Sonia Gandhi's memoir, 'Belonging: A Journey of Love', released on Tuesday, 11 November 2026, offers a rare behind-the-scenes account of her 1985 visit to the United States alongside her husband, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi — revealing a series of curious, sometimes startling interactions with the wives of President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush.

Barbara Bush's Equality Lesson — With a Shove

During a visit to NASA in Houston, as both couples walked toward a banquet hall, Sonia Gandhi recalls being caught off guard by what she describes as an 'impatient command' from Second Lady Barbara Bush. 'Mrs Gandhi, don't walk behind your husband; you must walk by his side,' Barbara Bush reportedly told her. Sonia Gandhi writes that 'at one point I even felt a less-than-gentle push from her to make sure I remembered her instructions and stayed in step with Rajiv.' The encounter, she writes, was 'unforgettable' — a short and 'energetic' lesson on equality and empowerment delivered mid-stride.

Nancy Reagan's Sartorial 'Matching' Mystery

It was First Lady Nancy Reagan, however, who provided what Sonia Gandhi calls the 'Mystery of the Wardrobe.' She writes that whatever she wore for each occasion would be matched by Nancy Reagan in the same colours — not once, but repeatedly. At their first appearance on the White House lawn, Sonia Gandhi wore 'a printed silk sari, a red floral design on a salmon background'; Nancy Reagan's outfit was 'a dress of the same shade.' At the White House banquet, she wore 'a Banarsi sari of an unusual grey-green colour'; the First Lady appeared 'in an ensemble of the very same shade.'

Sonia Gandhi writes that the recurrence was 'too often to be a coincidence' and that the question 'continues to baffle me' — noting that coordinating unusual colours from afar would have required advance knowledge of her wardrobe. She asks pointedly: was someone she knew passing details of her outfits to Nancy Reagan, and what was the whole point of these efforts?

A Pattern That Preceded Sonia Gandhi

She later discovered she was not the only target of this curious colour-coordination. While going through photographs with a friend, she found that Nancy Reagan had reportedly done the same sartorial matching during Indira Gandhi's earlier US visit — suggesting it may have been a deliberate, if inexplicable, protocol of the Reagan White House rather than a personal fixation.

Contrasting the US and Soviet Welcomes

Sonia Gandhi also draws a revealing contrast between the two state visits the Gandhis undertook in 1985 — to the Soviet Union and to the United States. She describes the Russians as 'warm and cordial, informal even in their formality within the grand halls of the Kremlin', with arrangements that were 'unostentatious.' The American welcome, by contrast, was 'grand and opulent, self-consciously so.' The primary purpose of the US trip was the inauguration of the Festival of India in America and Rajiv Gandhi's address to a joint meeting of the US Congress, alongside bilateral talks.

Contrasting the Two First Ladies

Sonia Gandhi offers a character sketch of both women. She describes Barbara Bush as informal in style, dressing 'unpretentiously' and favouring 'her favourite three-string artificial pearls for most occasions' — a pointed contrast to Nancy Reagan's 'studied demeanour and expensive designer clothes and jewellery.' The memoir presents the two women as near-opposites in temperament and presentation, both leaving a lasting impression on their Indian guest for entirely different reasons.

The memoir, now in readers' hands, is expected to generate significant public interest as one of the few first-person Indian accounts of Cold War-era diplomatic encounters at the highest level.