The Return Was Always Waiting - In Conversation With Subhashini Ali

What led you to decide to leave Bombay and return to Kanpur after being so deeply involved in the cultural and political life there?

My life in Bombay drew me into the women’s movement and into experiencing aspects of working-class life and the struggles of different Maharashtrian communities, as well as of migrants from UP. I was also able to participate in the excitement of the New Cinema that was emerging at the time. I was very fortunate that my life was greatly enriched by relationships with several talented, interesting, gifted people, some of whom were icons in different fields.

Before I moved to Bombay, I made a trip to meet some people I had met earlier and whom I hoped would help me come to terms with the separation from my life and work in Kanpur, and adjust to both marriage and a very new and strange environment. Some of the people I met on my recce trip became very much part of my life in Bombay after I moved.

One of the first people I met was Suhasini, the first woman to join the CPI. I was fortunate that she and her family had been very close to my mother and her family. In fact, as I have written in an earlier piece, it was Suhasini who introduced my mother to Communism when she was sharing her room in their Madras home while underground. Not only did she teach her to sing the Internationale, but every night, she would tell her about her experiences in the Soviet Union and Germany. As a result, my mother became a firm supporter of Communism and, when she finally joined the CPI(M) in 1971, she said that it felt like "coming home."

Jawahar Lal Nehru, Dr. Rajendraprasd and Bhulabhai Desai

It was quite natural that I should meet Suhasini on my recce trip, and we met at the home of Bhulabhai Desai, the brilliant lawyer who had defended my father and his comrades, Shahnawaz and Dhillon, in the historic Red Fort Trial. Madhuri Desai, his daughter-in-law a highly intelligent art lover who gave a large part of her home to the National Center of the Performing Arts (NCPA) to start its activities while its permanent building in Nariman Point was being constructed.

A former Communist, Soli Batliwala, was very much part of this project and was also present with Suhasini and her husband, Com. Jambekar. I remember Soli, who had left the Party many years before this and was quite cynical, telling me interesting tales of his time in the Deoli Camp, where Com. BTR and others were also imprisoned in the ’30s, and also about life in the famous Red Flag Commune of Bombay presided over by P.C. Joshi and inhabited by people like Kaifi and Shaukat Azmi, Sardar and Sultana Jafri, Leela Chari (later Sunderayya) and her family. I was quite mesmerized and paid no heed to whatever critical comments he made!

Suhasini was in a wheelchair by this time, but her voice was still booming and her laugh loud and contagious. She regaled us with tales of her encounters with various comrades, including Com. BTR but, unlike Soli, she was not bitter, despite the fact that she had stopped being a party member long before this. Perhaps this was due to the fact that Com. Jambekar, a very well-read and intelligent man, was not only a CPI member but a committed Marxist.

I remember telling Com. BTR after I had shifted to Bombay about this encounter and, with a twinkle in his eye, he commented acerbically, "Well, you met very interesting people, but I don’t know whether they were the right people to introduce you to the Party in Bombay!"

Rahi Masoom Raza

On that early trip, I also met Rahi sab (Rahi Masoom Raza), author of my most favourite Hindi novel, Aadha Gaon, who was very sympathetic to the CPI(M) and a lifelong admirer of Com. Ram Asrey, his very dear friend. Rahi sab was a most hospitable, affectionate, and knowledgeable person. His home was always open to us and to many others despite the fact that it housed many people – his wife Nayyar, her three sons and their daughter, along with Kitty, who bossed over everyone who worked and lived there – and consisted of just two rooms and a balcony.

Rahi sab would lounge on a gao takiya, eating paan, writing and talking! He wrote all his scripts, novels, poems and articles just like that, in a room that was constantly full of movement, talk, squabbles, and laughter. He would only get up and sit in a chair when his place on the carpet was taken by a dastarkhan on which the most delicious food was served to everyone who happened to be there! My very first meeting with him made me feel that I would always have a second home in Bombay.

Sai Paranjpye was another remarkable person who befriended me. She lived close by. Those were days when extra money and a telephone connection were great luxuries, difficult to come by. We were very fortunate to have a telephone connection in our house thanks first to Air India and later to the fact that someone on the Telephone Advisory Committee was very impressed by the fact that I was Capt. Lakshmi’s daughter.

Sai would come regularly to our house to make and receive phone calls. Our relative lack of money led us to invest in a First-Class Rail Pass that we would use, one at a time. I remember two occasions when we both travelled together and I was terrified of being caught. In fact, we were caught once, and Sai looked the ticket collector in the eye and said in her most formidable tone: "Mala olakhta naheen? Mee Sai Paranjpye." (Don’t you recognise me? I am Sai Paranjpye.) Luckily, she was a well-known TV and theatre personality, and the ticket collector apologised profusely!

Sai was not only a most interesting and fun person but also encyclopedic in her knowledge of Marathi literature and theatre and of people connected with both fields. That is how Arun Joglekar (her ex-husband), Nana Patekar (a rising star in Marathi theatre), Sulabha and Arvind Deshpande (Marathi theatre stars) came to act in Gaman. Through my friendship with her, I had a ringside view of the making of her films, especially Sparsh! She had very generously mentioned in her autobiography that I introduced her to working-class gaalas that occupied an important space in her film Disha.

These years of the early ’80s in Bombay were exciting and challenging, often exhausting but always interesting. As one year led to the next, however, I started feeling the need to re-direct my life. I wanted to have the freedom to decide how to divide and spend my time. Being married felt more and more like being caged.

A medical crisis that occurred in the summer of 1984 was a turning point. I fell seriously ill, experiencing excruciating pain which would not allow me to even turn around in bed. I was admitted in the general ward of the Nanavati Hospital and I was sure that I would die there. Fortunately, a beloved friend, Bakul Patel, came to see me. She was horrified and moved me to the Jaslok Hospital, where I spent one night sharing a room with a woman cancer patient who could not stop weeping. She was lamenting the fact that chemotherapy had left her bald, and she was sure that her husband would leave her. The sadness of her plight – that she was more afraid of losing her husband than of losing her life – kept me up all night.

To my relief, Bakul had me shifted to a single room where I was poked and prodded by a series of doctors who could not diagnose what was wrong with me. On the second or third day, I told Muzaffar to ask my mother to come. She arrived early in the morning and saw me just as I came out of the toilet, doubled up in pain, leaning on my dear, strong Manda who was working for me at the time.

My mother was horrified, but the look of unbearable pain on my face took her back to her days as an intern in the hospital attached to the Madras Medical College. She immediately diagnosed me as suffering from an ectopic pregnancy (when the sperm enters the fallopian tube and this leads to eventual haemorrhaging which can be fatal if not attended to in time). Nervous doctors and Bakul arrived, and my mother told Bakul that she must get the legendary gynaecologist-surgeon, Dr. (Ms) Motashaw – and no one else – to operate.

When Bakul got through to her, she was getting into her car to go to Khandala for the weekend but, of course, she could not say no to Bakul and she had also heard of my mother.

Dr. Motashaw’s arrival and the competence she exuded were most heartening, and I went under the chloroform with a sense of relief. It’s very strange. Either while I was unconscious or when I was regaining consciousness, I suddenly felt with great clarity that one has only one life. After having almost lost mine, I recognized its precious uniqueness and decided that I would live it on my own terms.

After leaving the hospital, I went with my mother to recuperate in Kanpur for a month. After a week or so, I started telling first my parents and then my comrades that I was thinking of coming back to Kanpur. I was happy that this was welcomed by all of them.

I went back to Bombay when the month ended. Muzaffar was out of town. My son, Shaad, was now 11. He had been spending his holidays in Kanpur very regularly and seemed to be very happy there, and being with my parents was something that he especially liked. I told him that I was planning to leave Bombay and go back home, and that he could come with me or stay in Bombay, and that, if he came with me, he would be free to visit Bombay whenever he wanted. He listened to me and was quiet for a bit. Then he went to his room and packed his bag and came back and told me that he would be coming to Kanpur too. We were back home within a week. Coming home to Kanpur and starting work was a seamless journey. The only problem I faced was Shaad’s admission, and even that was done without much trouble!