Indira Gandhi : an intimate biography; by Pupul Jayakar.

There could hardly be a more definitive and closer look at the life of this woman who lived life almost on world stage and yet was mostly a mystery to most people - this book is by one of the few people in her intimate circle, a friend from childhood years. As such she was a rare person who could ask Indira Gandhi why she took this decision or that, within the limits of decency and civil interaction between friends who care about one another, and get answers too. There are some answers surprisingly admission of sort one does not expect, and in circumstances changed hugely since they are all the more precious as they provide an insight into the lonely person that this strong leader of a democracy with almost a billion people as it then was (since then the billion mark has been crossed and well over), a nation she turned from a laughingstock to one to be reckoned with, or a beginning thereof, with some help from above.

Daughter of the most beloved leader of the nation, and yet so lonely in her childhood in the aristocratic setting of the wealthy family that doted on its only son her father who in turn wrote the famous letters to her from his jail sojourn what with the British throwing these guys in and out of jail like so much shifting of grain in a mill. Her ailing mother who approved of her choice of a life partner to take care of the only daughter after her as the father was busy with the nation, the daughter who valiantly turned herself into a helping hand for the father and a formidable leader after him, the admission of her weakness when her one widowed daughter in law was thrown out of the household as soon as the other was brought in when the now aging leader needed her one remaining son to be with her, and more, much more.

I read this well over a decade ago, and what with the history of the nation being that of certain parties quietly wiping off records from various places - a censored film that had its prints burnt during the infamous emergency comes to mind as too another where the dialogues were changed to suit the perception commonly held and the image considered desirable - perhaps the admission of weakness might now have been censored or will be so. Hope not, in the interest of the democracy and truth.