Senior politician Natwar Singh is reportedly very angry and hurt with Congress President Sonia Gandhi. In an interview with senior journalist Karan Thapar, Singh said that even after Sonia Gandhi apologised to him for mistreatment in the past eight years, he refused to edit any part of his "tell all" autobiography. Singh's revelations in his book titled One life not enough, is certainly going to be embarrassing for the Congress President if the excerpts selectively revealed in the media are anything to go by. But let's briefly revisit the career of Natwar Singh to throw light on his relations with the Gandhi family.

1. Natwar Singh was a career diplomat who worked in the Indian Foreign Service for three decades.

2. Singh was the blue-eyed boy of the cadre and served in important assignments in China, USA and in the UNICEF.

3. In 1966, he was posted to the Prime Minister's secretariat under Indira Gandhi. It was then that the long period of close friendship with the Gandhi family began.

4. After serving in various important positions, Natwar Singh resigned from the IFS in 1984. His last posting was as Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs.

5. Natwar Singh was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1984. He joined the Congress that year and became a junior minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government.

6. In his long political career, Natwar Singh has changed his party four times. He fell out with Narasimha Rao in 1989 to float a new political party All India Indira Congress (Tiwari). He rejoined the Congress in 1998 after Sonia Gandhi was back in the helm, but was expelled from the party in 2005 for the cash for oil scam. He later went on to join the BSP in 2008, but was expelled by Mayawati within a few months for indulging in anti-party activity.

7. Natwar Singh was the External Affairs minister in Manmohan Singh's UPA1 government. However, in 2005 his name emerged in the Volcker committee report for alleged corruption in the Oil for Food programme in Iraq. It was alleged that Natwar Singh misused his official position to procure oil coupons for his son Jagat Singh. The allegation was against the Congress party, but Natwar was singled out. He was briefly a minister without portfolio and later completely dropped from the government and the party. Singh goes on to say how a note was circulated to inform that he was dropped from the party on a "cold night".

Since then, Singh has suffered in ignominy and political oblivion till he decided to write his tell-all book which reportedly has some juicy information about the working policies of UPA1. Natwar believes that Sonia Gandhi should have shielded him and his son when the Volcker committee gave an incriminating report naming him and the Congress party, But Sonia chose the party over her long cherished friendship. Natwar alleges that all the agencies snooped on him and he believes that Sonia Gandhi was aware and behind all these developments. This perceived “betrayal” has now forced the old Gandhi family retainer to sing in public. But according to Natwar Singh, what insulted him was that Sonia Gandhi didn't give him any chance to present his side of the story. Hence, Singh felt that Sonia acted in a vicious manner and even goes to insinuate that Justice Pathak wrote a report against him under "pressure" from the Gandhis.

From what has come out in the public so far, Natwar has detailed Sonia as “authoritarian” and “Machiavellian”​ with very little tolerance for dissent and discussion when it comes to political matters. A friendship of four decades gone sour, the reverberation of which is already being felt in the political circles of the capital. Sonia Gandhi is a wily political customer and it might have made complete sense for her to cut her losses by junking her friend to save UPA 1 which was still in its infancy in 2005. But now her action may go on to haunt her. How much Natwar's expose will demean the public image of the already battered Gandhis is something only the future will reveal.