Sonia Gandhi's rise from small-town, postwar Italy to the whitewashed British Raj bungalows of Delhi is a story of love and death in India's political cauldron, culminating in the most sensational victory since India became independent in 1947.
On Thursday Sonia Gandhi, nee Maino, the daughter of a Tuscan building contractor, was on the brink of becoming India's prime minister after defeating the most potent political force in the country's recent history: Hindu nationalism.
In a dramatic result which will have deep implications for the world's largest democracy, her Congress party swept the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) from power. Her shock victory was put down to her ability to woo India's millions of rural poor.
It is in the small town of Orbassano, 10km from Italy's busy metropolis of Turin, that her extraordinary political journey begins. It was here in the Tuscan countryside that she was born in 1946, her father, Stephano, doting on his "little princess" and providing his three daughters with a strict Catholic education.
In a small way the Gandhi family, which produced three Indian prime ministers and looks set to have another, has left its mark in rural Italy. The road leading east out of Orbassano is called Via Rajiv Gandhi, after Sonia's late husband and the last member of the world's most successful political dynasty to be Indian prime minister.
Sonia Gandhi is the most improbable of political leaders in modern day India. She became an Indian citizen in 1983, 15 years after she married Rajiv at the age of 21.
The two met at Cambridge, where she was studying English and Rajiv was trying, and ultimately failing, to get an engineering degree. Arriving in India in 1968, the young Mrs Gandhi struggled to cope with the country's deeply ingrained culture. At first, she did not like Indian food or clothes and there was a minor uproar when she was pictured in a miniskirt sucking on a lolly.
As a daughter-in-law in the Gandhi clan, Sonia had a ringside view of history. The sight was bloody and terrible.
Her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. Her husband, Rajiv, whom she had implored not to enter politics, was blown up by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1991.
After her husband's death, Sonia Gandhi quietly departed from public life, but she was wooed back by a floundering Congress party in 1997.
Her start in Indian politics was difficult. Despite being a talented linguist who can converse in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian, her Hindi could be at best described as colloquial.
The reason for her success appears to be a combination of hard work and her name. Now fluent in Hindi, she can attract the masses and speak to them in a language they understand.
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