The mother-in-law who could freeze a room: Sonia Gandhi remembers Indira

Sonia Gandhi's memoir recounts Indira Gandhi's outbursts and responses to those who upset her. The recollections also reveal the domestic routines and grandchildren who helped calm her.

In Short

• Sonia Gandhi recalls Indira Gandhi's temper outbursts in her memoir
• Indira's anger often silenced staff and upset family members
• She used domestic tasks like sorting sarees to find calm

Congress leader Sonia Gandhi has recalled former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's occasional outbursts of temper and the different ways in which she dealt with people who upset her, according to news agency Press Trust of India.

In her memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, which hit the stands on Tuesday, Sonia Gandhi writes about her first year as a bride in the Gandhi family. The 544-page book, published by HarperCollins India, traces her childhood in post-war Italy, marriage into the Nehru-Gandhi family, the assassination of her husband Rajiv Gandhi and her entry into politics.

“What I found most alarming was my mother-in-law's occasional explosions of temper. They could freeze the staff into numbness. On one occasion, a member of the staff who had forgotten to remind her of an important appointment, and not for the first time, was made to stand in a corner of the room while others hurriedly passed by, all feeling rather embarrassed,” she writes.

In another instance, Sonia Gandhi noticed a “kurta-dhoti-clad individual standing immobile in the corner, staring at the wall."

“I was not yet familiar with who was who in the political pantheon, but the fact that he was within our private space signalled that he must have been a Congress Party senior. I was with Amie Aunty for a good half an hour, and when I walked back, the man in white was still stuck to the wall as ordered by my mother-in-law, I learnt later,” she writes. Amie Crishna was a senior member of Indira Gandhi's staff.

Sonia Gandhi also writes that Indira Gandhi sometimes refused to deal with “an offending individual” and ignored the person, leaving them in suspense for days. She would occasionally “flare up” during meals after a particularly unpleasant exchange with the Opposition in Parliament.

On one such occasion, Indira Gandhi pushed her thali to the other side of the long dining table in a “fit of anger."

“Such outbursts would unsettle me, reminding me of my father's explosions. While I'd feel perturbed and shaken, Rajiv and Sanjay would wait silently for the unpleasant moment to be over,” Sonia Gandhi writes.

Rajiv Gandhi would reassure her, saying, “Don't let yourself get so scared. She'll be all right in no time.”

“But until I got to know her well, I'd quake in my seat. She normally repented her outburst and, in her own way, communicated her regret to whoever had annoyed her. But if a colleague had betrayed her trust, she didn't relent; she'd distance herself and not ever deal with that person again,” Sonia Gandhi recalls, according to PTI.

Indira Gandhi found relief in domestic chores. She would ask Amie Crishna to bring out boxes of old photographs and then arrange them by date.

“Or she'd take out her saris and, with our help, arrange them according to their provenance, placing tags on each bundle so that it could be accessed easily. She'd set aside some that she had worn occasionally and were still very wearable and ask us to make separate bundles for various relatives,” Sonia Gandhi writes.

The memoir also records Indira Gandhi's fondness for sarees and old Kashmiri shawls. She treasured several old sarees that had belonged to her mother before the khadi period.

Sonia Gandhi writes that Indira Gandhi's “tense moments” became less frequent after she became a grandmother. “As the children grew up, it was they who'd be sent to get a sense of her ‘mood’. A smile or an innocent question from her grandchildren at once melted her; they helped her to relax and provided a lot of contentedness to her,” she writes.

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