Published: Friday, Apr 16, 2010, 2:30 IST
By Harish Gupta | Place: New Delhi | Agency: DNA
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_rahul-gandhi-soothes-mum-with-cool-message_1371919
“Keep cool’’. That was son Rahul Gandhi’s discreet message to a tense Sonia Gandhi in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. And it had a soothing effect on the UPA chairperson facing the heat of the Dantewada debate in the house.
In a rare occasion when she was not flanked by either prime minister Manmohan Singh or leader of the house Pranab Mukherjee, Sonia was palpably uncomfortable as the opposition unleashed a barrage of criticism over the Dantewada massacre.
She sat red-faced and turned fidgety as Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha launched an attack on the Congress, saying it won the elections in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere by going with the Maoists.
Noticeably angry, she turned to Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. As he was not quick in his response, she tried to draw the attention of parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Kumar Bansal. He sensed her displeasure and tried to signal to party MPs to raise their voices in protest. The MPs were on their feet soon and the house plunged into din.
Interestingly, none of the UPA allies like the DMK and the NCP tried to bail her out.
Old ally Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference was also silent.
Rahul, seated in the last row of the treasury bench, noticed something amiss as she was turning left and right too many times.
He felt his mother was losing her temper and immediately wrote a note, and quietly passed it on to her. After receiving it, she turned to Rahul, nodded her head and smiled.
The tension on her face evaporated soon. Later it transpired that he simply wrote: “Keep cool”.
