Congress leader Sonia Gandhi made her debut on social media platform X on Saturday, sharing memories of her life with Rajiv Gandhi and describing him as a good-looking and gentle person, as per news agency PTI.
In her first post, Gandhi shared a nearly two-minute video about her upcoming memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, which traces her life from her younger days to the present. The book will be released on November 10.
Gandhi also posted the video on Instagram. It featured photographs of the couple and the restaurant in Cambridge where they first met.
"In a small Greek restaurant in Cambridge my journey of love began. Rajiv and I created a world filled with love, laughter and memories. On 10th November, I share that world with you," she wrote in her first post on X.
Recalling how she fell in love with Rajiv Gandhi, she said: "Food in England in those days was awful. In those days, you didn't have so many restaurants, you know, like you have today".
"And so, I was constantly looking for a place where I could find some food which was closer to my kind of food — Italian food in that case," she said.
She and her friends then discovered the Varsity Restaurant, a Greek restaurant frequented by European and Indian students. "And that is where I met Rajiv in that very restaurant," the former Congress president said.
"When I first met him, I felt almost immediately that, you know, he was someone I would really love to be with. And, of course, I learned that it was the same for him," Gandhi recalled. She said a common friend had introduced her to Rajiv Gandhi.
"Then, you know, we became friends. Then going to parties with friends or going to see sights or we went to a Valentine's party where there were lots of students," she said.
Describing her first impression of Rajiv Gandhi, she said, "He was a very gentle-looking person. Of course, he was very good-looking, but that gentleness came through. So that was something which really touched me and struck me. So that of course, I'll never forget when I first met him".
Before opening her own social media accounts, Gandhi used the Congress's X handle to release video statements and public messages.
She has followed the X accounts of the Congress, her son Rahul Gandhi, daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and party president Mallikarjun Kharge. According to PTI, her account gained many followers within hours as Congress leaders and others began following it.
Gandhi had made her Instagram debut on Thursday with posts about the memoir, which she described as a "story of love, duty, loss and finding a place to belong".
HarperCollins India said last month that it would publish the memoir in India on November 10, ending uncertainty over its domestic publication after an "impasse" between Gandhi's representatives and Penguin Random House India.
The memoir begins with Gandhi's childhood in post-war Veneto, Italy, and follows her journey to Cambridge, where she met Rajiv Gandhi in 1965.
It recounts their marriage, her introduction to her mother-in-law and former prime minister Indira Gandhi, and her efforts to adjust to life in India by learning Hindi, wearing saris and adapting to Indian food and culture.
The book also covers the death of Sanjay Gandhi in a plane crash, Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991.
It discusses events surrounding the Congress-led alliance's victory in the 2004 elections, when Sonia Gandhi declined to become prime minister and instead led the party and the alliance that governed India for a decade.
Gandhi, the longest-serving Congress president who led the party for almost two decades, has used her social media debut to introduce a memoir spanning her childhood, family life, personal losses and political journey.
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