‘I’m not scared of death’

Dolly Thakore. Illustration/Uday Mohite

There is no question that theatre and media personality Dolly Thakore is a force of nature. Our paths have crossed over the years, notably in 2019, when I was invited to participate in a show of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues, reading out her text on violence against women, at the end of a Prithvi Theatre performance, starring Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, Thakore and others. We were both on the Mumbai Press Club's Red Ink Awards for the journalism selection committee, and earlier jury members of the first Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival in 2010. She has always been very generous with her time, energy and warmth, with her trademark big bindi, silver jewellery, cotton sarees and million-watt smile. Her memorable, well-written memoir Regrets, None, written by Dolly Thakore with Arghya Lahiri (Harper Collins India, R599), is an account of a feisty life, warts and all, written at 78, and continues my long interest in women's stories, including of single mothers.

Thakore was born Dolly Rawson, into a Protestant family, in Kohat, Peshawar, now in Pakistan. The veteran theatre personality, newscaster and casting director, describes her growing up years in Delhi and several Air Force bases where her dad was posted, a 58-year theatre career, her life in London, as casting director for eight Academy Awards-winner, Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, working in radio, television and advertising, and for social causes. "I wrote this memoir for my son, Quasar, so that he may understand," Thakore's preface says. It's a wrenching line. Indian women, by nature, are inherently modest; Lahiri's generosity allows Thakore's voice to reach us: how many men write books about women? Thakore's son Quasar Thakore-Padamsee, theatre director and actor, is Artistic Director, QTP Theatre Productions (which Quasar and Lahiri co-founded with others). Lahiri himself is a gifted writer, theatre director, lighting designer and filmmaker, who has worked in theatre for over 20 years.

Dolly opens with her break-up with advertising and theatre personality Alyque Padamsee after 12 years: when they first dated, he was still married to Pearl Padamsee, and she was still married to Dilip Thakore. Her preface is prickly: "I was not the first woman to ‘steal' another woman's husband," but while embracing her life experiences, she writes, "I admit to resentments. But I have no regrets. None." She writes candidly and with wit, about love, sex, infidelity, being a single mother, the agony and the ecstasy of a series of relationships, often overlapping. After Dolly and Alyque together approved of a house to move into, called Christmas Eve, Dolly realised he was actually moving in with Sharon Prabhakar instead, his Partner No 3. "It took me 10 years to speak to Alyque again. I don't think I ever forgave him, not really. But we found a way to coexist," she reflects. Her previous marriage to Dilip Thakore, whose family had a "5,000 acre estate in East Africa," was "almost as if we were holding each other hostage". Later, Dolly quotes Margaret Atwood's poem Variation on the Word Sleep, to describe yet another relationship: "I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary." I have always craved love, she confesses.

Driven by a can-do attitude, she's led a hectic life amid high profile people, including former prime minister Indira Gandhi, Amitabh Bachchan, filmmaker Richard Attenborough, writer Farrukh Dhondy, dancer Protima Bedi and journalist Anil Dharker, and worked with organisations including the BBC and Doordarshan. But also, her life offers a larger social commentary, such as when she experiences humiliating racism in Britain; or seeks comfort in a Hindu name: her divorce from Dilip Thakore finalised, she asked Dilip's father's ‘blessing': "I wished to keep Thakore as my last name. It was my professional name in Bombay now. And it seemed safer, more Indian, less Christian. It made absolute sense, and I hated myself a little," she writes. A heartbreaking comment on the growing nightmare that India is for
its minorities.

Seemingly resentful at being "farmed out" to her maternal grandparents because "there were too many kids to look after," she later admits, as a single mother, to raising Quasar with help from friends and via boarding school: "The village raised my son, and he's better for it." Reflecting on her friends Protima Bedi (ex-Kabir Bedi), Valerie Pereira (ex-Jalal Agha) and herself, she writes, "We had independent lives. We didn't cling to our men. We kicked down the door and ran out."

You can only salute a woman who has the fullness of life and fortitude to write: "I've wanted death, always. I'm not scared of it. I'm ready to go."

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist.
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com