Indira Gandhi remained a voracious reader throughout her tempestuous career in politics. Her wide reading made her an admirer of Latin American writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She was reading 100 Years of Solitude when the Colombia-born writer was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in October 1982.
The prime minister wanted the writer to visit her country. Her channel was Cuban president Fidel Castro, a close friend of Marquez.
A month after the announcement of the Nobel Prize, Gandhi met Castro in Moscow for the funeral of Leonid Brezhnev. Gandhi invited Castro to attend the non-alignment movement in Delhi next year. Bring your friend Marquez too, she told him.
Castro and Marquez flew down to Delhi in 1983. The writer chose to remain in the aircraft while the president was received with state honors. Gandhi, however, went up the aircraft door to look for Marquez. The surprised writer was in awe of the prime minister.
She spoke French. I wished she was born in Aracataca, he later said. Gandhi told him to visit India again. The next year she was gunned down by her bodyguards. Marquez was so shaken by the news that he vowed never to visit India again!
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