Sonia, Jaya

New Delhi, Dec. 3: A hand that reached out yesterday in a corridor of Parliament briefly bridged a 17-year-old chasm.

Sonia Gandhi, a Lok Sabha member, and Jaya Bachchan, a Rajya Sabha MP, ran into each other on Tuesday afternoon when the two Houses had split for lunch, according to a source privy to the encounter.

Sonia briskly strode up to Jaya, clutched her hand and asked: “Jaya, how are you?”

Jaya was apparently “too stunned” initially to respond, the source said. But later they exchanged notes on their families.

Today, as Jaya recounted her meeting to a friend in Parliament, she “could not conceal her tears”, the source added. She reportedly became “emotional” because yesterday’s was the first instance she and Sonia spoke to each other in “17 years”.

Jaya could not be contacted to corroborate the source’s version.

It is well known that the Nehru-Gandhis and the Bachchans, without doubt the bearers of the country’s two most famous surnames, publicly started drifting apart in 1996-97 although the relationship had soured after the Bofors scandal in the mid-1980s.

That was the time the United Front government was running the country and the Bachchans had begun gravitating towards Mulayam Singh Yadav. Jaya is in the Rajya Sabha now because of a ticket from Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party.

It is too early to assume years of rancour will melt away because of a chance encounter. But the brothers Bachchan, Amitabh and Ajitabh, are said to have been nursing a long-standing wish to restore the relationship with the Nehru-Gandhis.

The famed friendship spread over seven decades and three generations hit the skids after Amitabh quit politics in a huff over the Bofors allegations in 1987.

Jaya reportedly believed Rajiv could have saved the actor’s honour. Amitabh’s parting singularly contributed to Rajiv’s downfall as the Allahabad Lok Sabha bypoll in 1987 gave the fragmented Opposition the sense that together they could humble the Congress that then had as many as 413 MPs in the 542-member Lok Sabha.

The Congress now has 44 MPs — a steep fall from the 414-seat pinnacle reached on the back of the sympathy wave that swept the country after Indira Gandhi was assassinated.

The Samajwadi Party is also licking the wounds of the Narendra Modi phenomenon. It is not clear whether the dramatic change in the political weather had any role in the thaw between Sonia and Jaya.

The Nehru-Gandhis and the Bachchans have seldom spoken about the real reason why their friendship soured. Delhi’s chatterati had initially dropped hints about money and unrequited enquiries on matrimony between the children of the two families, though insiders have always dismissed such theories as drivel.

Bachchan patriarch Harivanshrai Bachchan, who had served under Jawaharlal Nehru, had won a Rajya Sabha term way back in 1966 because of his rapport with Indira Gandhi. Next in line was the storied “dostana” between Rajiv and Amitabh.

The split had been painful for both sides. Sonia lost the first friend she made in India. “Amit” was the one who received her at Palam airport on the winter morning of January 13, 1968. Amitabh once told an interviewer that newer members of the families could not understand the true nature of the ties.

The ties hit an all-time low in 2006 when Jaya was disqualified from the Rajya Sabha for holding an “office of profit”. The Sonia-led Congress was then accused of fomenting trouble.

In 2004, Jaya, while campaigning for the Samajwadis in Uttar Pradesh, had publicly alleged that the Nehru-Gandhis had “betrayed” her and her husband. Rahul Gandhi, who had just debuted in politics, retorted that Jaya’s charges were a “pack of lies”.

Within weeks of Jaya’s resignation, the combined Opposition turned the heat on Sonia, questioning her continuation as head of the National Advisory Council. Sonia stepped down and got re-elected to the Lok Sabha in 2006.

Three months after being disqualified, Jaya, too, returned to the Rajya Sabha as a Samajwadi MP. Since then, her relations with Sonia have remained frosty, although her party warmed up to the Congress every now and then.

In 2012, Amitabh had told a television channel, asked whether he was still friends with the Nehru-Gandhis: “Of course, in my mind there is no change. I will always respect them. We meet them sometimes at public functions. There is no anger, no angst. We’re still pretty normal.”

Perhaps what unfolded in Parliament’s corridor yesterday was little more than two accomplished individuals behaving pretty normal.