The evergreen Neelima Dalmia Adhar arrives almost right on cue for our meeting. She’s an author who takes a little under half a decade to write a book, then sits back to see that book being discussed for the next few years. It’s happened with Father Dearest . It almost did with Merchants of Death .
Now, Adhar has come up with a book whose subject will surprise many. The author would love to talk more about the book, called The Secret Diary of Kasturba . In fact, initially, Kasturba failed to ignite Adhar’s imagination. But that was before the author discovered that the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s wife had had an uncanny resemblance to her own.
It has been a long time since we met. Adhar’s first book left her completely brutalised. This one is relatively cathartic, in many ways, just repaying the debt she felt towards Kasturba. “It has been nine years,” she recalls our meeting.
Now, in the moment, however, she is happy to discuss Kasturba, the woman who had to often find peace between the Mahatma and his often wrangling son, Harilal. Kasturba had to dedicate herself to a man torn between the nation and the family. Not to forget that he was also the man who wrote to her in South Africa, expressing his inability to be with her at the time of serious illness, confident that her soul would be alive even if she were to die!
That he promised to stay single all his life following her possible demise would have done little to assuage her hurt. Of course, she was a freedom fighter too, something usually ignored in our hurry to cover Gandhi with a halo.
But the original Mrs. Gandhi had more colours to her than posterity gives her credit for. The abiding memory of her is courtesy Richard Attenborough’s film that for many youngsters was an introduction to the Father of the Nation. Everybody else revolved around that pivot.
“The book was with me for a long time,” recalls Adhar. “I read Harilal Gandhi by Chandulal Dalal. I was moved. And I decided to explore it more. I read more, though the information on Kasturba was sketchy at best. But honestly, initially, Kasturba did not inspire me. For two years, I did not write a page. Then it all came back to me.”
But a book on the wife of the Father of the Nation, with some candid moments thrown in, courts controversy, especially considering today’s political climate.
“I am never scared. I was titillated. I have always played with danger,” says the author. “I have not deviated from proven facts of history. Nobody can accuse [me] of fabricating a situation which was never there.”
She adds that Gandhi’s own biography has been the canvas of her book. He was brutally candid in his own biography having reached a state where criticism did not affect him. “The only place where I have drifted away from reality is when I have structured the character of Kasturba, juxtaposing her soul with mine,” says Adhar. “I found such chilling similarities between Gandhi and my father, his treatment of his wife and children. It seems like a parallel life. It was almost like they were clones. Mahatma Gandhi went on to become a messiah. My father became an industry titan. Frankly, I was so moved that I could as well have been writing the story from the eyes of a daughter on her mother.”
Of course, writing about somebody who is usually only a shadowy figure in history books must have been a daunting task.
“Well, we must not forget that it is a work of fiction,” says Adhar. “A work that draws from history, though. It was not that much of a challenge. I realised I am Kasturba. I am writing as a wife. But yes, I realise we are living in terrible times. I cannot indemnify myself against mad people. If they decide ‘ ke chalo, abhi iss book ko jalana hai ’. People must realise that we are calling it a work of fiction as there was no diary of Kasturba!”
Going back to the beginning, Adhar reveals, “I feel the time of the book was predestined. I could not have got a better time. Gandhi is no longer a holy cow. And it is a deconstruction of the man regarded as a god, a messiah of peace by many.”
Kasturba struck a chord with the author as a mother, and she understands that any marriage is an act of compromise. “I have lived and been bred on a pair of broken homes and fractured relationships. It is something that does not brutalise me,” she says.” But as for a mother-child relationship, Adhar is still touched to her core. “I cannot bear to see a child in misery. I cannot deal with a crying or a hurt child.” She says the most poignant part of the book is the mother-son relationship and the balance Kasturba had to maintain between Harilal and the Mahatma.
At the end of our conversation, Ahdar reveals that not just the Mahatma, even the couple’s sons never stood up for their mother.
“The elder one, Harilal, writes to his father that my mother is an oppressed woman, she has no voice. She cannot do what she wants to do because she is completely submerged by you,” she says.
“Then there was another instance that completely seared my soul. Gandhi and Kasturba were at Katni railway station. There was this crowd saying ‘ Mahatma Gandhi ki jai ho ’. There was one voice in that crowd, that said, ‘ Maa Kasturba ki jai ’. That is the voice of Harilal. He is completely wasted, wearing torn clothes. He is carrying a shrivelled orange which he hands over to her, saying it is for you, not for him, pointing at the Mahatma. And tells the Mahatma that I want you to know that everything you are is because of my mother. Gandhi’s face shows a sneer. I cried then. It impacted me. I actually cried with her as a mother, and him as the child.”
When it comes time to part, the author states with finality, “I think I had a debt towards Kasturba. With this book, I am repaying that.”
The Secret Diary of Kasturba (Tranquebar) will release in mid-October. The book is priced at Rs. 699.
Author Neelima Dalmia Adhar is back with a fictional account of the diary of Kasturba Gandhi
