by Javier Moro
Sonia puts on her glasses and starts reading. The text has the merit of its frankness: “We pulled his leg because of his Gucci shoes, his Cartier glasses, his designer jeans, his trips with his wife in Air India jumbos… We laughed at his Hindi, even though ours was worse… The fact is that we were full of resentment and envy. . We knew deep down that he had travelled more than the rest of us put together and that he had a better vision of the problems of India than we could ever have, pontificating in our columns. His natural elegance, his good looks and his manners gave him an unfair advantage over everyone else. He had so much to live for, so much to do in spite of our scruples and our criticisms.” Sonia is crying when she gives the article back to her daughter. “Why has a good man had to pay such a high price when on top of everything he had done a good job?” she wonders. There are so many questions and so few answers that Sonia despairs. What she does know is that her husband has ended up being the victim of a system that asked the impossible of him. Ah, if only he had not gone into politics, if only they had let Maneka take on the role of heir… Maneka, who appeared at the funeral with Firoz Varun and who murmured a few words of condolence with tears in her eyes.
Now Sonia and her children want to know who assassinated him. The police say it was the Tamil National Liberation Front terrorists… But are they sure? When will they be able to confirm it? And above all… When will justice be able to be done? Justice is poor consolation, but at this point it is the only thing left.
“Madam, you have a call,” a servant interrupts. “It’s long distance.”
Since her sisters have gone back to Italy after spending a few days comforting them in New Delhi, Sonia talks to one or other of them on the phone every day, and they insist that she should consider going back. They think that in time she will realize that there is no sense in staying on in New Delhi, apart from the fact that it is dangerous. But Sonia is clear on the matter and has already told her mother. India is still her reason for living, even if it has stolen her heart. Here is where her dreams are buried.
“This is my life,” she repeats to her sister on the phone. “I can’t leave this country now and set myself up abroad, where I will always be a foreigner. I realized that when Daddy died.”
“At least, move house…”
“Why? Do you also think it’s jinxed? That’s what the Press say here…”
“No, I don’t believe in that rubbish, I’m saying it because in that house everything will remind you of Rajiv…”
“That’s precisely why I don’t want to move. Besides, from the security point of view, this house is adequate.”
Security! How hollow that word seems from a distance away. Two assassinations, and Sonia still believes in it. How stubborn a sister can be… But fear can only be understood if it is experienced from the inside. The Sikhs’ threat to Indira that they would kill her descendants for a hundred generations stayed engraved on Sonia’s mind. How to forget a threat like that, which, in addition, was confirmed with her mother-in-law’s blood? Now, with Rajiv, she knows that the thirst for revenge knows no limits. Never will she or her children be able to live in complete peace, because they are who they are. Never, not here or in Italy or anywhere else. Better to accept that. At least in India she again has all the apparatus of the State to protect them. “The security of the Gandhi family is in the national interest,” the President of the Republic declared pompously a week after the attack. About time too, thinks Sonia… The fact is that the acting Prime Minister, acting under the orders of the President of the Republic, has assigned them maximum protection. Once again they have the Special Protection Group at their disposal, which had already proved its effectiveness when Rajiv was Prime Minister. Sonia has not been able to avoid making a bitter comment:
“The police have let me know that if you had not withdrawn the SPG’s protection from Rajiv, to which he had a right, he would have been saved from the attack.”
“Soniaji,” the Prime Minister replied imperturbably, “you know perfectly well that if Rajiv had insisted, the government would have provided it for him again.”
“I’m not so sure.”
How can she be? How can she believe the word of a politician? It is true that Rajiv had not requested it, but she had. She had insisted several times, but always in vain. Priyanka had insisted. Rahul too. The fact is that no politician had any special interest in giving Rajiv greater protection: those in his party because it separated him from the masses and therefore reduced his chances of success, those in the opposition because if something happened to Rajiv, the predominance of the Congress Party would come to an end. Everyone came out winning if Rajiv was left defenceless.
After so much coming and going, after seeing so many people, after so many tears spilled, Sonia suffers the reaction. Little by little she begins to assimilate her new situation, and a terrifying question emerges: How to go on living without Rajiv? How to find the strength to go on without him? Now it is the hardest part, to invent a life for herself. The consolation of religion is no help to her. She says she believes in all religions because perhaps she does not believe in any of them. She has the consolation that her son Rahul is staying there all summer. The young man is shattered. Added to the sadness of having lost his father, there is a strong feeling of guilt at not having moved heaven and earth, for not having faced up to him and forced him to demand more protection… Sonia and Priyanka also feel a little guilty, but what could they do against Rajiv’s will and the will of the State machinery? The fact is that the family home once again becomes the fortress it was before, with fences in the street, metal detector arches, surveillance cameras, watchtowers, sentry boxes and a hundred or so armed policemen lurking all round the area. Security.
The attack has not interrupted the elections, only the last two days have been postponed. The Congress Party has won comfortably in the south, because of the “empathy factor” caused by the assassination, but they have been defeated in the north. Maneka has also been defeated in her constituency and she has lost her seat in Parliament. The great surprise of these elections is the spectacular advances made by the BJP, the Hindu party that Rajiv had identified as the “enemy to be beaten”. They have multiplied their seats by a hundred. A spectacular and terrifying rise. How can you not feel afraid when the leader of a Hindu paramilitary group, an ally of this party, has given a tribute to the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi? Is that not something that would not be allowed in most democracies? asks Sonia, as scandalized as most of the visitors she receives. Can one so easily attack the pillars of a nation with total impunity? With the excuse of giving their condolences, many MPs and party members go to sound her out, sometimes even quite late at night. They go to discuss who should be the definitive successor to Rajiv at the head of the Congress Party. They do not dare to say that she should take on that post, that if she did it there would be some hope of fighting against the advance of religious factionalism. They know she does not want to hear of it. Did she not reject outright the presidency of the party, which they went to offer her on a silver plate while Rajiv’s ashes were still warm?
However, Sonia listens to them carefully: that so and so represents the wealthy too much and has a poor image among the poor, that so and so is disloyal and cannot be trusted, etc.
“What do you think?” they ask her.
“I would be inclined to go for Narasimha Rao, I think that is who Rajiv would choose… But why don’t you decide who is to be the next leader?”
“Because this party, with personalities as imposing as Nehru, Indira and your husband, has never had the need to develop a succession mechanism and it needs someone to guide it… You, for example,” one of them dares to let slip, looking straight at her.
Sonia struggles to stay composed and calm. Don’t they understand that I’m not interested? She has told them a hundred times that she does not want to get into politics, that she is not going to participate in any rally or event connected with politics. If she continues to receive them it is
out of fidelity to her husband’s memory, because she thinks he would like it. Keeping up these relationships is like keeping him alive in a small way. She does not want to cut the umbilical cord that links her to Rajiv’s world, to Indira’s world, to the family legacy. She does it for herself and for her children. A friend of hers feels obliged to warn those that come: “Don’t bother Madam talking about her going into politics. It hurts her a lot. Remember that she’s in mourning for a husband who never wanted to go into politics.”
Many will remember her dressed in a white sari with a black bodice and no jewels, as tradition requires in the period of mourning, except for her wedding ring, sitting on the edge of the sofa in Rajiv’s study, with the family portraits looking down on them from the walls. The office desk is exactly as it was when he left it. She has not wanted to move any of the objects there and no one sits on his chair, now covered with the flag that was wrapped round his coffin. No one will ever sit there, not even her. In spite of her elegant bearing and her effort to remain composed, the tears slip out from time to time, and she hides it by rubbing a handkerchief over her face. From all the crying she has perpetual bags under her eyes and her gaze is watery. She has lost a lot of weight, the marble-like pallor of her complexion is tinged with grey, and she has an expression of infinite sadness in her eyes.
But her opinion carries weight. So much weight that even she is surprised. In the end the MPs listen to her. Once they are convinced that Madam prefers Narasimha Rao, they arrange an internal election for the MPs to vote him in. The party finally puts in this old friend of the Nehru family as Prime Minister of a coalition government, a minority one because the Congress Party needs thirty more seats for a majority. The Press seizes on this power by influence, which it calls the Sonia factor. The same thing has happened to her as happened to Indira when Nehru died: she automatically inherited some of the family’s power. For some it is a question of “charisma”, for others it is the “name”. If that day she had mentioned another name, it is likely that Rao would not have come out on top. It is not so easy to get away from politics. Power follows her, power wants her. Power needs her.
The Rao government seems weak. The way things are, no one would bet on its survival, or on the party’s survival either. What is the Congress Party without a Gandhi at its head?… An organization sentenced to disappearing vanish, permitting the Hindu party, the BJP, to take over the ground lost. It is serious, because that party defends the dangerous idea of “a Hindu India”, which for many is a recipe for disaster. And no one can even imagine the consequences for the country and the rest of the world of a disaster on the scale of India… That is why the pressure on Sonia is redoubled. For those politically responsible for a totally disconcerted Congress Party, and for a large part of the population, she represents the last sentinel of a dynasty that has been struck a death-blow.
“Can I do you any favours, anything you need, can I help you in any way?” This is how the Welfare Minister announces himself in his singsong voice as he comes into the Gandhi home.
In the leadership of the Congress Party they cannot think what else to do to win her over, to get her to think again and agree to come into the fold.
There are so many of them wanting to see her that she decides to establish visiting times, from five to seven in the evening. She spends the mornings answering the thousands of letters of condolence that she and her children receive still from all over the world. She insists on reading them all, and she tries to answer the ones from acquaintances personally. To the others she sends a printed note of thanks signed by hand, in English or in Hindi. In the evenings, after the visits, is when the feeling of loss and solitude becomes harder to bear. For moments she forgets that now Rajiv is not going to come home that night. So many years accustomed to waiting for him to come back that she still has the reflex of that useless waiting. Fortunately she is surrounded by her family. Her mother, Paola, now lives with them, and is still secretly hoping that Sonia will decide to go back to Italy. But she does not want to insist any more, the last time she did, Sonia got upset. Priyanka and Rahul are very attentive to their mother. From time to time some friend or other turns up for dinner and the atmosphere livens up as they prepare the meal.
The close friends are few and far between, the faithful ones. Among these are the Bachchan brothers (one of them, Amitabh, has become the biggest star of the Indian cinema), a decorator that she met as soon as she arrived and her husband, a couple of journalists and editors, former colleagues from Indian Airlines, old friends of the family like Suman Dubey and his wife… The Quattrochis have gone back to Italy, although even if they were here, she would not be able to see them… Her friends do not talk to the Press, and they do not say anything that might be interpreted by Sonia as a betrayal of her confidence. They know she is a woman who is very jealous of her privacy. She does not want her grief to appear on the pages of the glossy magazines. She is very annoyed with the foreign Press which projects Priyanka as the heir to “the dynasty”. The reporters who followed them during the campaign in Amethi did not fail to notice the young woman’s magnetism, with that penetrating look of hers, and none of them was able to resist comparing her to her grandmother.
Many foreign dignitaries on their way through the capital also want to see her and she is happy to receive them, because that way she can share memories of the many trips she made with her husband. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs they cannot understand why Yasser Arafat, Nelson Mandela or King Hussein want to talk to a person who has no official position. “What’s happening with the protocol?” they ask. But Prime Minister Rao rejects those objections. If the foreign dignitaries wish it to be so, the government does not need to deal with the question of protocol, he answers them. Those in power treat her, and her children, as members of a ruling family. The Gandhis, dead or alive, are still revered, as though India recognized their divine right to reign there. Now, together with the big pictures of Indira which adorn public buildings, there is also the photo of Rajiv smiling from beyond the grave. The family is still very present in the minds of millions of Indians.
Little by little, her children and her friends help her to find some sense to life without Rajiv. Sonia is aware that she needs to get her life back to normal as soon as possible, even if it is only for her children’s sake, as they will have to go back to university. “What has happened cannot be an obstacle to their leading a normal life.” She is obsessed with that idea. All her life she has wanted nothing else, and she still talks about it as if she could attain it. Then she corrects herself, and says, “… a life as normal as possible.” Yes, that is the goal, the only viable goal.
And although she can no longer live with Rajiv, she can live for him. For his memory. So that his dream does not disappear. Her friends suggest she creates a foundation, somewhat in the style of American presidential foundations, which hold the legacy of each president. It would be a response to the terrorists who murdered him, a way for his ideas and his vision to survive. Sonia chooses the date of June 20th to sign the act of constitution of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, because it is also a way of giving some meaning to Rahul’s birthday, who is 21 that day. Surrounded by her children and her friends, she puts her signature to the document that establishes the creation of an institution aimed at promoting the application of science and technology to the service of the poor. Sonia has the impression that in that way Rajiv is still alive in death.
On August 20th, the day that Rajiv would have been 47, they go to pay tribute to him at the samadhi, the mausoleum in the shape of a lotus flower erected on the site where the cremation took place. It is not far from the respective samadhi of Sanjay, Indira and Nehru, all symbols which evoke the considerable price of power. Sonia wears a white sari with a black border. Her eyes are distant and it seems as if her spirit is far away, in some place that only she knows. Perhaps she is allowing herself to be carried away by her daydreaming and she is making plans for life with Rajiv, like before, and she is managing
492 to scrape a few seconds of happiness together in this way, even if they are imaginary. It smells of the incense the priests burn in makeshift braziers. Standing between Priyanka and Rahul, the three of them seem absorbed and involved in their own thoughts, while the Hindu religious chants follow one another like an endless litany. In the background the noise of the city can be heard. Suddenly Maneka appears, alone, the last person they want to see there at that moment. Sonia tenses up as her sister-in-law approaches the samadhi and places a floral offering on the polished marble. Then she follows the tradition of walking round the mausoleum and goes past Sonia and her children, but they do not greet each other. Her presence has broken the serenity of the act. Sonia, annoyed, decides to bring it to an end and go back to the car.
43
Five months after the assassination, the electoral commission announces local elections in Amethi, and again the chorus of voices makes itself heard. The chorus that called for Indira after Nehru’s death, and Rajiv after his brother’s death, is now calling for Sonia. Former colleagues of her husband’s call on the Prime Minister to convince her to stand in Amethi as Rajiv’s successor. They know that Sonia has a special link with the people in that constituency. The sycophancy reaches unexpected lengths when a party member declares unashamedly: “If Sonia wanted to wear shoes made out of my skin, I wouldn’t hesitate to give it to her.” But the family is losing patience: “What do these militants think?” exclaims Priyanka, beside herself. “That we have to go on sacrificing our lives? That’s enough politics!” It seems like an aberration to them that the balance of a whole nation of almost a billion inhabitants rests on an Italian widow, but that is what they believe at the pinnacle of the government and the party.