'Sonia has been staying in the golden cage for years'

CONTROVERSIAL WRITER

Six years have gone by and patience is what Javier Moro has learnt, thanks to his controversial book ‘The Red Sari’, the dramatised biography of the Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.

In 2010, when the Congress-led UPA Government was in power, the enraged party workers opposed Moro’s book ensuring that the book could not be released in India.

“There was hue and cry all around. They burnt my effigies as if I was George Bush. The book was in Spanish and it was incomprehensible to people opposing against it. But they managed to stop the publication. It was like a political operation,” exclaims Moro, while addressing the audience at Instituto Cervantes recently.

Waiting for six long years for the Gandhi family to take a step down from the dispensation, Moro is now ready to release his book with Roli Publication. The Spanish author clarified he had no intention to create a scandal. “I wanted to tell a story having the potential of grand history and fiction,” he exclaims.

“Sonia did not want anybody to write anything about her. She did not permit any Italian author to interview her. Even Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker magazine, who is well known among the traditional editorial section across the world, was stopped from writing about Sonia,” says Moro.

The valiant author, therefore, decided to create a dramatised version of Sonia Gandhi’s life. “I believe she is a public figure and she is obligated to be written about. You may or may not like the book but her story is great for a writer. A girl from a humble family in Italy, who has seen politics as personal enemy, becomes a politician and that too in a huge country like India and it is amazing,” he says. 

“She did not like the Congress people who surrounded her. She did not learn Hindi even being the part of a political family. There was Emergency in the country but she could not fly back to Italy with her kids. And with a spate of incidences, she changes her image and becomes ‘Sonia Gandhi’,” says Moro. He is not reluctant to say, “Sonia has been staying in the golden cage for years.”

“It is ridiculous when Italian journalists used to question her and instead of speaking in Italian, she replied in English. It is like robbing her identity. Above all, she had to accept it,” he adds.

How one goes through that psychological transformation, Moro had to question himself  while writing the book. “There were conflicts and dramas she faced. One must not forget Indira Gandhi died in her arms. Her husband Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. Narrating this epic saga of a family is rare in the world,” he said.

To write about Sonia Gandhi, was a deep desire of this writer, and he wants to give a pragmatic view of every event, every relation in her life. “What was the smell in the house of Indira Gandhi? What bond do the sisters-in-law share? I wanted a story from within,” says Moro.

The desire of creating something like a biography was so strong, that Moro decided to play with the dialogues. “It’s not just any historical book. It’s a work of fiction combined with historical events. It is about what a woman feels when she becomes a part of the Gandhi family. Dialogues are definitely unreal because I wasn’t there. I haven’t imitated anything but have reconstructed the narration. It is not hundred per cent true but 80 per cent of what happened is mentioned in the book.”

Though his obsession with Sonia Gandhi was big, he couldn’t interview her. “There was no way. So, I had to look for second circle of people to add depth to the book,” says Moro, who visited Sonia’s village and spoke to her cousins. “They have a street dedicated in her name. I even spoke to the secretary of Indira Gandhi,” he adds.

However, Moro got a chance to meet Sonia Gandhi at Rashtrapati Bhavan. “I did not know how to introduce myself. So I said, I have been sleeping with you for four years. I have been obsessed with you. I have been thinking about you even when I sleep. She was surprised, but she asked me ‘you are the same person who wrote a book on me?’ I offered her the book to read but she said, ‘we do not read what is written
about us’.”  “This is not the truth, she must have read it,” says Moro.