Of books, fairy tale marriage, and a museum for memories

If Snow White’s stepmother spent hours in conversation with a mirror, writer Kishwar Desai turned to her dairy. If the queen turned to the mirror several times a day to address her beauty insecurities, Kishwar turned to the diary for other reasons.

It was not about beauty; it was about penning dreams. More often than not, it was about unburdening the heart or coming to terms with a lonely childhood. In huge colonial bungalows that came her way thanks to her father’s government jobs, Kishwar was somewhat lost. There were not many friends around nor siblings, so Kishwar turned to her diary on more occasions than one. It was her constant companion and every time a thought crossed her mind she would flip pages and pour her heart out: “It was always Dear Diary for me,” she said.

It is a habit that has stayed except the writing space has changed. Kishwar’s writing has taken a more mature form and she now churns out books. She has already done four and intends to do “many, many more”. Her researched work was Darlingji: The True Love Story ofNargis and Sunil Dutt, followed by an award-winning novel Witness the Night.

Writing books was one of Kishwar’s many childhood dreams. Whenever an idea struck her she would meticulously put it down and add to her list of the “many plots” that were in her head that she imagined would “become books someday”. Darlingji surely was not among the plots Kishwar had in her head, but a chance that came her way. She grabbed it but before she could give it shape, Sunil Dutt died. That was a kind of a setback but determined as she was, she did complete the book with help of his family and close friends. Her husband Meghnad Desai had done a book on Dilip Kumar and therefore Kishwar treading the Bollywood path was a natural corollary. It was an idea on which both Meghnad and Kishwar had worked together but it was left to Kishwar to knock it to shape. Being a Member of the UK Parliament, Meghnad was short on time.

This was, perhaps, a one-off because Kishwar and Meghnad’s is a kind of a “two together” story. From the time they met and the decade they have spent together as a married couple, it has been a labour of love. It was a marriage that had shades of a controversy but ended up like a romance right out of a fairy tale book, albeit with interesting twists and turns. When news of their marriage plans leaked, there was disbelief because Meghnad and Kishwar did not come across as an ideal couple. He is 17 years older than her, overweight and not much to look at except his bunch of hair that spreads in all directions. If reports are anything to go by, Kishwar’s parents had reservations because Meghnad was far too old and would pass off as her father’s friend than his son-in-law: “My mother was a bit unsure but once Meghnad met and spoke to them they went along. What struck me about him was his brilliance. I am hooked to his intellect. He is, to say the least, a wonderful human being and a perfect companion.”

When Kishwar first met Meghnad, the only thing she noticed about him was his hair. She was then working with a publishing house and had been assigned to edit Meghnad’s book. They interacted on a regular basis, business meetings being gradually making way for social interactions. “We would meet in groups and sing songs because Meghnad loves old Hindi film songs,” Kishwar recalled reiterating that there was “nothing brewing” at that point: “At least nothing in my mind. I just found him bright and witty but that is it. Yes, the only thing I noticed was his silver, soft and curly hair…bunches of it.” Meghnad’s hair is his trademark and one cannot help but notice locks of it. Other than that he is bright, a great conversationalist, an economist, author and a politician.

Kishwar Desai with husband Meghnad Desai at their home | Arvind Jain

The penny did not drop when he met her more often than he should have; nor did it when he asked her out to dinner “just the two of us” he had told Kishwar. It was none of that.“We discussed books. He said he would do twenty for my publisher and I thought I had clinched a deal. I wanted to run and call my publisher to tell him that I had hit a jackpot”.

Meghnad started calling her several times a day from London till his phone was finally disconnected. “He ran huge bills and the service provider thought his phone was being misused and so they cut off the connection”. At one point in time he was slapped with call charges amounting to 4,000 British pounds: a huge jump from the 40-odd that he usually paid every month.

Not the one to beat around the bush, Kishwar took it head on: “I called him and told him that I could not have an affair with him so he better look elsewhere. At this point he said wait a minute, I want to marry you. I was stumped to put it mildly but then gave it a thought, spoke to my children and finally said yes.” Kishwar has two children from her first marriage and Meghnad three.

Kishwar’s blossoming in the real sense began after her marriage to Meghnad. This is not to suggest that she was twiddling her thumbs because she had a body of work to talk about. Till then she had done anchoring, films and television but none of this grabbed headlines. In fact, the first film she did that won an award also went into oblivion; the channel she set up with bureaucrat-turned-entrepreneur Rathikant Basu, Tara Punjabi, went bust; she was kind of a footloose and fancy free person who had a finger in many pies. That has still not changed. Even while being focused on books, Kishwar has jumped from having the Gandhi statue in London installed to setting up the partition museum in Amritsar; the latter being a childhood memoir.

Kishwar had grown up on stories about the partition; her father could not do his Ph.D. because his research papers were all in Pakistan; how her grandparents moved from Lahore to Amritsar with a small suitcase imagining that they would one day return to their home.“They went through the trauma that left its scars; to me they were stories of the past that I felt must to be retold”. It was an idea Kishwar decided to give shape to some ten years ago. Of course there was resistance, this time from Meghnad and her kids too. Meghnad cautioned that it would be a tough proposition and advised that she should do an online archive. “It was an idea that had remained with me for 25 years and I was determined not to let go. A museum it shall be, I said.”

And a museum it is—ready in India’s 70th year of Independence. She met the self-set deadline but it was an arduous task. “There was no money and no place to set up the museum. But I was convinced that it was an idea whose time has come. And more importantly I wanted to do something to mark the 70th year of India’s Independence. Our efforts paid off. The Punjab government gave us space and donors came up with funds. And step by step, brick by brick we put in place the museum, thrown open to the public in August this year.”

The museum, located in the Town Hall building in Amritsar, is a tribute to her grandparents and mother who was forced to leave home as a 13-year old. More importantly, the generation that saw partition is fading away and therefore it was imperative to record their experiences, stories and suffering. The museum has records of personal histories, artefacts and voices that tell the story of the partition as it unfolded. There are photographs, letters, government documents, newspaper clippings and personal items including an antique pocket watch that belonged to a victim of mob violence in Pakistan, a rope cot brought by a refugee from across the border, a phulkari coat, a water pot that came handy in the refugee camp and voices recounting their experiences during the riots and carnage that took its toll on both sides.

“Using people’s voices was very important because you hear history first hand from someone who has lived through it. It was also important because 20 years down the line one would be able to hear their great grandmother’s voice or a relative’s through our video archives”.

Partition museum

The first of its kind in India, the partition museum takes one on a memorable journey through time as one spans the 17,000 square feet of area donated by the state government of Punjab. She has now left it to her daughter Mallika to run the show. “My role is that of an advisor now, though I want to help build a corpus for the museum to sustain itself”.

It was perhaps the Gandhi statue project that gave her the confidence that there were “enough people out there” who cared for history, culture and heritage and would go that extra mile to make things happen. Unlike the partition museum which was an idea she had nurtured, the Gandhi statute came her way. “The British government had discussed the idea with Meghnad to install a statute of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament square, Westminster and he took it on”.

The first statue of any Indian at Parliament Square and also the first of a person who has never held any public office in India, Gandhi’s statue stands next to Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Whether this is enough for Gandhi to turn in his grave is uncertain but what is a matter of record is that the man who stands next to him despised him. Churchill had described Gandhi to be a “seditious Middle Temple lawyer…striding half naked up the steps of the Vice Regal Palace…”. The nine-ft statue cost some one million pounds, most of which Kishwar and her husband helped raise: “We had only six months but people came forward. One of Meghnad’s reservations about the museum was that we had barely finished asking for money and here we go again knocking doors,” Kishwar said. But between 2014 and 2017 she completed both projects: one hand-held with Meghnad and the second entirely on her own.

Kishwar’s deadlines coincide with birthdays—she planned to finish her first book before she turned fifty and the museum before India turned 70. “I said to myself that on my 50th birthday I would gift myself my first book, and the museum to India on her seventieth”.

Marriage did take her overseas but her work place has largely been India. Their home in Goa is a kind of a writer’s retreat and both Meghnad and Kishwar unwind there. Between writing serious, academic stuff, Meghnad takes time off to cook for Kishwar. In fact, this was one of the few things Kishwar had forewarned him about: “I told him I cannot cook and he said: Don’t worry I can”. For months on end he did, till guilt pangs overtook her and she started rustling up something.

Not learning to cook was by choice. It goes back to a pledge Kishwar had taken when she was 20: “I decided to go out and earn and not cook. I didn’t want to be stuck in the kitchen all my life”.

Being stuck, in any case, is not Kishwar’s idea of life. Even when her first marriage did not work out, she didn’t struggle with it. She simply distanced herself and chartered her own course. Her second marriage to Meghnad worked wonders and brought out the best in her: “I think I reinvented myself. It felt good to be married to someone who understood me, gave me freedom to pursue my dreams and at the same time stood by me.”

Kishwar can sit back and count her blessings. Or thank the astrologer who had told her years ago that she would “never live in India, marry someone much older and will always remain surrounded by foreigners.”