Amitabh Bachchan’s family hosted Sonia Gandhi’s pre-wedding ceremonies, memoir recalls

Sonia Gandhi has written about the role Amitabh Bachchan’s family played when she first came to India. In her recently published memoir, Belonging – A Journey of Love, she says the Bachchans hosted her at their Delhi home after she arrived in January 1968, ahead of her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi.

She writes that Rajiv, his brother Sanjay and Amitabh picked her up from Delhi airport. At the Bachchan home, Amitabh’s mother Teji Bachchan greeted her on the porch with a smile and a hug, and Sonia says she immediately felt relieved. She describes Teji as becoming a mother figure to her, someone who helped, taught and advised her.

During this period, she writes, she spent her time with Rajiv either at the Bachchans’ house or at the home he shared with his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Sonia met Amitabh’s father, the poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, the morning after she arrived. She recalls that he welcomed her briefly and then walked away.

Her room was at the edge of the house. She writes that his footsteps on his early-morning walk would wake her at dawn. After she fell back asleep, his morning prayers would wake her again: he blew a conch shell and then rang a prayer bell.

Sonia writes that although she had studied English for years, she could not yet speak it fluently or follow Indian accents. Harivansh Rai Bachchan, a Hindi poet and a professor of English, sometimes taught her a little Hindi, though not enough for her to make herself understood.

In their short conversations, she says, he warned her that in India what counts is not who you are but “what people think you to be.” The remark confused her at the time, because it seemed to suggest she could not be herself. In later years, she writes, she came to feel he had been right, as someone who had himself experienced the fickleness of the public.

Sonia notes that in Indian tradition, the bride’s family usually takes charge of the wedding arrangements. In her case, the phoolon-ka-gehena (floral jewellery) and mehendi ceremonies were held at the Bachchans’ home. Everything else took place at Indira Gandhi’s home. She explained, "n the Indian tradition, it is generally the girl’s family that takes the responsibility for the wedding arrangements. In my case, except for the phoolon-ka-gehena (floral jewellery) and mehendi (henna) ceremonies that would be held at the Bachchans’, everything else would be conducted in Rajiv’s mother’s home, just as if I were the daughter of the house.”

She added, “Tea and snacks were served amongst much singing and merrymaking directed by Rajiv’s friend Amit, then a corporate executive, who had come from Calcutta for the occasion.”

Sonia also writes that when her and Rajiv’s first child was born prematurely and died soon after, Teji Bachchan gave her a puppy to cheer her up."Teji Aunty, to cheer me up, gifted me a puppy, a cross between a dachshund and a cocker spaniel. Taking care of Reshma, as we named her after Rajiv’s much-loved dog, helped alleviate to some extent the ache of losing the baby,” she shared.