Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s seventh birthday in 1977 turned into a sombre affair when his grandmother Indira Gandhi’s shocking electoral defeat caused nearly all of his friends to skip the celebration.In her candid memoir, “Belonging: A Journey Of Love”, Sonia Gandhi shares an anecdote recalling the incident as a painful lesson in political relationships.“On Rahul’s birthday, June 19, we’d barely managed to settle into our new home (12, Willingdon Crescent), but I was determined to have a small celebration for him. He’d given me a list of friends to be invited, children who’d attended his previous birthday parties,” she said.She said that unlike today’s elaborate theme-based parties, the childhood birthday celebrations were simple affairs, featuring homemade cakes, a few decorations, snacks and potato chips.Also Read | When Politics overshadowed Rahul Gandhi’s 7th birthday: Sonia recalls incident“Priyanka (Gandhi Vadra) had been eagerly helping me with the decorations and the preparation of the cake. She had climbed up a chair and, held up by her brother, was hanging up balloons on the verandah’s doors. At every stage she would call out, ‘Ma, look! Look — how pretty’. Everything was soon ready: bunting and balloons, the table in the front verandah colourfully decorated,” she recounted.She further recalled that her mother-in-law, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had a collection of clay toys which featured lifelike insects, lizards and flies made in Bengal. She carefully stored them in a tin box wrapped in cotton wool to prevent damage.Also Read | Sonia Gandhi memoir: Book courts Babri vote bank, papers over Bofors, family wrongs, says BJP“She asked me to have the box handy so she could, at an opportune moment, quietly pop some on the table or on one of the children’s plates. That would invariably startle the guests and cause much amusement and laughter,” she says.Story continues below this adAs young Rahul and Priyanka eagerly rushed to inspect the party table, they had no idea what was about to unfold.“Time passed. Rahul’s best friend, Siddharth, arrived by himself. More time went by. I thought at first there might have been a miscommunication and got down to calling one parent after another. But the response was strangely evasive, and then it hit me: No other children were coming. Yes, things had indeed changed: A simple association between a seven-year-old and his classmates had been tainted by politics,” she said.Also Read | ‘Felt shaken and worried’: Sonia Gandhi’s account of her battle with cancerShe then recalled how Rahul was visibly hurt despite his grandmother’s efforts to cheer him up, describing it as his first painful lesson in the fickle nature of human relationships in the political sphere.“We cut the cake, but without much cheer, and my mother-in- law handed me back the toy box. ‘We can use it another time,’ she said, sadly,” she recalled.Story continues below this adRajiv Gandhi sat young Rahul down to comfort him saying, “It’s not your friends’ fault, Rahul, don’t be upset with them.”“Maybe their parents are afraid of being friends with your family. Some people are scared of the government,” Sonia Gandhi recalls Rajiv as saying.“It was a difficult phase in the children’s growing up. Apart from incidents that touched them personally, the political upheaval, the tension all around and at home was affecting them too,” she says.