'The Red Sari' humanises its subject, says Javier Moro

January 30, 2015 03:57 am | Updated 11:23 am IST - MUMBAI:

Javier Moro. Photo: Vivek Bendre

Javier Moro. Photo: Vivek Bendre

“For four years, I have been sleeping with you” — it takes some nerve to introduce yourself that way to Sonia Gandhi. But it was also a purpose that drove Javier Moro to introduce himself to the figure he was researching and writing about in his controversial book The Red Sari . He actually wasn’t far from the truth when he said that, for trying to get details of a person considered one of the most private public figures, and a powerful one at that, was consuming his days and nights.

“I said that so she wouldn’t forget me. After all, I had been trying to meet her for years and finally got the opportunity to do so at a cocktail party in Rashtrapathi Bhavan where I was a guest of my uncle Dominique Lapierre who had been awarded the Padma Bhushan. When I asked her whether she would read the manuscript of my book and suggest any change, she said: ‘We never read what is written about us’.”

Moro offered such interesting insights during a talk with journalist and author Siddharth Bhatia at Crosswords, Kemps Corner that was part of his book promotion tour.

The Red Sari, a dramatised biography of Sonia Gandhi, looks at the story of Sonia Maino, a young Italian girl who falls in love with a man who hails from one of India’s most powerful families. It traces her evolution from a shy, introverted, stubborn woman to a determined leader who leads her party to victory in 2004. “A story of a woman who gets into power in spite of herself — a story that has no archetype.”

The book was first published in October 2010 in Spanish as El Sari Rojo , but faced intense opposition from the Congress and the “sycophants surrounding the goddess” and was hence not published in India.

It took years of negotiation with Sonia Gandhi’s lawyers and the decimation of the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections for the book to be finally translated and released in India this month.

“It is not a political biography. It humanises the person, and I have actually painted her in a favourable way,” said Moro. “What they didn’t like about the book is that it spoke about her Italian origin — a fact that the party was trying to hide because the political opponents were making an issue out of it. For her supporters, she was a Gandhi, not a Manio – they hated that!”

Right from Sonia Gandhi’s first boyfriend, cousins and teachers back in Italy to Indira Gandhi’s aide Usha Bhagat and Khushwant Singh, Moro’s sources are varied. “Sonia’s close friends and family wouldn’t talk to me. But I wanted the story to talk about the personal things, the drama — to humanise the person I was writing about. So, I tried to talk to other people who knew her.”

The book also talks about Sonia Gandhi falling in love with a young Rajiv Gandhi, and her relationship with her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, who, Moro feels, has largely influenced Sonia the politician.

Moro is not new to India, nor is he a stranger to the Gandhis. “My uncle was a friend of your grandmother,” he apparently told Priyanka Vadra, when he bumped into her at a coffee shop. “But she couldn’t care less.”

Moro’s obsession with India began way back in 1968 when his father brought him to Mumbai where he stayed at Taj Mahal Hotel before its renovation. “I love this city. Maybe one day, I will write about it. It is wonderful, interesting, rich, crazy, brilliant — it has everything…like life itself!”

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