'Rahul, joy to us all, but especially his grandmother': Sonia recalls son's chubby childhood in memoir

New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi, who was born rather thin but grew up to be a chubby child with a double chin, was a joy to the entire family, especially his grandmother who would break into a smile after a long and tiring day, recalls Sonia Gandhi in her memoir "Belonging: A Journey of Love".

The then prime minister would pick the infant Rahul up, play a game with him, and he would grab her or pull at her sari or at her hair, and she would laugh delightedly.

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"Rahul was a source of joy to us all, but especially to his grandmother. If she came home tired or tense, a smile or a gurgle from him would at once cheer her up and bring a loving smile to her face," Gandhi writes in the book that hit the stands on Tuesday.

"When he reached the stage of crawling, she'd take him out of his playpen, go down on all fours, and romp alongside him. If the child fell sick, she'd fret and send messages from work enquiring about him or suggesting ways of making him feel better."

Born over a year after the death of Rajiv and Sonia's first child, Rahul soon became the favourite of the Gandhi household.

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When the formal name-giving ceremony, "naamkaran", was being planned, Gandhi noticed that her mother-in-law was giving directions to her secretary, Usha Bhagat, "on how she wanted things to be organised, what clothes Rahul should wear and so forth".

"It was as if I, the mother, had nothing to do with it. I nursed my wounded feelings for a day or two and then I exploded: I wouldn't take this lying down, I said to Rajiv. 'The baby may be your mother's grandson, but he's my son first!'"

When Rajiv conveyed her feelings to his mother, she "looked rather sheepish".

"I was upset, I told her bluntly; I had every right to know what was being planned for my son. She replied that she was so used to being in charge of things that she hadn't given it a thought and automatically got on with the task. 'I never meant to hurt you. I'm sorry,' she said. And before leaving, she planted a light kiss on my check," Gandhi recalls in the book.

Not only was she involved in the rest of the preparations, the details of the forthcoming rituals were also explained to her.

It also irked her when Indira said Rahul looked like the veteran Congress leader Kamalapati Tripathi.

"Rahul had grown quite chubby and I used to be irked by my mother-in-law's comment that his round face and double chin made him look like the veteran Congress leader Kamalapati Tripathi, even if she said it in a teasing way," she says.

The young mother was vindicated when Indira decided to take Rahul, who was almost two years old, on an official visit to Kashmir.

At first, Gandhi was upset over this "unthinkable" event, and was sure that Rahul would be miserable away from her, Indira insisted that he'd be fine.

"I was stricken but couldn't refuse his doting grandmama's keen desire. And so they left, Dadi beaming and me tearful. The same evening she called me: 'Sonia, Rahul has been a bit cranky but fine on the whole. Now he's yelling and calling out for you. Will you speak to him a little and calm him down?'"

"I can't deny a feeling of satisfaction: I'd been proven right. It was from small incidents such as these that I learnt that submitting to her initially, rather than getting into a situation of conflict, was the wiser approach to converting her to my point of view," she writes.

After having Rahul, Gandhi also realised that "being frank" with Indira, who was known to have a short temper, would help both of them deal with each other, "often through sending each other brief notes".

"I would still try to wait for the opportune moment when the 'mood' was 'theek'. To begin with, we relied on Rajiv's intervention... His mother, too, had full faith in his sense of fairness and, herself eager to dispel misunderstandings, would find a way to resolve any problems that arose between us," she recalls in the 526-page book published by HarperCollins India.