Before Rahul, Sonia and Rajiv lost first child; memoir reveals details (Picture from X)

NEW DELHI: In September 1968, the Gandhi household was filled with joy when Sonia Gandhi announced her pregnancy. Even the usually stern Indira Gandhi broke into a rare display of affection, embracing her daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi and exclaiming, “One big baby having another baby!” But the happiness was short-lived. Sonia gave birth to a premature baby boy on January 18, 1969, two months before her due date. Initially overjoyed, the family was soon devastated by the newborn’s death. In her newly released memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, Sonia recounts the deeply personal tragedy for the first time. She writes that the baby was buried by her husband Rajiv Gandhi and brother-in-law Sanjay Gandhi at Feroze Gandhi’s farmhouse in Mehrauli. “I heard the baby's first cry as he was placed in the incubator. Later Rajiv took me to see him, a tiny, perfectly formed boy, with thick, black hair and long, slim fingers. We gazed at him together, Rajiv's arm around my shoulder. We fell in love with him immediately,” she writes. Doctors had warned Rajiv that the baby’s chances of survival were uncertain. At 6:30 am, he was informed that the newborn had died. “With Amie Aunty beside him, he broke it gently to me when at 6:30 in the morning the end came. ‘No it was not possible! Why, why,’ I kept asking. Both of us were shocked and heartbroken, we held each other tight. I cried my heart out, and Rajiv, in spite of his ‘stiff upper lip’ upbringing, also wept copiously,” she recalls. Indira, who was away on a tour, cut short her visit and rushed to the hospital. “She embraced us, her eyes red and swollen, and sat with us for a long time. She wanted to remain with us, she said, but had to complete her tour engagement. She left early the next morning, full of sorrow: She, too, had so looked forward to the happy event.” The family then faced the difficult question of the newborn’s last rites. Sonia writes that, according to Hindu tradition, a newborn could not be cremated and was traditionally released into a river. However, the thought brought back a disturbing memory of seeing a swollen male body trapped near the Okhla barrage, with scavenging dogs trying to pull it out. “‘No,’ I whispered. ‘No matter what, I'm not going to allow our baby to be thrown into the river.’...’No, I couldn't do that to my baby, no matter how sacred the river was,’ I said, breaking into sobs. How could I consent to do something that seemed to me so alien and heartless to my tiny child, already deprived of his chance to live?” The family eventually decided to bury the child at Feroze Gandhi’s farmhouse in Mehrauli. “It was a painful and agonising option, but there was no other way. Rajiv came back to the hospital and told me that he and Sanjay had buried the little one deep under a beautiful pink bougainvillea bush, then in full bloom on the left side along the inner boundary wall," she recounts. “For a long time we'd pause and place a flower over the spot each time we went there. It didn't assuage our pain, but we had to accept the inevitable,” she writes. Sonia also recalls how Indira had closely monitored her pregnancy, advising her on diet, walks and exercise. She writes that she had no major discomfort, apart from missing Italian food and developing a craving for jamun, phalsa and Fanta, sometimes drinking twelve glasses a day.

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The loss left her depressed and struggling with feelings of inadequacy and guilt. The pain was compounded by a right-wing opposition newspaper publishing an article titled, "Indira Gandhi failed in her attempt to become the grandmother of a bastard child." “The venom of those words scarred my heart. How could people be so cruel? What had I done to deserve such malice? The hurt caused by that spiteful comment added to the heartbreak of my loss and to my feeling of inadequacy,” she writes. In October 1969, Sonia told Rajiv she was pregnant again. “Thrilled but anxious”, she gave birth to their second child, Rahul Gandhi, on June 19, 1970.

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