In C a variable is user selected name decalred for a memory location. But in Python a variable is lot more; it is a pointer which contains the value and data type (bytes) and reference counter to silently take care of memory allocation and de-allocation. When we move up to more generic structures like list and beyond the implementation under the hood becomes more generic whereby the python list is a pointer to block of pointers. In that block each item behaves simialr to the Python variable described earlier.

“Understanding Data Types In Python”, https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/python-data-science/9781491912126//; November 2016; O’Reilly Media, Inc.; by Jake VanderPlas