Congress President Sonia
Gandhi on Monday said her first conversation with her mother-in-law Indira
Gandhi was in French.
“I met Indira Gandhi in 1965. She started conversing with me in French in
our first conversation,” the Congress President said in an interview in Allahabad.
She said she was terribly nervous while meeting Indira Gandhi — the only
female Prime Minister of India till date — as she was from a completely
different culture and
background.
Recalling her first meet with her mother-in-law, Sonia said: “She (Indira
Gandhi) wanted to meet me. She asked Rajiv to bring me along. The date was
decided. It was Friday.”
Sonia said that she had declined to meet Indira Gandhi a little while before
she and Rajiv Gandhi entered the city.
“I said I cannot meet your mother. I will not. But I did. The next day I
firmly said I will meet your mother… I met her at the high commissioner’s
place. Of course terribly nervous but pleasantly surprised because I could not
speak English..”
The Congress president said that Indira Gandhi was completely different from
what she looked like. “She (Indira Gandhi) understood my difficulties with
the culture,
language and she conversed with me in French.”
Gandhi, who is known for her sparse television appearances, broke her silence
to India Today for the first time in nine years.
She also said that she would not have been in politics had
she not been with Indira Gandhi.
