“And All Is Said” by Zareeer Masani ; Published by Penguin; Pages 236 ; Price Rs.299/-

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                                           This chronicle of a divorce foretold— unfolding like a Greek tragedy --is at once melancholic and majestic. The mother Shakuntala—a Hindu was part of the Kanpur-based Srivastava family, which benefited tremendously from the British Raj both financially and politically. The father, Minoo Masani—a Parsi, was the leading light of the post-independence political Opposition. The couple were united by a love marriage but divided in their temperament, lifestyles and political affiliations. A troubled marriage and a prolonged divorce caused untold emotional damage.

                                           Minoo Masani’s historian son Zareer  eloquently breathes life into the last days of the British Raj, the early years of a one-party state and the rise and fall of Indira Gandhi, with the perennial strife  between his political parents looming large in the  narrative. Masani had two broken marriages  before he met Shakuntala. Torn by infidelities, much-publicised political differences and constant squabbling over the upbringing of their only child, Minoo Masani and  Shakuntala’s tumultuous marriage lasted for two decades after the first seeds of distrust and division were sown in 1960. Zareer draws on the letters and diaries of his parents to put together an intimate portrait of two remarkable individuals from two contrasting backgrounds.

                                            Their politics eventually led to their acrimonious divorce in the 1980s, when Minoo Masani was 84.The memoir aims at giving his mother the tragic dignity that she never got during her own life. He vividly narrates the gradual manner in which the accumulation of failures and setbacks, major as well as minor, eroded Shakuntala's sense of self worth and eventually affected her sanity. By laying bare many of his mother's flaws, Masani  makes a conscious attempt to give his father a fair chance. This, in some ways, makes up for the rather partisan role he admits to having played in his parents' squabbles during their forty years of wedded life.

                                         The correspondence between Shakuntala and Masani gives fascinating insights into the entire Indira era, especially the manner in which the political machinery of her time resembled a medieval court full of intrigues rather than a democratic government. The fact that the author and his mother used code language in the private letters - calling Gandhi 'Bhai' and Jayaprakash Narayan 'Russet', the name of Zareer's childhood pet - reveals the degree of censorship that existed during that period.

                                             This is a frank, affectionate and dignified memoir---not only an intimate portrait of a short-lived love marriage and a 17-year battle for divorce between Zareer’s parents but the saga of a family divided by opposing worldviews — the author compares them to Montagues and Capulets.

                                              Zareer was born in November 1947, which marked the beginning of the end of his parents’ marriage. As an only child, he was thoroughly spoiled by all except his remote and taciturn father. Zareer not only had to come to terms with his parents’ troubled marriage but his own leftist leanings and, not least, his homosexuality. Shakuntala’s downfall began when Indira won by a landslide and the opposition was routed  With Zareer back in Oxford, Shakuntala lobbied Mrs Gandhi for employment — and was grudgingly appointed member-secretary on the Committee for the Status of Women, a job in which her enthusiasm and intelligence was dissipated by infighting. Shakuntala’s behaviour swung erratically between paranoia (people want to kill her, she consults astrologers) and hysteria (importuning her estranged husband to take her back) — her son suggests that modern psychiatry might have labelled her bipolar.

                                          Zareer writes with clarity, a certain shrewd humour and poignant honesty. He blames himself for the breakdown of the marriage —the book probably serves as a confessional. It is captivating for the personal story and its valuable description of a seminal period in Indian politics.

P.P.Ramachandran,

3-04-2012