In May 2004, the Congress-headed UPA made a stunning return to the Centre after defeating the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA. The victory pushed Sonia Gandhi to an inner turmoil as her colleagues urged her to accept the prime ministerial post.
She found herself waging internal wars; the initial conviction about never stepping into the shoes of her late husband and mother-in-law eventually turned into a feeble "theek hai", only for her to make a U-turn.Her son, Rahul Gandhi, was the first to know when she decided to decline the PM post offer. He was elated and so was his sister Priyanka, who learnt about it later.
They had lived through the trauma of their grandmother Indira Gandhi's assassination and their father Rajiv Gandhi's horrific murder."In their minds, holding that office was intrinsically linked with heightened danger. They looked relieved and I, too, felt lighter, having said my views out loud on the question for the first time.
And there the matter rested. I never spoke of it to anyone else," Sonia Gandhi wrote in her memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love, which hit the stands today.- Ends