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Her publishers say author Neelima Dalmia Adhar’s new book, The Secret Diary of Kasturba, lays bare what it was like to be Mahatma Gandhi’s wife, “in a gripping tale of unconditional love, passion, sex, ecstasy and the ultimate liberation that every woman seeks.”
The child bride who married the boy next door, found in Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, “a sexually-driven, self-righteous, and overbearing husband.”
Released Oct. 1, on the eve of Gandhi’s birthday, the book is a psychologists attempt to look into the mind and heart of a woman and give voice to someone the world thought was voiceless despite her strong will, and her commitment to her husband, her children and her country-in-the-making.
“People watching” is her passion, Dalmia Adhar told Desi Talk during her visit to New York to promote her book. As a lifelong student and professor of psychology, she said, she is “ able to get into the soul, and get into that space, live inside it, and breath and speak like that person,” she explained.
Best known for her 2003 expose, Father Dearest: The Life and Times of R.K. Dalmia, that earned her the title of a daredevil family chronicler who exposed some fiercely-guarded secrets, Dalmia Adhar has now ventured into a fictionalized account of the mind of Kasturba, a space she said she is utterly familiar with.
In a “freaky” way, she says, in living with her own mother, she had an intimate view of Kasturba’s life. “My father was close to Gandhi, our cultures are similar, and we belong to the same sub-religious sect of Vaishnavism,” she said. “When I started reading about Gandhi, I saw chilling similarities between him and my father and my mother’s life paralleled Kasturba’s.”
She could well have titled her latest book, “Mother Dearest” she says, as each phase of Kasturba’s life was relatable – the devoted wife, the aspiring passionate freedom fighter, a very suppressed wife, a very controlling husband, a very tormented mother. “Because my father did exactly what Gandhi did to his wife and children,” Dalmia-Adhar said.
Unlike the docile figure of Kasturba cut in the epic film “Gandhi” directed by Richard Attenborough, “Kasturba was fiery and passionate, a fierce woman. She lashed out against her husband. It was never a silent acceptance,” of Gandhi’s directives, the author said.
“My Kasturba is the quintessential Indian woman – the Aadi Shakti,” the author says, adding, “She is the omniscient mother. A woman is built with so much power inside, one who was never created and will never be destroyed.”
In Kasturba, the author says, she has portrayed a woman “dealing with the ordinary-ness of an extraordinary, larger than life, man.” A woman to whom, she says, a free India owes a debt of gratitude.
“In a small way, I have redeemed my debt of gratitude,” Dalmia Adhar says. “Gandhi’s struggle was not half as trying and challenging as Kasturba’s life as his wife,” she contends. “I feel proud that I have resurrected Kasturba,” who spent sixty-two years of her life, juggling the roles of a devoted wife, a satyagrahi and sacrificing mother, eclipsed by the shadow cast by near-Godly figure of her husband.
Educated in a convent school and a reputed college in Delhi, Dalmia Adhar has a Master’s in Psychology with a specialisation in “Personality.” She lives in Delhi with her husband, children and two grandchildren.
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