From: bala@ulysses.att.com (Bala Krishnamurthy)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Sonia's book on Rajiv
Keywords: Sonia Rajiv Book
Date: 3 Sep 92 11:37:15 GMT

apnews reports:
	   NEW DELHI, India (AP) _ The intensely private widow of former
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has surprised and captivated Indian
readers with an intimate book about her assassinated husband.
	   In ``Rajiv,'' a 214-page coffee-table book filled with family
photographs and 10,000 words of text, Sonia Gandhi speaks about her
personal life for the first time since a 1985 magazine interview.
	   The book was published Aug. 20, which would have been her
husband's 48th birthday.
	   Mrs. Gandhi writes about Indian politics with a loathing that
should put to rest any lingering speculation that she might seek
office or encourage her college-age children to do so.
	   She confirms that she bitterly objected to her husband's
decision to abandon his job as a commercial pilot to enter politics
after the death of his ambitious younger brother in 1982. ``I
fought like a tiger,'' she wrote.
	   And when her mother-in-law was killed in 1984 by her own
bodyguards, she feared that he, too, would die if he took over as
prime minister.
	   ``I begged him not to let them (his party) do this. I pleaded
with him, with others around him, too. He would be killed as
well,'' Mrs. Gandhi wrote.
	   ``He held my hands, hugged me, tried to soothe my desperation.
He had no choice, he said, he would be killed anyway.''
	   Rajiv Gandhi succeeded his mother, Indira Gandhi, as prime
minister in 1984, extending a family dynasty that began with his
grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru. But voters put off by his cool
manner and by a corruption scandal in his government rejected him
in 1989.
	   After he lost the 1989 election, Mrs. Gandhi complained that the
new government replaced his bodyguards from an elite unit with
regular ill-trained policemen.
	   Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber, described as a member of
a Sri Lankan separatist movement, on May 21, 1991 _ the day after
he was re-elected to parliament in the first round of voting.
	   Mrs. Gandhi's book revives a public fascination with the
Italian-born woman who married into India's preeminent political
family.
	   ``Rajiv'' costs $52, five times more than anything else in the
catalogue of Penguin Books (India) Ltd. But in one week on the
stands, it sold 3,500 copies out of a printing run of 5,000.
	   Mrs. Gandhi also sold pre-publication rights for excerpts to two
English-language magazines for $3,500 _ a record for an Indian
book, said publisher Zamir Ansari. The book will be showcased this
month at the Frankfurt Book Fair for overseas sales.
	   Most reviewers have been charmed by the book, if not by the
woman.
	   ``My initial instinct was to pan this over-priced,
over-produced, over-discussed and, to an extent, irrelevant book,''
wrote Vinod Mehta, editor of The Pioneer, a New Delhi daily.
	   Mehta said Mrs. Gandhi had created an image as a ``cold,
humorless, grasping, introverted, pathologically shy lady of humble
beginnings.'' The book, however, revealed ``warmth, candor, and ...
sexual emotion.''
	   Mehta said he found the book ``unputdownable,'' and concluded:
``I continue to dislike Sonia, but I unreservedly recommend this
book.''
	   After Gandhi's death, the Congress Party, ruled by 36 years by
the Nehru-Gandhi family, immediately appealed to the new widow to
become party president. She refused.
	   For 12 months, Mrs. Gandhi mourned in seclusion and began
compiling the rare and sensitive photographs for the book she
planned as a tribute to her husband.
	   Since last May, she has made a few public appearances for the
Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, a charity founded after his death, and at
other nonpartisan events.
	   Beyond the few factual revelations, the book portrays the warm
private life of a man who savored his time with his family and who
took office reluctantly after his mother's assassination.
	   Photographs include a young Gandhi playing with grandfather
Nehru and a portfolio of family pictures taken by Gandhi, a serious
amateur photographer.

Xref: sparky soc.culture.indian:30238 alt.culture.kerala:242