As 2023 came to an end, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi celebrated the day by cooking orange marmalade at home with fresh fruit plucked from their kitchen garden. The recipe belongs to Rahul Gandhi's sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
Rahul Gandhi uploaded the process of making the marmalade in a five-minute video on his YouTube channel under the banner of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, or march for a united India.
Sonia Gandhi also shared how she learnt to adjust to Indian dishes decades ago. "When I came here, it took me time to adjust to the Indian flavours, especially the chillies," Sonia Gandhi said.
The video starts with the two Gandhis walking to their kitchen garden with a wicker basket to pluck the fruit.
"Mum, why do you have to cut it anyway? Why can't you just pluck it?" Rahul Gandhi said as he cut the fruit from its stalks in the garden.
"They have to be absolutely ripe," Sonia Gandhi said. "Actually, this is Priyanka's recipe," she added.
Soon, both came inside the kitchen, a clean and minimalist setup, and started working on the oranges.
"If BJP people want to get the jam, they can get it too. What do you say, mummy?" Rahul Gandhi said as he stirred a yellow mash of fruit pulp and sugar inside an aluminium vessel in low flame.
"They will throw it at us," Sonia Gandhi replied, and both broke out in laughter.
"That's good," her son said. "Then we can pick it up again." More laughter followed.
After making the marmalade, they put them in small jars and pinned a message on them in a piece of brown paper - "With love, from Sonia and Rahul."
The YouTube video carried the logo of the Congress's Bharat Jodo Yatra campaign, led by Rahul Gandhi.
The yatra began on September 7 from Kanyakumari and passed through 12 states, culminating in Jammu and Kashmir - spanning a distance of over 4,000 km in over 135 days.
