Frank, Katherine;
Indira: the life of Indira Nehru Gandhi
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002, 567 pages [gbook]
ISBN 039573097X, 9780395730973
topics: | biography | indira | india | history | modern | politics
Indira got her results [to the Oxford admission exam] and learned that she had failed, with a particularly bad performance in Latin. p.116 Feroze's open affairs with Tarakeshwari Sinha "the glamour-girl of the Indian Parliament", Mahmuna Sultana and Subhadra Joshi... His other well-known girlfriends included a beautiful Nepalese woman who worked for All India Radio and a divorcee from a high-caste Kerala family. [41] p.242
Mathai boasted openly of his liaison with Nehru's daughter, both at the time and for many years after. There is no q that Indira and M were very close.. she was attached to and confided in him. Sarvepalli Gopal, Nehru biographer said of the Mathai relationship: Indira Gandhi encouraged him beyond normal limits." In the 70s Mathai wrote an autobiography, which was to include a chapter, "She" that he himself suppressed when the book came out. But in the early 80s, some five years after Mathai's death, the chapter surfaced when Maneka Gandhi circulated it among a small group of Indira's enemies. The chapter contains such explicit material that even if M had not suppressed it, it is doubtful the publishers wd have published it. M describes Indira as 'highly sexed' and includes, among other salacious details, the claim that she became preg by him and had an abortion. At the time M was a disillusioned man eager to have the last destructive word against Indira, and her father... Ntheless, people who knew I and M well, including BK Nehru, who is a reliable source and no enemy of his cousin, feel that the "She" chapter contains more fact than fiction. p. 243 Mathai claims in 'She' that he was constantly fearful that Indira's careless behaviour would alert her father. One day in the hall of Parlyament, Feroze, Feroze Gandhi was enraged when someone referred to Mathai as 'the PM's real son-in-law. Indira, significantly, did nothing to quell the rumours of the alleged liaison. 243 But "Delhi buzzed with rumours" about their relationship. Subsequently, Indira Gandhi wrote to Dorothy Norman, her lifelong confidante, that she had taken to yoga taught "by an exceedingly good-looking yogi"—Dhirendra Brahmachari. She wrote that "it was his looks, especially his magnificent body, which attracted everyone to his system." Dhirendra was probably no brahmachari: a raid on his ashram in Kashmir after the Emergency yielded, among other things, a vibrator! If she had a lover as prime minister it would have to be him. "Brahmachari was the only man to see Indira alone in her room while giving her yoga instruction, and he was the only male with whom she could have had a relationship during this period."
Mrs G's String of Beaus- Sanjay Suri