// BBC WORLD NEWS — MONDO
'They will kill you too': Sonia Gandhi's turbulent journey in Indian politics
Sonia Gandhi has been one of the most powerful political figures in India's history
On the morning of 31 October 1984, Sonia Gandhi was a young wife and mother, living in the prime minister's residence in Delhi. She was about to take a bath when she heard shots ring out in the garden.
Her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, India's prime minister, had just left for her office in an adjoining building. Moments later, she would be assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards, in retaliation for the Indian army's storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine, earlier that year.
The sound was like firecrackers, but "different". The children's nanny came pounding on the bathroom door, hysterical, pointing towards the garden.
Sonia ran towards the path. A white Ambassador car was moving slowly towards her. Inside, Indira lay covered in blood, her sari stained, her eyes open, her face wearing what Sonia remembered as a look of surprise.
"Mummy, Mummy," she tried to say. No words came. At the hospital, she waited for hours before a doctor's shake of the head told her what she feared.
The ordeal did not end there. Rajiv Gandhi, her husband and the elder son of Indira Gandhi, summoned from a rally in West Bengal, arrived to tell her that party leaders wanted him to become prime minister.
Sonia's response was fury and terror. "They will kill you; they will kill you, too!" she pleaded. Rajiv replied: "They will kill me anyway." That evening, as Indira's body lay at home, Rajiv was sworn in.
It is one of the most searing passages in Belonging: A Journey of Love, Sonia Gandhi's new memoir: private devastation unfolding alongside the pressures of public life.
The woman who had largely stayed away from politics was now married to India's prime minister, and would eventually find herself at the head of the Congress party, leading it through two general election victories and becoming one of the country's most consequential political figures.