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Sunday Sentiments

  • The other Mrs. Malik

    Posted On May 10, 1999

    By Karan Thapar

    If you believe you know Amita Malik think again. I thought I did but I now realise how wrong I was. For the real McCoy is altogether different.

    Until now I knew her by her television column. In it she comes across as tough (if arbitrary), critical (if occasionally petty) and very particular (if also a bit of a snob). She once criticised Sharmila Tagore for wearing clothes that looked as if they had been bought in Karol Bagh, she often pounces on faulty (albeit very Indian) pronunciation and she is usually very pernickety about how questions are asked. Her favourites seem never to falter; her bete noires can never get it right.

    Oh yes, she also comes across as a woman of strong opinions. When they hurt they feel like prejudice and I won’t say she hasn’t injured my amour propre. Many is the sunday she has ruined by her comments.

    Yet I’m glad to say there’s more to Mrs. Malik than just that.

    When she asked if I would review her autobiography I agreed with trepidation. If she didn’t like what I had to say she would, I felt, take ‘revenge’. As it is I’m not on her list of anchors she likes and it would be rash to provoke her. But just suppose I liked the book ....

    Well I do, but now I’m not sure she’ll approve of my reasons for liking it. The truth of the matter is that the Mrs. Malik of the book is far nicer than the Mrs. Malik of the television columns. I like the author. I'm not at all sure about the critic.

    In the book she’s devilish, fun, witty, clever, vivacious but also a flirt, immodest and always a little pleased with herself. I like such people. They know their worth and they get what they want. But more than that – far, far more than that – I’m entranced by the world she writes about.

    I’m only half way through but the book recreates a lifestyle that only our parents can remember. British India in the 1940s seems to have been a gay whirl of cream teas, tennis parties, mountainside picnics, school galas, burra memsahibs, crotchety colonels and a parade of initials representing the various stations of the ICS. They are the people and places that make up her Assam childhood. Sadly, they’ve all now gone but in Amita No Holds Barred they breathe once more.

    Mrs. Malik liked all of it as, I suspect, she likes the British, their ways and their eccentricities. So do I. Which is perhaps why her account of her childhood has no echo of either the war or the Bengal Famine. But then why should it? At the time she was too young to know and today she is too old to feel the need to be politically correct. Above everything else, that’s what I really like about the Mrs. Malik of the book.

    Now, if only Mrs. Malik the critic could be more like her other self.

    The right to throw stones

    Before we start throwing stones at Bina Ramani lets take a closer look at the glass houses we live in. There’s no doubt she’s been foolish, reprehensible even, perhaps criminal but – and that’s my point – did we not play a role in her downfall? Not just as society but also as individuals?

    I’ve dined at Tamarind Court. It was December 1998 and I went en famille. My young nephew was visiting on holiday from London and I reckoned this would be a smart place to take him. So, along with his grandma, aunts and uncles we set off to have a jolly evening.

    It was sunday night. The place was deserted. Literally there wasn’t another soul but the emptiness was inviting. It’s nice to have a restaurant entirely to oneself.

    No sooner had we settled-in and well before any thoughts turned to ordering the food we demanded drinks.

    “I’m sorry”, the waiter announced. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a licence to serve alcohol”.

    “Oh come on”, the family chanted in unison. “Surely you can find a way around that one?”

    He did. In fact, he did it so well we virtually had what we wanted. Of course, the beer was hidden in ceramic mugs and the wine poured out of a tea pot, but it was drink and it was welcome.

    My point is simple. We demand alcohol, because we want it and rightly see no reason why we shouldn’t have it. Without it we would kick and scream and definitely not return. So did Bina have a choice? If you want to run a decent restaurant and you want the smart set to come then, one way or another, openly or out of tea pots, legitimately or by subterfuge, you have to serve drink. Our attitude encouraged her, so don’t we share the blame? It’s only the day we turn teetotal – heaven forbid ! – that we can claim to be innocent.

    My point, however, goes further. What sort of a society, what sort of damnfool authorities, what sort of killjoys, deny a thriving restaurant an alcohol licence? Quite frankly, they should be available on demand. Of course, there must be a few – but only a few – preliminary tests, but once passed – and as a flourishing, old eatery Tamarind Court had, I presume, long ago passed them – all restaurants should be entitled to such permits. Whatever the reason – and I doubt if it was good enough – it seems Tamarind Court was being given the run around.

    So, then, what do you expect? Alcohol will be served, the law will be flouted to do so and people will have a good time regardless of this.

    None of this – and let me reiterate that with emphasis – justifies the killing or the killers. There’s absolutely no question about that. Nor does it exonerate Bina Ramani’s own behaviour, the things she is reported to have said, done or got others to do and say. But please lets stop smirking with pleasure at Bina’s personal plight. She got caught breaking the law and, no doubt, she’ll pay for it. But remember we had a role to play as well, both as customers who encouraged her to do so – in fact we often demanded it, as did I – and as a society who left her no other choice.


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