Opinion: Sonia Gandhi, 'Belonging' And Why This Story Lies On Other Side Of Politics - By Shashi Tharoor

In the prologue to Belonging: A Journey of Love, Sonia Gandhi makes it clear to her readers that her book is a "personal memoir, one for which politics is the background noise." For a figure long defined in the Indian imagination by her reticence to speak publicly, her inscrutable silences in public, and her unflappable resilience in dealing with the relentless turbulence of Indian statecraft, this opening declaration is both a disarming invitation and a quiet assertion of ownership over her own story.

True to her word, the book resists the conventions of the standard political tell-all, choosing instead to chronicle the slow, arduous, and ultimately transformative journey of how a young woman from a provincial Italian town came to make India her permanent home and committed herself to its well-being.The opening sections of the memoir are deeply affecting, driven by unexpected emotional candour.

Gandhi writes with unvarnished sincerity about her childhood in Piedmont and her complicated relationship with her stern, traditionalist father, Stefano Maino.