo that spoke of the 
eternal dilemma of the Nehru between having to politician and the personal 
necessity, and that, in that conflict, to always have it had prevailed. 
Although Sonia visibly was altered by everything what finished seeing, could 
not measure the reach of those words nor imagine that someday its 
meaning would persecute it. 



7 

The glad life of enamored in England received a victim: the 
studies of Rajiv in the Trinity College. It suspended all the matters of the 
course. He would never be a scientist. It had already warned its mother that 
the studies were too arduous and of which the results would be 
catastrophic. Indira did not reproach it; to the aim and the end, it also had 
suspended in Oxford, although their circumstances had been very different: 
it had never had a normal escolarizacion, and when younger she was 
always ill. Of between the members of the family, only Nehru had 
demonstrated a genuine academic ability. His Rajiv grandson was neither a 
great student, nor a great reader nor an intellectual like his grandfathers. It 
had always liked the practitioner, the technical questions, to understand 
how a machine works , to try to fix it if he spoils. He was able to mount its 
own loudspeakers to listen to music, or to gut one radio to fix it. It was 
manitas, a quality that had inherited of its father. 

Rajiv had to leave Cambridge and to fall back in the Imperial 
College of London, study more technicians of mechanical engineering. But 
already it had a clear idea of which it wanted. One had paid attention to the 
publicity of the aviation school Wiltshire in Thruxton, one old base of the 
RAF near Southampton reconverted school of pilots. It wanted to take 
advantage of the vacations summer to begin to take classes from flight. To 
become pilot had an advantage added to the one of the pure one to please 
to fly: it was the fastest way to be able to gain the life, indispensable 
requirement to marry with Sonia. Much more fast that a university race. As it 
did not want to ask money to him its mother, it decided that it would work to 
pay to the flight hours and the instructor until pass first. 

In 1966 July , Sonia returned to Italy with the title of Proficiency in 
English of the University of Cambridge under the arm. The mailman 
returned to be the person who more assiduously visited the familiar house 
of Via the Bellinis before the exasperation of the Maino marriage who, in 
spite of having authorized the encounter with Indira, continued being 
against idilio of their daughter with Rajiv. She said openly that a day would 
marry with him. Their parents tried to dissuade it. Stefano proposed to him 
to hope to that he had most of age before making any decision: 

- It is Only a year more - her mother added. A decision thus 
cannot be taken lightly. Soon you could be regreted all the life. 

- While you are under our responsibility - his father continued, I 
cannot allow that you marry with that boy. We are sure that it is a wonderful 
chaval, is not that... but it would be to fail to fulfill with my to have of father if 
it said to you: it advanced, vetoes India, casate with him. You do not 
understand it? Delay a little more. 

It was a reasonable proposal, but the love understands little of 
reasons. To the twenty years, to hope is a torture. Strikes of Post office, so 
frequent Italy, became that year in the greater enemy of Sonia. Rajiv 
continued writing every day, telling the happiness him that felt learning to fly 
on the English countryside. It did in a biplane, a Tiger Moth, a model of 



years thirty, an agile and sensible airplane that provided hours to him of 
intense pleasing. The goal was to fly single, and to obtain it had to 
accumulate a minimum of forty hours with an instructor. That one was the 
indispensable requirement to be examined after civil pilot, and to continue 
scaling steps until being able to be commercial pilot. 

Rajiv had thought to make a trip to Orbassano. It wanted to 
convince the father of Sonia so that it let it travel to India. "I want that you go 
to India - wrote to him and you remain with my mother, without me, so that 
you can see the things as they really are, and in which to you concerns, in 
its worse light because I will not be and you will not have to anybody in that 
to trust. Thus you will know the country and people... I do not want 
arrastrarte to anything without you know everything what it implies. It would 
feel person in charge to me if, later, something leaves bad and you feel 
somehow wounded - in the feelings or another thing. I do not want to have 
to request accounts to him to anybody safe to same me, for that reason I do 
not want to lie nor engaharte." The letter showed a certain moral height and 
Sonia felt affected, although pessimistic as far as the probability that his 
father approved that plan. 

In order to pay for the trip to Italy, Rajiv was forced to obtain 
more money: "I feel much not haberte been able to write before, but I have 
found a job of bricklayer in a work - it said in another one of its letters. I 
have been working up to ten hours to the day, more hour and average of 
displacement, so that when returning to house he was dead. I have so 
many stiffnesses that only I can escribirte very slowly." Affection letters were 
full, of illusion by the future, although the last ones revealed a great fear. 
Rajiv was worried about the news that arrived to him from India. Prime 
minister had died of an attack to the heart while he was of official visit in the 
Soviet Union to sign a treaty of peace with Pakistan, after one short war. 
"India lives a situation convulsa, very bad very... - it wrote to him to Sonia-. I 
have the prefeeling of which much people are going to want that my mother 
is prime minister . I hope that it does not accept, will end up it killing." 

Rajiv was right. The power group that controlled the Party of the 
Congress loved its mother of prime minister: "It knows all the world-wide 
leaders, has crossed the world with its father, is servant next to the heroes 
of the fight by independence, has a rational mind and modern and it is not 
identified with any chaste one, state or religion. But mainly, it can make us 
gain the elections of 1967", wrote a head of the party. There was another 
reason, more powerful still: they wanted it in that position because they 
believed it weak and they thought that he was maleable. The old big shots 
of the party were convinced that they could follow in the positions nails, 
enjoying the privilege to make decisions without the responsibility to take 
them. The best one of worlds. In fact, they did not know Indira Gandhi. To 
its forty and eight years, nor she herself conocla even. 

The eve of its election like female leader of the government, the 
Maxima authority of the second country more populating with the world, 
Indira had written to Rajiv a letter saying that a poem of Robert Frost was 



not able to take off of the head who summarized the crossroads well in 
which he was: "What difficult is not to be king when it is in you and in the 
situation." Also it told him in the letter that to the dawn of that day visited the 
mausoleo of the Mahatma Gandhi to impregnate itself of the memory of that 
had been its second father. Soon it went to Teen Murti House, now national 
museum, and length was had left short while in the room where Nehru had 
died. It needed to feel its presence. One of its letters remembered when it 
was fifteen years old: "I know brave, and the rest will come single." Well, the 
rest had arrived. It was going to cross the threshold of a new existence, a 
life for which at heart always had been preparing itself, although it did not 
admit it consciously. 

After the death of its father, it had dreamed about retiring of the 
world. It played with that idea during a time, until thought about renting a 
pisito in London and looking for a work there of which it was, perhaps of 
secretary in some cultural institution. To flee from itself, that is what looked 
for. But soon the reality reached it, and it could not continue dreaming about 
its own freedom. It had to solve concrete problems. It had remained without 
house and of its father it had inherited its personal objects and their rights of 
author, not much. Nehru had been eating his capital, because its wage of 
prime minister did not reach to him after its expenses of representation, and 
was not of which put the hand in the coffers of the State. It is certain that 
Indira inherited the old mansion of Anand Bhawan in Allahabad, but 
involved so many expenses that to maintain an important load supposed it. 
In addition it had two children studying in England. How to pay for all that? 
Retiring of the world? Account occurred of which it was a chimera, a whim. 
Its life been too much had dominated by the policy like being able to retire 
so young. Every day people came to see it, people of all class and 
condition, since they did it when his father lived. The same multitudes that 
congregated themselves now in Teen Murti House came to see it her. They 
came to greet it, to expose its complaints, that she it listened to them, said 
phrases , showed interest to them by its offenses. They were the poor men 
of always, the poor men of eternal and old India, such poor in name of 
which Gandhi and his father had fought. Indira was not going to leave 
thrown them, had been to insult the memory of Nehru. On the contrary, it 
received them and it listened with attention which they meant to him. They 
were they who really consoled their wounded heart. From them it was 
removing forces to come out ahead, to find a sense to its life. Those poor 
men made realize him of which what she had really inherited it had been the 
power of his father. 

The presence of Nehru also felt it when entering the building of 
the Parliament, in the landscaped Nueva center Delhi, a gigantic red and 
beige circular building of arenaceous with one veranda full of columns. In 
their interior, under a cupola of thirty meters of height, the representatives of 
the town chose it by 355 votes against 169. Its party voted in mass by her. 
In its brief speech, it thanked to them. "I hope not to betray the confidence 
that you have deposited in me." He was radiating, very conscious that its 



appointment with the destiny had arrived. It was going to take possession 
from that "wide extension of India humanity" according to the description of 
Nehru. 

The residence that was assigned to him found in he himself 
Nueva district Delhi that the old mansion palaciega. Number 1 of Safdarjung 
Road was a typical colonial villa with painted walls of target, surrounded by 
a good garden and with four rooms of which it turned two office and one in 
room of reception. It made clear that every day between the eight and the 
nine in the morning the house would be open to all, without concerning the 
position nor estatus social. It was the same schedule that Nehru had 
dedicated to the same task. 

Indira explained to Rajiv the reasons that had impelled it to 
accept the candidacy. In its months to the front of the ministry of 
Information, one had been dragged to face serious a national crisis that did 
not depend on the jurisdiction of their own ministry. The crisis pillo of 
vacations in Kashmir, the gorgeous region of where the Nehru was native. 
Nothing else to arrive, found out that Pakistani troops, disguised civil 
volunteers, had themselves to capture the capital, Srinagar, to foment a 
scrambled Pakistani pro between the population. Indira disobeyed the order 
of prime minister to return immediately to Delhi. Not only it remained in 
Kashmir, but that flew towards the front when the hostilities exploded. "We 
will not give a centimeter from our territory to the aggressor", proclaimed in 
a tour by the cities of the north. The press praised its gesture: "Indira is the 
only man in a government of old", said a holder. The correspondents who 
followed it were astonished to verify how Indira was received everywhere by 
enormous multitudes that shouted their enthusiasm. The Pakistani army 
was defeated. India, and Indira, left victorious, giving rise to the idea that 
later would be appropriated the popular imagination: "India is Indira; Indira is 
India." 

All that happened while to eight thousand kilometers of Rajiv it 
learned there to control his Tiger Moth in the sky of England. « ... If my 
mother does not appear prime minister, everything what we have obtained 
from independence will lose", said to him to Sonia in a letter that seemed to 
contradict to the previous ones. And he is that Rajiv lived to its way the 
conflict on its mother, who was the one of all the family, oscillating between 
having towards the nation, towards the inheritance of its father and 
grandfathers, and the exigencies of the personal life. When Rajiv knew that 
her mother had left chosen prime minister, the letter that arrived to him at 
Sonia distilled the anguish that this new situation created to him: "If 
something happens to him to my mother I will not know what to do. You 
cannot imaginarte much which I depend on her, of its aid in any situation, 
specially with you. You are going it to have much more difficult that I. For 
you, everything will be new and it is the unique one who can of truth 
ayudarte. I do not know what would do if it got to lose it." 

The photo of its mother was in cover of the world-wide press. In a 
kiosk of Thruxton, the town near the air base, Rajiv bought a unit of the The 



newspaper Guardian: "No other woman in history has assumed similar 
responsibility and no country of the importance of India has given the power 
to a woman in democratic conditions", said the text. The photo of its mother 
also occupied the cover of the Time magazine: "The India shaken into the 
hands of a woman", said the holder. Although it protested that he was not 
feminista, the entire world had curiosity to know how a woman with little 
experience in administrative subjects was going to face the immensity of the 
problems that waited for it. As immense as the nation that had to govern, 
composed by a mosaic complex of towns that shared races, religions, 
languages and cultures of an enormous diversity. A country of Hindu 
majority, but with more than one hundred million Muslims who turned it the 
second Muslim country of the planet. Without counting the ten million 
Christians, seven million of sijs, two hundred thousand parsis and thirty and 
five thousand Jews whose ancestors had fled from Babylonia after the 
destruction of the temple of Salomon. A territory where 4,635 different 
communities coexisted, everyone dragging its own traditions, and as old 
languages as diverse, as urdu of the Muslims, that were written of right to 
left, or hindi, that was written of left to right like the Latin alphabet, or the 
tamil that was ***reflxed mng sometimes from top to bottom, or other 
alphabets that were deciphered like hieroglyphics. In this Babel forty and 
five official dialectos and seventeen languages were used eight hundred. 
But English, the language of the colonizadores, continued being the 
common language after the imposition of hindi was rejected by the states of 
the south. A country that dragged hirientes inequalities, with an affluent 
corruption inlaid in all the levels of the society and a paralyzing 
bureaucracy. A country known by its high spiritual conquests and 
simultaneously by their ominous indicators of material well-being, a country 
where the man was more fertile than the Earth than worked, a country 
constantly whipped by natural calamities, and nevertheless devotee of three 
hundred thirty million divinities. Perhaps the greater profit of that nation 
forged by Nehru and Gandhi is that it continued being free in spite of the 
rosary of curses and overwhelming inherited problems of the British 
colonizadores. In spite of which an English general at the moment of 
independence had prophesied: "Nobody can forge a nation of a continent of 
so many nations." 

But that continent country that her mother had to govern was 
worse of which there was been never under Nehru or his successor. 
Several years of droughts had caused food shortage and triggered 
hambrunas pertinaces. The state of Kerala was shaken by violent 
disturbances related to the food distribution. The economy was victim of a 
galloping inflation. The region of Punjab was anxious because a state of 
exclusive punjabi speech protested; a leader sij threatened immolating itself 
if its request were not taken care of. The Naga town of the northeast fought 
by the secession. Like colofon, santones Hindu was pronounced naked, 
with the body covered with ash, in front of the Parliament, in the own noses 
of Indira, to demand the prohibition to kill cows in all the territory. A claim 



that went against the aconfesional Constitution of the India, that commited 
itself to respect the rights and the equality of all the religions. In a so poor 
country, the cow meat was an essential protein source for the minorities like 
the Muslims or the Christians. The protests degenerated and had died when 
the police shot against the agitators. "I am not going to let to me intimidate 
by the rescuers of cows", declared challenging Indira. Decidedly, India did 
not look itself like any other country. In 1966 it was a gigantic pot to 
pressure on the verge of exploding, as if independence had given foot to 
the outbreak of million small rebellions, fruit of centuries and centuries of 
operation of minorities by others, of chaste ones by others, of ethnic groups 
by others... Gerifaltes of the Congress had not made to Indira any gift when 
aupar it to the top. 

For Indira there was a clear priority, the same one that their 
father or Gandhi had identified: to end hambrunas, to avoid the death of 
poorest. If for it it were necessary to ask for aid to the international 
organisms and to the richest countries, it would be necessary to swallow the 
pride and to put the hand. Twenty years after independence, India, very to 
its grief, little reached enviable estatus of international pauper. Indira was 
ashamed to have to request, but it knew that another option did not exist. 
Nevertheless, she was determined to not suplicar anything: "The more weak 
it is our position, the more strong we must seem." 

It accepted immediately the invitation of president Johnson to 
Washington and meticulously prepared the trip, on whose result the life of 
million compatriots would depend , and perhaps its political future. It 
elaborated its speeches puntillosamente and it corrected them consulting its 
booklet of appointments, that always accompanied it. It looked for simple 
ideas and it fled from the complicated concepts. It chose its clothes with he 
himself care with which it prepared its speeches: sari, a bodice, a chal and 
shoes for each reception. In order to crown it everything, it wanted to go 
accompanied of its two children. Rajiv had to interrupt its classes of flight 
and to travel to Paris to meet with its mother. There, after the general Of 
Gaulle offered a lunch in his honor, they embarked in a Boeing 707 that the 
White House had made its available. When they asked to him Of Gaulle 
what it had seemed him Indira, the old statesman said: "Those so fragile 
shoulders on which the gigantic destiny of India rests... it does not seem 
that they shrink of as much weight. That woman has something inside, and 
she will obtain it." 

In Washington, B. K. Nehru, cousin of Indira and ambassador in 
the United States, received a telephone call to one hour early. It was of 
president Lyndon B. Johnson, a native giant of Texas: 

- I finish reading in The New York Times that to Indira it does not 
like that they call "Lady prime minister"... How I must direct me to her? 

- Dejeme to consult it, president. I return to him to call as soon as 
it has pertinent instructions. 

Immediately afterwards, one hurried to the suite of Indira. 



- That calls to me as it wants... - she said, and before his cousin 
had left, she added. Also you can say to him that some of my ministers call 
"Sir to me". If it desires to him, can call to me thus. 

President Johnson succumbed to the enchantments of Indira. It 
unblocked the North American aid, that had been interrupted as a result of 
the fast war with Pakistan, and located to the World Bank to lend money to 
India. The only point of discord during the visit was when Johnson wanted 
to remove it to dance after the official banquet. Indira refused, did not want 
nor to think about the reaction of the India press before a photo of the 
"socialist daughter of Nehru dancing - enjoyada with the foreign president". 
He explained Johnson to him who could make it very unpopular, and he 
understood it. "I do not want that nothing bad happens to him to this girl", it 
said to its head of cabinet with its strong tejano accent that made him 
permanently seem catched a cold, before promising to Indira three million 
tons of foods and nine million dollars of immediate aid. That trip was the first 
great success of flaming prime minister, although it confessed to one of its 
men of confidence: "I hope to never be more in a similar situation." 

Sonia lived all this from the distance, with certain apprehension 
because they were spectacular changes, and very pub bid. The Italian 
means widely disclosed the news of the access of Indira Gandhi to the 
power, and the Maino marriage could see in its television set, from the hall 
Via Bellini the face of the mother of the pretendiente of its daughter yet 
luxury of details. But the fact that she was now prime minister did not seem 
to moderate to them. On the contrary, Stefano saw the ears him the wolf. 
For him, that increased the risk, made the company still more preposterous. 
Everything what surrounded to that lady was in danger, knew it very clearly. 
Had not killed the own Gandhi? Those countries were too unpredictable... 
Paola, nevertheless, could not disguise a certain satisfaction. Her daughter 
had not fallen in love with a anyone. Somehow, Sonia had cleared to them 
slides of paesani, them "had ennoblecido", although for that reason she was 
not arranged to that that history of love prospered. She either did not want 
to lose it. 

Rajiv returned satisfied from its trip to the United States, although 
he was too short and too much it was saturated of official acts as to enjoy it 
since it had liked. From boy, the policy always had meant the same for him: 
interminable sessions of photos with its mother, to have to listen to during 
long suppers boring conversations, to be always very educated, to wear 
necktie, to say yes to everything, etc. More and more it was convinced that 
his trajin was a life moved away of all that, a discreet and calm existence 
next to the woman who cleared the dream to him. Also it wanted to flee from 
itself, its roots, the weight of the familiar tradition that, intuited, could a day 
squash it. It secretly trusted that the destiny that their last names never 
marked would reach to him. 

In October of 1966, it asked the lent car its brother to go to see 
Sonia; old Volkswagen had deteriorated so much that had sold it by four 
pounds. In addition the car to Sanjay was more appropriate for a so long 



trip. It was an old Jaguar, a model that his brother had acquired thanks to 
his contacts in the Rolls- Royce to an exceptional price because he did not 
work. Sanjay had patiently fixed it until obtaining that it started again. On the 
contrary that his brother, to Rajiv it did not like to be conceited, and to enter 
with that car in Orbassano gave him on the other hand until shame but it 
thought that more it was worth to appear thus, like somebody well-to-do and 
not like a mochilero. Of that it stews would have more possibilities favorably 
of impressing the parents of Sonia. 

It was expectant before her arrival; it had been months without 
seeing it and the delay became eternal. Their sisters and friends also were 
nervous. Not every day an Indian prince ready arrived at that city dormitory 
of the suburbs of Turin to take to his cenicienta... The curiosity was 
enormous, including the one of its parents, whom they had invited to him to 
have supper that same day, although all did like if nothing. 

The arrival of Rajiv in its Jaguar was an authentic commotion in 
the vecindario. Who would be that English rich one that came to see the 
Maino daughter? , they were asked between murmurs. The disagreement 
was still greater because its aspect not cuadraba with its automobile. "It 
seems siciliano", joked a companion of Sonia. "With that cochazo, could be 
terrone of camorra", commented another one. Rajiv arrived untidy and with 
beard of several days because it had slept in the car to save hotel rooms. 
Sonia did not know if it were the fatigue or the perspective of the supper, or 
the recent events that were catapult to their mother to the international 
scene, but noticed worried to him when finally it could embrace it, in a 
dreary street about Orbassano where they had mentioned the morning of 
his arrival. 

- I am going to have to return to India - it confessed to him as 
soon as the passion of the encounter had calmed . 

- Then... you pilot license? 

- Me I will remove it there. Of all ways, I do not have money to 
remove it to me in England. What it worries to me about all this is to be so 
far from you. 

There was another reason, and it is that her mother had 
requested to him who returned. 

- She is very single. It has enormous problems - it confessed 
Sonia to him. 

It explained to him that nothing else to return from the United 
States, the opposition attacked it with viciousness, accusing it to have fallen 
under the influence of the Americans and to leave the policy of not- 
alignment of its father... But not only the opposition, but those that had 
chosen it for the position of prime minister, the heads of its own party also. 
They were in favor annoying of the way in which Indira faced the problems, 
directly, skipping the hierarchy of the party, as in the case of the Pakistani 
skirmish. An old colleague of Nehru had sent one not as much lasts diatriba 
against Indira in the Parliament questioning the aid as the conditions that 
the Americans had imposed to give it. Among them she was the one to 



devaluate rupia, a very unpopular measurement that Indira took in spite of 
having against to all the country, demonstrating so it was not an imitation of 
its father, who was able to administer a bitter medicine to the nation if really 
believed in it, and that to not had nothing him to nobody. But the result is 
that it was in his lower point, while the predictions on the future of India 
were made more and more shady. The idea that prevailed the personality 
and the example of Nehru they had solely been able to maintain the united 
and democratic India, but that now, with the successive droughts, the 
innumerable and small ethnic rebellions, the tension with Pakistan and the 
leadership of Indira, the country was on the brink of madness the 
disintegration. 

- And they blame my mother for that reason - Rajiv- said. As if 
outside she responsible for which there has been three years of droughts 
and people dies of hunger... The case is that I have the impression that I 
am leaving it and I do not like. 

To listen Rajiv to speak of its mother represented for Sonia its 
peculiar initiation the India policy. He was not conscious of it, but it made 
contact with enemy with concepts and very distant and incomprehensible 
ideas that always were similarity to him, and that soon would become 
something as familiar as in their house was to comment the results of the 
Juventus or the footbridge of the fashion of Milan. Account began to occur 
on which it was not possible to be lived near anybody like the mother of 
Rajiv without it affected to the life of all those that surrounded it, she 
including. But he was still something too cloudy and distant like altering it. 
Each battle to its time. The one of now it was to overcome the resistance of 
its parents. 

Sonia accompanied to Rajiv house by a friend who offered itself 
to lodge it, and soon he showed its town to him. They took individual 
capuccini in the bar as a child, they walked by the streets of the center, and 
they stopped in the bar of Pier Luigi. Aside from taking its establishment, 
Pier Luigi was a radio ham in its free hours, hobby to which Rajiv also 
wanted to dedicate itself. It had discovered it in its studies of flight and, 
aside from the attraction by the magic of the electronics, also it saw in it a 
way to communicate with Sonia from the distance. The desperation to be a 
day so far from her made him dream about any possibility of overwhelming 
that emptiness. 

Sonia left him so that she could rest and was in gathering at night 
to take it to him to have supper to house of his parents. Meanwhile, it would 
go to the annual appointment of old students in its school of Giavena. 
"Memory that day as if outside yesterday", Negri would say to the Giovanna 
sister. Sonia was twenty years old. After the meeting of old students of the 
school, Sonia announced that she left. 

- So that you do not remain to have supper with us? - I said to 
him. You have been long time in England and we have almost not seen 
you. 



- I cannot remain - Sonia- responded. I have a guest who comes 
to have supper tonight to house. 

- And who is...? - sister Giovanna asked guasona. 

Sonia smiled, letting see the hoyuelos of his cheeks. In the end, it 
loosen it: 

- My fiance. 

- Your fiance? Vaya surprise! Cuentame... Who is? 

Sonia was obstinate to respond, which still more urged on the 
curiosity of the nun. 

- He is Indian... - it said with reluctance. 

- Indian? - it repeated astonished. 

Sonia put a finger in the lips, so that she lowered the voice. 
Soon it said to him, almost as a sigh: 

- He is son of Indira Gandhi. 

"I remained pasmada", would remember the sister later Negri 
years. 

That supper was a little the Italian version of the famous film that 
would carry out Katharine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier. That was not fiction 
and did not only have final happy, although the reactions of Stefano Maino 
and Spencer Tracy were similar. Rajiv spoke of its studies. The title finished 
removing from deprived pilot, and thought that in year and means it would 
obtain the one of commercial pilot. It wanted to be placed as rapidly as 
possible. It was a powerful right for it: 

- I have come with a very serious intention - it said to him to 
Stefano Maino-. I have come to say to him that I want to marry with its 
daughter. 

Sonia did not know where to put because she was called on to 
him to translate. Her mother, nervous, began to place drinks upon the small 
table of tresillo. The hands shook to him. The patriarch stayed warm, but 
she signs: 

- The smaller doubt of its sincerity and its honesty does not fit to 
me - it responded to him, watching Sonia to request to him that it continued 
translating. It is not necessary more to watch the eyes to see to him how it 
is. I do not doubt you. All my doubts have to do with my daughter. He is too 
young to know what wants... - Sonia watched the ceiling, exasperated. I do 
not believe frankly that it can get used to living in India. They are too 
different customs. 

There Rajiv suggested Sonia went to spend short vacations. It 
explained its idea to him that first she was single, before it arrived, so that 
thus he could judge in case same. But Stefano was against categorically. 

- Until which it does not fulfill most of age, I cannot let march it. 

It was a hard bone to nibble, Sonia knew it but it could not allow 
that the atmosphere of the meeting was degraded. The silencios of their 
father could be cut with a knife. That man was a rock, and he only made a 
minimum concession: 



- If for then you continue feeling the one the same towards the 
other, I will let it go to India, but that will be within a year, when he is of legal 
age - said before turning itself towards its woman and adding: If the subject 
leaves bad, it will not be able to reproach to me that it has contributed to 
annoy the life to him. 

But Stefano continued believing, and hoping of all heart, that the 
waters would return to their channel and that Sonia, before the difficulties 
that would be finding, would finish throwing the towel. It tormented the idea 
to him to separate of its daughter. 



8 

When Rajiv told to its mother its encounter him with the Maino in 
Orbassano, Indira was in agreement with the condition that the Italian 
patriarch had imposed. To test the feelings of the young ones was the only 
way to know if that history had future. It was necessary to gain time; at 
heart, she also had preferred who Rajiv did not choose a foreigner. But the 
time demonstrated that both were wanted, Indira did not think to be against 
to the decision of its son. It had undergone too much with the rejection of its 
own father to its wedding like inflicting the same to no of its piston rods. 

" The marriage is not it everything. The life is something much 
more great", was this Nehru to him when it had been going to see it the jail 
of Dehra Dun to say to him that she wanted to marry with Firoz. Nehru 
advised to him that she recovered forces before making any decision. He 
had been very ill and his father remembered to him that the doctors had 
advised against to him to have children. In addition, the desire of Indira 
seemed to him a triroad, because it meant to throw overboard "the 
inheritance and the familiar tradition" to marry with a man of surroundings 
and an education very different from his. Indira did not agree, at least at that 
moment. It said that it wanted an anonymous life to him and it frees of 
tensions, which never had had. It wanted to marry and to have children. 
More than one, it stressed, because it did not want that his son underwent 
the solitude that she had known. It wanted to take care of them and their 
husband in a full house of books, music and friends. If to reach that dream, 
it had to defy the doctors and until its own health, it were arranged to do it. 

Firoz was son of parsi call Jehangir Ghandy, whose official 
biography attributes to him to be naval engineer but other sources assure 
that he was a licor salesman, although without relation some with Gandhi. 
At the end of the Thirties, it changed the spelling of its name by the one of 
Gandhi, the last name of a chaste one of perfumistas, a current last name in 
chaste the Bania of the Hindus of Gujarat, of where the Mahatma was 
native. It has not been registered the reason of that small change that 
finished being of inestimable value for the future political race of its woman. 

Follower of Zarathustra, the religion parsi is one of oldest of the 
humanity, but Firoz never was religious, on the contrary. It had made 
contact with enemy with the Nehru as a result of the movement of fight 
against the English that took it to become member of the Party of the 
Congress. Very active and very radical militant, knew texts Marx and Engels 
better than the own Nehru. Together they had participated in France in a 
meeting of protest by the bombings against the civil populaces in the war of 
Spain. Firoz had tried to convince the anti-communist organizers of the act 
who let speak to the Pasionaria, but he did not obtain it. Nehru, furious, did 
a speech ignited, defending ardent the right to the freedom of expression. 

Nehru did not question to Firoz like militant, but she thought that 
he was badly started off for its daughter. Both men were opposed in 
everything. Firoz was short and square, a little fanfarron, spoke in very high 
voice and used palabrotas by piece. Neither he was refined nor she was an 



intellectual. It liked the good table and the alcohol and interested the 
electrical and mechanical cars and gadgets, passions to him that Rajiv and 
Sanjay would inherit. She had been a terrible student, although it liked 
classic music India and the flowers, like a Indira. But without university title 
neither perspective profession nor to gain the life, with a solid reputation of 
mujeriego, was logical that the Nehru saw that gift nobody that she tried to 
enter the first family of India with great distrust. 

- You are servant in Anand Bhawan surrounded by luxury and 
servants - her grandmother said to him to Indira in an attempt by 
presionarla-. Firoz lacks fortune, is of another atmosphere and another 
religion. 

- It does not concern the religion to us because neither we are 
religious - Indira- responded to him. I am austere like my mother, and 
although I have lived in Anand Bhawan, I can be equal of happy in the hut 
of a farmer. 

More or less the same Sonia said to him to his parents when 
these evoked the difficulty to live so far, in a so different country. For Sonia, 
India was an abstraction. It did not scare to him minimum, in spite of 
everything what it had heard. If Rajiv had been a esquimal, it had given him 
equal to follow to him the North Pole. "When you are enamored - the love 
wrote gives a very powerful force you. Navy of that force, nothing gives fear 
you. You only love the person who masters. It only wanted to Rajiv. It had 
gone to the aim of the world with him. It was my greater security. It could not 
think about anything or about anybody, only in him" 

If Nehru finished giving his consent to the wedding of Indira with 
Firoz, Indira acceded to the request of its son when this one requested to 
him that it wrote to the father of Sonia so that let it go to India. A year had 
passed, the term that Stefano Maino had imposed, and the passion of the 
young people did not show signs to cool off. Neither Sonia nor Rajiv were 
arranged to live the one without the other; the separation became too 
painful. Indira understood that the thing went in serious. In fact it had 
preferred to follow the route traditional, to choose a daughter of good family 
of Kashmir to marry it with its son, so and as it sends the tradition, so and 
as his Motilal grandfathers choosing to Kamala did, his mother. The 
"arranged marriages" were the common thing, and love marriages, the 
weddings by love, the exceptions. First they used to work better; the rate of 
divorces between this type of unions is amazingly low because the parents 
look for candidates for their compatible social and cultural means sprouts, 
the one that of in case it constitutes an advantage at the time of the 
coexistence. The seconds were a lottery. Indira had not had luck. Perhaps 
Rajiv had it, although it dragged handicap of which her fiancee was foreign. 
In the traditional society, the foreigners not even deserved a place in the 
roster, were considered "without chaste". Nueva Delhi was not deep India, 
but thus Indira was even perfectly conscious of the difficult thing that it could 
turn out to him to a western girl to adapt to the life in his country, although 



she was arranged to make to it it most pleasant possible because the girl it 
had liked. 

The letter of Indira Gandhi inviting to Sonia to spend vacations to 
Nueva Delhi was a misfortune for Stefano Maino, but he was a word man 
and it did not have more remedy than to fulfill its commitment. They 
discussed it in family and since there were no escape, they were left in 
which Sonia would go to India, but a month only, and later it would return to 
house definitively convinced that it could not never live there, thought its 
parents. Here not only it had to his, but also a future. It had been working all 
the year in Fieratorino, and they left every time more opportunities to him to 
gain the life with the languages that had learned. If it did not like Orbassano 
because it seemed to him small and suburbial, it could always go away to 
live to Turin. Their parents still dreamed that some businessman would 
know it in one those fairs and would end up marrying with her. Sonia did as 
if she listened to all those suggestions with attention, but its mind was 
already very far, to eight thousand kilometers of distance. 

The 13 of January of 1968, exactly thirty and four days after to 
have fulfilled the majority of age, Sonia landed in the airport Palam de 
Nueva Delhi. It had a knot in the stomach. Their parents and sisters had 
been going to dismiss it the airport of Milan and not even the duro of 
Stefano had been able to contain the tears. 

- If you do not like, you become immediately, eh? - it had said to 
him while her mother still put in the handbag more medicines to him, as if 
she went to the forest. 

Sonia did not sleep during the flight. Now which one faced single 
his destiny, a species of anguish entered to him. The illusion to see Rajiv 
was transformed into a vague fear. They had been a year without seeing 
itself. And if it disappoints to me? Or I disappoint him to him? And if in its 
own atmosphere one behaves of another way? If he is not the same one 
that the one that I believe that it is? They were inevitable questions, the right 
reaction of which had bet hard to a letter. Now it was called on to put the 
letter mouth arrives. 

From the air, the interlace of avenues and Nueva roundhouses 
Delhi suggested the geometric marble figures in star form that decorated 
the palaces mogoles. The airplane landed in the morning. The climate could 
not be more different from the cold winter that had left back. It made a 
temperature exquisite, the sky was blue, and nothing else to leave the 
airplane its sense of smell was impregnated of a very characteristic scent, 
that later it would identify with the scent of India: a mixture of scent to 
burned wood and honey, ash and last fruit, and a sound, the quack of 
cornejas, those crows always present, dresses of gray or black, clucking, 
insolent people, relatives, who gave the welcome him from the railing of the 
lobby of arrivals, from posts and the edges of the windows. There it was 
waiting for Rajiv to it: "Nothing else to see it - Sonia- would count invaded a 
deep sensation to me of lightening." Also they were its Sanjay brother and a 
called friend Amitabh, son of a marriage, the Bachchan, that the Nehru 



knew long time ago. The father was a famous poet in hindi and delegated 
parliamentary and Indira him he had requested the favor to lodge Sonia 
while its visit lasted. 

The fears that had felt during the flight disappeared suddenly, as 
if they had never existed. On the contrary, now it had the certainty that it 
had done well in following the dictation of its heart in spite of the difficulties. 
"It was of new to its side and nothing or nobody it would separate to us 
again", wrote Sonia remembering its arrival. 

Nueva Delhi was not India so and as it had imagined, at least the 
part where it lived, with its wide bordered avenues of great always green 
trees, many of them in flower. The house of the Bachchan was in Willingdon 
Crescent, the avenue of the banianos. The English city planners who made 
of Nueva Delhi an pleasant city garden wanted that each avenue had its 
own species. Janpath, the old Queen's Way, was the one of nims, those 
sacred trees known by its medicinal properties; Akbar Road the one of the 
tamarinds; and in Safdarjung Road, where was the residence of Indira 
Gandhi, there was profusion of flamboyanes with a green foliage and 
shining cultivated field of orange flowers. The little rolled traffic was made 
up of cyclists, cars thrown by donkeys or camels, carricoches with the 
ceiling anlarillo, petardeantes , old motorcycles Ambassador, retort of the 
Morris Oxford III of 1956 that made under license in Bengal, all drawing for 
the cows that stood out to their wide ones in the middle of the road. It was 
not rare to run into with a car of oxen and until with some elephant that 
transported merchandise, lengthy in a traffic light. It was a calm city of three 
million inhabitants, without department store nor commercial centers, with a 
single hotel of luxury in the heart of the diplomatic district. 

Sonia was received with all the calidez that could be expected of 
a family India, although Rajiv could not take care of it since it had wanted 
because the 25 of January were going to be examined of commercial pilot 
and had to continue accumulating flight hours and to study. But their 
cousins and friends, and until Indira Gandhi, turned upside down so that its 
stay was most pleasant possible. Although it slept in house of the 
Bachchan, in the morning passed great part in house of its fiance'. At that 
time, prime minister lived without hardly safety measures. It received to 
people all the mornings to the doors of its house with the simple presence of 
a guard. Their children either did not have escort, except in certain 
considered events dangerous. 

Friends and relatives alternated themselves to teach to Sonia the 
city, flood of parks and gardens, old monuments and magnificent buildings 
that had been raised by the English when in 1912 they had decided to 
change the capital of Calcuta to Delhi. They drew up a new city in which 
they planted thousands of trees. From immemorial times, the vegetation 
had been the obsession of the governors of Delhi. Some gardens decorated 
mausoleos and tombs with the idea that the deads felt peacefully happy 
and, others had been conceived like acts of charity for the town, and others 
had made them the kings for use and enjoys own. To Rajiv it specially liked 



to take a walk by the gardens of Lodh to the dusk, with its pools and their 
rows of gigantic palms that surround the tomb by Mohamlned Shah, a 
precious monument of style indomogol that conserved rest of the turquesa 
tiled one and of the original handwriting that ornamented it. It was a popular 
place where the enamored pairs of could enjoy a little while tranquillity and 
certain privacy. In his moto Lambretta also showed the spectacular Nueva 
imperial Delhi, and views to him that the British architects had conceived to 
impress and to intimidate the local population. The one that Sonia admired 
from the arc of triumph of the Door of India, where an eternal flame in 
memory burns with the Indian soldiers died in the two world wars, was 
huge. Like it was it the imposing building of South Block, mixture of 
neoclassic style mogol and where, across of the facade decorated with bas- 
relief of flowers of loto and elephants, was the office of Indira Gandhi, and 
on all the Palace of the Presidency of the Republic, once the palace of the 
British virrey, an elegant building of arenaceous red beige and crowned by a 
vast cupola of copper, exquisite proportions and considered by many like 
one of the most beautiful buildings of century xx. 

And where was the India of which they had spoken to him? , 
Sonia asked itself. The India that terrified its parents? Other India? It was 
not necessary to move much. It was enough to follow the wide Rajpath 
avenue, the old King's Way, and to arrive at the Old Delhi. That was another 
world. Around the Red Fort, another spectacular monument constructed by 
emperor Shah Jehan, he himself who had raised the Taj Mahal in honor to 
his woman, moved a colorful and noisy crowd who seemed to be 
participating in a gigantic carnival of juggler, snake charmers, fortune teller, 
musician, tragadores of sabers and faquires that transferred their cheeks 
with daggers. This one was the eternal India, same that invaded the side 
streets around the Great Mosque, with its full positions of fabric clothes of 
colors, its salesmen of fruit, candies, lanterns, bitumen and batteries, his 
limpiabotas, its peluqueros in the middle of the street, its dark factories in 
which young they braided carpets and others made precision instruments... 
A life explosion, an exotic and bullanguero chaos that left ebria of colors, 
noises and scents it. And everywhere, behind a street, the bottom of a 
garden, one old tomb or cenotaph, a Muslim or Hindu monument that went 
back to the night of the times, like a reminder of the old thing could be seen 
that is India. Had not described to Nehru its country like "an old palimpsesto 
in which layers on thought layers and ensohacion have been recorded, 
without no has been able to erase or to hide previously what it had been 
registered"? 

And soon the spectacle of the poverty, that saw sitting in the 
back part of moto when they circulated around certain districts: naked 
children running by the streets, old making tintinear his escudillas, people 
who washed and made her necessities in the sidewalks. To Sonia a little to 
the poor men of their native Lusiana when she was young, in the Fifties 
remembered to him, those naked children in winter, those families who 
passed hunger and that her mother as much felt sorry, those tullidos in the 



seats, old soldiers who had returned hurt from the Russian front... But what 
never it had seen they were deformities like which they exhibited some 
Nueva lepers Delhi which they watched to the cars that stopped in the traffic 
lights. The India of 1968 had so many lepers as inhabitants had Portugal, 
so many paupers as to populate a country like Holland, eleven million of 
santones, ten million smaller children of fifteen years married or widowers. 
Forty thousand children were born every day, a fifth part of which died 
before turning the five years. Even so, they were numbers better than when 
independence, twenty years before. The improvement, although weighs, of 
the sanitary conditions it was creating a still greater problem, and is than the 
reproductive age of the Indians was extended. As a result of it, the 
explosion of the natality was becoming the greater problem of the country 
because literally "the economic development ate". Every year, the 
population of India increased in an equal number to the population of whole 
Spain. 

For Sonia, everything to his around was new strange v: the 
colors, the flavors, the people. "But rarest of everything they were the eyes 
of people, that glance of curiosity that followed to me throughout." Sonia 
was beginning in the world of India, discovering peculiar and the inquisitive 
thing that they could be his inhabitants, especially in those days when she 
did not have practically tourist. If a foreigner already of in case it called the 
attention, a woman still more, and if she were handsome and it dressed in 
miniskirt, that was the fashion in Europe that year, then one became an 
immediate pole of attraction. Or in opprobrium object. Sonia had to learn to 
control his gestures, their movements and their way to dress, but it was not 
always easy: "The absolute lack of privacy, the obligation to repress and of 
not giving loose rein to me to my feelings were a exasperante experience." 
The public samples of affection were bad views, not only in the street but 
also in the daily life. It could not give a kiss to Rajiv if there were somebody 
ahead, not even to go of the hand with him without it was scandalous. It 
discovered that India was the most modest country of the world, inheritance 
of Victorian England. Soon there were difficult things for an Italian: the food, 
for example. Sonia was not accustomed to the sharp one, seemed to him 
that she annulled the flavor of foods. Neither to so strong sauces nor to the 
bittersweet plate flavors certain. Or the custom of the social suppers, where 
it was spoken and much drank awhile during interminable, was had supper 
suddenly and soon the tablecloth did not exist, all went away in five 
minutes. 

It did not take in realizing of which the glances that so very 
insistently settled on her not had only to that she was foreign, or a rare tiny 
beast, or a very handsome girl. It was Vista like a new member of a family 
who during years had lived facing the public. Everything what they did and 
they said, or on the contrary, which let do or say, was meticulously 
escudrihado, analyzed and judged. How can be lived thus? , it was asked 
overwhelmed. 



But, even though of everything, Sonia it was not seen of return in 
Italy. This was a very different world, and was left much way to cross, to 
explore much. Of the hand of Rajiv, it was a fascinating day's work in spite 
of the stumbling blocks. In addition it was surrounded by the affection of the 
others. Sanjay treated like a a sister, between protector and amused to see 
adapt it. Amitabh and its family also. One felt wrapped and dear. For both, 
the idea to separate was simply inconceivable again. So that to waste more 
time, so that to return to Italy and to hope again, like another agony, to meet 
here or there? Rajiv could not consider to go to live to Europe, thought to 
enter in Indian Airlines as soon as it had removed "deals". Soon they could 
go away to live to an apartment. Here in Delhi it had it easier; the life in 
common was within reach. Sonia was the one who had to take the step, that 
had to risk because it had to back leave to his country and its family by an 
indefinite time. It had come to know India and its customs, but it did not 
need to know more because, at heart, before embarking in that airplane 
already it had made the decision to be faithful to its own heart. Although that 
meant to do something that went very against itself. The face of its father 
did not want nor to imagine when it said to him that it did not return, who 
married. 

Indira was surprised when it knew that Sonia was arranged to 
remain, that they wanted to marry already. Exactly three years ago they had 
been known in Cambridge. They had fulfilled all the terms, they had done 
everything what there were saying to them, and now arrived the moment for 
making the decision. Indira was conscious that the arrival of Sonia had 
supposed a small revolution in the social Nueva world Delhi, although 
neither Sonia nor Rajiv had looked for it, on the contrary. Its mere presence, 
for being the fiancee of whom was and because it was the first time that a 
Nehru was going to marry with a foreigner of another continent, had given 
foot to all class of conjectures. Although it was the capital of a country of 
seven hundred million inhabitants, the society was small, conventional, and 
all the excellent families knew themselves among them. In their mentideros, 
the elogiosos commentaries were the majority - what handsome is! -. But 
others alluded to their lack of "pedigrf" - he is not nobody or, worse, "it is of 
chaste loss" -; others to its way to dress - "it wants to call the attention" -; 
others to its mere presence - " what will see that boy in her? " -; others to a 
feeling of nationalistic ultraje - " is that it has not been able to find a girl 
better here". Without eating it nor drinking it, one had put against to very 
many handsome girls of the good society and their mothers, who saw how a 
foreigner, and above one intrusa, took to one of the unmarried ones of gold 
of the country. 

"After one week - Usha Bhagat, the secretary of Indira- would 
say, Mrs. Gandhi occurred to account of that both went very in serious and 
which she would not don't mention it serve to wait for more. The fact that 
they were leaving by Nueva Delhi fomented the cotilleo and the best way to 
cut it was to leave them that they married." But when Rajiv suggested its 
mother to him which they would be changed to an own floor as soon as it 



had work, Indira imposed its only condition to him: "A thing is to marry 
outside your community. But to live aside is totally in opposition to the India 
tradition of the united family. They would label to us as western, would 
accuse to us to leave all our traditions." If Rajiv had been European or 
western, probably it had disobeyed its mother and it had been going away 
to live with its woman. But he was Indian, and in India, the children accept 
the tradition. Mainly when there is to give example. The solution to the 
conflict in which it was happened because Sonia accepted a condition that 
most of western women had considered inadmissible. But to Sonia it was 
called on to him to adapt to India, it could not the other way around be, and 
in India the marriage is a familiar subject, than more individual, where the 
harmony between its members is valued more than the individual 
fascination. That meant to happen to comprise of the family of the husband. 
It would have to live in the familiar house, to the Indian style, sharing he 
himself ceiling with the mother-in-law, the brother and the family of the 
brother if this one married someday. All in number 1 of Safdarjung Road. 
Sonia accepted because she was blind of love. In addition, to live in family 
was not something that scared an Italian that its childhood in a town had 
lived where the Maino was a clan. Also one was convinced that being single 
would not be more protecting and that would allow him to adapt better. 
Everything it saw the positive side him: she is one of the advantages of the 
love, that acts like a drug. 

They decided to fix the date of the 25 of February for the 
wedding. Everything very fast, but was worth more thus. Indira wanted to 
avoid that the wedding of its son became a national subject, since it had 
happened with hers. To Sonia and Rajiv it told them how it had been put to 
all the country against, as if each one of the inhabitants of the nation had 
felt with right to think. Thousands of letters and telegrams had flooded 
Anand Bhawan, offensive ones, the majority hostile, some of congratulation. 
There was an explanation, and it is that Firoz and Indira had transgressed 
two deeply taken root traditions: neither they had been put under a union 
arranged by the families, nor married "within its faith". This last one had 
infuriated to Hindu the orthodox ones. And now history was repeated. As if 
the children also inherited of their parents not only the physical 
characteristics and the abilities but their vital conflicts, their contradictions 
and their situations. 

"Loved parents - Sonia- wrote to them. I am very happy. I send 
this letter to you for anunciaros that Rajiv and I married. I wait for to all here 
the 25 to you of February... " Sonia did not suspect that when arriving its 
letter, the news of the announcement of its wedding already had been 
spread by mass media of the entire world. A journalist of the newspaper 
turines the Stampa went to visit the family to number 14 of Via Bellini. "The 
parents and the sisters live moments on extreme tension - he wrote. The 
telephone does not stop of sounding, journalists and photographers make 
tail in front of the door. The father, of fifty and three years, is man of few 
words: "All the life working to assure the future my daughters... of the best 



wedding to speak when it has happened, or better would be not to have to 
never speak of it " - it declared in a tone that lets intuit that it is hurt. Her 
woman, Paola, of forty and five years, is not able to retain the tears. "It 
terrifies the idea to Me that my daughter is going away to live to a so distant 
place ", declared. Asked for the fiance, they added: "He is a calm, educated 
and serious boy", and to the question of if they would go to the celebration, 
the father responded: "I am afraid that the desire of Sonia could not be 
made. My woman will only go, I have too much I work and I cannot waste 
time. I will be with my daughter in the thought. "" 

It was going to be a civil wedding, could not be a religious 
wedding. A simple wedding, not an eccentric wedding "to the Indian" who 
lasts several days. Indira was opposite to the pomp and the wasteful 
unfolding of the weddings Indians, done to be conceited of relations, to be 
able and of money. The Nehru did not need to be conceited. But they 
needed space to live. The colonial villa that the government had assigned to 
Indira to the named being prime minister was too small, as much that the 
secretaries and the assistants worked under sheds in the garden. When 
giving to the new pair a fourth and small hall in the part of the bottom, with 
independent exit to the garden, would be still tightr. So that Indira was in 
conversations with its cabinet to enlarge the house. Soon the workers 
initiated works. 

The uproar of the preparations absorbed of blow to all the 
members of the family, specially to Sonia. It did not like anything to have to 
trocar its trousers fit by sari, an article in which it was ridiculous. It was not 
able to feel to taste because it lived with the fear on which at any time the 
six meters of fabric in which it was surrounded came down. It was seen like 
those tourists of very white skin who pavoneaban themselves shining saris 
chillones. Clear that for them it was a game, a disguise to become a photo 
and to teach it from return to its country; for Sonia, sari was much more. It 
marked the first time in its process of indianizacion. Sooner or later, it would 
have to be accustomed. 

It was necessary to take care of multitude of details: lists of 
guests, to design the invitations, tests of hairdo, maquillaje, etc. Sonia was 
stunned, because in addition the English did not understand well of the 
Indians, impregnated of a strong accent. At heart, it was wishing that 
everything finished as rapidly as possible. Its proverbial timidity prevented 
him to feel to taste being the attention center, although it could not make 
nothing prevent it. Literally first exit in family was besieged by 
photographers the day of his, like official fiancee of Rajiv, to attend a parade 
of models of Pierre Cardin in the hotel Ashokde Nueva Delhi. An extensive 
news article gave account of the event in the Femina magazine. Sonia 
appeared very handsome, with the straight hair falling on his shoulders, 
covered by sari with printed silk, sitting between Rajiv and Sanjay while she 
spoke with Indira. A photo that let augur a perfect familiar harmony. When 
coming out, Sonia answered a insidiosa question of a journalist: "It goes to 
Me to marry with Rajiv the person, not with the son of prime minister." He 



was inevitable which many saw it like one taken advantage of, an ambitious 
one that had fished a fat fish. Plaster sank in a state of deep sadness and 
indignation to it. When another journalist asked to him what thought on the 
fact to remain to live in India, so far from its house, Sonia raised the Vista 
towards Rajiv and using a timid smile, it said: "With Rajiv it would go to the 
aim of the world." 

And was not India the aim of the world in those days? For the 
Maino family, it was it, and as soon as they had time to organize itself. In 
the end they were only the mother of Sonia, her Anushka sister and the 
uncle Mario (brother of its mother), who would celebrate of father having 
given the hand of his young niece. They arrived the eve from the wedding 
when it was celebrated, in the garden of the house of the friends where 
Sonia lodged, the ceremony of mehendi, that was equivalent as a single 
person to a goodbye of the fiancee. Although traditionally they must attend 
neither the fiance nor his parents, in this occasion one became an exception 
and as much Rajiv as their mother was present because they wanted to 
greet the relatives who had arrived from Italy. Indira was warmly and 
extremely letter with Paola, who felt between intimidated and impatient to 
see his daughter. It throughout looked for it with the glance. When they 
indicated to him where it was, it was scared: 

- Oh, marnrna mine! 

The tears almost skip to him. It had not recognized because 
Sonia took it the head covered by a red and dwelled veil, went dressed in a 
skirt red until the feet, typical of Kashmir, and an embroidered red bodice. It 
took bracelets, necklaces and a tiara made with petals of linked nardos and 
jazmin - "floral jewelry shop" called it, and tilak in the forehead, the red point 
that symbolizes the third eye, that that is able to see beyond the 
appearances. Their hands, their arms and their feet totally were covered 
with peculiar tattoos done with henna, an extracted paste of the ground 
branches of a shrub, tattoos that drew graceful arabesque and intrincate 
designs. When one had recovered of the scare to see his daughter of that 
stews, her mother embraced it: " Better than your father has not seen you 
thus! ", it said affected. The poor man Stefano, to eight thousand kilometers 
of distance, was sad. To his friend of the soul, Danilo mechanic, confessed 
to him as a child in the bar, with regard to Sonia: " Will throw It to the tigers" 
What reason had the old shepherd of the Asiago mounts. 

Immediately young girls surrounded to Anushka and to Paola and 
they were offered to paint the hands to them. While they applied henna to 
them, they explained the tradition to them: whatever more black left the 
drawings in the hands the fiancee, more love would have in the marriage. 
And the more they took in erasing, the more time would last the passion. 
Paola and. Anushka watched the arabesque ones of Sonia: they were black 
as if they had painted them with Chinese red. 

The wedding itself took place on the following day, to six of 
afternoon, in the garden of number 1 of Safdarjung Road. Indira had 
searched carefully in its closets sari that loved that Sonia took, he himself 



who had taken she, the one that Nehru had spun during his long hours of 
imprisonment, once she had accepted the will of his daughter to marry with 
Firoz. Sonia recognized it, she had seen it in the exhibition of London and 
the words of Rajiv came to him to the memory: " Hopefully you someday to 
it take" Then he had taken them to joke. Still it dreamed about marrying of 
target. Now was taken it as an honor and a signal from affection, without for 
a moment suspecting that when dressing that sari red pale entered to 
comprise, she also, of the history of India. 

A small incident infuriated to Rajiv when discovering that there 
were two journalists between the guests. That one was its celebration, and 
it did not want interferences nor publicity. That day wanted to be only Rajiv, 
not the son of the Maxima authority of the country, the one that did not stop 
being a naivete. One refused to leave the house until paparazzi was not 
expelled. Indira had to calm it, with much patience. When the nuptial march 
of Mendelsohn announced the arrival of the fiancee, it was tranquilized. 
Rajiv left to receive to Sonia to the garden, where there were about two 
hundred guests, between friends and known the family. When it saw it 
enter, of the arm of its uncle Mario, it changed the face to him. Sonia was 
splendid. It was the same image of the elegance, the hair gathered 
backwards in a subject monkey by a clasp of petals of jazmin, the shining 
skin by the mask of curcuma that hours had put him before, a simple 
bracelet of silver in the wrist, the eyes painted of khol and the face framed 
by earrings of flowers. They made good pair. It wore white narrow trousers, 
one long jacket color cream buttoned until the neck, a turban color salmon 
(like his friends and cousins), and shoes type slipper, with the curved end 
upwards, like a one and thousand prince nights. After the ritual interchange 
of garlands, they went towards a corner of the garden where, around a table 
protected by an enormous screen also done of flowers linked in hanging 
cords, were the next relatives. They signed in the civil registry and the ring 
interchanged. Sonia fought to control his emotions. Whenever it was 
crossed the glance of his mother, desire entered to him to cry. Then it 
preferred to look for the glance of Rajiv to find forces. The uncle Mario 
seemed lost; it watched at its niece with affection and something of 
condescendencia. Paola maintained the type, although on the inside that 
wedding without priest gave an infinite pain him. The words of Rajiv, that 
read verses of the Rigveda selected specially by its mother, put full stop to 
the ceremony: 

Smooth the wind, 

smooth blows flows 

the river, 

that the days and the 
nights bring 

happiness to us, that 
the Earth dust 

produces happiness, 
that the trees us 



make happy with 
their fruits, that the 
Sun surrounds to us 
of happiness... 
And that was everything. The fiances left the enclosure to be with 
a rain of petals of flowers and the fireworks roar wisely orchestrated by 
Sanjay. The ceremony could not have been simpler. To thus it had wanted 
Indira it, without paripe to have to content to Hindu the orthodox ones that 
they demanded a complete religious ceremony. When she married, Nehru 
had requested to him who accepted to do it by the Hindu rite, giving seven 
returns around interminable the sacred fire and listening to mantras, 
because she did not want to enemistar itself with them. It had acceded, but 
now revancha was taken. Indira was harder than its father. In fact, it had not 
cried during the ceremony of its own wedding. Nehru yes, the eyes had 
become damp him. 



9 

In the evening, Sonia had changed his equipment of the house 
where been she had lodged to his new residence. The works had served to 
extend the main hall that Indira had furnished in tones pink pie and green 
moss; a sliding door gave to a place of enormous trees and shrubs between 
which birds and butterflies revoloteaban. 

After the celebration, one went to its new home, a great and 
comfortable room that had been added to the bottom of the house and that 
still smelled of plaster. Her mother had brought him clothes of Italy, a few 
books and discs and the newspapers of the airplane because she feared 
that its daughter nostalgia entered to him. Sitting in the bed, Sonia threw a 
look to the holders. "The wind makes shake the Tower of Is above", "Lucia 
Bose has asked the safekeeping of her children" and an interview the first 
man who had lived fifteen days with a transplanted heart, a called South 
African Blaiberg. They seemed to him the news of another planet. The news 
of a world that no longer was his. While Rajiv took off the spectacular turban 
in front of the mirror of the bathroom and several servants entered and left 
watching it reojo, Sonia felt vertigo when thinking that no longer she had 
returned back. The luck was thrown. How had arrived up to here? She 
herself was surprised of the force that had removed to obtain its intention. It, 
who always had been enemy of the confrontation, had had to tighten the 
cord with her family until an end del that had been believed incapable. To to 
have obtained happiness it, to the happiness to so close feel the presence 
of Rajiv, a deep feeling of surprise, and also of pain was mixed. Pain by its 
father. Pain of not being able to share the most important moment of its life 
with all those that it wanted, with its friends of the district, their old 
professors, their companions... Pain to have to say good bye to the 
childhood, the parents, the town, its country. Pain by his mother, because 
Sonia was able to guess in his glance everything what could torment it, from 
"the exotic" customs to the fact to live thus, in the familiar house, with the 
mother-in-law to the bottom of the corridor, by very prime minister who was. 
To the forced salary the situation, the familiar harmony of the Maino had 
cracked and Sonia felt like culprit. But the life had placed to him in that 
tesitura, and from the moment at which it was had obstinate at the hand of 
Rajiv in answer to its timid advance, back in the gardens of the cathedral of 
Ely, he was consequent with itself. To anybody that melancholy was strange 
to him because the India tradition contemplated the exit of a daughter of the 
house of its father to the one of the family of the fiance as a little while of 
great anguish. Most of the fiancees Indians they cry and their friends and 
relatives are very grieved. Sonia was not going to cry, but she had the filled 
heart of pain, although the events followed one another to too much rapidity 
like taking pity itself of same himself. 

To the following day in the evening a reception in Hyderabad 
House took place, a style palace anglomogol that the Nizam de Hyderabad 
ordered to construct in 1928 to give it to a lover hers to it, and that now, 
under control of the government, served as residence for foreign dignitaries. 



Also great mediatic events or press conferences were organized there. 
Thousand people went - friends of the family, companions of the party, 
politicians, diplomats, journalists, artists, etc. -, all presenting/displaying to 
the entrance the gilded invitation that had received from the office of prime 
minister and eager to know near the foreign fiancee judging by themselves 
if everything what they had heard, so different and deformed by the cotilleo, 
were certain. Sonia, adorned with another splendid sari, felt like an animal 
in zoo. It seemed to him that the women crossed it with their glances, trying 
to guess of what paste was done. The majority had traveled to the foreigner 
were conscious of the different thing that it was the India of Europe. Some 
watched it with pity, others with envies, others with genuine affection. The 
hour arrived to have supper, in the ground, to the way of Kashmir. To they 
are of a small orchestra of classic music India, the invited ones tasted 
succulent typical plates with cinnamon aromas, cardamom, saffron and nail: 
lamb with nabo, chicken with spinach, fish with root of loto... Also there 
were potatoes in sauce of yogur or fried fresh cheese for the vegetarians. 
The relatives of Sonia could have supper Italian food, and the uncles of 
Rajiv, food parsi. The delicious green tea of Kashmir, the Kavha, used in the 
end. But it was not a ostentosa reception. "The budget was small", would 
confess Usha, the secretary of Indira. 

It had not either estimated nor time for a trip of fiances in 
conditions. Pero Rajiv wanted to show a little from India the relatives of 
Sonia, so they left all for Rajastan, romantic India, land of old feudales 
gentlemen, the most spectacular region of the subcontinent. It seemed to 
them incredible that so close of a city as Delhi medieval villages existed, 
without light nor running water , but of an overwhelming beauty, where in 
the seat of the market all the offices of India were elbowed: traveling 
salesmen of used clothes, dentists, farmers squatting next to its vegetable 
positions, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, jewelers... Goats, cows and 
camels teemed between piles of essences of all the colors - dust of yellow 
ocher saffron, curcuma, red guindillas ground. In way to the national park of 
Ranthambore, they saw by the field spots of yellow, red color, malva, rose, 
that were the turbans of farmers and shepherds who walked between the 
ocher dust which they raised its flocks. Their women went such dressed in 
tones; semiprecious jewels of old silver and stones shone and seemed 
princess instead of farmers. 

Ranthambore was a natural park created in 1955 in a 
semiselvatica zone to protect the survival of the tiger. -An immense 
strength, that conserved in its interior temples in ruins, palaces and 
cenotaphs imprisoned by gigantic roots of ceibas, dominated the park from 
the stop of a promontory. Down, between hills covered with vegetation and 
silverplated water lagoons, red deers, antelopes, bears, chacales, cervids 
and wild boars could be seen. If there were luck, some tiger to the dawn. To 
Rajiv it liked that place because it combined two passions hers: the love to 
the animals and its liking to the photography. In addition it thought that the 
family of her woman would take a good memory of India because in that 



forest human misery was not seen. Rajiv told them that he and their brother 
had lived the childhood surrounded by animals, enjoying authentic a 
zoological one in the gardens of Teen Murti House. Many of the animals 
were gifts that national Chiefs of State or politicians made their 
grandfathers. They had had dark-brown, doves, squirrels, a crocodile and a 
plain between two mountains of the called Himalayas Bhimsa, a gift of the 
state of Assam to its grandfathers. Also they had had three puppies of tiger. 
Rajiv adored them and one of its great misfortunes as a child was when his 
grandfathers decided to come off themselves one to give it to it to marshal 
Tito. 

Of return to Delhi, they stopped in a village where a wedding was 
celebrated. It was an authentic Hindu, full wedding of colorful and noise. 
The fiance, the face covered by one cortinilla done of flowers, appeared 
mounted in a skinny covered white mare with a gold velvet carpet 
embroidered. To they are of drums and panderetas, advanced caracoling 
towards its fiancee, who was waiting for it under a store. The families were 
very proud of which strangers attended the ceremony and immediately they 
entertained with tea and candies to them, while the boy disassembled. The 
priest invited then the fiances to know itself officially. Slowly and timidly, 
each one of them separated the veil from the other with its free hand. The 
glad face of the boy appeared as opposed to the diminished glance of the 
fiancee, a girl who must not have more than twelve years, fragile and 
scared like a pajarito. Her family observed it with an emotion badly 
contained. Rajiv for of interpreter, not only with the language, but with the 
customs. That simple wedding, that it seemed so ingenuous and 
inoffensive, hid several evils of India, authentic social diseases. The infantile 
marriages as this one exposed children to be mothers, with the consequent 
mortality and problems of health for the mother and the boy. In addition the 
parents to the fiancee, who seemed poor farmers, surely had become 
indebted themselves during many years to pay the dowry, indispensable 
requirement to marry to a daughter. Yes, all that was very pretty and very 
colorful, but those customs maintained to the poor men sunk in the misery. 
It was there when Sonia heard by first time speak of the custom of sati, that 
still practiced sporadically in this region. The companions at table 
commented a recent case, not very far from where they were, that it had 
been a national scandal. A young widow had sent itself to the funeral pyre 
of the husband. The police had investigated the case without being able to 
find out the truth. The opinions of the guests to the wedding very were 
divided: they said that the widow was santa to have had the value of 
becoming sati, other that had been drugged and forced to jump to the 
bonfire so that it could not inherit none of the husband's properties... Rajiv 
inclined at this last one. How to be able to modernize this country? , it 
seemed to ask itself, thinking about the enormous task that it had touched 
to its mother, while it drived the car of return to Delhi. 

At Sonia the hour arrived to him to take leave of its family. It 
accompanied them to the airport. Later to embrace its mother, and perhaps 



because he guessed the break that felt when leaving its daughter, Sonia 
came down and broke to sob. For its mother, that one was the true 
goodbye: they returned to house, to the home of always; Sonia remained in 
that strange, single earth, without them. Like then had never been the reality 
with as much crudity, so much that made damage. Both were made a sea of 
tears, and they were not specially prone to the weeping, which still made 
the scene more heartrendering. 

- It writes much, llamame often... 

- You I promise it, mamma. 

In the car that brought it from return to house, Sonia dried the 
face while came to him to the flash memory of happy moments of their 
childhood in Lusiana, when it left to milk the cows with his father and his 
mother, or when friends and cousins came to celebrate their full birthday of 
gifts. What far it seemed that life! Remaining in India, account occurred now 
of which it began of zero. As much tension and as much activity had left it 
exhausted and gotten depressed. It needed to see Rajiv as rapidly as 
possible. Only he could console it because he was the justification of all his 
sinking. 

Pero Rajiv was not in house, was in its course, the flying club. 
Sonia went to his quarter. If he were not its husband, then it preferred to 
remain single, to ease up in the bed and to cry all the tears, to swear in the 
melancholy hoping its return. But nothing else to open the door, saw on 
upon the bed, with letterhead of the office of prime minister. It opened it. It 
was a note of Indira that said: "Sonia, all we want much to you." Then the 
face was illuminated to him. The melancholy evaporated as by 
enchantment, smiled and left its room. 



10 

The daily life in house of the Gandhi began soon, almost to the 
dawn. When Sonia awoke, it was already Indira to the bottom of the garden 
in his char it daily surrounded by the poor men who came to have his 
darshan. Soon one put in its official car, that took it office to its of South 
Block, where spent all the morning. In the afternoons it used to go to work to 
its personal office, that of ago seat of the Congress, and which was closely 
together of its house, in number 1 of Akbar Road, to about fifty meters of 
distance. It was an pleasant long walk by the garden, always green and with 
arriates of flowers and odoriferas plants. The government finished to him 
yielding this house so that all fitted in hers. 

Rajiv also left soon for its classes of flight. It pass without 
difficulty of commercial pilot and now it made practical in the national 
company Indian Airlines. It piloted a DC-3, the famous Dakota, the airplane 
of its dreams of childhood. His Sanjay brother was engrossed in the task of 
designing a native car, adapted to the highways of India. Each member of 
the family took an independent existence, but Sonia spent long time single. 
A time that allowed him to observe the activity and the bullicio of a great 
India house and to adapt to the heat, that arrived suddenly. A dry, intense 
and burning heat that raised every day, irremediably, and that would 
continue doing it until June rains, if is that this year they arrived in time. It 
did not like the conditioned air because it feared that it caused asthma crisis 
to him; it preferred to be placed under the vanes of the hung ventilators of 
the ceiling. He understood so that the personnel on watch moved with as 
much slowness. At the outset they seemed to him sluggish ones; now it 
included/understood that the heat, similar to ferragosto of Italy, only which 
they were in March, relaxed muscles and softened the wills. The personnel 
on watch was little for a house of those characteristics. The normal thing is 
that there was a minimum of ten or fifteen servants, each one in charge of a 
specific task to its chaste one. Although Nehru and Gandhi had been in 
charge to officially suppress the chaste ones in the Constitution of the new 
independent nation, the reality is that they continued influencing the 
conducts, on everything in the lowest layers of the society and in the 
countryside. In no house of the Nehru they had been able to fight that 
hierarchial structuring of the domestic life, no matter how hard they had tried 
it. It was not easy with a stroke of the pen to erase thousands of years of 
history. So that the tradition continued reigning, and that served the table 
was not he himself who gathered it, the driver lead but it did not wash the 
car; the cook stewed, but she did not mop plates; those that swept the 
ground did not clean the baths, etc. The Nehru was contented with less 
service than the usual thing, but even so Sonia was not customary to the 
eternal presence of the servants, who when sliding without noise by the 
corridors stuck death scares to him. Perhaps what it bothered to him more 
is that it seemed to him that never was safe from indiscreet glances, not 
even in the privacy of its house. More of once, after to have locked up in its 
bathroom, had been frightened when discovering the one in charge of the 



cleaning, a huesudo man and of blackish skin that, squatting and with a rag 
in the hand, was put in a corner in a corner. Little by little it learned just like 
they had to learn the spouses of the diplomats settled down in India: to 
coexist with that cluster of people, that is to say to command to them, to 
have patience with sweepers, the street cleaners, who only move the dust 
from a place to another one, to go to everyone according to its rank or its 
religion so that at no moment they feel that "they lose chaste", to take to the 
doctor if patients put themselves because social security does not exist, etc. 

Not even the house of prime minister saved to trajin of the daily 
life in the cities Indians. To mid-morning, Sonia oia to the colorful traveling 
salesmen announcing from the street its merchandise with singsong voices. 
They pushed carts filled with vegetables and fruit, others loaded full candy 
drawers, others brought milk, or the newspapers... From time to time a man 
with a monkey dancer and bears called from outside offering his spectacle. 
Also table cloths fardos of and dinner service, weave, by hand smooth or 
printing went selling of fabrics with their, of the finest cotton or crude silk, 
multicolor or targets. The tailor seated in veranda sewing all the morning, 
while Sonia watched fascinated the polished crystal bracelets that offered a 
traveling salesman to him who the service had let enter thinking that it 
would distract it. The doors and windows opened to the garden let enter the 
aromas of the flowers and the turf just cut and humid, but that yellowed 
according to they spent the days. 

Often Sonia appeared in the office where the two private 
secretaries of their mother-in-law worked. One of them, Usha, would 
remember that it came to do all type to him of questions on things Indians: 
How adjusts sari? How are celebrated the birthdays? What gift takes to the 
celebration of the first haircut of a baby? How is said "closes the door" in 
hindi? , etc. They took the hair saying to him that she did not have one, but 
three mothers-in-law. To the true one as soon as it saw it of the occupied 
thing that it was, although its presence always was made notice. She was 
the central person in the family. A day Sonia entered the office of Usha very 
altered. It took one note that had left him to Indira expressing its points of 
view on certain aspects, the majority critical, like the fact that Sonia refused 
to learn hindi or was so paradita before which did not know. " By what me it 
does not say it in person instead of writing a note to me? ", it asked Italian 
the tears on the brink of madness. 

- To Mrs. Gandhi it costs to him to communicate - Usha- 
answered to him, is a woman enough introvert. But you do not worry about 
the one about letters, also one communicated thus with its husband and his 
father. 

Perhaps the timidity of Sonia and a certain complex got to 
paralyze it as much that it became a problem at the time of taking care of 
visits important, or simply to the hour to socialize. Outside the friends of its 
husband and his brother-in-law, with whom already it had confidence, it cost 
to him much to break the ice and to open themselves to people. At heart, it 
continued being the small farmer of the mounts Asiago, the student of an 



Italian city of provinces transplanted to another planet, the house of one 
prime minister, where always it entered and it left people all type and 
condition. "During long time, Sonia very was dissuaded - Usha- would 
count. It was a complicated task of persuading it of something." Indira, in 
spite of the occupied thing that was, did not lose of Vista the house subjects 
and it made an effort so that her daughter-in-law left her shell: "It would be 
wonderful if you could convince Sonia for that it comes tonight. But you do 
not force it if really it does not desire to him", said to a note hers to its 
secretary. As much Rajiv as their mother was characters rather reserved, so 
that they understood that Sonia needed to take his time to become 
aclimated itself to this new life. They tried to press it less possible, because 
they saw that it cost to him to be accustomed. Here it could not make things 
simple, like leaving with a friend to take a walk, for example. The wide 
Nueva avenues Delhi were not made to walk, the distances were too great 
to cross them on foot. In addition, that part of the city was purely residential, 
were stores nor no commerce. The restriction of movements, the food, the 
heat and the distance of his caused nostalgia attacks to him that the Italian 
magazine Oggi that sent to its mother every week precise to him as soon as 
it was able to n1 itigar. It was between two worlds without making foot in no 
of them. One remembered its father, and his warnings, and was moments at 
which had liked to take it the telephone and to speak with him, but Sonia he 
was strong and it knew that it had to hold. The presence of Rajiv, by behind 
schedule, used to calm its anguishes. 

In May it was as much warm that Indira invited Sonia to 
accompany it to an official trip to the kingdom by Bhutan, a small country in 
spurs of the Himalayas that totally lived section on the world, thinking that it 
would seat to change to him well of airs. In order to accompany also it 
invited it the daughter of the minister of Outer Subjects, Priti Kaul, that had 
the same age that Sonia. They were only two days of trip, but they amused 
much. Nothing else to lower of the helicopter, received king Dorje 
Wangchuk, very good natured, devotee man Buddhist and absolute 
monarch to them whom its kingdom closed to the outside maintained. It 
made a temperature perfect; they gave desire to drink the crystalline air. 
What lightening! , it thought Italian when feeling the fresh breeze of the 
mountain to caress the face to him, like when it went on trip to the Alps. 
Here there were telesillas nor restaurants, but pennants of no prayer that 
floated to the wind, scattering the Buddhist orations towards the mountain 
range of the Himalayas, that showed its tips acierated against an intensely 
blue sky. There was nothing could be considered "modern". The traffic 
rolled, except some motorcycles practically did not exist, and people 
dressed to the traditional way in a species of very colorful apron of colors. 
They went to horse or in cars thrown by oxen similar to yaks. The retinue 
arrived at the imposing monastery of Tashichhodzong, that dominated a 
luminous mountain landscape of white crests in whose skirts there were 
golden bancales of barley which they descended towards the valley like 
gigantic stairs. It was as a trip to the Average Age: the television did not 



exist, was jail nor no delinquency, the only concession to modernity was the 
electricity, but only during two hours to the day. The own king accompanied 
his aposentos, three rooms and a bathroom, everything to them rather 
modest, explaining to them that they were his own ones. At the time hotel 
infrastructure in Thimpu, the capital did not exist, that seemed a pueblecito 
rather, so it yielded to his guests the best thing than it had. After the 
banquet, in which Indira and the monarch spoke of how democratizar the 
kingdom and at the same time to preserve it of the ominous influences of 
modernity, the girls returned to their quarter. Sonia discovered a hatch in 
the ground, underneath a carpet. Died of curiosity, the two raised and saw it 
a room with a rickety old bed, simple, seemed to the room of a monk. 
Suddenly a lantern ignited and glimpsed the king, light of clothes, that were 
arranged to lie down. They closed the shame trap died. They told it to Usha, 
that as well said it to Indira, afraid of which that incident could trigger a 
diplomatic conflict. Indira was limited to ***reflx mng itself. 

On the following day they flew in helicopter from Thimpu to the 
state of Sikkim, border with Tibet. The local king and his woman, a 
charming New Yorker called Hope were received by Cooke, in their palace. 
At night, when already Indira had lain down, the American arrived at the 
quarter of the girls with manjar that it more liked Sonia: smoky salmon. It 
remembered its time to him of England, where it had discovered it. 

It was a brief parenthesis of coolness in the middle of the dog 
days that burnt the north of India. When they returned to Delhi, down in the 
plain mercury in the morning marked 43 degrees eleven. Asphalt melted. 
The trees seemed tired so as the men. People walked with opened 
umbrellas to protect themselves of the sun. The conductors of rickshaws 
hoped to their clients knocked down under any shade. In house, the flowers 
of arriates of the garden had been marchitado and the turf seemed dry 
straw. The servants watered the facade. Sonia had to learn to restrict his 
movements to the minimum to save energy. The nocturnal temperature 
became so intolerable that it had to waver before the conditioned air. They 
advised to him not to leave from house to the noon because the sun struck 
with too much force. Little it had to do this heat with ferragosto. The air was 
so dense that it was possible to be cut with a knife and the temperature later 
raised until the 46 degrees days. It was a cruel and ruthless climate. Sonia 
waited for anxious the return of Rajiv, knocked down in the bed and 
dreaming about the bucolico landscape of the Veneto, remembering the 
crujido one that their rubber boots produced in the snow just fallen, the 
water frozen that of girl drank directly of streams, the scent of the field after 
rain, the sprinkled green meadows of poppies in spring... But already he 
was here its husband, and hoped the dusk to leave to give a return in moto 
and to take an ice cream in one from the little places that served them in 
healthful hygienic conditions. It was necessary to have well-taken care of 
when eating abroad, because the heat altered the conservation of foods. 

The tension in house increased to the heat proportionally, not by 
the discomfort that could be, but by its political repercussions. After all, that 



one was the house of prime minister, and their work and its future depended 
in great measurement, that year, from which monzonicas rains arrived in 
time. The greater preoccupation of Indira continued being to fight against 
the hunger. It knew clearly that the food shortage was fought introducing 
new agricultural methods that had proven their effectiveness in other parts 
of the world, and fomenting the construction of fertilizer factories. To obtain 
an authentic green revolution, to do that India was sufficient car, that one 
was its main priority and to her it was dedicated hard. All the others, that 
were much, could come later: health, education, to improve estatus of the 
women, etc. 

The problem is that that ambitious program needed time so that 
gave its fruits. While, people had to eat. And the bad luck wanted that India 
underwent three years of consecutive droughts. If that fourth year rains did 
not arrive either, the disaster would be served. To this it was necessary to 
add fiasco of the American aid. In spite of all the indications of the opposite, 
president Johnson had wanted to use the nourishing aid like handle to put 
under India his policy. Although Indira was arranged to make some 
concessions (facing a storm of protests in house), never had the intention to 
leave the policy of not-alignment of its father. Like retaliation by a critic that 
the Indian Secretary of State did to Israel by his attitude towards the Arab 
countries, Johnson began to delay the food shipments. It requested that all 
the grain shipment information passed by their office before giving the final 
approval them. Indira had a map of India in the wall of its office of South 
Block where it tracked the movement of each freighter with foods. Slowness 
was exasperante. 

- Those Americans do not realize of which every day that 
happens supposes the death of much people! - it said in house, indignant, a 
day in which Sonia had prepared a paste plate. You you do not take it to 
badly, is not nothing personal - it continued saying to Sonia, separating its 
plate to him, but I have decided, and thus I finish it announcing in the 
Parliament, that I let eat wheat and rice in protest signal. 

The parliamentary session had left it exhausted, and as soon as 
it had supper. One complained strong jaqueca. No of it prescriptions had 
been able to clear the persistent headaches to him that had been several 
days doing to suffer it. The problems of India were not for less. 

- As rains do not arrive, hambruna will be another one. 

- It goes to You to prepare a homemade remedy that my parents 
taught me to fight against the headache. 

Sonia made an infusion of manzanilla and dampened gauzes 
that applied in the forehead of their mother-in-law. Indira continued 
speaking. It feared that another drought left in evidence its agrarian policy, 
to pound of the action of the government, who so good signals had begun 
to show. "It began to tranquilize themselves and to be better", would 
remember Sonia, who did not understand the shades nor the details of the 
enormous problems which her mother-in-law faced, but who yes understood 
her importance and its reach. Suddenly, Indira changed of subject. 



- How you go with hindi? - it asked of sopeton. 

- Badly - Sonia answered. 

Indira wanted at all costs that Sonia learned hindi. In addition to 
for political reasons, because always it had accused the Nehru to be too 
much "British" or "western", Indira thought that it was genuinely good that 
her daughter-in-law could express itself in the language of the town 
because would also open to contacts and the doors to him of deep India. 
Was not the language the soul of a culture? Pero Sonia did not understand 
so that it had to learn a language that only spoke the service, since the 
English was what invited friends and always used. A particular professor 
who had insisted on teaching the language to him from the academic point 
of view, with much grammar had put him. 

- The classes are aburridisimas - Sonia, satisfied confessed to 
him with to have been able to alleviate the pain to him. 

Indira did not insist, but days later it left a note to Usha, its 
secretary: "It seems that the progresses of Sonia are nonexistent. The 
method of the professor does not work. Please, whatever more 
conversation in hindi you practice with her, better." 

Certain habits of that house had been difficult to understand for 
anyone. By example, from always in house of the Nehru hindi in the lunch 
had been spoken of the English noon and in the supper, and every day, one 
of the meals was India and another western one. Sonia did not understand 
so that each one could not eat the one that it wanted and to speak in the 
language that it wanted. But like he was docile, was not blinded. And he 
was sufficiently intelligent like knowing that it had to find its place in that 
family although it was necessary to fold itself to exigencies that did not 
understand well. It accepted that that comprised of its process of 
adaptation. 

June became eternal. It seemed that all the city was watching at 
the sky barruntando rain indications. Front page of newspapers showed in 
heavy characters the temperature records: 46 degrees in the Door of India 
de Rajpath, announced day 15, when the monsoon already must have 
arrived. A photo showed groups of children bathing in the public sources. 
The dry and burning air resecaba the throat. The eyes itched as if they had 
river sand. A gray dust layer, that the wind had brought of the deserts of 
Rajastan, covered the garden with number 1 of Safdarjung Road. For 
Sonia, extreme it of the climate he was something novel. In Europe, the 
climate was to regulate, and the predictions served mainly to know if there 
would be snow in the mountain or sun in the beach the following weekend. 
Here the climate was something much more dramatic by its intensity and its 
importance in the life of the country, eminently agriculturist. The failure of 
the rice harvest could mean the death of a million farmers. For that reason 
these crucial days in the life of India were followed with as much attention 
by people and mass media. 

Finally, to end of month, a atronador noise followed of an ardent 
air eddy that raised dust clouds and started the leaves of the trees 



announced first storms. As if the night fell suddenly, black thicknesses 
nubarrones invaded the sky and the dry wind opened the way to a rain of 
heavy drops that hammered the ceiling of the house. The employees on 
watch seemed to revivir after as much sleepiness. They went out to let itself 
soak and the smiles returned to illuminate their faces. It seemed that the 
high palms of the roundhouse also shook of emotion. The television showed 
images of the euphoria that was seizing of the country. People of different 
chaste religions and jumped and danced together in the streets, like 
children, wading in the water, showering under the sewers of the tile roofs. It 
was like a great celebration in which the monsoon had made disappear the 
differences between the men. 

But to the intensity of the heat, now the intensity of precipitations 
happened to him. The water with as much force fell that the noise, within 
house, was deafening. The temperature descended from blow degrees, and 
a smooth breeze contributed a coolness caress. In the garden, the frogs 
crossed croando by the turf that turned green again like by magic art, but 
two days later the garden so was flooded that it seemed a lake. If many 
districts of shacks literally disappeared with rains soon to be reconstructed, 
the Nueva districts Delhi were not immune the consequences of the deluge. 
The elegant roundhouses of the vecindario of the embassies were flooded, 
as well as the tunnels, and many vehicles were stayed as deads, taxis and 
rickshaws with the drowned motors that loosen their last death rattles other 
people's to the efforts of their owners to take them again. Although the heat 
became less intense, the shame sensation was disagreeable. Sonia had 
the sensation to have the always humid hands; one changed several times 
to the day because the sweat soaked the clothes. It was astonished of 
which during days it did not stop to rain, as if the Gods of the climate took 
revenge themselves of the dry and ardent heat of the previous months. Now 
it understood so that the facades of so many buildings seemed dirty and 
with chorretones, so that there were so many caverns, and are that the 
climate devastated with everything and turned any task of maintenance a 
too expensive company for a so poor country. 

The positive part is that rains brought to the house the joy of 
outside, as if the happiness of a whole gigantic country was strained by the 
windows and invaded each corner. A country that, when not starving east 
year, would perhaps be able to come out ahead and not to return to know 
atrocious hambrunas the past. Indira, very in syntony with the feeling of the 
town, seemed infected of that joy. In spite of so many other problems, it 
returned to be a radiating woman. 



11 

Perhaps because it did not perceive the dissuaded behavior of 
Sonia as a threat, in a period of surprising short time, Indira, that was rather 
of nature distrusted, got to take true affection him. The Italian was a discreet 
and direct woman, two qualities that at first had won him their immediate 
affection. But also he was hogareha and it liked "to make family". It did not 
push Rajiv to live in separated pair of the rest, since it had been able to 
think at the outset. On the contrary, it insisted so that they continued being 
respected the customs of always, like joining itself at the time of the meals, 
a tradition that went back to the times of Teen Murti House. Independently 
from where was each member of the family, all made an effort in returning 
to house to eat, unless there were some official act. Ever since they were 
young, Rajiv and Sanjay were had customary to leave what they were 
making to have lunch in family. To Sonia this seemed to him very well 
because the conversations in the table were always very animated, except 
for when Sanjay was entangled to speak of policy with its mother. The 
habitual era to interchange personal points of view, jokes and experiences. 
If Rajiv and Sonia went out at night with their friends, hoped to that Indira 
finished having supper doing company to him. Indira had a great talent for 
the conversation; she was fast in its observations, clear in its descriptions 
and had a fine sense of humor. Their interests were not limited the policy, 
but also the arts, the scientific innovations, the behavior of people, books, 
the nature... There were surprising things in her, that only with time were 
discovered. By example, it used to recognize a bird by its song, and is that 
in the fifty it had been member of an ornithological society and had learned 
much of birds. Also multitude of anecdotes of its trips told the foreigner. In 
Santiago of Chile the woman of a politician received it saying: "Uy, what fine 
and delicate it seems. It hoped to see a species of Golda Meir... " Sonia 
desternillaba with those histories. Like the one of the Kremlin, when after a 
banquet that Brezhnev and Kosiguin gave in their honor, at the time of the 
coffee it observed the Russian custom to secrete the men of the women, 
and Indira, for its great surprise, was in the group of the men... Or when 
Indira went to see Gandhi to speak to him of its wedding with Firoz, and old 
santon instead of animating it to have family, suggested her to him and 
Firoz followers were made of their married ideal stay celibate after married. 
Then so that to marry? , Indira, irritated had espetado him. To Sonia, who 
had the easy laughter, all those anecdotes enchanted to him. 

When the Italian had understood the basic operation of an India 
house, she went replacing to Usha in the domestic subjects. Useful feeling 
and being occupied turned out the best weapon to fight against nostalgia. 
"Sonia was an organized person, was strong, although she maintained a 
profile low, but she knew what wanted", the secretary of Indira would say. 
The Italian behaved like really was: affectionate, always pending to please, 
fleeing from the confrontation, until a little submissive before the 
tremendous authority that emanated of its mother-in-law. "I understood that 
there was to give time to my mother-in-law so that she also was made to the 



new familiar situation, although was not specially possessive with Rajiv. In 
those days, I was always to his side, ready to support it", later affirmed in an 
interview published in the Weekend Telegraph years. 

In that house costumary Indians, but cachemiries and also 
English, Sonia contributed their contribution of subtle way. And it did it with 
a powerful weapon, that handled with determination. Sonia had learned of 
his mother the secrets of the Italian kitchen, and soon the house of prime 
minister exhalaba aromas of lasagna to forno, sauce to the pesto with taken 
basil of the garden and until of ossobuco to the Milanese one. It was 
impossible in those years to obtain Nueva cheese Delhi, but always a friend 
who came from Europe brought mozzarella to him or to gruyer rallado 
packaging to the emptiness. It did not lack some joker who said that instead 
of indianizar to Sonia, she was italianizando to the family... The joke era of 
doors inside, because if a commentary thus arrived at the press, knew that 
the opposition would use it with viciousness. The certain thing is that in the 
home of the Nehru-Gandhi it fitted of everything, to image and similarity of 
India, crucible of cultures and traditions always arranged to integrate the 
foreigner and to do it his. If Sonia adapted to the prevailing culture, also she 
fought her peculiar and quiet battle to leave her track, casserole in hand, 
that cosmopolitan home. 

Later, it went learning to guess to the tastes and the preferences 
of Indira, like its liking by the flowers, for example, and always it guarded so 
that there were splendid branches in the tables. To both they liked specially 
the scent of the nardos, balsam that invaded each corner of that house 
decorated with an almost Spartan simplicity, but with pleasure. The curtains 
were of crude cotton, the carpets came from several places of the north; 
there were tribal objects, pictures of Indian painters, some antiques like a 
precious screen, and furniture of English colonial style. Sonia understood 
that simplicity and the economy were the keys of the personality of their 
mother-in-law. To Indira it did not like to throw nothing; on the contrary, it 
kept the affluent plastic bags doubled to use them again. Sonia learned to 
make the suitcases as it liked to Indira, taking advantage of the most mini 
hollow, without wasting space. If Indira needed something for the house, 
Sonia was in charge to obtain it to it. The salesman of the store The Shoppe 
in Connaught Place would remember that she saw it arrive a day, dressed 
in leather trousers and their pretty melena falling on shoulders. Manteleria 
of thread came to buy one to give it to it to its mother-in-law in its birthday. 
The only thing which Sonia did not share with Indira was the mysteries of 
the India policy, that to neither interested him nor delivered attacks to 
understand. 

But in that kitchen that Sonia transformed o'clock neuralgic of the 
home, where all finished being although it only was for asking what surprise 
had to them prepared to eat, was spoken inevitably of everything. 

- The family of maharaja of Jaipur has retired us the greeting - 
she arrived saying a Sanjay day, socarron-. Those of Kota and those of 



Travancore also. You do not count whereupon they invite us to no of its 
celebrations. 

Thus Sonia found out that her mother-in-law had abolished the 
last privileges of maharajas. Rajiv explained to him that when their states 
integrated the India Union, maharajas received the constitutional guarantee 
of which they could conserve its titles, their jewels and their palaces; of 
which the State would pay proportional an annual sum to them to the size of 
its kingdoms; and of which one would exempt to pay to taxes and rates to 
them of import. 

- But with so many so poor Indians and, to my mother and her 
government it seems to them that those privileges are anachronistic and are 
outside place - it continued saying to him. The case is that maharajas has 
been put military still on. The maharani of Jaipur, that is the local leader of a 
rightist party, has given instructions to its supporters to burst a mother 
meeting. But it has faced itself to them. Sabes what it has said to them? " Id 
and you ask maharajas how many wells have dug for the town when they 
governed its states, how many wagon they constructed, which made to fight 
against the slavery which they put under the English to us" The result is that 
mother has ended up devastating, as always. 

Indira had done it because it had had to give a left turn in his 
policy, when seeing that the Americans had left it in the stockade. Not to 
continue losing supports in its party, the unconditional end of the American 
bombings had signed in the Soviet Union a treaty requesting on Vietnam. 
Johnson, furious, had delayed the food shipments still more. The poor men 
starved without suspecting that they were the price that paid its country to 
maintain its independence as opposed to the most powerful power of the 
world, that it wanted to use them like change currency. Maharajas had not 
been the only victims of that turn of political direction. The program of Indira 
gave chills most liberal, to the patronos of the industry, the businessmen , 
the aristocrats and really to the elites of the country because it also 
announced the nationalization of the bank and the insurance agencies. 
Sonia was witness of the euphoria of the level town before those measures. 
Employees and civil employees, taxi drivers, conductors of rickshaws, 
unemployed and those that never had been inside a banking branch 
danced in the street, to the house doors. Bold Populists were measured and 
who won to Indira an enormous political success because the government 
cleared the financial resources to the capitalists for entregarselos to the 
town. The farmers, the small retailers and traders also were contentments 
because they were going to benefit from credits in better conditions in the 
nationalized banks, and all the parties of left were aligned firmly with Indira. 

In the first months of 1969, Sonia began to be bad. At the outset 
he attributed it to an nourishing poisoning, to some local virus, but the 
doctor immediately removed it from doubts. She was pregnant. The news 
filled of joy to the family. Indira felt very happy and redoubled the cares to its 
daughter-in-law. She was euphoric with the idea of being grandmother. The 
children always had been their weakness. Now it left notes of the type: 



"Tomorrow parsi is navroz (New Year), but I go away soon of tour in the 
morning. I can go to darte a kiss right now" Indira deeply was thanked for 
him to Sonia by the stability that contributed to its life. No longer it returned 
from its debilitating tours or long sessions in the Parliament to the solitude 
of an empty house, but to a home with life. And that happiness saw breath 
by the news that, more than no other, caused in Indira an intimate and deep 
satisfaction. Its new agricultural policy began to give results. The grain 
harvest of the this year was being the double of habitual thanks to abundant 
rains of the last monsoons. The greater production was registered in the 
states of the Punjab, to the north, the country of sijs, an affluent community 
organized and worker whose farmers had planted new varieties of dwarfed 
wheat developed by Indian scientists from Mexican modalities. The new 
varieties of rice, cotton and peanut also had shown a spectacular result. 
The increase of the production was so hopeful that it augured that the 
endemic shortage could become thing of the past soon. What desire had 
Indira to take off the thorn of Lyndon Johnson... 

Nevertheless, Sonia did not participate in that euphoria. Its 
happiness was dyed by a new feeling, that had not experimented 
previously, and that arose from deepest from its being. It was an atavic, 
diffuse and intense fear. Fear to give so to light far from its family, fear to 
take a disease rare, a tropical infection, fear to that the boy was born with 
some problem... It returned to feel nostalgia of his and until it thought about 
going to Italy to have the boy, but no, that was impossible because how to 
be far from Rajiv in a while thus? , what would say the politicians of here? 
That the daughter-in-law of Indira did not entrust in the India medicine 
(which was perfectly logical then)? That what was good for the town not was 
it for bahu of Indira? It wanted it or no, the policy interfered in the private life. 
Pero Sonia was sufficiently gracious to accept it and to understand that the 
hormonal transformations of their body were playing bad a last one to him, 
and that its mood would improve with the time. 

But the five months of pregnancy it followed with constant 
mareos. As one physically were bad, the moral was also suffered. Sanjay 
turned upside down in attentions with its sister-in-law. When it knew that his 
brother was flying, he did not leave house without making sure that Sonia 
did not want to accompany to give a return to him, to take an ice cream in 
Nirula's, one of the little establishments similar to a western cafeteria, or to 
visit a friend. Pero Sonia did not have desire to leave. It preferred to remain 
in house, caressing during hours to the dogs Putli and Pepita, two Golden 
Retrievers, the favourites of the Nehru from the times of Anand Bhawan, 
and chucho Sona call that Rajiv gathered in a side street of the Old Delhi 
when he was young. When he returned its husband, they passed hours 
listening music. Rajiv hoarded in house an important disc collection that had 
reunited throughout the years and that dealt with extreme well-taken care 
of. It did not want that nobody touched to the equipment or discs without 
making sure before it would do it of as scrupulous way as he. From time to 
time they attended concerts of classic music India, where Sonia learned on 



ragas (melodia classic) and ghazals (poems sung in urdu) and to 
distinguish instruments like sarangi or the table, precursors of the guitars 
and the drums of the West. Many Rajiv times it recorded the recitales of 
great teachers as Ustad AN Khan or Ravi Shankar and soon added them 
collection to its, that it classified methodically. But they used to leave little 
and they were not become fond of to the celebrations, now that Sonia was 
fragile of health, still less. They never wanted to comprise of the Nueva jet 
Delhi nor to belong to no group or gang. Rajiv was to taste with friends of 
very different social extraction, from a mechanic of the flying club to its old 
colleagues of Cambridge who came to Delhi with certain frequency. Sonia, 
navigated and with nauseas, only acceded in the morning to give to a return 
Sundays by Khan Market, where they were the disc stores and the 
bookstores better provided of the city. It was a short return, that the Italian 
took advantage of to also buy fruit and some European product in one of 
her commerce, frequented by diplomats. To the five months, the smooth 
curvature of its belly, that saw with pride reflected in the showcases, was 
object of comidilla of the known ones which it used to cross itself, because 
in a certain sense Nueva Delhi was like a great town. 

Five months it is a time interval in which it is considered that a 
pregnancy has passed its moment more critical. In the case of Sonia, it was 
not thus. In half of one night of heat, she was imprisoned of sharp pains in 
the belly, and felt that it lost blood in torrents. The pains were so acute and 
so hard the sensation to be draining on the inside that it thought that died at 
that same moment. Rajiv organized the transport to the hospital in the car of 
its mother. It so saw so pale Sonia and going that was scared to lose it. 
After the transfusion, when one had recovered, they said to him to Sonia 
who was lost much blood, but that now, once carried out a small 
intervention, was going to be better. " And the boy? ", she asked, terrified 
because at heart she knew what it had happened. The glance of Rajiv, that 
lowered the eyes to the ground, said everything to it. 

It was the moment it last more until that moment in the life of the 
Italian. To the five months of pregnancy, it did not consider that it had had 
an abortion, but that was lost its son. To that deep pain an ill-fated feeling of 
personal failure was united . It seemed to him that it had failed its husband, 
to Indira, its own family and the entire world. It seemed to him that it was 
paying by all the happiness that the life had given to him, as if it had to 
expiar the sin of its extraordinary history of love. The medical explanations, 
that assured to him that his he was relatively current in a first pregnancy 
and that it did not mean that to the next attempt it went to happen the same, 
were not able to remove it from a deep melancholy. In addition, it badly did 
not lack some commentary of the personnel on watch on the augury that 
foretold resemblance mishap, or the rumor of the street that attributed the 
responsibility of the happened thing to Indira "because it pushed its 
daughter-in-law to move and to walk, obsessed whereupon it stayed in form 
and it did not get fat too much during the pregnancy". In certain mentideros 
of the city, after all what it had passed with the nationalizations and the 



abolition of the privileges of maharajas, it had been put fashionable to label 
to Indira of monster. Like she was to wait for, the family reacted as a 
fragmentation hand grenade and all surrounded to Sonia by attentions and 
affection. Indira very was affected. This him had remembered a similar 
mishap, when being born its second son, the 14 of December of 1946. The 
pains childbirth had arisen at night, of totally unexpected way. It was taken 
from urgency to a hospital where the English doctors got to fear for their life 
because he was bleeding. From the beginning, that boy had been a 
problem. Nehru arrived when finally the hemorrhage was controlled. At 
dawn a man was born, to whom Nehru named Sanjay, in tribute to a 
visionary priest who in the Mahabharata, the great epic of the hinduismo, 
describes the great battle with the blind king. Firoz, its husband, did not go 
more behind schedule until days. It worked in the city of Lucknow, and 
Indira finished finding out that it maintained a loving relation with a Muslim 
woman, daughter of a prominent family of the city. For that reason, the 
arrival of the small one had not been a as happy event as the one of first, 
Rajiv. And Indira, in its subconscious mind, felt like culprit for that reason. It 
had to think that it was unjust and that it had to repair it. All its life, seemed 
to him that it had something to Sanjay. 

Little by little, the Italian was leaving the sadness ocean in which 
she was sunk, although did not return to smile until it was not left pregnant 
woman again, months more behind schedule. This time, her gynecologist 
was butcher: nothing of long walks nor of efforts. The more time happened 
fallen down, the less risk of another abortion runs. Decided this time to take 
the pregnancy to good port, Sonia arranged itself to spend nine months in 
bed. Its inspiration came to him world-wide from another Italian well-known 
one, Sofia Loren, who finished happening through he himself critical 
moment, with a happy end. It was a hard experience, but Sonia took it like a 
test that had to surpass. It counted on the support of Rajiv, that mimaba and 
took care of with great devotion. Luckyly, it had not left to Firoz, its father: 
hogareho was, affectionate and of a fidelity to all test. It followed enamored 
with Sonia so as the first day. Or more, because now a deeper feeling was 
linked, that than is born of the mutual understanding, to watch it everything 
with the eyes of the other, of a life in common totally assumed and made. 

Indira again was excited and luxury of details took care yet of the 
basket of the boy. "You are Always jactandote of the joys and "estatus 
superior " of being grandmother - Dorothy wrote to him to her North 
American friend Norman from an airplane that transported it to the south of 
India to celebrate the fourth centenary of the synagogue of the Jewish 
community of Kerala-, for that reason I divulge a secret to you: also I am 
competing by that estatus. Sonia waits for a boy for end of May. Is not 
exciting? Although when a daughter-in-law is of another continent, there are 
many complexities also." One talked about the fear of Sonia to give light in 
Delhi, and to new exigencies of its daughter-in-law, that arose like a 
reaction to the pressure of the surroundings. Suddenly Sonia declared that 
she wanted neither bred airplane nor to take care of the boy, and who 



would do she herself. To say that was a little chiquillada, a way to affirm 
giving to understand: "I am European and in my private sphere I will make 
the things to my way." Indira and Rajiv therefore understood it, so they did 
not insist, convinced that that intransigencia would go to him when was born 
the boy. The reality would already take care to put the things in its site. It 
was going to him to be very difficult to Sonia to do without aid considering 
that it would have to be available to accompany to its husband or Indira in 
the official exits. But, in general, the joy to receive to a new member of the 
family compensated those slight domestic frictions. When Rajiv was 
working, their mother or her brother tried to alternate themselves to 
accompany to Sonia during the meals. They did not want that its spirit felt 
like single at no moment nor that decayed. Rajiv now flew of copilot in the 
turboprops Fokker Friendship de Indian Airlines, high-winged airplanes with 
capacity for about forty passengers, worthy successors of the DC-3. 

Sonia spent long time with both brothers, who shared friends and 
I interest common, although to Sanjay saw itself him less and less. It was 
obsessed with its project to construct a "Volkswagen Indian". With a friend it 
had opened a factory in the periphery of the city and there, surrounded by 
rubbish dumps and culvert to opened sky, it persecuted its dream to 
become a "Henry Ford" local between pieces of metal and oxidized irons. 
The project to construct a produced popular car for the masses took more 
than ten years being discussed in the offices of the government, and finally 
the decision was taken to order its production to the private sector. Until 
then, two models, famous the Ambassador, retorts of the Morris Oxford only 
made in India under license that served as taxis in the London postwar 
period and which still today they continue making in the facilities of 
Hindustan Motors in the state of Bengal, and the Fiat Padmini, that would 
become the unique model of the taxis of Bombay (in Europe he was well- 
known like Fiat 1100). The car that it wanted to make Sanjay had to be 
totally native, would be cheap, reach the speed of eighty kilometers per 
hour and would consume five liters to the one hundred kilometers. The 
name that had chosen was Maruti, in reference to the son of the God of the 
wind in Hindu mythology. 

In that then, Indira did not watch beyond its own race. A dynasty 
did not imagine familiar, as his father had not imagined to it either. In 
numerous interviews it repeated that their children did not have interest in 
policy and that would do the one that was in its power to separate to them 
from that world. It did not show desires to transfer the "familiar load to 
them". To Indira it did not like anything to mix the politician and the 
personnel. 

But his Sanjay son, pawned at all costs on removing ahead his 
project, was going to trastocar that border that her mother had as much 
interest in preserving. So that it did not have the right to make a genuinely 
Indian car? , it was asked. It did not seem to him right that by the fact of 
being son of prime minister, resemblance company was vetoed to him. 
Indira was in a jam, torn between its feeling of mother and his to have of 



governor. It had requested to him to Sanjay that did not present/display its 
project to the Ministry of Industrial Development, but this one had made 
ears deaf and had asked for the license formally, although not even its 
learning in the Rolls-Royce had finished and he was neither a businessman 
nor a manufacturer of cars. In fact, its history of love with the cars had been 
a constant source of headache for its mother. Being adolescent, more of 
once the police it had brought to him to house after to have discovered to 
him, along with a friend, leaving cars that had stolen previously of a parking 
to occur a return. Those gamberradas as a child mimado were adopting 
forms different when growing. In England, Sanjay had caused several 
accidents without physical damages, and several times it had been arrested 
to exceed the speed limit to the steering wheel of its old Jaguar or not to 
take a driving licence valid. 

On the contrary that Rajiv, Sanjay was aggressive in its way to 
fight reason why it believed and it exerted a considerable pressure on its 
mother so that the license was granted to him . Indira presided over the 
meeting of the cabinet in which the minister of Industry granted to Sanjay a 
permission to produce fifty thousand automobiles to the year, entirely with 
native materials. And that although Sanjay lacked experience and could not 
present/display results of previous projects. It was clear that if had not been 
the son of prime minister, never they had granted it. By once, Indira its 
sacrosanct principle needed to put in front to have to its personal desire, an 
exception that would end up costing to him very expensive. A scandal and a 
general protest accompanied the birth by the project of national car Indira 
was accused in the press to practice the worse type of nepotism. A deputy 
of the opposition labeled the concession as " a misfortune for the 
democracy and the socialism". Others spoke of "corruption without limit". 
Their own allies, the Communists of Bengal, were united to the alluvium of 
critics. Indira responded little of convincing way: "My son has demonstrated 
to have enterprising spirit... If it is not animated to them, How to ask other 
young people who assume risks" At heart, Indira believed blindly in its son 
and surely it thought that the Maruti was a gold opportunity so that Sanjay 
came out ahead and proved his was worth. It knew that he was young, 
immature, impetuous, but it believed it capable and strong. It thought that it 
would learn and that it could control it. Also it knew that that would be 
equivalent to expose to him to the public life. To Vista years, it meant that 
Indira, in spite of continuing repeating that did not want that their children 
entered policy, already saw its smaller son like worthy successor of the 
lineage of the Nehru-Gandhi. It was perhaps a way to feel a little less single 
in the exercise of the power. 

In that fight against the solitude feeling that obstructed it from the 
most tender childhood, the birth of its grandson, the 19 of June of 1970, 
filled it of joy. Like in all the homes of India, the birth of a son was an event 
of great relevance. Rajiv attended the childbirth, which was unusual for a 
man in the India of then, and it made it with its camera in the hand to record 
the first weeping of its son, who had been born a little premature. Sonia was 



exhausted, but his husband helped it much, changed to the boy and he 
slept to him between the takings. They behaved like modern parents, 
although eternal India already watched to the house doors when they 
returned from the hospital and santon hoped the baby to make him the letter 
astral the chosen name was the one of Rahul, proposed by Indira. It 
explained Sonia to him who was the name about which she had thought 
originally for its first-born son, although in the end she put Rajiv to him to 
please its father. Nehru had been receiving suggestions of names in the jail, 
and had chosen Rajiv because in sanscrito she meant "loto", he himself 
meaning that Kamala, the name of its passed away woman eight years 
before. In the same way which Indira yielded to the desire of its father, 
Sonia yielded to the one of Indira and when doing it, a little became more 
India every time. Rahul was the name of a son of Gautama Buddha and in 
sanscrito it meant "the one that is able". Although the family was not 
religious, the force of the custom caused that the boy was received with the 
corresponding Hindu rites. The ceremony of the first haircut took place three 
weeks after its birth, and all the friends of the pair joined themselves in 
house. They shaved the skull of the baby, leaving only a hair tuft that, 
according to the tradition, would protect its memory. To shave to him had 
the symbolic meaning to release to him of the rest of its last lives and to 
prepare to him to face the future. 

Indira absolutely was captivated by the baby. It tried to return by 
house between sessions of the Parliament to see it and only to narrow it in 
its arms. The woman who was persecuting with hardness to aristocrats of 
India, that finished standing before the party to remain with the power, that 
expelled the companions who had not voted by her, was a grandmother 
who in front of melted her grandson. " How it is looked like Rajiv! ", it said, 
without nobody still found similar some him. In addition, that was not none 
fulfilled because there was counted thousand times the ugly thing that had 
been Rajiv when being born. But that creature touched the most intimate 
fiber to him and she remembered the times to him of its own maternity. 
Indira had given to light to Rajiv the 20 of August of 1944, not in a hospital 
but in house of its younger aunt, in Bombay, in precarious conditions. It had 
remained embarrassed in spite of its file of tuberculosis, of the warnings of 
the doctors and the opposition of its father to its wedding, so that that birth 
was lived like an authentic triumph on the adversity. Indira wanted at all 
costs that Nehru knew his grandson. Still they lacked three years for 
independence and was locked up in a British jail in which he would be his 
ninth and last imprisonment. When one found out that they were going to 
transfer it, Indira appeared to the doors of the prison of Naini in Allahabad, 
and in the interval that was between the door of the jail and the cellular van, 
it maintained to the small Rajiv in arms. "Under the tenuous light of a 
lamppost, my father discovered his grandson for the first time, and he was 
watching it the little time in which they allowed it", Indira counted. 

When Sonia had recovered, they traveled to Italy with the boy. 
Sonia had dreamed about that moment in numerous occasions during his 



long convalecencia. The aroma of the delicious coffee nothing else to arrive 
at the airport, silence in the great places public, the lacerante cold, the 
comfort and the rapidity of the automobiles, the water that could be drunk of 
the faucet, the supermarkets that offered of everything... those simple 
things which it lacked in India astonished it. It seemed that it was the first 
time that stepped on its earth. It was a moment of intense joy for being with 
his, in its town. It was fused in a hug with its father, did not say anything, 
was not necessary. Stefano Maino was suddenly with the small Rahul in 
arms and only he already concerned the well-being of the boy. Was not 
worth that moment all the shortages of the past? , Sonia seemed to ask 
itself. Finally, it was reunited under he himself ceiling with all those that 
populated their heart. 



12 

They soon returned to Nueva Delhi, to follow with its calm familiar 
life, although it was a fictitious calm because always it was threatened by 
bumps of the policy. In spite of which Indira loved its grandson, almost it did 
not see it much of the occupied thing that it was. It spent long hours in its 
office of South Block, and when it returned to house, it was always tired and 
with the worried semblante. 

- What is the one that happens? - Rajiv nothing else asked to 
return. 

- They say that it is going to have a coup d'etat - Sanjay 
commented to him. 

- Who says it? 

- All the world. In the celebrations, in cocktails, the suppers it is 
not spoken of another thing... Mother knows it, and the worse thing is 
afraid. 

Indira had become many enemies with its attacks against the 
well off class, that accused it to want to make of India a communist country. 
It had been put to all the right against, to the employer's association, the 
proprietors of mass media , to maharajas and their descendants, etc., and 
feared, like good part of the country, a violent reaction. But it did not want to 
make of India a communist country like which it had known in its trips after 
the steel drop curtain. To the opposite, it delivered great attacks to assure to 
the well off classes that their interests were not in danger. It had 
compensated to the great financial families with generous indemnifications 
by the nationalization of its banks. The freedom - individual collective, 
national it was a supreme value that was not arranged to sacrifice in the 
altar of the socialism. 

But the rumor that the military prepared a blow had propagated 
like the powder in the great cities, Bombay, Delhi and Calcuta. The idea that 
India could survive neither as democracy nor as united country were holding 
fast in the elitist sectors the more of the society. The figures of Nehru and 
Gandhi began to be contemplated like relics of an idealistic past that 
already little it had to do with the reality. Indira, more and more isolated in 
the top of the power, began to feel paranoica, and it was not for less. To 
general Sam Manekshaw, parsi that was Indian Army Commander-in-Chief, 
they did the same question there to him where it went: When is going to 
take control of the power? It abstained to respond. What it hit to him more is 
that between that did the question to him, there were ministers of the 
cabinet of Indira. 

It is satiated with as much rumor, that one had infiltrated until in 
its own house, Indira summoned to its office of South Block general 
Manekshaw. They were old friends; Indira been had married with parsi 
plaster always added familiarity to the relation. Sam across was sitting of his 
table of office in kidney form, the elbows supported on the table and the 
head between the hands. After greeting itself, she said to him with cansina 
voice: 



- All say that you are going to replace to me... Is certain that, 
Sam? 

The military man remained of stone, but to the few seconds she 
reacted: "I took steps towards where it was seated. It had a long nose, and 
mine also he was prominent, so that I approached my nose hers and I 
asked to him, watching it fixedly to the eyes: 

" " And you what you think, prime minister? " 

" You cannot do it, I answer. 

" " Piensas that I am so incompetent? " 

" "No, Sam, did not mean that. I mean that you will not do it. " 

" "You are all the right, prime minister. I do not interfere in political 
subjects. My work consists of sending on the army and velar so that it stays 
like an instrument of first order. Yours it is velar by the country. " 

"" My ministers say that a military coup is being plotted. Until my 
children they have heard it. " 

"" Those ministers, you named them. Librate of them. You must 
trust me. " 

The general had never seen it so worried and with the spirit so 
lowered as that day. "It had many political enemies - it would remember 
Manekshaw-. Constantly they plotted complots against her. But she was 
small a ready one. It came to say to me: "Sam, if you are thinking about 
doing something, that you know that I know everything to it. "" 

They were turbulent Christmases. Although of doors inside Indira 
it did the possible thing not to let traslucir its restlessness, was impossible to 
be immune to the tension of the street. Sanjay was the one who more often 
asked to him on which was going to do, but Indira responded with one of its 
famous silencios and took to the small Rahul in arms, as if in that simple 
gesture it looked for the answer complicated questions. What had made 
their father in those same circumstances? , she asked herself. In 1951, 
Nehru had been in a seemed situation, although not so extreme. And it had 
decided to consult the town. That same one was going to make Indira. He 
felt that his government, employee solely of the support of the left parties, 
would not survive the attacks of the powerful forces that had been united 
against her. It had the intuition of which the town, if he were consulted, 
would support it. But this time would separate the general elections of the 
state ones. Until then, always they had been made jointly, with the result of 
which local ethnic group and considerations chaste were mixed with great 
national questions. Now it wanted to make sure that they would be 
dissociated. It wanted to present/display an authentic national program 
before the electorate. 

The 27 of December of 1970, to eight in the morning, after their 
daily meeting in the garden, Indira a tea with Sonia was taken. 

- Today I will not come to eat - it said to him. I am going to go to 
see the president of the Republic and I am going to him to solicit that it 
dissolves the Parliament. It is going to be a day very loaded. Dile to Rajiv 
that I will speak tonight by the radio. 



In effect, that same night went to the nation to announce that it 
advanced to the general elections a year. Sonia listened to it from the 
house kitchen: " The time is not going to hope to us - Indira with certain 
apocalyptic tone said. The million people who request food, lodging and 
work have haste by which we do something. The power in a democracy has 
the town. For that reason we went to him to request a new mandate to him." 
Just a short time after the announcement, a journalist of Newsweek asked 
Indira which would be the great subject of the campaign. Without doubting 
it, Indira responded: "The subject I am." 

During the ten following weeks, as soon as it appeared by house, 
and if for it were to change of clothes and to return to leave. Sometimes that 
happened to the one of the dawn, and when hearing it, Sonia it awoke, 
arranged to help it to look for sari or to do a tea to him. It notified to him of 
the boy, and Indira spoke to him of the campaign. It was animated: "I like to 
be with people, with the town. The fatigue goes away to me when I am with 
them - it said while both dismissed the day. Sabes, Sonia? I do not see 
them like mass, I see them like many together individuals... " She was 
contented because the great alliance that agglutinated opposite parties - 
from parties of right to Socialists and who were their adversaries, had 
committed the error to choose eslogan that it reflected his deeper desire: 
"We end Indira." 

- I have proposed another one eslogan: " Acabemos with the 
poverty" You do not think that it has more feeling? 

Sonia agreed. Indira continued, in low voice not to wake up to the 
boy. 

- That phrase gives to our party as opposed to the moral reason 
and an image of progress to a reactionary alliance. After all, the poor men 
are the great majority of the electorate... 

- They will see You like its rescuer... 

- Hopefully. 

The campaign that made during the months of January and 
February of 1971 was very intense. Having frugales habits - as soon as it 
ate and it slept very little helped him in his effort. More than thirteen million 
people they attended his meetings and other seven million received it to 
both sides of the highways, according to official statistics. "In the forty and 
three days that I had to my disposition - Dorothy Norman- wrote to her 
friend crossed more than sixty thousand kilometers and spoke in about 
three hundred meetings. He was wonderful to see the light in the eyes of 
people." Still more wonderful it was to verify that, except in certain areas 
populated by untouchable and tribal communities, the type of poverty that 
existed twenty ago years no longer occurred. Deformations atrocious like 
long ago, nor young with bellies swollen by the undernourishment were not 
seen. "Perhaps a ceiling and a work do not have all, but people seem 
healthy. To the children the eyes shine to them ", told Dorothy. 

That one was its great pride, authenticated by the statistics. In 
five years, the annual production of wheat and rice had been duplicated. 



"For the first time, I do not have the impression that the economy depends 
exclusively on the success or the failure of the monsoons", had written a 
British journalist who traveled regularly to India. The Indian mass media, the 
majority into the hands of the opposition, did not speak of this, but the town 
yes pronounced itself, in the greater electoral call to date in the world. 

The night of the results, the whole family was reunited in house. 
Sonia had been in charge of which there were candies and flowers in all the 
corners. The house was illuminated by outside, and in the interior the 
atmosphere era of contained enthusiasm. As the Electoral Commission 
shelled numbers and results, the euphoria went away untying. Two hundred 
seventy and five million had voted in this fifth call from independence. No 
individual had had to walk more than two kilometers to deposit its problem. 
Almost two million volunteers had acted of electoral agents. Sixty and six 
attempts of fraud had been entered, an insignificant number in a so 
enormous country. The tendency of the results was clear: the party of Indira 
won in all the circumscriptions. They began to arrive at house cars without 
stopping. A similar victory came accompanied from an inescapable cut of 
flatterers. People that did not doubt in crouching itself and touching the feet 
to him, way traditional to salute that the Nehru always saw as a servility 
sample when those that did it were of well off class. Their ministers, such 
who spoke to their backs on a military coup, were first in arriving and postrar 
themselves. Sonia learned to recognize these melifluos whereas they 
changed of jacket according to the political temperature. In that time its 
obsession was born to identify them and to maintain them to ray, an 
obsession that would never leave it. Also sincere friends came to 
congratulate to Indira, that entered and left its stuffed study of seated 
colleagues of the party in the ground with the crossed legs. Another room, 
near the entrance, was seen soon invaded of people. The telephones 
sounded without truce. The dogs also participated in the general excitation 
and they were strained between the legs of the visitors whom Sonia took 
care of with the small Rahul in arms. Indira tried to disguise its rejoicing, but 
in truth it had obtained for its new mandate a comfortable majority of two 
thirds. A victory that turned it more powerful prime minister from 
independence. In the venerated person more, more feared, more wanted 
and in certain atmospheres, the most hated. 

But also it was a victory for India. The elections demonstrated to 
be a genuine unificadora force of the nation, over the differences and the 
diversity. The democracy was confirmed like the new religion of this so old 
country and so populated with Gods, a religion that helped to clear the way 
towards the future. 

It did not have long Indira time to savor its triumph. Fifteen days 
after the announcement of its phenomenal victory, the Pakistani army 
mounted a ferocious attack against the bengalies citizens of Eastern 
Pakistan. The images in the television showed a human tide, composed by 
million refugees, in their majority old women, children and, who crossed the 
border looking for refuge in the India province of western Bengal, already of 



in case very populated, and whose capital it was Calcuta. Neither Sonia, nor 
Rajiv nor Sanjay lost an informative one. That tide of refugees remembered 
the tragic events of the Partition. They knew that Indira was as opposed to a 
crisis of enormous proportions. How a poor country as India can welcome 
so many refugees? , they were asked distressed. Will be necessary to take 
part in Eastern Pakistan to stop the flow from which they arrive? What will 
make mother? 

- Is a civil war? - Sonia asked. They explained to him that it 
seemed it because it happened within a same country, Pakistan, but was a 
country made up of two separated organizations by more than three 
thousand kilometers of Indian territory, product of the partition of the 
subcontinent according to doubtful religious and communal criteria when the 
independence of the English. In fact, there was no real unit between those 
two nations, whose western part finished declaring the war to the Eastern 
one. The inhabitants of western Pakistan spoke urdu and were more well 
high and of clear skin. Those of Eastern Pakistan were low, of dark skin and 
spoke bengali. The only thing that shared was the Islam, but this was not 
sufficient base to lay the foundations a nation. Mainly because, in spite of 
being the the most populated Eastern part, most of the resources - health, 
education, electricity were systematically off the track to the western part. 
Those of the west exploded blatantly to those of the east, that demanded 
the autonomy. 

In resistance with India, where the democracy had survived 
political disturbances, hambrunas and war, Pakistan had been thirteen 
years of military regime. His president, general Yahya Khan, known by his 
liking the alcohol, had promised to celebrate the first free plebiscito in the 
history of the country in December of 1970. It could not anticipate the 
consequences of those elections that opened to the contradictions and the 
fragility of the well-known political organization like Pakistan. In the west 
Zulfikar won AN Bhutto, a lawyer educated in England that had put in policy 
when returning to its country and that was leader of the PPP (Started off of 
the Town of Pakistan). In the east it devastated a party led by a charismatic 
personage, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, friend and ally of Indira, that had 
campaigned denouncing the colonialismo exerted by western Pakistan on 
the Eastern part. It gained a so overwhelming victory that it obtained the 
majority in the National Assembly of Pakistan. According to the logic of the 
results it must be named prime minister. But the general in the power did 
not have intention of which the Eastern part assumed the political power. 
Before the movement of civil disobedience that sent Sheikh Mujibur 
Rahman in all Eastern Pakistan, summoning an indefinite general strike, 
Yahya dictator Khan decided to repress the rebellion by the force. Suddenly 
and without previous warning, it sent forty thousand soldiers of western 
Pakistan to invade the Eastern part. The press news spoke of a ruthless 
and brutal attack. Many of the officials, boasting itself of which they were 
going to dedicate itself to improve the genes of the bengalies children, 
violated to thousands of women, they sacked and they burned houses and 



businesses and they assassinated to thousands of innocents. Any suspect 
of dissidence was persecuted and eliminated, specially if they were Hindu: 
students, professors of university, writers, journalists, professionals and 
intellectuals, nobody escaped to the terror of those high , strong soldiers 
and supplied well that degollaban without mercy. Not even the children 
escaped to the brutality: those that had luck were assassinated next to their 
parents, but other thousands would have to pass the rest of their lives 
without eyes or with members horribly amputated. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman 
was arrested and transferred western Pakistan, where it was jailed. 

- Vas to declare the war, mother? - Sanjay at the time of the 
supper asked to him, like that asks if it were going away to go of trip or 
purchases. 

- If nonencounter another way to fix the problem, I do not have 
left more remedy. Of all ways, tomorrow I will speak with general 
Manekshaw. 

Indira knew that if the Pakistani dictator had acted with as much 
security, was because it counted on the endorsement of his main ally, the 
United States. The other ally was Chinese, that had declared the war to the 
India in 1962, and which in a lightning attack it had annexed border 
territories in the Himalayas. That had been a humiliation for India, and a 
mortal blow to the old idea of Nehru of the solidarity of the nations 
nonaligned. Also it had marked the principle of the aim of Nehru. Its health 
began to decay, and more of an observer it attributed its death to the 
affliction that produced the attack to him of the neighbors of the north. 

- Sabes the one that is happening in Eastern Pakistan? - Sam 
Manekshaw asked to him to Indira his old friend, Army Commander-in- 
Chief, nothing else to arrive at a meeting of his government. 

- Yes, there are slaughters - the military man responded. 

- Telegrams of the border states rain to Us - Indira- continued. 
They say that the refugees do not stop to arrive. Sam, is necessary to stop 
the flow as she is, we do not have resources to take care of more people. If 
it is necessary to enter Eastern Pakistan, hazlo. Beam which is, but 
detenlos. 

- You know that that means the war. 

- It does not matter to me that there is war - settled prime 
minister. 

The general happened to explain the dangers to him of an 
invasion. Monzonicas rains were on the verge of unloading, the transport of 
troops would have to be done using the highways because the fields would 
be flooded. The Air Force could not act in those circumstances. It said 
frankly to him that in that situation they could not win a war. 

- The harvest has begun in Punjab and Haryana - the prudent 
general added. If the country goes to the war in season of harvest, I will 
need all the highways available, and that is going to cause problems in the 
food distribution, and perhaps hambrunas. Soon it is the problem of China. 
The passages of the Himalayas will be opened within few days... Will 



remain with the crossed arms, they who are allied of Pakistan? What we do 
if they give an ultimatum us? 

- They will not do it - Indira- said. I inform to him that we are on 
the verge of signing a pact of collaboration and mutual defense with the 
Soviet Union. A pact for next the twenty years. 

So much was the rage of Indira - the military man remembered 
who its face went away blushing. It decided to interrupt the meeting and to 
resume it in the evening. The ministers left the room, but Indira asked Sam 
who remained. When they were single, the military man felt in the obligation 
to say to him: 

- My to have it is to tell the truth him, lady. But to the light of 
everything what I have exposed, if it wants that present my resignation, I am 
arranged to do it. 

- No, Sam Adelante. I have total confidence in you. 

As of that moment, prime minister and the Commander-in-Chief 
worked in perfect syntony. Indira never allowed that nothing or nobody 
interfered among them. Sam had convinced to him that the military option 
would have to be the last one, and only if they were themselves forced it. 
The strategy now was the one to gain time, by the minus until the winter 
returned to the Himalayas and congealed the mountain passages , 
indispensable requirement so that the Chinese did not have the temptation 
to put in the conflict. 

The tide of refugees was unstoppable. Up to one hundred fifty 
thousands crossed the border every day. They arrived in trucks, cars of 
oxen, rickshaws and on foot. Sonia saw Indira affected the return of a trip 
very that had done to Calcuta. 

- I have visited the campings under a torrential rain - it counted in 
house, sitting to the table but without proving mouthful because the appetite 
had been cut to him. It thought that after the experience of the fields of 
refugees during the Partition, which would be prepared for was going to 
see. But no. I have seen men and women like small sticks, skeletal, old 
children transported in the backs of its children who walked through flooded 
fields... They remained standing up during hours in the mud because there 
was no dry place where to seat. My companions waited for words mine, but 
so it was affected that I could not speak. 

Eight weeks, three million and means of refugees had entered 
India. Although the majority was Hindu, also were Muslims, Buddhist, 
Christian... People of all the social phantom and all the ages. It cost what 
cost - repeated Indira-, would not leave its luck to them. She and their 
advisors dedicated themselves meticulously to plan the organization of the 
fields of refugees. He wanted that his government turned upside down in 
lodging them, feeding them and to protect them of the epidemics. If again it 
had to go to request money by the world to assume that cost, were 
arranged to do it. 

To Sonia the look scared a little to him that took the events, but it 
did not let it see. It had a blind faith in its mother-in-law. The press insisted 



on which the atrocities did not stop and that the flow of refugees did not 
diminish either. Where will lead all this? , they were asked in house, patches 
in front of the television set at the time of the news. Throughout, oia a same 
outcry so that the government sent to the army. But in spite of the frenetic 
calls, Indira maintained the blood cold. As always in time of crisis, it 
remained control of the situation altogether. The familiar atmosphere in its 
Nueva house Delhi helped it to relax. To see grow to its Rahul grandson 
was for her a balsam. The decision making, mainly when it affected one 
sixth part of the humanity, could easily become a mental torture. To stay 
gracious and calm was fundamental, for her, the country and the world. In 
that, it found in Sonia a valuable aid. "Her daughter is a jewel", wrote to him 
to Paola. In public, it did not stop to do to him fulfilled. To a veteran 
journalist it said to him: "She is simply a wonderful woman, a perfect wife, a 
perfect daughter-in-law, a wonderful mother and a fabulous housewife. And 
the incredible thing of all this is that it is more India than any girl India" A 
day, all the family attended the projection of a documentary one that a friend 
of Indira, the journalist Gita Mehta, had made on the refugees and who 
were going to be spread in the United States. Sonia was affected by the 
images deeply. The documentary one showed and entrevistaba women 
who the Pakistani soldiers had maintained captive in trenches. One of them, 
of about fifteen years, must be violated two hundred times. They did not 
leave tears to him, was in state of catatonico shock. Also old and young 
were seen images of returning their destroyed homes, images of burned 
and devastated fields. When finishing the projection, Sonia realized of which 
Indira cried. 



13 

Indira was arranged to burn all the cartridges to avoid a war, or at 
least to delay it. It thought that only the intervention of the rest of the world 
could be able a Pacific agreement to stop the drain. The world-wide press 
became echo of the committed atrocities in which they began to call 
Bangladesh. The publishing commentaries were critical with the support 
that president Nixon gave the Pakistanis. The North American elite seemed 
united in its fort condemns to general Yahya Khan. In France, Andre 
Malraux proposed to give arms to the resistance of Bangladesh. The ex- 
Beatle George Harrison and the Indian teacher of sitar Shankar Rabbi 
organized a gigantic concert to collect bottoms for the refugees. Allen 
Ginsberg, the poet whom Indira had listened in London when it went to 
inaugurate the exhibition on his father, sang the suffering of the fields. 

It did not have left to Indira another resource that to leave tour by 
the United States and Europe, being tried to galvanize to world-wide the 
public opinion. 

- If in the West people saw the images of the documentary one 
that we saw the other day - she said to him to Sonia- I am sure that they 
would be mobilized. 

It had the intention to spend several months traveling through the 
world. One went away with the certainty that the domestic front well was 
taken care of, which provided to him very needed tranquillity spirit. Thus it 
confessed it to an Arab journalist in one of its scales: "I do not have any 
anxiety by the family when Sonia is in house." Before starting off, her 
daughter-in-law had communicated him another happy news: she was 
again pregnant woman, and this time it did not seem that it had to remain 
other nine months in bed. 

The tour began bad; its encounter with Nixon was sounded 
fiasco. Decidedly, Indira accumulated bad experiences with the North 
American presidents who considered too much izquierdosa, although Nixon 
seemed one hundred times worse to him than the gross one of Johnson. 
The discussions were dyed of mutual distrust and antipathy. Indira and 
Nixon were seated in armchairs with orejeras to each side of the chimney of 
the oval office of the White House while their advisor and Kissinger, like 
individual assistants in a duel, listened seated sofas on the brink of 
madness the dialogue of their heads. Nixon refused to recognize the 
dimensions of the human tragedy that was knocking down Eastern 
Pakistan. One also refused to accept the suggestion of Indira to convince to 
general Yahya Khan so that it released to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and it 
established direct negotiations with him and their party, the only serious 
possibility to stop the conflict. Nixon did not take pity itself of the luck of the 
refugees nor of the one of Sheikh. The words of Indira seemed to slip to 
him. "It was a dialogue of deaf people", declared Kissinger when coming 
out. Soon it commentd out of which Nixon had said things "that were not 
reproducibles". Years later, when the documents of that time were 
declassified, he knew that Nixon based all his policy on that corner of Asia 



in his affection personal by dictator Yahya Khan - "a decent and reasonable 
man" - whose loyalty to the United States had to be compensated helping 
him to repress the rebellion of Eastern Pakistan, and his aversion towards 
the Indians - "those bastards" - as she called them. Both were sure that they 
would not go to the war. They were poor until for that, thought. 

To the following day, Nixon made wait for to Indira forty and five 
minutes in the waiting room of the oval office. Prime minister was full of 
contained wrath when they seated to speak. It was the head of a country of 
poor people, but of a great democratic nation with an enormous population 
and a millenarian civilization, and a similar treatment was not deserved. It 
faces had a personage who did not seem human, a man who, according to 
his advisor, "lacked moral principles". And a Kissinger that was "egolatra 
that was believed Metternich". So that to waste more time with that type of 
interlocutors? The luck of the refugees and the financial load that had to 
support to India had left them cold. " It had been an error to dribble on which 
the old witch told us", there was this deprived Nixon in to its advisor. They 
were clear allies of Pakistan, and Indira realized of which that was not going 
to change it she in that visit. So that in this second encounter, Indira gave 
back his groseria to him with subtility. It did not make any reference to the 
problem with Pakistan, as if the south of Asia was the most pacific region of 
the world and, in its place, asked on Vietnam and American foreign policy in 
other parts of the planet. Nixon took it like an insult. "That old vixen", 
therefore called it in private. 

In spite of the tightened thing of its agenda, Indira obtained a pair 
in free afternoons for its private activities. Her friend Dorothy Norman found 
it exhausted. The tension of the meetings with Nixon and the continuous 
trips, the effort to have to control themselves always and to stay reasonable 
front to the provocation began to leave their track in the face of Indira. 
Dorothy had bought tickets to attend a representation of the New York City 
Ballet of a work of Stravinsky coreografiada by Balanchine, which it could 
more like its friend. At the last moment, Indira said to him that it could not 
go. "It seemed sad and nervous", would remember Dorothy, who did not 
understand what she happened to him. Indira tried to explain itself: 

- I cannot, Dorothy. He will be too pretty. I will not be able to 
support it. 

It was to point to lie down to cry. Dorothy remained worried, but 
on the following day she noticed alleviated who Indira "had restored its 
balance". 

In the other countries, Indira ran into with he himself message. 
They requested to him that it had patience, that accepted the presence of 
observers of the UN and that found a solution pacific. "The greater problem 
with the one than I am - it said to the press is not the confrontation in the 
border, but the constant effort of the people of other countries in turning 
aside the attention on which it is the basic question." In the English 
television, one was like one prime minister the height of the circumstances. 
There was lost weight and in its factions they appeared characteristics of its 



father, he himself urgent air, of great dignity, and a fire glance. When the 
journalist spoke to him of the necessity of India to be patient, Indira 
exploded: " Patience? Patience so that it follows the massacre? So that they 
continue the violations? When Hitler was attacking to everybody... you 
remained without doing nothing? Dejasteis killed all the Jews? How controls 
a similar exodus? If the international community had recognized the 
situation, the problem would already have been solved." It was not only to 
the journalist to whom went, but to all the world-wide leaders who ignored it. 
When it returned to India, one found out that the number of 
refugees had ascended to ten million. Now it was convinced that the war 
was inevitable, but did not say anything in house. Omitting the tensions of 
the trips and of which it was approached, it told them that it had been able 
to scratch time to attend the Fidelio opera in Vienna where also it had seen 
a spectacle that it had liked much, the school of Spanish equitation. In 
Paris, it had had supper in house of friends where it had known Joan 
Watched and a called politician Frangois Mitterrand who had caused very 
good impression to him. It seemed that it returned of a trip of pleasing 
instead of an exhausting and frustrating international tour. Pero Rajiv and 
Sonia were not let deceive. They perfectly knew the tension level that it was 
supporting and in the end Indira could not hide the truth to them: there 
would be war. To Sanjay it did not seem to affect the news to him, but Rajiv 
and Sonia were worried. The small Rahul moaned in its cradle. 

- You will have acostumbraros to leave less and to live 
surrounded by greater protection, by the minus while all this lasts - Indira- 
said. The whole country demands a fast and effective action. The time 
finishes. 

That night, general Sam Manekshaw came his friend, and Sonia 
and Rajiv could hear fragments of the conversation in which the general 
spoke of the preparations of the army, of the operational bases that had 
mounted inside Bangladesh and of how had protected the border of western 
Pakistan with defense units. 

- I am afraid that there is to go to the war, Sam - they heard say 
to Indira. 

- If we go, it already must be, taking advantage of the Full Moon 
of the 4 December. That day, we can attack Dacca. 

Indira remained pensativa a little while. It never thought that it 
would someday be called on to him to initiate a war. But the world was 
become lost in thought of the problem and the situation became untenable, 
did not have more remedy than to take the subject in its own hands. One 
remembered words that his father said to him to a day: "I know the owner of 
your own life, your present and your future, consultame if you need it, but 
decides you." It could not consult to him, but it could decide. It returned the 
head towards its old friend and it said to him: 

- Ahead, Sam 



In house, it tried not to let traslucir its preoccupation. In fact, all 
delivered the same attack. They feared for Sonia, who was in advanced 
state of gestation. The Nehru was customary to disguise their feelings when 
the thing was turned. In that, they were very British. And if they went away 
to Italy one season? The suggestion had come from a friend, but Sonia 
misestimated it. It did not have intention to leave to single Indira in that 
critical moment. That did not correspond with its concept of loyalty. Sonia 
knew his mother-in-law sufficiently well to guess that now more than ever 
she needed the heat and the proximity his. In addition, as much she corno 
Rajiv had confidence in the life, the future, in Indira and India, and it was 
never happened to think to them about the consequences in case of defeat. 
That eventuality simply was not contemplated. 

What they did went to surround to Indira of affection, without 
doing too many questions and trying not to oppress it more than what was. 
They were very affectionate with her and when they saw it specially worried, 
Rajiv gave a long hug him. 

Indira traveled to Calcuta the 3 of December of 1971, a day 
before the anticipated attack. In the great esplanade in center of which it 
was the capital of the British empire, one went to a means multitude million 
people: "India wants La Paz, but if the war explodes we are prepared to 
fight, because it is as much question of our ideals as of our security. . . " Just 
when she pronounced these words, an assistant raised podio and she 
passed a note to him: "Pakistani Huntings have bombed nine air bases ours 
in the northwest, the north and the west, including those of Amritsar, Agra 
and Srinagar in Kashmir. " Indira finished its speech hastily, without 
announcing what finished reading. Nothing else to leave the meeting said to 
him to its assistant: " Thanks to God, have attacked they" The third war 
Hindu-Pakistani had exploded. And Pakistan was the aggressor. 

That night, Indira flew of Nueva return Delhi, and its airplane was 
escorted by Indian huntings. The danger that existed the Pakistani Air Force 
located the airplane and demolished it. Pero Indira did not seem affected by 
the acceleration of the events. On the contrary, it took of its purse a book of 
Thor Heyerdal on the expedition of the Ra and was reading the flight 
throughout. Don't mention it it served already to put itself nervous: the luck 
was thrown. When it landed, the capital was sunk in the most complete 
dark, fruit of the blackout that had ordered the military administrations. 
Indira went directly to its office of South Block where, in the room of maps, it 
was informed into the damages inflicted by Pakistani aviation. Later one met 
with members of the opposition to inform to them into which it had issued 
orders so that the Indian army invaded Bangladesh. They described it 
"calm, calm and trusted". It was more of midnight when one went to the 
nation by radio to announce the Pakistani aggression and to warn on the 
great dangers that threatened that region of the world. That day did not 
sleep in house. The scaling of the military situation remained to all the night 
monitorizando. To the following morning, in the Parliament, it announced 



the representatives of the town who had to prepare themselves for one long 
fight. 

Sonia, to point to give light when the conflict exploded, more was 
worried about the childbirth that by a war that she perceived distant, in spite 
of to have had to spend the last nights in the dark by the blackout. If it felt 
anguish, at no moment it demonstrated it. Aside from an additional detent of 
the army protecting the house and of which now general Sam Manekshaw 
came to have breakfast all the mornings to inform to prime minister on the 
development of the conflict, the life ran with normality. To Sonia it liked to 
serve the tea to the general, a likeable and very courteous man, known by 
its liking the British military traditions. Every day, nothing else to rise to five 
and the average one, it liked to take a drink from whiskey, to listen to the 
news in the BBC and to take care of a little the garden before going to work. 
He himself calm and safe behavior of Indira, that tranquillity to all those 
inspired that surrounded - colleagues, the military, also welded repelled in 
house. 

The sixth day, Sam arrived with the serious semblante. Sonia 
heard say to him that several units of their army had stagnated in bogs near 
Dacca, the capital of Bangladesh. They were losing crucial hours. The 
general informed to Indira of the precise number of losses and demolished 
airplanes. It seemed affected very. She made questions, always calmed 
and positive. "Sam, you cannot gain all the days", said to him as a 
consolation. Sonia saw them leave to the porch. There was no the minimum 
resquicio of anxiety in the face of Indira while it gave the hand to the 
Commander-in-Chief. General Manekshaw said that the anger of Indira was 
an inspiration for all. Sonia could verify it when she listened, of the other 
side of the iron door, to people to send victory shouts. 

Not even that day let Indira be interested in the subjects of the 
family. When it returned to house after an exhausting day in the Parliament 
and its office of South Block, it was locked in with Usha to dissolve 
questions that deserved the same importance to him that those that had 
discussed during the day: how to organize the national celebration of the 
Day of the Republic without knowing the result the war, for example, or what 
to give to Sonia the 9 of December, day of its birthday, and to elaborate a 
list of gifts for next Christmases. 

Perhaps the procession went on the inside and Indira was not so 
safe of itself as it wanted to pretend because at that time it began to ask for 
the services of astrologers and quiromanticos. That night arrived its 
professor from yoga, a called guru Dhirendra Brahmachari, good looking, 
with long beard and hair, always dressed in one kurta orange and footwear 
with sandals. Short while in a room with her was locked in length. Nine, 
while Usha, Rajiv and Sonia saw the news in the television on the troops 
flooded Indians, Indira entered the hall, with the a little anxious semblante. It 
finished dismissing the visitor. "It thinks that we are going to pass it bad until 
February", it said something insane. 



The 6 of December, while the Indian army left the bog and it 
approached Dacca, Indira announced in the Parliament the official 
recognition of the new nation of Bangladesh. A sonorous ovation received 
its words. From all parts it received an unconditional support. The 
opposition and all the sectors of the society were united like a fragmentation 
hand grenade under their leadership. The town began to identify it with 
Durga, the goddess of the war that rides on a tiger and that overcame the 
demons after these had expelled the Gods from the sky. 

Sonia would not be arranged to forget that 9 December in that 
she turned twenty-five years with a belly of eight months. Indira called mid- 
morning to saying that it would not attend the familiar food of celebration 
because a serious subject had arisen . Very serious it had to be so that 
Indira was not present in the birthday of its daughter-in-law, thought those 
that knew it. The news, that it came from the United States, caused that the 
world shook. Nixon had decided to dispatch to the Seventh Fleet to the bay 
of Bengal, headed by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise. All a 
provocation that could trigger a world war. 

While friends in private festejaban the birthday of Sonia of their 
house, Indira, excited, made an incendiary speech in the esplanade of Lila 
Ram in Nueva Delhi, in front of a multitude of hundreds of thousands of 
people. Indian huntings flew over the place to prevent any attack surprise 
with the Pakistani Aerial Force. Indira had disregarded the advice of its 
advisers of security to speak by the radio instead of doing it in public. He 
was brave; it seemed that nothing gave fear him. 

At night, one met with general Manekshaw and his advisor. 
Without intimidating itself by the American provocation, Indira confirmed its 
decision to follow with the war. It thought that the gesture of Nixon was a 
light because the Americans would not be as crazy as to open another front 
in Asia after the one of Vietnam. But also it was certain that of a type as 
Nixon could be expected everything. It was turned towards general 
Manekshaw: 

- Sam, now is imperative to capture Dacca before the arrival of 
the Seventh Fleet waters Indians - she said to him, You create It feasible? 

- Yes - the military man without dudarlo- responded, unless the 
Chinese take part. 

The advisor of Indira took the word: 

- They are annoying with the situation, but they have not sent any 
direct threat - it said. 

- Then - it continued Indira- I will command same to the minister 
of Outer Subjects to Moscow tomorrow to activate the treaty that we have 
with the Soviets and to assure its support to us in case an American or 
Chinese attack. My opinion, I repeat it, is that we must follow with the war. 
You agree? 

Both responded with an affirmative gesture. 
The visit of the minister of Outer Subjects Indian served so that 
the Russians dispatched a fleet to the bay of Bengal that in few days 



followed the wake of the American boats. The situation had reached a 
tactically important point. From the White House, Nixon mounted furious 
attacks against the "India aggression". Its administration announced the 
suppression of the economic and military aid to India, but it continued 
sending war material to Pakistan, something that was denounced by the 
own North American press. Indira wrote a sharp letter to him: "This war had 
been able to avoid if the nations, the specially United States, had used their 
influence, its power and its authority to find a solution political. You, like 
president of the United States and representative of the will, the aspirations 
and the idealismo of the great North American town, at least hagame to 
know where exactly we have been mistaken so that their representatives 
and their spokesman deal to us with a so hard language." Indira spent the 
day doubting on if it had to send the letter or no. At night, it decided to send 
it. The North American would be an additional right to detest it still more. 

The 13 of December, when its army was to the doors of Dacca, 
general Manekshaw sent an ultimatum to his homologous Pakistani in 
whom he gave three days him to surrender. To five of afternoon of day 16, 
Indira was more being interviewed by a reporter of the Swedish television 
interested in knowing what clothes it liked to put themselves and how it had 
been his childhood that in the course of the war , when suddenly it sounded 
the telephone. It was Manekshaw: "Lady, we have won to them. They finish 
surrendering. Dacca has fallen." Indira closed the eyes and tightened the 
fists. 

- Thanks, Sam - it said to him. 

Its interview finished hastily and it went to the Parliament. Before 
the assembly of expectant deputies, it began saying: "Dacca is today the 
free capital of a free country... " But an intense ovacion mixed with joy 
shouts drowned the rest of its speech. " We have won! ", they vociferated 
until the deputies of the opposition. " Aplastemos to the enemy for always! ", 
they said others. " Long life to Indira Gandhi! ", the town cried out. 

Later one met with the cupola of the army. The balance for the 
Indians was of forty and two destroyed airplanes and eighty and tanks; the 
Pakistanis were lost eighty and six airplanes and two hundred twenty-six 
tanks. The greater disparity resided in the number of prisoners. The 
Pakistanis had obtained a handful of prisoners in the combats in the west. 
India was with ninety and four thousand Pakistani prisoners. Indira was 
dedicated to calm the spirits of its generals, who were not in agreement with 
the unilateral cease-fire that she protested. The High Command became 
echo of a great part of the public opinion, that it wanted to continue 
collecting warlike victories "until the total defeat of the enemy". Pero Indira 
was pragmatic: "We must stop to us once reached our objectives, we do not 
give neither to China nor to the United States excuses to take part. It is 
necessary to give back the prisoners and to settle the conflict already." The 
military cleared one's throat, except Sam, who listened imperturbable, their 
long nose aiming at the interlocutors according to were speaking. Indira 
explained that its position was based on a political appreciation of the 



situation and that spoke with the authority that gave the endorsement him of 
a unanimous cabinet. A time had finished, the military rose, greeted and 
said that they would carry out the instructions of the government. "This is 
something that had not been able to happen in many countries, and not 
only of the Third World", Indira would remember. 

The strategy of Indira to gain time, their exquisite sense of the 
opportunity and the moment, the mutual understanding that maintained with 
general Manekshaw, their almost maternal way to harangue the troops was 
qualities unanimously recognized by all the sectors of the society. The 
international press spoke of her in huge terms. The Durga goddess had 
become the "Empress of India". 

Indira had opened the light of Nixon. Indeed, the North 
Americans could not run to save to their ally the dictation! "Pakistani 
because they could not allow itself to open a new front in Asia. Nixon was 
furious with the outcome of the war. "We have been too soft with that damn 
woman - it said to him to Kissinger-. Sight that to do that to them to the 
Pakistanis when we had warned that old vixen to him that did not put." 
Kissinger was irritated with itself by to have underestimated the military 
power of the Indians. "The Indians are so bad pilots who not even know to 
make take off their airplanes", he had commented its head when the visit of 
Indira. A commentary that to Rajiv had not made him any grace. But the 
opinion of the North American town, and the one of its press, it differed of 
the one of its leaders. In an opinion survey, Indira Gandhi was classified like 
the admired person more of the world. 

The decisive action of Indira saved the life to Sheikh Mujibur 
Rahman, that had been condemned until death in Pakistan. One of the 
conditions of the armistice agreement was the immediate liberation of the 
leader of the new Bangladesh. The 11 of January of 1972, Rahman made 
the stop at the airport Palam de Nueva Delhi, of passage towards Dacca. It 
came to thank to Indira and both pronounced individual full speeches of 
emotion: "Its body was locked up, but nobody could lock up its spirit, who 
continued inspiring the town of Bangladesh... ", she said. "Indira Gandhi is 
not only one leader of a country, is a leader of the humanity", declared 
Sheikh Mujibur. It was a little while of intense euphoria later of the 
accumulated tension of the last months. 

In the days and the following weeks, to thousand of children born 
in India its parents they put the name to them of Indira. One of them, 
nevertheless, been born a day later of the triunfal visit of Sheikh Mujibur 
Rahman to Nueva Delhi, was not called thus. Their parents, Sonia and Rajiv 
Gandhi, put the name to him of Priyanka, that in sanscrito means "pleasant 
at sight". 



ACT II 

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL 

What can the river against the fire, the night against the sun, the 

darknesses against the moon? 
Sanscrito aphorism 



14 

Usha called by telephone to Indira, that was of tour in the state of 
Bihar, to announce good the new one to him. Year and means after the 
birth of Rahul, the family was proud with this new member. Prime minister 
was radiating. What plus could request? He was the unquestionable leader 
of the country, his position was inatacable' and above the life did the gift to 
him of a granddaughter, like a coronation. Arranged to mimar it much, one 
always stayed to as much of his necessities and, faithful to his style, sent 
messages to Sonia from the most unsuspected places with questions of the 
type: how has passed the night the girl? or continues having Rahul many 
snots? That moment of rejoicing remembered another equal one to him of 
intense, when it had decided to marry with Firoz. "I very feel a calm 
happiness within me who nothing or nobody can rob to me", she had written 
to him to its father. Nehru had responded from the jail, warming up the 
enthusiasm to him of his daughter from the height of his years and their 
experience: "The happiness is something rather fleeting, to feel made is 
perhaps a more lasting feeling." Nehru knew, and Indira already had 
learned it, that the happiness is as fragile as finest of porcelains. More bond 
to preserve it and to enjoy it while it lasts, because it is possible to be 
broken - or they can rob it. 

Indira felt certainly made, and in the heat of possession of its 
faculties. It was had customary to the power, not reason why it derived from 
him in material terms, because their little necessities widely were covered 
and lacked ambition in that sense, but by the feeling of fullness that it 
provided to him. The feeling of which he was faithful to his destiny by the 
fact to belong to the family in whom it was born. The intimate conviction of 
which it fulfilled with his to have, that did not appear of a personal election, 
but of the moral inheritance that had received from its father, and this one of 
his. The messianic sense that Nehru had instilado him had finished piercing 
in more deep of its spirit. 

But also Indira had learned that the power, the fame and the 
popularity do not last eternally. How to continue ascending when it has 
been arrived at the top? Or is that, once in the stop, it is only possible to be 
lowered? They were considerations that assaulted it at difficult moments, 
more and more numerous. "I feel like prisoner - Dorothy wrote to him to her 
friend Norman in June of 1973 - by the security equipment , that that thinks 
it can disguise its incompetencia with surrounding me by more and more 
people, but mainly because I realize from which I have arrived at a end, of 
which no longer it is possible to be grown more in this direction." In fact, it 
would have been concentrated exclusively in the subjects of international 
policy if it had been able, because they were those that really it liked. One 
felt with statesman soul: the great questions and the great challenges 
inspired it. It had signed an agreement with Bhutto that guaranteed one long 
peace with Pakistan; it wanted to solve the contentious one of Kashmir, the 
country of its ancestors; it looked for to standardize the relations with the 
Chinese. However, the internal policy, rifirrafes between parties, the 



treasons, the forced alliances, the noise of the public life India crushed it. 
"There is days normal for one prime minister of India - no oia to say Sonia 
to him, while it served the tea to Indira and its Pupul- friend. Perhaps in a 
good day, there are two or three very urgent problems. Perhaps in a bad 
day, there is a dozen. After a time, you are able to live with it, although 
never you are accustomed absolutely. If it beams, then are better than you 
leave the position. Prime minister must be always a little to misfortune, 
always looking for a balance." 

Personal level, the Durga goddess continued living to its austere 
way. Hardly it took jewels, reflection of its frugal personality His saris more 
appraised were those than his father in the jail had woven. It nevertheless 
had a pretty collection that used of "political" way, in the sense that one put 
according to the place and the population that thought to visit. There were 
them of all parts of the subcontinent. Also there were in its locker regional 
customes that Lucia when it went of tour by the territories of the northeast, 
to make clear that sari was not the only article that took the women in India. 

Sonia learned to recognize all that clothes and she helped it to 
choose it before each trip. During the conflict of Bangladesh, Indira one had 
inclined by the red one, as if the war had heightened its sensitivity to that 
color, that traditionally was striped to the widows. Indira had confessed 
during that time that outside saw everything it as if through a red filter and 
that that color had accompanied to him throughout all the war. But later it 
returned to its tastes from always, that is to say, all the colors except malva 
and the violet. It preferred the luminous tones to the tones pie, very 
specially the green one. Like it was difficult her to go of stores, Sonia and 
Usha approached saris to him house. Quickly Indira chose those that it 
liked. It knew to take them with style, and so elegant Lucia in simple sari of 
cotton woven by hand like in one recharged, done with silk of Benares. 

Sonia had become the indispensable presence in that house. 
Indira wanted it like the daughter whom it had not had. Now which there 
were more receptions and suppers of foreign dignitaries, Sonia assumed 
with his mother-in-law the role that Indira had when it lived in Teen Murti 
House with his father. She was very concientious at the time of choosing 
the menus, in which meat of cow nor of pig was never included. The Hindu 
vegetarians did not eat milky eggs but, and strictest, the veganos, did not 
admit anything animal. Also it prepared halal food Muslim them and to 
kosher for the Jews. To take care of of which everything was in perfect 
order was not easy task, mainly when they came foreign. It was difficult to 
obtain products indispensable for a good western menu, even in the 
economato of the North American embassy. Sonia learned to plan the 
meals by far touch, mixing Indian and European plates according to the 
availability of the ingredients. The serious thing is that again there was basic 
food shortage. After six years of abundant monsoons, rains had returned to 
fail. The dust cloud that asphyxiated Nueva Delhi was so dense that Sonia 
did not move without his inhalant. It saw the disorder in the streets from the 
interior of its white Ambassador with black crystals. By anywhere there was 



cut manifestations, routes, people who protested. " Indira does not end the 
poverty! - reference said to a man armed of a megaphone in front of a small 
multitude in a Nueva crossing Delhi, doing to eslogan electoral of Indira-, 
but that is ending the hunger poor men killing to us " The victory had not 
pardoned the winner, and India was wounded. The attention to the refugees 
had drained the barns of the country. The coffers of the State were to zero. 
World-wide the oil crisis had shot the price of the crude one and the inflation 
was desbocada. If before Sonia took twenty minutes in arriving at 
Connaught Place, now she had to anticipate more of the double by the 
returns that was to give, such era the disorder in the streets. The purchase 
for luxury banquets was paradoxical to have to cross the city doing while the 
poor men passed hunger in the streets. That one was a reality to which 
Sonia was not accustomed. From return to house, it controlled that each 
light bulb worked, and that the faucets of the bathrooms did not drip. One 
made sure that the high guests would have appropriate chairs and that the 
very short ones could count on reposapies. 

When it was in house, whenever Indira could continued using its 
small study in veranda attached its dormitory, although it had a great office 
in Akbar Road, to about fifty meters of distance. But within house, it felt near 
the presence of his, could listen to trajin domestic, it saw happen to Sonia 
with the baby in arms and that did the sweetest life to him. For her, the 
familiar work, leisure and duties were not bulkhead activities, but that flowed 
in the others. It rendered more when it was dedicated at the same time to 
several things. "The more beams, the more you can do" was its Maxima 
favorite. Their faculties worked simultaneously, perhaps and that was the 
secret of which it could much more dispatch work that normal people. Sonia 
observed that for their mother-in-law the work and the rest were not 
separated periods. Which one was was to make something different, 
although it was nearly time, like reading, to fix branches of flowers, to order 
books or clothes, or to speak with the family. During the lunch, Indira 
sometimes was dedicated to complete crucigrama, which seemed strange 
with the amount of problems that watched it. "It helps Me to relax to me and 
to organize the ideas", it said. In house it followed with the custom to leave 
notes: "Today there are lost a pretty photo - it left to writing to Rajiv a day 
him. This morning in Akbar Road, two periquitos put long time in the branch 
of a tree. Also there was a pair of woodpeckers fluttering without rest. » 

Sonia learned much of her, by the affectionate relation that both 
had woven and that consolidated with time. The problems of Indira, that to a 
great extent were the problems of India, finished being discussed in house. 
It was not spoken as much of the day to day of the political life like of the 
great subjects: the severe economic crisis that had begun in 1972 and 
which it threatened becoming most serious of all, the sobrepopulation that 
asphyxiated the development of the country, the eternal tensions between 
religious communities, the occupation by chabolistas of lands public in all 
the cities or the effects of the natural disasters, ether to us companions of 
the existence of the man in Asia. The love that Indira felt by the level town 



also infected Sonia, to that affected the paper of its mother-in-law like leader 
of the poor men, an echo of its adolescent dreams with heroic missionaries. 
In addition, it admired it, not as much by its successes in the political life, 
but because he was spontaneous and informal, totally devoid of pride. The 
Italian appreciated "her capacity to want and of they give>. "For us, he was 
somebody that generously shared its ample knowledge, their calidez and its 
presence. When it went of trip, it wrote on its encounter and their 
experiences to us. When it was here, it guarded by all and each one of us." 
Indira was taken very in serious the small events from the day to day of its 
grandsons, like the first tooth or the first steps. The extraordinary, as old as 
humanity and nevertheless always new phenomenon astonished to him, of 
how a boy develops his knowledge of the outer world, with that endless 
sense of the adventure, that passion by the investigation of everything what 
he surrounds to him... "You will see that very quickly the young one 
happens through millenia of human history, and unconsciously, and partly 
consciously also, the history of its race will live within himself, his father 
had written him once, and had wanted to show the letter to him Sonia. To 
the Italian it affected to him simultaneously that in spite of all the pressure of 
the outer world that received Indira, this one followed sensible the 
spectacle, small and huge, to see grow to its grandsons. 

In spite of which he was very pending of the well-being of his 
mother-in-law, Sonia maintained his life deprived with Rajiv. That there was 
a supper in the main dining room did not mean that they had to also attend 
they. Sometimes they did it, other no. They had their familiar life very 
organized, as stable as it was it his relation. "They were always wanted 
much; I have never seen an equal pair of united from the day in which they 
were known", would say Christian, the friend who had presented/displayed 
to them in Cambridge. "Our marriage worked always very well, from the first 
moment. Sonia was always very comprehensive", confessed Rajiv, that had 
promoted pilot and now it flew an English airplane, Avro HS-748, another 
worthy successor of the famous DC-3 Dakota. Between its colleagues of the 
airline, it was had to him by a good professional, although sometimes they 
took the too meticulous hair him for being with the flight plans, the technical 
problems and the schedules. It did not support the shoddy work, but always 
position was arranged to become of a flight if for some reason a colleague 
please requested to him to replace to him. She was good comrade, frank 
and indifferent with the hierarchy. 



15 

About who was worried Indira was by his other son, Sanjay. 
"Rajiv has a work, but Sanjay does not have it and is put in an expensive 
company. It is looked much like me when it also had the same age - with its 
harshness, as much that gives to pain the suffering me that must support." 
Two years after to have been able the license of the government to make a 
native car, the company of Sanjay had not produced a single vehicle that 
could be commercialized. It had not needed aid, from the privileged position 
that the height of its mother provided to him. It had obtained that some 
politicians and businessmen, wishing to ingratiate itself with Indira, invested 
great sums of money in their company. They knew that in case of losing the 
investment political favors could protest. From head of government of state 
of Haryana, individual plump with glasses called Bansi Lai, that she looked 
for to approach the cupola of the power as she were, had obtained fifty 
hectares of agricultural earth to the outskirts of Delhi. "When huntings to the 
bull calf, are safe that the mother will follow to him", had declared with a 
primary logic Bansi Lai a friend. When the press opened that it was 
necessary "to reaccomodate" to more of a thousand of farmers raising the 
Maruti Factory, the Parliament reacted with virulence to which it called a 
new act of "flagrant nepotism". The obtained price was suspicious, and the 
location of lands, next to an old powder magazine of the army, broke the 
laws of the government that they prohibited to raise an industrial factory to 
less of a kilometer of a defense installation. But never it was possible to be 
proven that there was bribe. Indira stayed shut up, as if it was not with her, 
although his main advisor and man of confidence noticed on the naivete of 
the plans of his son and his inexperience to him with industrial projects. 

- The failure of Sanjay in producing an automobile could affect 
your political position seriously - it said to him. The Maruti can be the crack 
that the opposition parties are looking for in your armor. 

Indira raised the Vista towards its advisor, it watched seconds to 
him and it did not answer. It felt a mixture of faith and compassion by its son 
whom it prevented to see the reality so him and as it was. 

But there was another powerful factor that contributed to the 
blindness in Indira: its immense one to be able. The men who Indira chose 
for excellent positions acquired, by the mere fact of to be designated by her, 
an enormous power to give favors and sponsorship. They counted on a 
gigantic source of corruption, that was the measures that the own party had 
started up to control the economic activity like part of its socialist program. 
In order to make any business, to open any company, to concern goods of 
equipment or spare parts sinfin of licenses was required, permissions and 
authorizations. A system that called License Raj, something as well as the 
"Empire of the Permission". There bureaucrats and politicians had the 
possibility of becoming rich interchanging favors by money or other favors. 
The Licen Raj it paid the land to still more high levels of corruption. And 
Sanjay was dedicated to fish in those waters. 



Indira was conscious of the influence that the money and the 
power exerted on which they were to his around, but thought that certain 
degree of corruption had always existed and was integral part of the 
system. The important thing was that it was not uncontrolled. In addition, to 
close the eyes on corruptelas of its people was also a way to have tied 
them. Certainly, Indira was not the only case - in the India or the world of 
personally intachable political leader but who made the fat Vista before the 
corruption of the others. It seemed to him that they were compared subjects 
that had little importance, for example, with the numbers that finished 
publishing of which less of the 20 percent of the women of India they knew 
to read and to write, and in the state of Bihar only a 4 percent... Or that the 
population of the country was going to pass the threshold of seven hundred 
million, that is to say, more of the double of the population that existed at 
the moment of independence... To that rate, in few years, the India 
population would exceed to the one of China. Those yes was problems that 
demanded the Maxima attention. As they were it the big wave of strikes, the 
popular displeasure and the phantom of hambrunas. Until Rajiv and Sonia, 
that left little, they began to notice the corruption by the way to dress the 
women and the daughters of the members of the Party of the Congress, 
that now took saris of concerned silk, Italian diamond jewels and shoes 
when they went to the official receptions. 

Very even though of the tacit support of its mother, the project of 
Sanjay did not take off. All the prototypes had defects in the direction, the 
gear box, the suspension and the circuit of refrigeration. A day invited Sonia 
to prove a prototype in the circuit around the perimeter of the factory. 
Sanjay strave in demonstrating that its vehicle was able to reach the one 
hundred kilometers per hour, but the land was so full of pockets and scrubs 
that Sonia, died of fear, requested to him that she reduced the speed. 
Although he was new, the car seemed old. The doors did not close well, the 
suspension was hardest and the noise of the motor, deafening. Pero Sanjay 
did not see those defects. As much era so, about May of 1973, it thought 
that finally it could present/display a model to the press and invited a 
journalist of the magazine Arises to prove it. The car warmed up and lost oil. 
In the factories, the journalist noticed that there were only five cars without 
painting and other fifteen in manufacture process. The motors were 
assembled manually and there were signs of a no production line. Account 
occurred of which the Maruti, in place of being the car cheap produced in 
mass that loved the government, was an artisan product of very low quality. 

The problem is that Sanjay had collected much money and was 
entrampado. At the outset, like it could not either call directly to which could 
help him financially, used the services of one of the secretaries of its 
mother, a man with the engominado hair backwards combed and a wide 
mechanical smile called R. K. Dhawan (he had been the stenographer of 
Nehru) that saw a good opportunity, cultivating the contact with Sanjay, to 
improve its position with with respect to its female leader. It was in charge to 
call to industralists and businessmen from number 1 of Safdarjung Road 



and these went running because they did not want to lose the opportunity to 
make a favor to prime minister, via their son. It is possible that they thought 
that the own Indira was interested in these businesses, but in fact she 
ignored absolutely everything of tejemanejes of her piston rod. 

More ahead, Sanjay requested a means deposit million of rupias 
to each one of the seventy and five concessionaires whom it had 
designated in exchange for the promise to give the first cars for the sale in 
the six following months. Also it had gone to the banks, nationalized 
recently by its mother, and had obtained credits without guarantee by value 
of eight million of rupias. But the car followed without materializing itself and 
the ineptitude of Sanjay left to shine. In order to defend itself of the attacks, 
more and more numerous, he attributed his failure to the bureaucracy and 
the amount of administrative restrictions that he had to draw for. Something 
of reason had, but somebody was at readiness to fight with the difficulties 
and the obstacles of the License Raj, were he. Even so, it chose to throw 
the fault to the others. But the protest of the deputies became very 
estridente and the newspapers began to speak of the Maruti subject relating 
to Indira to their old enemy Nixon. The Maruti subject, according to the 
press, was the Watergate de Indira. 

At the end of 1973, distressed before the proportion that took the 
subject, Indira asked its minister of Economy that threw a look to the papers 
of the Maruti. Sonia saw it very worried. Her mother-in-law was convinced 
that the opposition used the subject of Sanjay to destroy it, and it did not 
seem to him just. It continued thinking that his son deserved an opportunity. 
A day told him that in his youth it had known a catholic priest who had 
constructed an airplane in two garages in Bombay and that used to walk to 
its friends being flown over the bay. "If that man could construct an 
airplane... So that Sanjay cannot construct a car? ", it asked. 

The reasons of the incapacity of their son in emulating the 
catholic priest left to shine in the interview that took place between Indira, 
Sanjay and the minister of Economy, Subramanian, that had been the 
architect of the "green revolution". The minister requested to Sanjay the 
report of the project. 

- It cannot have report of the project before being made the 
project - Sanjay answered. 

The minister happened to explain to him that although he 
possibly could design a car, must have a report with the specification of 
each component, the way in which they would take place and the cost by 
piece. 

- That no longer is necessary - Sanjay with its point of arrogance 
answered. Those are old ways to operate. 

The minister said to Indira that his son, by very dynamic which he 
was, lacked the knowledge necessary to prevail in similar company. It 
promised to be able the aid to him of professionals to advise to him, but 
Sanjay was against to it with vehemence. It did not want that nobody made 
shade him nor lose the control of its business. Everything made foretell that 



Indira would listen its minister, but it did not do it. Prey between his to have 
of governor and the faith blinds that it had in his son, not only ignored the 
advice of Subramanian, but that separated to the most critical advisors with 
Sanjay. The absolute power del that now arranged Indira demanded people 
without character and maleable around. It admitted shades, neither 
discrepancies, nor critical, although she was friendly. The power, that was 
poisoning the son and blinded the mother, only admitted submission. 

To Rajiv never it had liked the project of its brother, whom the 
dream of a megalomano saw as that could damage the reputation of its 
mother, and by extension the one of the rest of the family. Both brothers 
had their first great mix-up of adults when Rajiv, when returning of a trip, 
found out that Sanjay had convinced Sonia so that signed several 
documents that made partner of a new company, Maruti Technical 
Services, with pay, advantages and expenses of trip including. Also they 
appeared like small partners the Rahul and Priyanka. 

- How you have been able to do that? - it said to him infuriated its 
brother. I do not want to finish dipped in grease in your tejemanejes, nor 
that I put to Sonia and the children in messes... 

- Messes none... 

- Because no? How long you think that it is going to take the 
opposition in finding out this? 

- He is not nothing illegal. 

- Yes it is it. You have forgotten that Sonia, by law, must not right 
to have actions of foreign an India company for being. 

Sanjay raised shoulders, as if that did not have the minimum 
importance. Rajiv also was gotten upset with Sonia. 

- I have accepted to do a favor to him to your brother - it said to 
him. It has always been very affectionate, and if it requests a favor to me, it 
was not going to say to him that no. 

- But you have signed that you are going to receive a pay, gives 
account you? 

- I have signed blind people, did not know the one of the pay, nor 
I have never had intention to receive nothing, that you know you to it... 

- You are going to see how sooner or later, the mess of the 
Maruti is going to finish splashing to us. 

Rajiv was furious, as not very often it had seen Sonia him. Under 
the denomination of consultancy company, was in fact one created cover to 
turn aside money of the first company Maruti Limited at the hands of Sanjay 
and of which they had invested great sums in the factory of cars that did not 
finish existing. Now Rajiv only wanted a thing: to move away completely of 
everything what had to do with the Maruti. 

Both brothers were servant in the same house, but from the most 
tender childhood they had shown marked differences. The teacher of 
infantile school that gave class them described to Rajiv like a courteous, 
docile boy, a correct student. However Sanjay was rebellious, destructive, 
porfiado, without interest some by the activities of the school, magnificent 



with its professors and very difficult to treat. It grew like a turbulent and 
capricious adolescent, trasteando with cars and attracting doubtful 
friendships. Both entered in the Doon School, the most elitist school of the 
India, created to image and similarity of the great British educative 
institutions like Eton or Harrow. Pero Sanjay did not hold the discipline nor 
the rate of studies. It had so little interest by the reading that in one 
interview that did to him of adult could not name a single book whom it had 
influenced to him or inspired, not even the writings by its grandfathers. Only 
it liked the activities of the mechanical factory. It lived obsessed with the 
cars and the airplanes. In spite of being the one who was, it was expelled 
from the school. It was then when Indira, desperate, sent it to make a 
course of learning to the Rolls-Royce in England. "What liked more was to 
speak it of India policy and to make fun of of the English policy", his 
supervisor would before say to add: "Once, when I called the attention to 
him by an error that had committed, it said to me: "Sight, the British have 
jodido to India during centuries, and now I have come to joder to England. "" 

Servant between prime minister who people flattered like a Gods, 
Sanjay ended up thinking that India was its personal dominion. It never 
knew deprivations, on the contrary that its mother and her grandfathers. 
Nehru, after a fight life, gave loose rein to his desire of mimar to his 
grandsons, as if doing she compensated it the sufferings that had suffered. 
Sometimes it did eccentric gifts to them, like a crocodile that became the 
preferred mascot of Sanjay until Indira finished sending it zoo when it 
almost bit the fingers to him. Sanjay either did not inherit of them its 
immense love towards the people of India nor her genuine compassion by 
the poor men. Never it was called on to see the skeletal faces to him of old 
crying its deads, never was called on to him to watch the eyes of the 
farmers who contemplated their fields cracked by the drought, never felt the 
quiet outcry of a town that centuries ago requested protection. To Sanjay it 
seemed to bother the delay to him of its country and it did not understand its 
complexity. He was a rebel against the tradition, impatient with the laws and 
the regulations. It happened to be affectionate and kind to brutal franc and 
in santiamen, but that abruptness was chocante in a country where the 
relations between people are impregnated of one old courtesy, as one 
slides, product of thousands of years of uninterrupted civilization. For him, 
the life was a game in which there was to win and the problems of the life 
were obstacles that were to cross to be able to arrive at the goal. And it was 
in a hurry. Haste to change the things, to arrive before, to accumulate a 
power that did not correspond to him. It had as much haste that to him the 
average ones did not concern to arrive at the aim. 

His brother had grown in an opposite direction. From small he 
had been always more sensible to the suffering of the others. It had 
inherited the sensitivity of his mother towards the most underprivileged and 
her love to India, and that was pronounced in the photos that did. When 
younger, it visited the friends of its parents who were ill, of spontaneous 
form, without nobody pushed to him it. A day, when it was seventeen years 



old, Indira was it when it went to give to the condolence to the family of a 
friend and veteran leader of the Congress that finished dying. Thus one 
found out that his son had to him been visiting the last days. Rajiv was the 
type of person who did not doubt in stopping and offering her aid if she saw 
an accident in the highway; and if it were necessary, it took to the victim to 
the hospital and soon one worried about its evolution. In the house garden, 
it watched a nest of petirrojos and if one were with a hurt young, it took it to 
the hospital of birds of Chandni Chowk, risking to arrive behind schedule at 
its work. Rajiv was happy with which it had, with Sonia, his children, their 
dogs and the luxury of being able to dedicate itself to its likings. It did not 
request more to the life, and indeed of that it consisted its wisdom. But her 
mother did not seem to appreciate it; more than wisdom, it saw in it lack of 
ambition, which did not provoke its admiration. 

Nevertheless, Indira thought that a privileged existence did not 
mean that they had not suffered in his childhood. They had lived in a always 
full house of adults, whose atmosphere was impregnated of the gravity of 
the discussions and the solemnity of which it was dissolved in the offices, 
the halls and the studies of Teen Murti House. That they had not been 
become fond of to the reading perhaps was a reaction against that official 
and protocolic world in which it was called on to them to be young, thought 
she, always looking for an excuse to them. When they well really went it 
was when they were going to visit his father, the week ends and vacation. 
Firoz was extroverted, charlatan' affectionate and it gave its total attention 
them. It knew to play with its children and to entertain them. It taught to 
mount and to disassemble toys to them, to planting and taking care of 
roses, because he was very fan to its culture. Far from the severe formality 
of palacete of prime minister where they lived, Rajiv and Sanjay found in 
their father to a person with a capacity of overflowing diversion. In addition it 
knew to instigar the feeling to them of which they were very important for 
him, which caused a deep impact to them. Like in all the separated 
marriages, in the end they are the children who support the tensions of the 
parents, although they do not understand them. Perhaps But could Indira 
explain them to it? Could tell them that it did not live with Firoz because this 
one him had been repeatedly unfaithful? Because they were not understood 
and was fed up to fight itself? Its own dignity prevented it. The children saw 
that the grandfathers Nehru did not lodge affection some by his son-in-law, 
and they accused it. Perhaps, unconsciously, they blamed its mother from 
which Firoz was separated and it did not comprise of the home of prime 
minister . After the cremation, Sanjay, devastated, it threw in face to its 
mother to have neglected its father. It directly accused it of the infarct that 
had killed to him. 

Indira fitted the blow. It had to feel guilty of which its marriage 
had not worked. And therefore guilty of which their children had suffered for 
that reason. Perhaps its weakness with Sanjay hid its will to amend that 
fault. To Sonia it hit to him that it, the woman more hard of India, was of a 



so amazing weakness with her small son. Their numerous enemies would 
not take in realizing of which Sanjay was its heel of Aquilles. 

Indira, that had a total confidence with Sonia, often chatted with 
her. She was perhaps the unique one of the house with that shared secrets. 
A day confessed to him that its marriage had known many bumps, but that 
had not been able to marry with any man except for Firoz. He was the 
unique one that really it loved. It often spoke to him of him, and with 
affection because it said that Rajiv remembered its husband to him. Both 
had the Earth feet, were sensible to the beauty of the nature and music, 
capable with their hands and practitioners in their way to face the problems. 
It never thought that Firoz would die so soon, so young. It is certain, it 
recognized that it had neglected it lately, but had done it thinking that both 
had the life ahead and that they would recover the lost time. They had 
reconciled in 1958, after a first infarct. So that one recovered, Indira 
organized vacations in family in a house-boat on the lake of the city of 
Srinagar, Venice of East, as it is known the capital of Kashmir. Firoz and the 
boys went it in great, swimming, mounting in boat and making photos. Indira 
took advantage of to begin to learn Castilian, a language that always it 
attracted to him. 

The spectacle of the nature of Kashmir, the Earth of its 
ancestors, always filled it of emotion. The sun puttings on sparkling waters 
of the Dal lake were sublime. There was magic in the air. It seemed that 
martines fishermen were trained. One of them entered the house-boat and it 
settled on the shoulder of Rajiv. Soon they made a trip of several days to 
Daksun, a paradisiaco place where wild trouts in mighty rivers fished that 
lowered between meadows covered with flowers and forests of pines and 
firs framed by eternal snow summits. Firoz told him that it finished buying a 
land in Mehrauli, near Delhi, and spoke to be constructed a house 
someday. It would be its own house, not to have to live more in those on the 
government (Firoz, like deputy of the state of Uttar Pradesh, also lived in an 
official house). It was a beautiful encounter for Indira, after a so stormy 
marriage, with so many fights, treasons and humiliations, still more painful 
because the majority had finished exposed to the public light. Now the 
shade of the tips of the Himalayas acted of balsam that cured the wounds of 
the past. During that time in that they could enjoy La Paz of mountains, they 
returned to speak of a future together. It was then, in that interval of 
happiness, as fleeting as intense, when Indira decided, once that his father 
there was dead, to devote itself totally to Firoz. But the 8 of September of 
1 960 came the infarct to break the dream to him. 



16 

Sanjay no longer had the reputation of mujeriego that had won in 
England. Obsessed with the Maruti, it took a life of pure work. It left house 
before the dawn and returned to seven or the eight at night to see have 
supper to its nephews or to share tentempie with Sonia. Rare time with its 
brother or his mother, because so they were absorbed by the work who 
then let themselves see little in house. 

From its return of England, Sanjay had had two relations, one 
with a Muslim woman, who lasted little, and other, more serious and longer, 
with a German, Sabine von Stieglitz, the sister of Christian, the friend who 
had presented/displayed Sonia to Rajiv, and that worked in Nueva Delhi like 
professor of languages. Sabine, discharge, blonde, handsome and 
cosmopolitan, were culturally English than German because almost all its 
life had lived in England. She was very friend of Sonia. They spent many 
afternoons together, taking care of the children, playing with them or 
reading stories to them. One of them, "the animals of my city", was specially 
graceful because it described to the elephant, to the monkey, the boa, the 
crow, the vulture, corneja... like the familiar animals. And it was certain, 
were everywhere. The quack of cornejas was the sound track of the life in 
India. 

Sonia was very madraza, and very meticulous with the education 
of the small ones. It did not tolerate whims with the food, and knew to put 
limits to them in its behavior, without getting to be severe since it he had 
been Stefano with her and its sisters. It spoke to them in Italian when they 
were solo, and English if they were all together ones or in the presence of 
Sabine. In fact, Sonia was meticulous in everything, for that reason she 
wanted to make a course of old painting restoration. That liking cuadraba 
with its discreet, hacendosa personality, concientious lover of detail and. It 
thought to dedicate itself to it as soon as the children grew a little and they 
needed less. 

Sonia lodged the hope of which the relation between Sanjay and 
Sabine would become stabilized someday and ended up marrying. Pero 
Sabine got tired to hope. 

- Sanjay more is enamored with the Maruti that of me - it 
confessed a day to him to Sonia-. No longer I believe that it ends up 
committing with me. It only thinks about its project of business, does not fit 
nothing else in its life. 

- What you are going to do? 
- 1 become to Europe. 

- What suffers. Tenerte of sister-in-law had been formidable. 

- Also to me I had liked - she said to him to Sonia, while Priyanka 
and Rahul were fought by a cake. 

Sonia accompanied it to the airport to dismiss it. What it did not 
know is that it would return to see two days later it. 

- But what has happened? You were not in London? 



Sabine told him that in the scale of Tehran, the pilot of the 
airplane of Indian Airlines sent it to call by megafonia. Sabine, surprised, 
went to the cabin of Boeing. 

- Somebody wants to speak with you by the radio - they said to 
him. It was Sanjay. There, in front of a crew who did not leave her 
astonishment, they lived its penultimate scene of love. Sanjay requested to 
him that it returned to Nueva Delhi: "Demonos a last opportunity", him 
suplico. Sabine could not resist to the man whom she loved and by that she 
had returned. It gave a little him shame to have yielded. Sonia was 
enchanted, and returned to dream whereupon her friend could become her 
sister-in-law. 

But weeks later broke again, and this time for always. The dream 
of Sonia to have its friend surrounds disappeared, but only during one 
season. Sabine did not settle in England. It was had customary to live in 
India. In Europe, it missed the heat of people, the Asian courtesy, the life 
rate. "To me it happens to me the same", confessed Sonia to him. In 
addition, Sabine had a work that allowed him to live better than if it had left 
to London. So that, for great joy of Sonia, they returned to spend 
afternoons, and week ends together in the environs, like which it finished in 
a small tragedy when they approached a nest of wasps and finished covers 
of pecks. 

Sabine ended up knowing one the professors of the Institute 
Goethe de Nueva Delhi and she married with him. Six years in the India 
capital lived. They did not have children until later, when they had been 
changed to Mexico, but had dogs that they joined with those of Sonia when 
they went away to the field, for delight of the children. Sabine kept from 
Sanjay the memory of a boy serious, with push, but too egocentrico. 

For Indira, he was better thus, because the fact that their two 
children married with two European had been politically most correct. It 
would have been like confirming publicly that the Nehru was made western 
absolutely and they always moved away for by his roots Indians, and by 
then Sanjay already had put in policy, not as much by vocation as to defend 
itself of the critics that rained to him everywhere as a result of their ominous 
management of the Maruti subject. 

It was in a cocktail to celebrate the next wedding of an old friend 
of the school where Sanjay would know its future wife. He was the 14 of 
December of 1973, and the date it agreed with its birthday. That Sanjay day 
very was animated, and it was not by the alcohol because it never drank. 
But he was conscious of to be the unmarried one more coveted of India. 
Lady's man although to his twenty-seven years already had a baldness 
outpost, tried to have well-taken care of of not embroiling with women who 
suspected could be interested solely in becoming members of the first 
family of India. The friend who was going away to marry 
presented/displayed to a premium hers call to him Maneka Anand, a lanky, 
with regular and well proportionate factions, pecosa girl, sufficiently 
attractive like to have gained a beauty aid and that worked sporadically of 



model for a mark of towels. Guapetona was and photogenic, with a 
vivacious and energetic character. Sanjay it attracted to him immediately 
and it passed the evening speaking with her. Maneka told him that it had left 
his studies of Political Sciences in the Sri Ram College de Nueva Delhi and 
that it wanted to become journalist. She was daughter of a colonel of the 
army, sij, and of its called wife Amteshwar, daughter of a landowner and 
cattle dealer of Punjab. 

As of that day, Sanjay dedicated all its free time to Maneka. They 
were seen newspaper. As to him it let like to leave to restaurants or the 
cinema, it preferred to see it in the afternoons in house of one of the two 
families. To Sonia this new fiancee did not cause a great impression to him. 
Compared with Sabine, one was chiquilla immature that would last with 
Sanjay which this one took in realizing the ambitious thing which it had of 
being. Because now Sonia had infected itself of the distrust that comes with 
the power or the proximity to the power. Like its mother-in-law, it thought 
that all the one that approached the family did by interest. Most of the times 
it did not need reason. It thought that Maneka, more of those than courted 
to the unmarried one of gold of India, would be flower of a day. 

But to 1974 principles, Sanjay invited it to eat to house, sign from 
which the boy was taking his relation more in serious of the habitual thing. 
The girl was very nervous because she had to happen through the critical 
moment to know prime minister. Sonia understood it perfectly, she who had 
had an attack of nerves the day that Rajiv had to present/display it to it. The 
difference was that then she and their together fiance had been a year, and 
not a month, like Sanjay and Maneka. But it knew its brother-in-law, it knew 
impulsive and the impatient thing who was. Also, at the time of England, 
Indira was another woman, slower, without the oppression nor the tension 
of the power. Maneka, visibly intimidated, watched everything like a scared 
pajarito: the furniture, the pictures, the photos. When suddenly one was as 
opposed to Indira, it did not know what to say. It was put red and it begun to 
stammer. Indira broke the ice: 

- As Sanjay has not presented/displayed to us, it tell me how you 
are called and to what you dedicate yourself - said to him. 

Maneka continued stammering like could, omitting that for of 
model for a mark of towels, which did not seem to him worthy of mention. 

Indira chatted awhile with her and, like she was customary to see 
march past to girls who Sanjay seduced, did not think anything about 
special, unless he were a little young. Although it had liked to find a 
daughter-in-law between the good families of Kashmir, did not put in the 
sentimental subjects of its son, as it had not either done it with Rajiv. A long 
time ago it had left the idea to organize a " marriage to him arranged" to the 
Indian. That would leave it for another life in which it had more time and 
more calmness... 

They spent the months and seemed that Maneka was there for 
remaining. It was not a plus in the life of Sanjay. This one had fallen in love 
and, faithful to his impulsive character, wanted to marry already. Indira did 



not have repairs, at the outset, in admitting it. That he was of a family sij did 
not suppose a problem for the Nehru, that had always announced the 
equality between the religious communities of the country. Pressed by the 
haste of its son, it did not have time to inquire on the family of its future 
daughter-in-law and fixed the date of the 29 of July for the requested one. 
Both families met in number 1 of Safdarjung Road where after a brief 
ceremony, all seated to celebrate eating it. Indira realized in followed of that 
were not educated people, neither cosmopolitan, nor cultured and in the 
mother he was able to guess the deep to have placed to his daughter in 
family the more coveted satisfaction of the country. It had been able to say 
something similar of the family of Sonia, but the difference is that those 
were simple, they were not conceited don't mention it and they lacked 
ambition. These were noisy and ostentosos, with a hortera taste in the way 
to dress and to exhibit their jewels. Of all ways, Indira was to the height of 
the circumstances. Nobility forces. The requested ring of that luda her 
daughter-in-law had #***aed-refl mng it she. And it was a very special gift. It 
had belonged to Kamala, its mother, and had been designed by its Motilal 
grandfathers. It trusted secretly that someday that chiquilla would get to 
understand the deep meaning of so appraised present. Also it offered a joint 
gold and turquesa to him, as well as sari of a silk very fine and embroidered 
to Indian and Chinese the Tanchoi style, mixture of styles. A month later, 
gave sari to him of Italian silk by its birthday. 

The fears on the family of Maneka were confirmed by the 
information that began to flow after the requested one. Indira found out that 
Arnteshwar, its future consuegra, were been ten years litigating with its 
brother by the inheritance of the father, who was a woman with a very 
elementary education and, according to which knew it, intriguer and 
codiciosa. Rumors that arrived to him the other members of the family were 
robust and shameless. Other sources labeled to them as self-seeking. The 
type of person had been strained in the life of right Sanjay that always had 
tried to avoid. Although rare time the parents are contentments with the 
election of the pairs of their children, now Indira was going to drink the same 
glass that he gave to drink his father when he informed to him into his 
decision to marry with Firoz. As in that case, also now one was families who 
came from opposed worlds, that did not share values such. But would serve 
as something to face its son, as Nehru had faced her? Not very often in the 
life it had passed it as badly as then, so that it was not arranged to do the 
same. It could not open a front more. The amount of problems with which it 
had to fight had gotten depressed it. It did not see how to remove to India 
from the poverty, plaster made hopeles it. Her faithful Usha secretary would 
remember that, when returning of a funeral at the end of July by the eternal 
rest of an old friend of the family, Indira confessed to him that was tired to 
live. It gave instructions him on the way to have its body when it had died. 

- I do not want a funeral, Usha. It aims... I want that they put my 
body in a coffin and that they drop it from an airplane on eternal snows of 



the Himalayas. Perhaps thus it is able to enjoy a peace that I have not 
enjoyed while still alive. 

- Madam, the important thing is to have peace in this life, does 
not create? In the other it is guaranteed... 

- Yes, I know it, but it is not in my hands and I do not believe that 
or possible. 

- It must be it, lady. In addition, dejeme to say to him that nobody 
will agree in having its body of that way. If they were ash-gray still... but 
how wants that they throw a coffin from an airplane and that it crashes 
against the ground? 

- Then I want neither to be buried nor that they burn to me - 
Indira settled. 

In that mood , the perspective to marry to its son with a girl of 
seventeen years of a family who considered "ordinary" was not something 
that raised to the moral the only thing to him that could do was to delay the 
wedding. When one found out that in the fixed date Maneka it would not 
have fulfilled most of age, said to him to its son: 

- You will have to hope to that it fulfills the eighteen. I cannot 
allow that you fail to fulfill the law. 

The problem of the infantile marriages continued being a thorny 
subject in the India that had been denounced by Gandhi, Nehru and by all 
those that they wanted to modernize the country. Thousands of children 
finished "being negotiated" by their parents, married and turned servants of 
the family of the husband, without being able some to decide on the number 
of children whom they would have. The case of Maneka distaba much of 
this, but Indira was not arranged to that Sanjay did not preach with the 
example. In addition, gaining time, his son would perhaps end up recalling 
to mind. 

But it did not happen. That summer, Sanjay had to be put under 
a small operation of hernia. After its matutinal classes, Maneka happened 
afternoon and leaves from the night in the deprived room of the All India 
Institute of Medical Sciences, the sharpshooting Nueva hospital Delhi. 
Weeks after their convalecencia, the 23 of September of 1974, married in a 
civil ceremony in house of an old friend of the family, Mohammed Yunus. 
The wedding was a demonstration of aconfesional India that always had 
defended the Nehru: the son of parsi and a Hindu married with a girl sij in 
house of a Muslim friend front to a catholic daughter-in-law. Indira was 
generous with Maneka: saris of the finest fabrics gave veintiun to him, some 
the gold jewels and, most valuable, one of saris of cotton that Nehru had 
spun in the jail with his rueca. It fulfilled on the foot of the letter with his to 
have of mother-in-law. In order to receive its daughter-in-law, it assigned to 
the new pair a dormitory that it gave to the main hall, near the front door, in 
the part of the house opposed to the quarter of Rajiv and Sonia. It 
decorated it and it fixed it with mimo, it placed objects and bottles on the 
table of the dressing table and chose bracelets that, by tradition, Maneka 
had to be put in its night of weddings and that left in the small table. 



Just later of the celebration, Maneka entered the home of the 
Gandhi - Nehru just as Sonia it had done it with Rajiv six years before. "The 
wedding has passed calmly - that same night wrote Indira to Dorothy 
Norman, Maneka is so young that it had my doubts on the subject and it did 
not guess right to guess if it knew what it was doing. But it seems that it has 
fitted, and he is jovial and it cheers." 

Pero Maneka was not Sonia and, although it came from a family 
who lived to a kilometer of distance, its adaptation was much more arduous 
that the one of its sister-in-law who came from the other end of the world. In 
spite of the desire of Indira, to the girl it cost to him to fit in that house. In 
order to begin, it smoked, a habit that was very bad sight. Sanjay hated the 
tobacco; Indira, that had been tuberculosa, detested it; and Sonia, 
asthmatic, was allergic to the smoke. Badly beginning. In addition, he was 
loquacious and it spoke in a high tone of voice. "In my own house eramos 
informal and sometimes foulmouthed - Maneka- would say. The Gandhi 
maintains the honor among them in all circumstance." Sanjay and it had 
diametrically opposite temperaments and added many ingredients for a 
married failure. It is certain that not always it had to be easy to communicate 
with Indira, an imposing presence. To times during the Maneka meals it was 
put to speak of books that had read or that were reading as if it wanted to 
impress it with its intellectual capacity. Indira raised the Vista, it sent a 
glance to him of reojo and it continued eating. "Fogosa and intelligent Era - 
Usha would say, the faithful secretary of Indira- but to the same time was 
ambitious and very immature." Several times it mentioned that Sanjay would 
be a day prime minister, which caused other people's shame in the others. 
Other times mustia spoke of the happiness with face: "It knew that one did 
not talk about a philosophical search - would remember Usha- but to its own 
infelicidad caused by the absence of Sanjay." What it really liked was to 
leave and to be Vista, indeed what his husband could not now allow itself, 
occupied as he were in leaving his track in the India society. 

Consequently, Maneka became bored much in a house where 
nobody smoked, neither drank nor said palabrotas. It spent the hours died 
in the office of Usha asking for the program of its husband, who was always 
very loaded, and trying to discover the keys of that new world in which it 
was put. The traditional world, to that did not want nor to approach. When 
Sonia proposed to teach it to him to cook, although she only was so that 
she was distracted, because the nobody best one than she knew reason 
why it was passing its sister-in-law, Maneka answered to him that they 
interested neither the kitchen nor the things to him of house. 

All quickly realized of which Maneka was a discordant note. To 
Rajiv to him it put nervous to find it knocked down it in a sofa of the hall 
smoking while Sonia was occupied with the house. 

- Does not stick nor blow! - it said in low voice to Sonia-. Who is 
created? 

Sonia raised shoulders, like saying: it is what there is. They either 
did not like their way to treat to the service, shouts and without respect, very 



typical of the well off class India. To Indira also it displeased its vulgar 
behavior and chillon to him. The problem is that the only place where found 
protection against the hardness of the political life was its house, that now 
was insane. Number 1 of Safdarjung Road stopped being a peace 
backwater. 



17 

The humor of Indira reflected the one of the India, that did not 
raise head after the war of Bangladesh. Unemployment raised and with it 
the popular displeasure. The cadence of strikes and manifestations was 
infernal, and many finished in violent shocks with the police. For Sonia, the 
task of making the purchase could become an authentic one via crucis: cut 
streets, arbitrary deflections, reyertas to pedradas, stores closed by lack of 
food supply due to a strike of transports, etc. There was no a normal day, it 
was as if the country was lost the north and embraced the anarchy. In all 
national geography it was not spoken of another thing that were not 
corruption, disturbances, confinements, seating and strikes. To Sonia I 
impress much to him the scandal of sugar as one occurred to know, that I 
cause the death of much people, specially young. Retailers without scruples 
had on sale put a sugar mixture with ground crystal, that I am lethal and that 
removed to shine the lack of control and the complete laziness of the 
administration. Sonia who always remembered his children, asked itself 
horrified: and if that sugar would have finished in the day-care center of 
Rahul? 

Before the devastating spectacle that offered the country, a hero 
of the liberation movement and old friend of the family Nehru, a fragile man 
of seventy and two years called J. P. Narayan, was able to unify different 
opposed groups from Indira. Its program pleaded for a federation of villages 
and tried to send a total revolution, a democracy without parties. It was a 
madness, the vague idea of a messianic idealist, but it served to galvanize 
to the multitudes against the party of Indira, corruption defendant. In fact, 
the seed of the fall of Indira already was planted and lay in the immense 
one to be able that had been able to accumulate and that it acted like a 
poison that flooded everything, until his own house through Sanjay. As a 
legal system of financing of parties did not exist, the congress depended on 
substantial private donations. Too many members of their party, conscious 
of the power that granted the fact to count to them with an overwhelming 
majority in the national Parliament and most of state parliaments, became 
codiciosos and experts in interchanging economic aid by political favors. 

The J.P movement, it was able to organize several important 
strikes, that they finished in confrontations with the police. The protest I 
degenerate in a general revolt when it left to shine that a leader of the Party 
of the Congress had allowed an ascent of the price of the oil of kitchen in 
exchange for an important donation of the producers. It was the spark that 
exploded the popular fury. There was looting of houses and stores, fire of 
buses and destruction of goods of the government. Rajiv was several days 
without returning to house because its airplane had not been able to take off 
when closing itself the airports. Indira, incapable to control all the shoddy 
work and tejemanejes of the members of its party, felt threatened. Its fear 
was added to the paranoia that felt from the previous year, when the blow 
took place, supported by the company, that the Rescuing democratically 
chosen president Beyond overthrew in Chile, another Socialist. It knew well 



which had orchestrated it, and feared that they tried to take advantage of 
the chaotic situation of India to try the same with her. Mainly, because Nixon 
finished being reelected, and Kissinger was again to its side. 

What to do? One did not consider to resign, at least without 
fighting. It attributed the disturbances to the perfida manipulation of the 
opposition, pawned on expelling it from the power, and to a dark 
international conspiracy. It cost to him to think that the town was losing its 
faith in her. But it could not leave by more time than the anarchy extended 
as an oil spot, never rather. So I arm myself of anger to face the greater 
challenge of its race, a national strike of railroads that threatened paralyzing 
the country. To gain that pulse was decisive for her and India. One faced 
million and average one of railway workers whom they demanded, among 
other vindications, schedules of work of eight hours and an increase of pay 
of the 75 percent, concession this one that was impossible to grant. "In a 
country where there is unemployed million and many million more with 
precarious uses - it explained with boldness in a union conference, which is 
needed is a right distribution of opportunities. In this sense the workers 
would have to recognize that in our country to be used it is in itself a 
privilege." Words that inflamed the spirits still more, so that strike was 
summoned. A million railway secundaron it. Suddenly they raised the strip 
of its exigencies: "What we want it is to change the history of India and to 
overthrow the government of Indira Gandhi." 

As always in these conflicts, it was in game the life of poorest. 
The paralyzation of the trains, when altering the transport of merchandise, 
was susceptible to cause hambrunas, something that Indira was not 
arranged to allow. So it applied one recent law (MASS, Maintenance of 
Security Act) that allowed to make police custodies. An unfolding never 
seen of police invaded railway colonies, the old districts created by the 
English to lodge to the railway and that were near the train stations. "It 
seemed a occupied country", would say a union leader that it did not leave 
its astonishment. The dawn, the police entered the houses of the railway 
and stopped to all the one that refused to go to work. Some families were 
expelled from their houses - they were property of the government and 
forced to live outdoors. The arrests were sometimes violent - a case in that 
had the police set fire to the hovel of a railroader and some strikers finished 
wounded. Altogether, sixty thousand workers were arrested. Indira acted as 
a general in the din of the battle. It commanded to the army and to navy to 
protect possible the railway facilities con sabotages. The military made work 
the signalings and the telecommunications, and handled the trains under 
the protection of armed guards. It was convinced that if squashed this strike, 
there would not be another one in fifty years. 

Indira was very gracious, with total dominion of its faculties, like 
was habitual at moments of high tension. It trusted itself. It tried to make 
several things to he himself time, was its infallible prescription to relax and 
to find solutions to difficult problems. Behind schedule, while it took care of 
a press conference in the garden of his house and saw his Rahul grandson 



entertained in the turf playing the war with plastic arms, an idea was 
happened to him. It thought that the moment had arrived for giving the 
authorization that the scientists took hoping years ago detonating a nuclear 
pump. It had been indeed the decision of Nixon to send a nuclear-powered 
aircraft carrier to the bay of Bengal which had caused the acceleration of 
the Indian atomic program. It was not indeed an idea of grandma, but the 
one of a shining strategist. It privily maintained it until the moment of the 
explosion, that took place in Pokhran, in the desert of Rajastan, next to the 
border with Pakistan, days later. 

So and as it had anticipated, the news caused the enthusiasm of 
certain layers of the population that lived it with authentic patriotic fervor. 
The deputies who rose in the great room of the Parliament to congratulate 
an a the others seemed to have forgotten the pressing economic problems 
and strike trains. Indira had obtained its intention, that it was to turn aside 
the attention of the country. The India, over-populated and almost 
paralyzed, whose rent per capita located it in position 102.° of the world- 
wide ranking, one became, to a great extent by necessities of internal 
policy, in the sixth world-wide nuclear power. The critics got worse abroad. 
Indira was defended: «... India does not accept the principle of the apartheid 
in any scope, and the technology is not no exception." 

It took twenty-two days in squashing strike with iron hand. 
Although the press condemned the brutality of the repression, the middle- 
class, the people who always had appreciated the puntualidad of the trains, 
praised the firmness of prime minister. The Chambers of Commerce also, 
although that did not mean many votes. For Indira, it was a bittersweet 
victory. Whereas the one of Bangladesh it had elevated it to the category of 
goddess, this one left a bitter flavor of mouth. Prime minister had 
demonstrated that she could be hard and until ruthless. Its way to repress 
strike left a deep wake of fear in ample sectors of the society. The counter- 
productive effect of as much severity was that the opposition was united still 
more against her. Until the more compatible political observers they had to 
admit that its popularity fell in mincemeat. In the elections anticipated for 
1 976, a defeat of the Congress appeared now like a real possibility. 

The 12 of June of 1975 amanecio with black thicknesses 
nubarrones in the sky, that announced longed for rains, or perhaps 
predicted ill-fated times. The heat, to those hours in the morning, already 
was intense, but Indira followed with its daily routine to do twenty minutes of 
exercises of yoga in its room. The weeping of its Priyanka granddaughter 
caused the temptation to him to interrupt the exercise, but as immediately it 
sent, it thought that Sonia had risen already and was taking care of the 
small one. Soon one showered and it got dressed in five minutes 
"something that few men can do", liked to be conceited. In their small table 
at night the books crowded. With days that lasted sixteen hours, it had time 
don't mention it, neither to be with the family nor to receive friends, nor by 
supposed to read, and it missed it. 



It was having breakfast in its room in front of a tray with tea, fruit 
and toasted when its secretary R. K. Dhawan, that that was so I solicit with 
Sanjay, called to the door. It brought the bad news. D. P. Dhar, old friend 
and advisor of Indira, the man whom he had sent to Moscow when the crisis 
of Bangladesh to make sure the support the Soviets and that since then 
celebrated of ambassador in the USSR, had died minutes before being 
operated to install marcapasos to him. Another pillar of confidence and 
friendship disappeared of its life. Indira quickly went to the hospital to 
console the family and to help in the organization of the funeral rites. 

It returned to house towards noon, where it waited for another 
bad news to him. His secretary communicated to him that in the elections of 
the eve in the state of Gujarat, the Janata Front, a coalition of five parties 
that included the supporters of J. P. Narayan, the idealist whom it loved to 
overthrow it, had won to the Congress. It did not surprise too much to him. 
The bad thing was that those results augured defeats in other states. Era 
perhaps the principle of the aim? , it was asked. Did not follow all the 
companies he himself model of evolution human that the one of the nature, 
that is to say, a phase of growth, another one of development, and a end? It 
had tried to make the peace with J. P., but its utopica idea to establish a 
government without parties was unacceptable because it meant the death 
of the democratic operation. Thus had been expressed it, but J. P. he was a 
revolutionary who continued believing in great abstract ideas. It did not 
move backwards in its persistence nor one was flexible in its demands. 

- You will agree with me in which the government of Bihar is very 
corrupt? - it asked J.P to him. with its trembly voice. 

- Yes, that we know all to it - Indira talked back. 

- Because I insist on which you must dismiss it and summon new 
elections. 

- I cannot do that, J.P. He is a chosen government democratically 
and I lack authority to dismiss it. 

There was no reconciliation, on the contrary. Indira ended up 
accusing it to count on the support of the company and the United States to 
overthrow it, and he reproached to want to him to make of India a Soviet 
satellite. 

Nevertheless, when finishing the meeting, J.P. it requested to 
see it solo, without its advisors. They happened to the hall and there, before 
the surprise of Indira, the man had a gesture of personal amiability, in spite 
of the aggravated thing of his political confrontation. It gave an old folder to 
him that had belonged to its wife and who contained letters that the mother 
of Indira, Kamala, him had written fifty years before in the din of the fight by 
independence. 

- It had Them kept since my woman died - she said J to him. P. - 
with the hope of dartelas when it had the opportunity of verte. 

To Indira it affected the gesture to him of that man who 
nevertheless was pawned on destroying it. Rare what is the policy - it had to 
think that it allows to hatred and the affection to he himself time and in the 



same person. It always felt a tiny amount in the heart when it read those 
letters, that revived their mother, so fragile, so ill, and that now they 
revealed its infelicidad to feel the scorn of the sisters of Nehru who found it 
too traditional and religious. It thanked to him to J. P. of all heart, knowing 
full well that this one it would even fulfill its threat to intensify crossed his 
against her. 

The third bad news of the day reached three of behind schedule. 
Rajiv, dress with its uniform of pilot, burst in into the dormitory of Indira. 
When returning from the airport, it had been crossed one of the secretaries 
of its mother who had put to him to the current of the news that finished 
arriving by the teletype. 

- It has left the verdict Judge de Allahabad... - Rajiv said. 

- And...? - a little asked to Indira, turning the head, as if it waited 
for the blow that was going to receive. 

Rajiv read the text to him of the sentence that had given the 
secretary to him. She said that prime minister had been declared guilty of 
negligence in the electoral procedures of the 1971 suffrage. Consequently, 
the result of those elections was invalidado. The court gave twenty days to 
the Congress to take the necessary measures facing that the Government 
continued working. In addition, it was prohibited him to assume a public 
position in following the six years. 

Indira sighed and night love song stayed. It watched the garden. 
Their grandsons played in the grass. Everything seemed so normal and 
calm, except by nubarrones that continued threatening unloading rain. 
Peculiar what was the life, had to think. Greater mazazo of their race 
occurred it in their native city, in such courts where his Motilal grandfathers 
Nehru did his more shining pleas. One became towards its son: 

- I believe that another solution does not have left that the one to 
resign. The moment has arrived - it said without the smaller spying of 
emotion. 

It waited for a condemnatory sentence, but not so out of 
proportion. The opposition had used one triquihuela legal to corner it. The 
sentence corresponded to the denunciation that a political rival called Raj 
Narain, that was lost by one hundred thousand votes of difference, had 
presented/displayed four years before in the court of Allahabad. The 
accusations were trivial and personnel use of and transport talked about to 
the illegal property of the government during the previous electoral 
campaign. In prevailed, everybody, including their adversaries, recognized 
that the positions against her were ridiculous and who the judges had 
exceeded. According to the Times newspaper of London, he was equivalent 
"to dismiss prime minister by a traffic fine". But in the India of 1975, people 
lay down to the street to celebrate it. 

His friend Siddharta Shankar Ray, head of the government of 
Bengal, arrived just a short time at house later. He was a man of 
confidence, Complete, the old guard of the unconditional friends. The party 
was shocked, said to him. Soon it continued: 



- ... What the opposition has not obtained in the ballot boxes, 
tries to manipulate it through a legal sentence. 

- I must resign - Indira, impassible loosen. 

The man took seat. It watched Indira: its face let traslucir an 
infinite fatigue. 

- You do not make that decision to the light one. We are going to 
think it. 

Indira raised shoulders: 

- Hay another solution? 

- It is always possible to be appealed. 

- It will take months. . . We know how justice works. 

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of two ministers, 
followed short time later by the one of the president of the party and several 
colleagues more. The house went filling of people. Sonia offered candies 
and drinks to them. With its own eyes, it saw how they were worried to lose 
the position, others the opposite, excited because the armchair of Indira 
was to the reach. The rumors, the uncertainty and the heat did that the air 
was irrespirable. They spoke with Indira, trying to dissuade it of that it 
submitted its retirement application; others did corrillos, measuring the 
forces of different leaders who could replace it. Still prime minister listened 
all, shut up. "I believe that it would have to resign immediately", it repeated. 

In the evening, Sanjay arrived from the "factory". One had found 
out the news by the radio. Entering house, one was with its brother: 

- What is going to do? - it asked to him. 

- To resign. It does not have left another one. 

- Not - Sanjay- said, that cannot be. 

In a second Sanjay it saw its dream of being a great industralist 
made pieces. If her mother yielded before her enemies, could take leave for 
always of Maruti Ltd. It entered the jammed hall people and, without hardly 
saluting to anybody like it was custom hers, it took to its mother of the arm 
and it requested to speak solo minutes to him. They retired to the 
contiguous study. 

- There is this Rajiv to Me that you think to resign. 

- We are hefting It. I do not have many options. 

- You do not have to do it, mother. If you yield now and you 
resign by those so insignificant positions, when you do not have 
parliamentary immunity obtain meterte in the jail by any thing that are 
invented. 

- I become aware calm. We are thinking about changing the 
papers. That the president of the party assumes the position of prime 
minister until my resource is transacted in the Supreme Court. While, I 
would be in charge of the presidency of the party. 

- That is a madness, mother! - Sanjay said, and the shout was 
heard in the contiguous hall. You think that the president of the party, once 
is in your armchair, you will give back it later? It will never do it. They seem 
all very loyal very and friends, but you know better than I than their smiles 



hide their personal ambitions. All want your site. All look for the power. You 
do not have to resign under any concept. 

To accept the defeat was not something easy for Indira. Could 
retire with the tail between the legs by something so trivial, she who had 
dedicated her life to the policy and that had exerted of prime minister during 
almost one decade? One did not correspond with its concept of dignity. 
Could leave in the stockade its companions of party, to all those that 
depended on her? To the whole country? Did not say that India is Indira and 
Indira is India? Iba to allow that J. P. Narayan ended the democracy sinking 
the country in the anarchy? It is certain, it was tired, sometimes until gotten 
depressed not to find solutions to the evils of the country. If it only had to 
listen to its inner voice, that that requested calmness to him, perhaps it 
would decide on the resignation. By her, it would do it. But she was not 
single. It thought about Sanjay... What would be of him, if she lost the 
position? They would be sent like bloodhounds to simply devour it by having 
itself bold to being enterprising, or for being who was. What would be of the 
rest of the family? The power was revealed like a necessary defense 
against all the enemy s that that same power had created to the edge of the 
years. The power protected the family. Without that shield, they were in 
danger. 

Indira returned to the hall. "I am determined to fight to maintain to 
me in the position", said to him to its lawyer. They were in which this one 
would ask for to the Supreme Court the postponement of the sentence until 
the court decided on his resource. The maneuver would allow to gain time 
and to stay like prime minister until being able to reunite to forces and 
supports. Nothing else to announce its decision, the tension in house 
relaxed. In order to disguise their deception, those that already were had 
bold to dream about releasing it fused in the most servile praises. Sonia 
was disturbed. At heart, it had liked that her mother-in-law resigned, 
because she missed one more a calmed life. 



18 

In the following days, Sanjay and its pal Dhawan secretary 
organized manifestations and marches of support to Indira. They did not 
have repairs in confiscating the buses of the municipal company of 
transports of Delhi to transport to thousands of demonstrators. All the 
apparatus of the party was mobilized so that it heard stop and fort the voice 
in favor of Indira. Trains chartered specially for the full meetings of 
supporters arrived at the capital. 

Now Sonia and Maneka could not enter and leave house so 
easily because permanently the presence of Indira was a multitude to the 
doors protesting, that once left to the day to greet them. Neither to Sonia 
nor to Rajiv they liked the look that took the events. It was scared because 
the car that took a morning to it to Khan Market had received pedrada. It 
had only caused a scratch in the body, but it had been enough to put the 
fear to him in the body. In addition, the coexistence with Maneka him very 
difficult fairy. And Sanjay seemed another one. Hardly it saw him, but when 
for no longer he was as affectionate as before. One occurred account of 
which the presence of Maneka was poisoning the relations between the 
brothers, and her and Sanjay also. 

- So that we do not go away to Italy one season - it asked to him 
its husband until the waters return to their channel? 

To Rajiv it desired the idea to him, and it recognized that it would 
be good for the children. But one was worried. 

- How we say it to my mother? We can leave it in a while thus? 
Sonia remained become absorbed in thought, without answer. It 

was scared for the first time, by her and the children. It never had been the 
atmosphere so heated. 

The 20 of June of 1975, Sanjay had the idea that the whole 
family attended a solidarity meeting that Nueva Club had organized in the 
Boat Delhi. 

- It is good that they see us all together ones - had said. 

- I prefer that you do not decide by us - him espeto Rajiv. 

- He is by mother - his brother answered to him. 

Positions in a commitment, Rajiv and Sonia acceded grudgingly. 
It was perhaps the first political act of Sonia. It made an impression to be to 
him in front of a multitude of more than one hundred thousand people. 
Dressed in sari khaki color, it was next to Rajiv, Maneka and Sanjay behind 
Indira. Thence, it gave vertigo to imagine the immoderation of its country of 
adoption. As much people, so many beliefs, so many religions... When her 
mother-in-law turned itself towards them, Sonia smiled to him. Suddenly it 
saw in contact with the town del it that always spoke, that privileged contact 
that justified all its sinsabores and that now were not something abstract, 
but real estate. He was, tired there on its feet. Sonia could verify the 
enormous popular support del that still enjoyed Indira, that exceeded much 
in the mere presence of the supporters paid by Sanjay. The hen skin was 
put to him when it listened his mother-in-law to say to the crowd that to 



serve the country was the tradition of the Nehru-Gandhi family, and who 
committed itself to continue serving to him until her last sigh. It was the first 
time that Indira was flanked by its family and the meeting was a great 
success. Sonia realized much that Indira needed to have to the family to its 
side. No, it was not moment for leaving it. 

The followers of J. P. they organized contramanifestaciones in 
front of the palace of the president of the Republic and in several cities of 
the immense country. Journalist Oriana Fallaci was first in finding out mouth 
of a leader of the opposition that glided to block the entrance of number 1 of 
Safdarjung Road with people hordes to turn to Indira in prisoner their own 
house. "We will encamp day and night there - the leader said. We will force 
it to resign. For always. The lady will not survive our movement." 

In the morning of the 25 of June, Indira summoned to its office 
from house to Siddarta Shankar Ray, the head of government of Bengal, 
that accidentally was in Nueva Delhi, and that when public becoming the 
sentence had advised to him not to resign. It found it very tense. Its table 
was covered with information of the Intelligence service. 

- We cannot allow it - Indira- said to him. I have information that 
J. P. Narayan, in a meeting this same night, is going to request to the police 
and the army that rebel. It is possible that the company it is implied. You 
know that I am in the first positions in the list of people hated by Richard 
Nixon... What we can do? 

Ray was an expert in legal subjects, with fame of honest and 
duro. It continued thinking that Indira had to stay in its position. It continued 
describing how the country was sunk in the chaos. 

- It is necessary to be able to stop this madness. I feel that the 
India democracy is like a boy and, of the same way whom sometimes there 
is to shake to a boy, I think that there is to shake to the country to wake up 
it. 

- You are thinking about the state of emergency, emergency 
situation? 

Indira agreed with the head. In fact, it did not look for advice on 
what decision to take, because he had already taken it the previous day. His 
Sanjay son had been mentioned it, but the idea did not come from him but 
from his protector Bansi Lai, the plump head of government of Haryana that 
had provided him lands to erect the factory. According to Bansi Lai and 
Sanjay, there were at least fifty politicians in the country that was necessary 
to eliminate of the public life. First, by all means, it was J. P. Narayan. 

To declare the state of emergency, emergency situation was one 
fled forwards... 

Pero what option had left to Indira? Between a dishonourable exit 
and the state of emergency, emergency situation, preferred the latest. 

- I want to do it everything of an impeccable way from the point of 
view legal-needed prime minister. 

- Dejame to study the constitutional aspect. Dame hours and I 
will say something to you. 



- By favor, that is fast - she requested to him. 

Ray went and returned to three of afternoon. It had passed 
several hours reviewing the text of the India Constitution, and the North 
American also. 

- Under article 352 of the Constitution - he said to him to Indira-, 
the government can impose the state of emergency, emergency situation if 
there is risk of external aggression or internal interferences . 

- The call of J. P. Narayan to that the army and the police they 
rebel is not sufficiently serious an internal threat? 

- Yes, it is it. 

- Then, when doing it, they have fallen in its own trap. 

- In effect. They have given in silver tray the justification to you 
that you need to suspend the parliamentary activity and to impose the state 
of emergency, emergency situation. 

There was a silence. The eyes of Indira shone in the dark. 
It lacked a requirement, the company/signature of the president 
of the Republic, but this one was an ally and Indira did not doubt its loyalty. 

- You accompany Me to the palace by the president? - it asked to 
him Ray. 

-We go. 

With the document of four lines that the president signed that 
same night in the splendid Ashoka hall in the old palace the virrey, and that 
ratified the proclamation of the state of emergency, emergency situation, the 
greater democracy of the world one became a virtual dictatorship. The 
government of India was now authorized to arrest to people without 
previous order, to suspend to the civil rights and the liberties, to limit the 
right of interference of the courts already to impose the censorship. 

Rajiv had been two days abroad, flying, and in one of the scales 
of its route, a great surprise when finding out by the press took of which the 
eve her mother had declared the state of emergency, emergency situation. 
Nobody had said nothing to him. The measurement hit its Pacific character 
and, although he was not a political man, seemed to him that it went against 
the democratic principles of the familiar tradition. Mainly, the one that 
worried to him was that her mother had wavered before her brother. It knew 
the ascending one that Sanjay had on its mother. For some dark reason, 
her mother was incapable to resist the emotional blackmail to which his 
brother had it put under. And the nobody best one than he knew Sanjay, its 
strongpoints, their limitations and the danger that could represent. For that 
reason between it was disturbed and it alarmed, and the idea of Sonia to go 
to Italy one season returned to make the rounds to him by the head. 

- I do not know what is what we would have to do - Sonia- said to 
him. The behavior worries to me much about your brother. More and more it 
is put in policy. 

It told him that Maneka was in Kashmir, where had sent it Sanjay 
by indication of Indira, since it feared that the girl, so loquacious, could 
reveal its intentions with respect to the declaration of the state of 



emergency, emergency situation, that maintained in a total secret until their 
promulgation. To him it continued telling that the Sanjay eve been had 
reunited in the office of Indira until very late with Dhawan secretary and the 
second of the minister of the Interior. 

- Sabes what did? They were being put in contact with local 
heads of government and they sent halting orders to them. They had one 
lists black of "enemies". The worse thing is not that, the worse thing is than 
they did it in name of your mother. 

- I know that they stopped to J. P. Narayan at daybreak, I found 
out in the airport - Rajiv said, sighing. A patrol of the police took newlywed 
to it to the jail. It seems to be that Narayan could not believe it to it; it 
seemed to him inconceivable that mother had taken a so drastic 
measurement. 

Sonia to him continued telling that to three of the dawn, 
Siddharta Shankar Ray, later to have helped Indira to finish the rough draft 
of the speech that was going to announce the state of emergency, 
emergency situation to the population, she had to leave when she crossed 
herself in the corridor Dhawan secretary, who said to him: "The measures 
are already taken to cut the electrical provision to main newspapers of the 
country and to close the courts." 

- Ray remained of stone - Sonia- continued, and it was put 
furious. It requested that they woke up to your mother, who was exhausted 
after a so long day. Then, Sanjay left, that began to discuss with Ray. 
Sabes what it said to him? It said to him: You do not know to take a country! 

- As if he knew! - the Vista said to Rajiv raising to the sky. 

- The case is that it did not leave until she appeared your mother, 
that it was astonished because she did not know anything of those orders of 
halting. It had given your brother them. It requested to him that it waited for 
minutes to him, and went away to speak with Sanjay. 

- The one that Sanjay looks for with those measures is to protect 
itself to itself and its business, doing of seeing that also it protects to mother 
of the undertaken legal actions against her.