"What a Life I Have Made!"

Unpublished letters reveal an unsettled, unhappy Indira

Dorothy Norman, a New York-based writer and photographer, first met Indira Gandhi, then 31, when she accompanied her father, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, to the U.S. in 1949. The two women instantly struck up a friendship that they were to sustain over 35 years in India, the U.S. and while traveling together through Europe. In her book of memoirs, Encounters, to be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Norman recalls her impressions of the Prime Minister's lonely and often sickly daughter and includes several affectionate, heartfelt letters that Indira wrote her during the '50s. Excerpts from those letters:

Oct. 13,1950

I am full of ideas but I haven't the driving force and energy to execute them.

One has to fight so much for every little thing. I was born bone lazy, so I have developed a system of dividing things into most important, important, less important, and I fight only for the first, sometimes if I am very fit and energetic for the second as well.

What complicates life is our entanglement with other people.

There is so much interdependence and so little understanding . . . I do wish I were more interested in people as such. They amuse me and they irritate me and sometimes I find myself observing them as if I were not of the same species at all. Isn't that an awful thought?

July 12,1951

On the whole it is a frustrating life.

Long ago when I was a student in England, I went to [Economist] Harold Laski for advice about my studies. He said, "Young woman, if you want to amount to something you had better start on your own life right now--if you tag along with your father you won't be able to do anything else." But there doesn't seem to be any choice, in the sense that I felt my father's loneliness so intensely, and I felt also that whatever I amounted to, or whatever satisfaction I got from my own work, would not, from a wide perspective, be so useful as my "tagging" along, smoothing the corners and dealing with many details, small but necessary, which in my absence he has to tackle himself with consequent loss of patience and temper! . . . I am fortunate in having just enough humor to tide me over the worst situations and enough love of nature to find beauty and delight in the most unexpected places. And there are so many other things--people and books, music and pictures and, above all else, my own children and the fascination of watching them grow and develop into two such very different persons.

May 31, 1955

What a life I have made for myself!

Often I seem to be standing outside myself, watching and wondering if it's all worth the trouble. One acts the way one is made and it is only once in a lifetime that opportunity comes our way. I cannot say whether I have made good use of it or not.

It's certainly true that I have grown enormously since you saw me last. I am confident of myself but still humble enough to feel acutely embarrassed when all kinds of VIPS come for advice and even help in their projects, as is increasingly happening. I still haven't got used to being on the Working Committee of the A.I.C.C. [All India Congress Committee]! . . . Can you imagine me being an "elder statesman"?

My duties and responsibilities have also grown enormously. I have my finger in so many pies that it would take too long even to list them. And if you remember me and what a perfect tyrant of a conscience I have got, you will understand that this does not mean merely lending my name to some association or attendance at committee meetings. It means hard work, planning, organizing, directing, scouting for new helpers, humoring the old and so on, in several fields--political, social welfare and cultural . . .

I have been and am deeply unhappy in my domestic life. Now, the hurt and the unpleasantness don't seem to matter so much. I am sorry, though, to have missed the most wonderful thing in life, having a complete and perfect relationship with another human being: for only thus, I feel, can one's personality fully develop and blossom. However, and perhaps as compensation, I am more at peace with myself. One of our 17th century poets has said, "Go where thou wilt . . . if thy soul is a stranger to thee, this whole world is unhomely." I think I have come to a stage where home is wherever I go.

Feb. 23, 1956

All those of us who have the opportunity of visiting the Communist countries are very clear in our minds that we should not follow that path and we realize that we can only avoid this by strengthening our own organization and trying to prove to the people that ours is the better way.

April 17, 1958

I myself am feeling very unsettled--is it age, do you think? Ever since I was a small girl, there seemed to be some force driving me on--as if there were a debt to pay. But suddenly the debt seems to be paid--anyhow I get a tremendous urge to leave everything and retire to a far far place high in the mountains!

Nov. 5, 1959

All sections in India, with the solitary exception of the Communists, feel that I have done a good job [as Congress Party President] and there is tremendous pressure on me to continue for another term. It has been tough work--sometimes exhausting, but always a worthwhile experience. I have gained tremendously in self-confidence. But I do not wish to continue for many reasons.

The routine part of the work takes too much time and is too confining. I have felt like a bird in a too-small cage. Also I feel that I have now established myself and will be able to do quite a lot even from outside, besides being free to take up any particular project--there are some which are urgent.