The recent denial of a party ticket for the coming Lok Sabha polls to Varun Feroze Gandhi highlights the endless roller coaster he has been on since his birth 44 years ago, soon after Indira Gandhi’s triumphal return to power in 1980. As the son of Mrs Gandhi’s political heir Sanjay Gandhi, his stars seemed very bright indeed. Yet within three months of his birth, Varun’s world started collapsing with his father crashing his two-seater plane.
Two years later, it slid further downhill after his doting grandmother banished his widowed mother Maneka for contesting her new political heir, elder son Rajiv. Efforts to snatch Varun from Maneka failed and he left the Gandhi household, a dazed two-year-old clutching his mother’s hand provoking banner headlines and photographs on newspaper front pages across the country. A little over two years afterwards, Mrs Gandhi herself was gone, shot dead by her Sikh security guards in vengeance for the Golden Temple operation by her government.