New Delhi: Revealing her heartbreak as she writes about the aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi says she has never seen the photograph of her husband’s remains after the explosion, even more than three decades after his death.
In her memoir, ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’, Sonia Gandhi recounts how Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi took it upon themselves to shield her from the horrific images, instructing their staff to vet every newspaper and magazine before it reached her.
“I had become the child to be protected, they the parents whose care for their mother brought them to shield her,” Sonia writes. “To this day, more than thirty years later, I have not seen that picture of Rajiv’s remains after the explosion,” she adds.
Recalling the night of 21 May, 1991, when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, Sonia writes that Priyanka rushed into her room after the blast. Initially, she told her mother that 12 people around her father had been killed but that Rajiv was safe. It was only later that she told Sonia the truth: “Papa is dead.”
Sonia writes that she crumpled in Priyanka’s arms. Her immediate reaction was regret at not having accompanied Rajiv on the trip.
“I should have gone with him,” she writes, recalling how the thought kept returning to her. “My Rajiv was dead. He was gone. I would never see his beautiful face again, I would never feel him holding me, I would never again know the safety of his embrace,” she writes.
“I wanted to die. I didn’t want to live without him,” she adds.
She also recalls speaking to family friend Suman Dubey over the phone and asking whether everything was over. “I asked him, is it over? and remember his broken voice on the phone: Yes. I’m sorry we couldn’t save him,” Sonia Gandhi writes.
When Sonia travelled to Chennai, she repeatedly asked to see Rajiv. Priyanka, however, tried to protect her from the sight of his body. Sonia describes the image of Rajiv’s coffin being brought into the aircraft and Priyanka sitting on the floor, with her head resting against it.
At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, Sonia recalled that Rajiv had pledged to donate his eyes, as his mother Indira Gandhi had done. She asked the family physician, Dr Mathur, about the donation. His response, in Hindi, was: “Aankhen? Arre kya baat karte ho, kuchh nahin bacha hai, kuchh nahin! (Eyes? What are you talking about? There is nothing left, nothing!).”
Rahul, who was in the United States at the time, returned to India and went to see his father’s remains. Sonia recalls him standing motionless beside Rajiv’s body before placing his forehead on his father’s feet. A white sheet was used to shield him from the people around.
She writes that Rahul insisted on walking alongside his father’s bier during the funeral, despite her fears for his safety. He also performed the last rites.
“I burst into sobs as Rahul walks towards Priyanka and me. The three of us are joined in a tight embrace. We linger for a few moments,” Sonia writes in her memoir, recalling the moment after the funeral pyre was lit.
She also remembers the immersion of Rajiv’s ashes at the Sangam in Allahabad. The ritual brought back memories of an earlier boat trip with Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi, when Rajiv had explained to her the meeting of the rivers.
“Two decades earlier, on a pearly dawn, we had set off—Rajiv, Sanjay, and I—on a boat ride to the Sangam at my mother-in-law’s request. Rajiv had pointed out the different colours of the water, the mood of the two rivers, one almost resisting merging with the other. He had explained the religious belief in a third river, the invisible Saraswati, flowing below the mighty Ganga and the Yamuna. Finally he had guided me through the meaning of the ritual that we were then to perform,” she writes.
Sonia also writes in her memoir that after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, her sister Nadia urged her to return to Italy. “Sonia, they killed your mother-in-law, now they have killed your husband… India has brought you so much sorrow. Come home, Sonia, we all want you to come back,” Nadia told her. But Sonia refused to leave, telling her: “No, Nadia, no! This is my home. It is my country, my children’s country.”
In the days after his death, Sonia also found herself returning to Rajiv’s personal belongings. She writes that he had always packed his own travel bags. Among the things she found were his khadi kurta sets, handkerchiefs, shawl, toiletries, toothbrush, shaver, hairbrush, dark glasses and portable radio.
There were also family photographs, including the first picture Rajiv had taken of Sonia in Cambridge, and photographs of their children at different stages of their lives.
“I look at them one by one: The children at different stages of their growing up, his mother and brother. A separate bag has the clothes he had changed out of. I bend over it, seeking to inhale the elusive scent of my beloved, gone forever,” she writes in her memoir.
On the day after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, the Congress Working Committee decided that Sonia should become the Congress president. Priyanka had declined the offer feeling “disgusted and angry”. Despite a resounding victory in the elections next month, Sonia recalls not having an interest in the world and being locked in at 10, Janpath after Rajiv’s death.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)