Sonia Gandhi called Atal Bihari Vajpayee to check on his safety after the December 13, 2001, Parliament attack. She wrote in her memoir that their relationship changed in March 2002. During a joint session, Vajpayee got angry and questioned her political skills instead of discussing the new terrorism law.

NEW DELHI: Hours after the Parliament building echoed with explosions and gunshots in a terrorist attack on December 13, 2001, a terrified Sonia Gandhi called then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to inquire about his safety.

Vajpayee assured her that he was safe at home and later told many of his colleagues "appreciatively that I had been the first to call him", Gandhi writes in her memoir "Belonging: A Journey of Love", recalling the good-natured exchange between two leaders of rival parties.

Gandhi, who had made her debut in politics only two years earlier in 1999, was leader of opposition at the time and would still find it terrifying to "stand up and confront" leaders of the ruling BJP coalition who had for long seen her as "the foreign-born daughter-in-law of the Nehru-Gandhi family".

Nearly four months after the conversation with the prime minister, Gandhi's impression of the Sangh stalwart, who was generally seen as a soft-spoken Hindi poet-cum-politician, changed when the two leaders came face to face over a bill.

In March 2002, a special joint sitting of Parliament had been called by the Vajpayee government to pass the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) into law, after it had been defeated in the Upper House.

"It was a measure the BJP's heavyweights had vigorously opposed as anti-democratic in 1985 when it had been brought into existence by our government to counter the Punjab insurgency," she writes.

Congress, now in opposition, argued that the ordinance "had proved ineffective in dealing with terrorism, while giving the police wide-ranging powers that could be misused against our citizens".

The joint session was held in the Central Hall, "a much larger and more intimidating space" with imposing portraits of the leaders of the independence struggle adorning its walls.

"Prime Minister Vajpayee had chosen not to speak on this vitally important issue. Towards the end of the session, when the Speaker called out my name, I walked to the podium, full of trepidation. I had just finished reading out my speech, when the Speaker surprised everyone by calling out the name of the prime minister."

Vajpayee appeared in the Central Hall, "his expression sullen", and began his speech that was not about the subject but to question Gandhi's "inexperience and lack of skill in oratory".

"He had taken offence at my asking whether he would 'uphold the prestige of his high office' or be 'submissive and weak in his leadership'. So that was his purpose in returning to the House! How dare I question his leadership abilities, who was I to place him in the dock?

"He launched into a full-blown attack on my inexperience and my lack of skill in oratory, berating me so that our MPs rose to their feet in protest. The other side did the same, and soon all were not only vociferously shouting one another down but almost coming to blows. I cannot deny I felt wounded," Gandhi writes in the book.

The joint session ended with the passing of the bill, which was later repealed by the UPA government in 2004.

A few months later, when Vajpayee appeared to have ""aged visibly and was looking far from well", Gandhi was prompted to feel that she had "gone a bit too far".

"...he was a veteran leader, and though we belonged to opposing ideologies, he was the prime minister, and I should have been more moderate in criticising him," Gandhi writes.

The 526-page book, published by HarperCollins India, covers the arc of Gandhi's remarkable life -- her childhood in post-war Italy, her marriage into the Nehru-Gandhi family, the assassination of her husband Rajiv Gandhi and her entry into politics.