The mother of tell-alls

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Zareer Masani’s And All Is Said is perhaps one of the most widely reviewed books in recent times. From international publications to Indian, everyone has been queuing up to review the book or interview its author. All of which makes it considerably more difficult for an interviewer to pose questions that cover new ground.
One isn’t helped by the fact that the author himself has been not just candid, but also very thorough in his rendering of this memoir, which chronicles the breakdown of his parents, Minoo Masani (politician and Swatantra Party leader) and Shakuntala Srivastava’s marriage, and the role he himself played in it.

Staying true to its title, all the stock questions: Why Zareer wrote the book (“to give his mother some of the dignity the circumstances of later life denied her”) or how he felt about this that or the other, have already been dealt with in the book. To make matters difficult for the prospective interviewer, the spare style of Zareer’s prose reflects in his speech as well, and despite the fact that his family’s innermost secrets are laid bare in And All Is Said, in person, there is a reserve that seems difficult to breach.
The quietness of his personality suits his surroundings: A high ceilinged flat in the Breach Candy area in Mumbai, which has a portrait of Zareer’s aunt Mehra occupying pride of place in the living room, rows of books along a wall. “A lot of people ask me if writing the book was cathartic,” he says. “But I don’t think the process of writing in itself is cathartic. Whenever I finish a book, there is a bit of a vacuum. At the same time, there is also a feeling of satisfaction. Writing And All Is Said did bring back certain memories; my feelings weren’t really very different (from before), but maybe I became more conscious of how things were.”
Those memories include (among other happier ones) being raised by parents who were widely divergent in what they thought constituted the right way to bring up their only son, their frequent battles, reconciliations and infidelities, and the final, irrevocable split fuelled by his mother Shakuntala’s public support for the Congress’ then rising star, Indira Gandhi, while his father was the leader of the Opposition. So while there were the regular upheavals that every family goes through, there were also these larger conflicts that a family less engaged in political life might have been spared. Zareer however, refuses to think about what it would have meant for his family had his parents been born in a different, less nationalistically charged age. “It would be futile to imagine that things would have been different had they been born 50 years later. Yes, we are affected by society and the world around us, but there are certain things about your temperament that don’t change — why else would we still relate to characters from books written 100 years ago? (Had they been born in a different time) their lives would have been different, but not their personalities,” he suggests.
What might also have been different had the family been slightly less high profile (their circle of friends and acquaintances included not just the who’s who of Indian politics, but also luminaries like J.R.D. Tata), would have been the expectations from Zareer — “There would have been less pressure to succeed, and a more stable childhood. My father wouldn’t have been away from home so much,” he admits. In any case, the pressure doesn’t seem to have done too much harm considering the
success Zareer has enjoyed as a writer and journalist, based in London.
There are other difficult areas the memoir focuses on: The author’s recognition of his sexual orientation, his outlining of the sometimes manipulative role he played in stoking his parents’ differences and the long illness and the subsequent death of his mother while he was her sole caregiver in London. Writing about the last was the toughest, Zareer says, explaining, “The conventional thing is you don’t talk about those things…I suppose I had felt guilty that I had been very irritable and bad tempered (while caring for her).” Referring to the duties he had to perform as her kidney ailment became more serious, he adds, “I didn’t enjoy doing those things for her. Some people say ‘Oh it was such a pleasure doing it, every moment was worth it’ — but I was honest enough to admit that it was a burden and that I behaved at the time as though it was a burden. And I think she was tolerant enough to realise that.”
The intensely personal nature of the book did make Zareer toy with the idea of writing it as a novel, but he realised his “heart wasn’t in it”. “I suppose I don’t have enough imagination to be an author,” Zareer says, asserting that he has no regrets that his family’s extraordinary story is out there for everyone to read. “I’m happy that it’s out,” he says. “I’m just surprised that people are enjoying reading it so much.”
And all is said.