Amita Bajaj

Time to read it again! So I sort of finished reading The Red Sari...( based on the pale red/pink sari that Nehru wove during his many prison sojourns fighting for Independence from the British) which both Indira Gandhi n Sonia Gandhi wore on their wedding day. It is fairly well-researched especially as far as Sonia G's birth place Italy is concerned n elsewhere too there are small nuggets of info that have not appeared elsewhere till now...like the Mainos ,Sonia paternal side are of German descent,n Not Sicilian as many would like to believe! Lol! And she was asthmatic from an early age till today n of the 3 sisters she is the favourite of her late father Stefano Maino! Later Rajiv Gandhi too became "bravo ragazzo" ( good guy)! The book should not have annoyed anyone if it is taken for its face value that it is a dramatized biography of Mrs SG, infact it paints her and Rajiv Gandhi in all the good colours of a good wife, great mother n wonderful daughter-in-law!! As opposed to the rough hues of Sanjay n Maneka Gandhi...imperious, overbearing n rebels with little or no cause!! Even the dogs of the two households replicated the human masters....Sonia's dachshund Reshma n quiet Afghan hound called Zabul were terrorised by the 2 Irish wolfhounds of Sanjay n Maneka...so much so that the late Khushwant Singh a frequent visitor to the house as he edited Surya ( later it was my husband who edited Surya but KS remained consulting editor) was left paralysed with fear!! And once whilst I was interviewing Maneka G her Great Dane had tried to eat my tiny Sanyo dictaphone recorder!!! So I could empathize with that bit! That Jayaprakash Narayan's late wife Prabhavati n Kamala Nehru were friends n JP met Mrs IG alone to hand over a bunch of letters written by her late mother to his wife during the Freedom Movement when both were on the same side...."How strange politics is.....that it allows hatred and love at the same time and in the same person"....she actually met JP again later before his death..... The book at the beginning has the mention of a quaint ritual: Sonia G places an offering of camphor,cardamom,cloves and sugar over the heart of her dead husband's body before his pyre is lit by their son...it is supposed to remove the imperfections from the soul!! I wish I had known this earlier....I know about placing a paan in the departed's mouth as it is one item that is Unavailable in "parlok"....The Bofors scandal, Emergency,1971 war which saw 10 million Bangla Deshi refugees fleeing into India from the excesses of Yahya Khan even before the war hostilities began, to Operation Blue Star....are all there but heavily extracted from previous books...nothing new there! The Maneka-Indira tiff which was fanned by the late Khushwant Singh describing Maneka as" Durga astride a tiger" ( Mrs IG was described thus earlier) n clearly implying that Maneka was the inheritor of Sanjay's mantle .....the rest is history when her belongings were strewn across the steps of the PM's residence from where she was asked to "Get Out"! The book ends with the catastrophic defeat of the Congress ( out of sync with what the Nation wants) n it hints that all "Gandhis are late bloomers"....n may be it has to be Priyanka Gandhi.... I found it inoffensive so can't figure out why it had to be banned in India!? Wish Javier Moro had met me I could have told him so much more....may be I will save that up for my book! :) With much much better pix....some that have not even seen light of day till today....