Sonia Gandhi was the underestimated candidate. It is not hard to see why. She had everything against her - her origins (Italian), her religion (nominally Catholic), her education (modest) and, not least, the fact that this shy woman pales by comparison with her murdered mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, the master politician. Even some of her staff were dismissive, calling her Kungi Kureya - Hindi for a mute doll.
Yet when, a few months before her surprise election victory, I met the 57-year-old head of the Congress party - and now a key figure in the new Indian government - she came across as a woman who was not at all anxious at the prospect of ruling over 500m males.
When I arrived I did not get a handshake. To break the ice I asked my last question first. "May I ask you a very personal question?" Quietly but quickly the answer came back: "Yes." "Isn't it difficult to go into the centre of the maelstrom of Indian politics knowing all you do of its dangers and the terrible toll it has taken with two assassinations in your family? Are you really at peace with that?"
"I am at peace. I have thought it through," she replied.
"How did the pull of politics overcome your inhibitions? You had long said you would never go into politics."
She replied: "At the time of the 1998 election Congress was in serious difficulties. We were divided. Senior members of the party who had tried to persuade me before came to me again. My children were grown up. I agreed. Moreover, I feel very strongly about India being a secular state. By secular state I mean one that encompasses all religions. The present government doesn't stand for that. It is important that Congress is in power."
She looks surprised when I ask her about her own religious convictions. "I'm not religious. My family never was. My father never went to church; my mother did but not every week. I got sent away to boarding school so I suppose that had its effect too."
"So on what principles do you draw when you make moral decisions, in family life or in politics?"
"I suppose these Catholic values are at the back of my mind," she replies without needing to pause to weigh what she is saying.
"How would that affect a decision whether or not in a crisis to use nuclear weapons? Could you press the button?" She grimaces but doesn't answer.
I break the silence recounting how when Zbigniew Brzezinski was President Carter's national security adviser I asked him this question and he had replied strongly in the affirmative.
"But Robert McNamara has a very different view on the value of nuclear weapons," I added.
"I like that man. He's been here a couple of times for seminars. I have learnt a lot from him," she says.
The mood has changed. The tension has dissipated. For the first time she is looking me in the eye. I can see she wants to talk about the dilemma of nuclear weapons. She asks me not to write in detail about this part of the conversation but I am left with the feeling of a moral soul who will not take a step towards war with the equanimity of her mother-in-law.
We end up talking at length about Mrs Gandhi senior and the political stories she used to tell.
She raises her hands ever so slightly. My time is up. As I stand to leave I am moved to tell this obviously solitary and even disconsolate woman what I've never in 40 years of reporting the world told another politician: "I know you are a good person. I can see that. I think India will be in good hands with you and Manmohan at the helm [Manmohan Singh, her 71-year-old economic adviser and father of the Indian economic miracle]. Can we keep talking?" She nods and holds out her hand.
