``...They went to an embassy because they thought we were going to get lynched and then five days later we had to bring them back,'' Maneka says in an interview to Doordarshan.

She says Sonia, now Congress president, and late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi took it as a taking away of privileges which they were entitled to and took a house somewhere else before being persuaded to come back ``because my mother-in-law was very upset. That perhaps hit her harder than losing an election because she was a very family person.''

Claiming that her late husband Sanjay and she adjusted to the situation much better, Maneka says ``Our social circle did not condemn us or did not drop us because we did not have a social circle. We justhad people who worked like us.''

Referring to the Janata Government, she says that Indira, who relaxed after a long time, would not have tried to make a comeback if she had not been attacked unceasingly day after day.

``If they had left her alone after a bit, I am sure she would not really have wanted ever to come back. She just saw it as laying down a burden which she had assumed virtually since she was born but somehow these attacks made her come back and along with her Sanjay,'' says the Minister.

``...I keep hearing this word lumpen. He (Sanjay) was not slightest bit lumpen. It is difficult to explain but he was one of the most refined minds I had ever come across,'' says the Minister while claiming that she always adored and looked up to her husband.

Without naming anybody, she says though there were many people who ``mucked about'' during Emergency, all the blame was put on Sanjay.

She says the days after the Congress lost elections under Indira Gandhi were the happiest days of her life. ``Ihad my husband to myself. I could get to know my mother-in-law much better.''

She claims there was a strong relationship between Indira and her younger son and denies that Sanjay ever used to go wild and shout at his mother.

``She (Indira) saw him as a son and also as an elder brother. So it was an off relationship and he was extremely careful of her well being and would never ever do anything to offend or make her sad, even for a minute,'' she says.

After Sanjay's death in a plane crash in 1980, Maneka says there was a change in attitude of the entire family.

```The whole thing is a blur, punctuated by deep hurt, punctuated by family hurt. Because things just started getting very strained...Members of the family just being mean for no reason whatsoever,'' she says, adding that it was shocking to feel completely left out in the cold.

After moving out from the Prime Minister's house, her son Feroz was not allowed to meet Indira Gandhi ``because every body else in the family objected'', saysshe.

Admitting that she was a pale shadow of her husband, Maneka, who was widowed at the age of 22, says she had to discover herself and realise what she wanted for herself and her son.

But she stresses that there was a very strong bond between Indira Gandhi and herself which existed long after they stopped speaking to each other.

``A lot of her relatives who now come and see me say that if she had been alive she would have been very proud of the way I turned out,'' she says.