In her candid memoir, senior Congress leader and former UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi has opened up about what is among the most private and painful chapters of her life: the assassination of her husband and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991.

Gandhi recounted in detail the moments before she got the news. “It had been a few days since Priyanka and I returned from campaigning for Rajiv’s election, but the fatigue hadn’t left me. I had missed seeing him in Rae Bareli and had barely had a day with him in Delhi before he left again. Priyanka had stayed back for a few days and her account of meeting him in Rae Bareli on May 10 was playing on my mind. She said she was shocked to see how exhausted her father was; he’d been campaigning non-stop for days and days on end, and through the whole country,” she wrote.

“I lay down on his side of the bed; it gave me a sense of comfort whenever he was away. The bedside table lamp threw long shadows on the bedroom walls. I opened a book and began to read.…