Dearest Nargis

A staggering stack of letters that former Maharashtra CM, AR Antulay wrote to his wife, reveal the depth of his attachment. The correspondence is now part of a new book by his daughter

Sitiing in her living room that overlooks the Oval Maidan, Neelam Antulay pulls out a briefcase filled with ageing letters written in chaste Urdu. The words flow without a scratch-through, taking us back to a time when there was no mercy of a backspace. The unfiltered thoughts belong to her late father and former Maharashtra Chief Minister, Abdul Rehman Antulay. The bundles of passionate letters addressed to his wife, Nargis, were written through the late '50s and early '60s when the couple was in the early throes of their marriage. The correspondence is now part of a new book, Banaam Nargis, Baqalam AR Antulay, released last week in the presence of Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, NCP president Sharad Pawar and Ghulam Nabi Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

"To be honest, my mother was against the idea of making the letters public," remembers Neelam, when we meet her at her Churchgate home. "Understandably so, because they were deeply personal, and meant for her eyes only." She undertook the exercise to transliterate the letters after her father's demise in 2014, when one morning, she saw her mother poring over the collection. Even as a little girl, Neelam was aware of the correspondence, but the gravity, and beauty, of it dawned on her much later. "Each one is a little piece of art. I didn't want to tamper with the language because it represented a warm routine that my parents shared," she says. While the book contains 70 letters, it's a miniscule part of the collection that the family owns. Each one has been laminated and preserved in its original form.

Hailing from a humble background, AR Antulay studied law at Lincoln's Inn, London, from 1952 to 1955, on scholarship. He came back to India and began working at a Mumbai law firm. As is the case with arranged marriages, he met with a couple of potential matches on his return, but nothing materialised. Until he met Nargis, a demure, strikingly beautiful girl from Konkan. "For him, it was love at first sight," she says. Nargis was only 16 then. He waited for four years and they got engaged in 1957.

Nargis Antulay with daughter Neelam at their Churchgate home. Neelam says she picked 70 letters of many more for the book. Pic/ Suresh Karkera

While Antulay was known for his penmanship and flair for languages, his wife was still an amateur. "It's endearing to see the erudite, refined letters that he would write to her in unsullied Urdu. My mother would, sometimes, admit that she had a hard time understanding those words," laughs Neelam.

Heady in love, there was no cap to the number of letters her father would write in a day. Some would begin with a tender 'Meri apni, Nargis'; others, with a lovelorn, 'meri dil ki rani,' or 'jaaneman'. Apart from declarations of love, the letters also contain mundane details of the day; the food he ate, the people he met and his agenda for the following days. "What began during their courtship, extended to post marriage because he would often travel for work and be absent for two to three months on end," she says. The sheer volume of letters meant she had to sift through the pile to select the "relatively less personal" ones. It took her nearly three years to come up with the book. "Some traits that my father possessed stayed with him till the end. You see that in his writing as well. For instance, he did not fear anybody. He writes, "Main sari duniya ka muqbala kar sakta hoon, agar tum mera saath do (I can fight the world, provided you support me)." Unlike her two sisters, who married and moved to their husband's homes, Neelam continued living with her parents at their current abode. "I was lucky to marry my cousin, which meant I could continue living in this house. So, I was privy to the relationship my parents shared even in their sunset years. He would discuss everything with her, both personal and political. Through the ups and downs, she was his comrade."

While the family would often goad him to write an autobiography, he never warmed up to the idea till the very end. "He categorically told me that a tell-all book would inevitably hurt the sentiments of a few, so he doesn't want to go down that path." For Antulay, her father was less of a politician and more of a social worker. "He knew each photographer and reporter personally. In fact, he would sometimes halt a press conference till they arrived. He was, basically, a good man. "

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