Essay: A Different Mrs. Gandhi
	Sonia has lost much to Indian politics, but she still controls her own destiny
	By Ruchir Joshi

	NEAL ULEVICH/AP Sonia may lead her mother-in-law Indira's Congress Party, but she renounced the top job

Posted Monday, May 24, 2004; 20:00 HKT
I remember a photograph I took of Indira Gandhi in 1976, at the height of her rule during India's Emergency. She had come to give away prizes at my school and I was one of the few boys allowed to get close to the heavily secured stage. At one point my eyes met Indira's and she obviously didn't like what she saw. Even at 16 years old, I knew she was the destroyer of her father's great democratic legacy to India and, perhaps, it showed on my face. Or maybe she didn't like the poking gaze of my Nikon. Whatever it was, the lady scowled at me. The look was too good to miss. As I brought the camera up to capture her expression, I understood why big and powerful men were scared witless by this little woman in a crisply ironed sari.

About a decade earlier a group of old, Congress Party big shots had made Indira Prime Minister, assuming they would be able to control this rather awkward and seemingly unambitious woman while exploiting her popular appeal as the daughter of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. They paid for their mistake with their political careers. Last week, Sonia Gandhi, Indira's Italian-born daughter-in-law, became the woman who surprised the entire country by pulling off an amazing election upset for the Congress Party. With the win, she was almost thrust into Indira's old job, but she turned it down. Just as Sonia seemed to know what she was doing in bringing about the victory, she also seemed to know what to do once she had grasped it. People now ascribe all sorts of reasons for her decision: that she wants to be the power behind the throne, that she is afraid of being a target for assassination, that she wanted to diffuse the agitation her opponents launched centering on the argument that she is a "foreigner." Whatever the truth, Sonia Gandhi is no stranger to living in the Prime Minister's house, and she appears to be in no hurry to return.

Power carves a strange facial surgery on those who hold it. One of the clearest memories I have of public imagery is the gradual transformation of Rajiv Gandhi's face—from that of a reasonably fresh-looking man in his early 40s to a jowly, careworn fiftysomething by the time he was killed by a suicide bomber in 1991. In the aftermath of his death, it became almost unbearable to look at the face of Rajiv's widow. This was the same woman who had cradled Indira's bullet-ridden body in an ambulance six years earlier, the same "outsider" whose main desires in life were to bring up her children, admire her pilot husband's wildlife photographs and balance the family's Indian diet with good pasta and salad. Even as the flames from Rajiv's funeral pyre flickered across our TV screens, people were already examining his teenage son and daughter for signs of a successor. Most people were certain the one face disappearing soon from public life would be their mother's.

The transformation of Sonia Gandhi's face—from grief-shattered widow to reluctant, wooden, political leader and then to the recent, vividly alert fighter—is surely a visual graph for the country's past decade. The smile is still not fully convincing, coming out as it does from a dense forest of sorrow, but the rest of it is confident. Gone is the hesitation, the gingerly spoken Hindi, the effort to hide the odd mix of Italian and cosmopolitan-Indian accents in her English, the apparent lack of self-belief. Not just her face but her whole body language is now different: the brisk walk lifted straight from her mother-in-law, the way the shoulders are squared under the drape of her cotton saris. It is a makeover that seems to have played well with the Indian public.

At this moment there are more former Prime Ministers alive and still active in Indian politics than ever. All of them are men, and most of them look like they've come straight out of a medical textbook on old age. And though the public obviously pushed the buttons on their newfangled voting machines with many things on their minds, it is obvious the contrast between Sonia and the lineup of usual electoral suspects played a part in her victory. In particular, it consigned the aging Atal Bihari Vajpayee to ex-Prime Ministerhood for a second and probably the last time.

The resignation speech Vajpayee delivered the first time he left the post in 1996—after holding office for a mere two weeks—was a masterstroke of eloquence, wit and grace. This time it is his main opponent who has walked away with her head held high. Even as another old man takes the oath of government, the face to watch is Sonia Gandhi's. Though it is nothing like her mother-in-law's, there is every indication it is still not a finished piece of work.

Ruchir Joshi, a New Delhi-based filmmaker and novelist, is the author of The Last Jet-Engine Laugh

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