Sonia Gandhi memoir Belonging: she recalls first India stay with Bachchan family and Rajiv’s airport prank
Gandhi writes that Rajiv Gandhi planned to welcome his friend Amit at the airport with marigold garlands and an old brass band hired for weddings.
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The Sonia Gandhi memoir, Belonging, was released on Tuesday, 10 November 2026. Excerpts show how she first arrived in India to be with Rajiv, The Week reported. The book covers her childhood and family in Italy, her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi, her years watching her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi lead the country and her eventual entry into politics.
What the Sonia Gandhi memoir says about her first night in Delhi
Oneindia reported that Gandhi writes she reached India around 5.15 am on 13 January 1968. The airport was dark and far from the modern ones she knew in Italy. Waiting for her were Rajiv, his brother Sanjay Gandhi and their friend Amit, later the film star Amitabh Bachchan, according to a PTI report carried by ThePrint.
“We drove off down a narrow road in pitch darkness to 13, Willingdon Crescent, the home of Amit’s parents,” she writes. There she stayed with the Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan and his wife Teji, whom she calls her “temporary foster parents” in the book.
Key numbers
- 10 November 2026: the release date of the memoir, according to The Week.
- 13 January 1968: the day Gandhi says she landed in India, per Oneindia.
- 13: the number of the Willingdon Crescent house in New Delhi where she stayed, per ThePrint.
Harivansh Rai Bachchan and the asthma attack
Rajiv had tried to make her room welcoming, with a reproduction of a painting from Picasso’s Blue Period on the wall behind the bed and a vase of fragrant roses on the bedside table, the PTI report said. Then came trouble. Gandhi writes that “no sooner did I step into the bathroom than I found myself gasping”, a sudden asthma attack.
She describes Teji Bachchan as “ever ready to help, teach, and counsel me”, The Week said. Her host gave her a piece of advice about public life. “In this country it is not what you are that counts, it is what people think you to be,” Harivansh Rai Bachchan told her.
Rajiv Gandhi and Amitabh Bachchan: The airport prank
The memoir also records a friendship from the days when Bachchan was still an aspiring actor. Rajiv wrote to her of a plan to play a prank on his friend Amit, “to welcome him at the airport with marigold garlands and an old broken-down brass band normally hired for weddings,” The Week reported.
Background: a first visit before the marriage
PTI said Gandhi came to India for the first time to be with Rajiv because both were certain of their feelings despite a considerable time apart. The Week added that the book revisits the worries of people around her about a move to India.
What happens next
The Sonia Gandhi memoir is on sale now. Bihar Congress said in a post on X on Tuesday that the book was available on Blinkit, Oneindia reported.
The memoir gives a first-person account of Sonia Gandhi's arrival in India before her marriage, and of her ties with the Bachchan family. It is likely to draw attention from readers of Indian politics and film because both families remain in public life.