Dolly Thakore - Regrets, None

Contents

This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path Ill never tread
These are the dreams Ill dream instead
This is the joy thats seldom spread
These are the tears

The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent
And this is how I feel
Do you know how I feel?

Annie Lennox, Why?

Okay.

I admit to resentments. But I have no regrets. None.

I wrote this memoir for my son, Quasar, so that he may understand.

I dont know who you are, ma soeur, ma semblable, but I hope you will understand too.

I was not the first woman to steal another womans husband.

I was not the first woman to bear a child out of wedlock.

I was not the first woman to bring up a boy alone.

I was not the first woman to be abandoned.

And I will not be the last.

Quasar, this is for you, first and always.

But it is also for my maternal grandmother, Rahael Solomon, and my aunt, Rani Solomon,

two fantastic women whose struggles taught me acceptance and survival.

I owe them everything I am today.

And to my parents, Dora and David Rawson,

who provided for me, were patient with me and accepted me.

Two people I hurt very much by not being their ideal, dutiful daughter.

Sorry, mum; sorry, dad.

M Y NAME IS Dolly Thakore. I am seventy-eight years old. I live and work in Mumbai, India a place that used to be called Bombay. When I first came here, I was Dolly Rawson. Dolly from Delhi, like I said to Simi Garewal, a very long time ago.

This book was written the way some people quit smoking: it took over thirty years. Friends helped, and they didnt. I relapsed now and again. Brief periods on the wagon a chapter or two at a time. A process begun in a headlong rush, finished in wry contemplation. Anger burnt out. Resentments tended to with care. The slightly astonished realization that there arent any regrets after all.

In 1982, my sons father Alyque Padamsee left me. Our separation caused a minor storm. We already possessed a degree of notoriety: Id stolen Alyque away from his first wife. In the process, Id broken up Bombay Theatres First Couple. There were children involved. The whole thing was a mess.

Ingrid Albuquerque, the first editor of Savvy, conducted a series of interviews with me in the aftermath of Alyques departure. She then spent some four weeks transcribing those tapes, more than a hundred pages worth my tears, my heartbreak, my insecurities, memories I had forgotten, memories I had repressed, experiences that I had excised.

Ingrid was the first and not the last to say: I could write a book about you.

Instead, I was on the cover of the second-ever issue of Savvy. The Power, Passion and Pain of Dolly Thakore, July 1984. Maneka Gandhi had been the first.

Even two years after the break-up, I was half-crazed with grief and would remain so for a long time. Therefore, when Savvy put up three massive hoardings to publicise the issue, it became some strange kind of validation. I remember one at Haji Ali, another at Chowpatty, and one in Colaba. There may have been five.

Three days later, the hoardings came down. Why? I dont know.

I have my theories, of course. I had spoken about what Id felt, and what Id thought. There were enough people who had reason to want to avoid publicity of that kind. Brand associations cut both ways.

All I know is that the hoardings came down. Given that theyd just gone up, and given that I was on the cover, Savvy must have had their reasons. But the hoardings came down.

Id have to find validation somewhere else. Id have to heal for real.

After the end of the relationship, it took me ten years to speak to Alyque again. I dont think I ever forgave him, not really. But we found a way to coexist. I saw him often, up until his death in November 2018. We spoke on the phone. A lot of the celebrations in our lives birthdays, the kids birthdays were shared. And some of my resentment lingered. It still does. We had a long association. The relationship didnt invalidate the resentment.

In those last few months of 2018, I saw him quite regularly one of a handful of people who did.

Time comes a circle, and yet were never the same.

He could irritate the hell out of me. And I never idolized him the way I once did. But we had a place in each others lives. With some form of equanimity.

My story remained confined to those transcripts for the duration of the 1980s. Ever so gradually, it began to take on the shape of a larger project: a book that would tell the story of my life. I began writing in earnest on the 27th of April 1998. I had told myself I would. I had promised friends like Dinesh Thakur that I would. In the weeks after Alyque left, Protima Bedi dragged me to a series of astrologers, palmists, shadow readers, tarot-card diviners and clairvoyants. Each of them suggested I make a record of my feelings, that I distil those experiences.

So, I began. But excuses came easy. I set down an account of my early years and paused. That pause became a halt, then a stop and then years passed. I needed a computer, I told myself, so I wouldnt have to retype, cancel, correct, get my hands dirty with carbon. I worried about wasting paper, you see. The computer duly arrived, and I learnt to surf the internet and to send emails.

Dust gathered over the book.

I didnt know if I dared. I didnt know if I could say the things I wanted to say.

I also paused because the early years were fine. There were details in the later years about myself, about people I love, about people I cared for at one point that I shied away from. I didnt know how much I wanted to reveal.

So the past remained in the corner. Like a body with a sheet thrown over it.

I came back to the project in 2011. I knew now why I had stopped. Maybe I was still looking for approval back then. Maybe I didnt want to be judged. But now, this book has a simple sense of purpose: time is running out. I feel that keenly. The endgame has begun. There will be no stalling now there is no opportunity.

So, to those who spurred me to finish, you have my gratitude.

Thank you, Jerry. Thank you, Satya. Thank you, Shanta.

Ive lived in the same apartment for fifty-one years. I moved in on the 1st of January 1970. Alyque and I shared it for twelve of the thirteen years we were together. When he moved out, he left behind a shell that became a silo, a way-station en route to somewhere else, with only my son and I left to mark the passage of love, a monument, an accident, something.

We populated it, Quasar and I. The walls bare when Alyque left, taking his paintings with him belong to us now. They are a record of our lives: stills from rehearsals and performances, paintings gifts from visionary friends and artists, and photographs of family. The curtains in the living room used to be banners painted for the shows my son directed in college, repurposed, living history.

This is home. We made it so.

Here is a list of jobs Ive held, to make it so: I started my career as a sub-editor with the British Information Service (BIS). Then a sub-editor for the BBC. A radio host along the way, first in England and then in India. A copywriter, a model coordinator, an account executive. A newsreader on television. A columnist. A casting director. A media consultant. An actor for over sixty years.