Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Sunday posted a video recollecting the day his grandmother Indira Gandhi’s died in 1984. It is a three-minute video where an emotional Rahul Gandhi narrates how he lost one of his mothers as Indira Gandhi was his second mom, ‘supermom’, and used to protect him when his father Rajiv Gandhi got angry. The video shows a young Rahul crying at Indira Gandhi’s last rites, crying, apart from visuals of Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi paying their respect to Indira Gandhi. 

“That morning before she died she told me don’t cry if something happens to me. I didn’t understand what she meant. And 2-3 hours later, she was dead. She sort of sensed that she would be killed. And everybody in the house also knew it,” Rahul says in the video posted on his YouTube channel.

Here is the video

That day was the second most difficult day of his life, Rahul said, and also explained why he was hiding his face in the video. Because his grandmother told him to not cry.

“She once said to me, to all of us, at the dining table, that the biggest curse would be to die of a disease. From her perspective, this was probably the best way to die… for her country… defending the idea she loved,” Rahul said. At that time, the young Rahul did not understand the idea behind it, but now he understands, he said.

“In my house my father was strict… and I essentially had two mothers, including a ‘super’ mother who was my grandmother, who would defend me when my father got angry,” Rahul said. 

Earlier on Sunday, Rahul Gandhi paid floral tributes to Indira Gandhi at her memorial Shakti Sthal. “My grandmother served the country fearlessly till the last moment — her life is a source of inspiration for us,” Rahul Gandhi tweeted.