• What is your view of her (Sonia) now being in politics?

I have no view on that but I have great respect for the position she took on the issue of prime ministership on one hand, and relative to the office of profit on the other. I feel very proud of her as my sister.

• Did you expect her to do this, particularly giving up the prime ministership, knowing her?

Yes I think so. Because I think she has one quality, and which most women have relative to men in that sense: her ability to assess herself is very truthful. I think she declined the prime ministership also because she realised that by accepting it she would be opening a Pandora’s box where people would be attacking only one side of hers. Who would not be talking about anything to do with her as a person...

• Or her performance.

Ignoring the fact, and this is of course even more typical of Indian tradition, ignoring the fact that in our tradition post-kanyadaan the bride takes the gotra of her husband.

• There are those who put it this way, that she is able to think more clear-headedly because her European mind is able to think linear rather than in the circular, spaghetti-like way in which Indians think. (Both laugh)

May be so. I have never spoken to her or anybody...

• And the fact that she was deeply unhappy with Rajiv’s joining politics is true?

... contd.