i believe

I must have done something good in my past lives to have met Behram in this one. If I climbed every mountain and thanked every God for having graced my life with a man such as him, it would not be enough. In a world where nothing lasts, least of all relationships, I shared one, the mere memory of which helps me endure the irreplaceable loss I felt when Behramwent away forever on April 9, 2001."

I believe everything in my life just happened to me.

Simply. Just like that. Without me having to make things happen. That may be because I have always been a spontaneous and an impulsive person. I go with the flow.
Planning, deciding, wanting, hoping, trying, thinking way ahead, these are things I have never been able to do. People tell me I wear my heart on my sleeve, I guess I do. I am open with my feelings to others and to myself which is why the most important occasion in my life happened the way it did.
"Would you like to marry me?" That was me asking that question to someone I had met just four months ago. Yes, even I startled myself with that one, I didn't know anything about him, or his family; he was over twice my age, of a different religion. All I knew was I felt wonderful just looking at his face, felt engulfed by the peaceful aura that surrounded him. I wanted to be with him forever.
Behram's answer to that question, "if you want (pause) (smile)" changed my life. A month later, we were married. Very quietly, at the Registrar's Office at Old Customs House, with Behram's friends M.Y. Tham of Mandarin and Habiba Miranda and a friend of mine, Selma D'Silva, as witnesses.

It was then that Behram's carefully guarded secret came out in the open.

Behram Contractor was Busybee! Well, January 31, 1985, became a turning point in both our lives. He had just given up his job, and surrendered his apartment to his landlady. So here he was now, jobless and homeless, but with a brand new wife just out of college.
Behram, I was to discover, was an incredible human being.
At 54, he was innocent and as fun-loving as a child; he was enlightened and wise as the 'Old Man and the Sea'; and, enthusiastic and enterprising as a 20-year-old who dared to dream of starting yet another newspaper.
Behram's encouraging "if you want" became a mantra and stayed with me for 16 glorious years in which my candid, indirect, unintentional nurturing took place. Like 'Savvy', of which Behram was the founding consulting editor, itself said in one of its issues 15 years ago, Behram was making a swan out of me!

True, except as a duckling I was not that bad.

I was, in fact, a rather charming and talented duck! Even as a teenager I could take on anything in the world. I had loads of confidence and strangely, I could be good at anything I decided to do. Sports, art, dramatics, singing, dancing... even climbing mountains! I had 22 penpals all over the world, used to collect pebbles from wherever I travelled, had hundreds of keychains, stamps, coins and pictures of world flags. I could play the bongo and took good care of my pets, Martina, a squirrel and Tamee Da, a turtle. I painted oil on canvas when I was 13. I was most easy-going. Life was a breeze.

I was eighth youngest in a row of 10 children.

That's seven sisters and three brothers. I nearly died when I was two. That I did not was considered a miracle. I had diphtheria and was given up as gone. But I lived. And by that virtue I became a favourite in the family. Guess it was destiny. There was a lovely road ahead waiting for me to sprint on. In fact, in retrospect, I realise it was more a cross-country track than a straight road. That's how rich and varied and fabulous my life has been.
Living in a large family was so much fun. What I most remember is, that we were always laughing and joking. The age difference between the eldest and youngest was so much, it felt like we were living in a boarding school. There was so much hustle and bustle. To top it, we had a grey African parrot which used to talk non-stop and shriek like we did. For me my eldest brother played the role of my father who was a businessman dealing in livestock as pets and who, we would mostly see at dinner. My dad, though, was God's good man, very hardworking, simple, loving, pious, which my mom also was in addition to being more dynamic and tough. She had to be, imagine rearing 10 children (would have been 14 but for God's intervention) all with different personalities, likes and dislikes. Particularly taste-buds. My mom was a great cook and I say, hats off to her for bringing us up so well, so easily. I had a wonderful childhood in a very normal atmosphere. A solid middle-class upbringing, with a touch of 'Muslimism'. Basic values of honesty, charity, thrift, selflessness, of doing good to others are qualities which were strongly inculcated in us. I can never waste food, even if it's a piece of bread. I take all my leftovers to my farm for the animals. My mom's two favourite quotes were 'always remember there is someone who has less than you' and 'think of death once a day, it will make you a better human being'.

In school I was an athlete, a champ.

You name a team and I was on it. Most probably as captain. I represented my school, St Agnes, Convent of Jesus & Mary at Clare Road, Byculla at hockey, basketball, throwball, netball even table tennis and badminton. I could play any game most easily. At the annual school sports, the Championship Trophy in my category would always be mine. And at the Bombay Inter-School Sports, where St. Agnes was always the best, my events were javelin, hurdles and broad jumps. My big high was leading march pasts, carrying various flags at different times.
I had a fan following even at that age. When I was ill and did not go to school, my classmates would turn up home. When I started wearing Data's Naughty Boy shoes with socks rolled down, the whole school followed. Teachers did not like us wearing our sashes loose and low on our hips. So I reversed the order, tight and on the waist. Everybody else did so too. The teachers did not like that, either. It accentuated our bust!

I don't know how or where my school days went.

I was hardly in class. I was always playing a match somewhere. Training at some camp with coach Minoo Golakari in Satara or Nashik or Pune to represent Maharashtra at the Nationals.
Life was bliss. And I was charcoal black, and as skinny as Twiggy.
Studies were an altogether different thing. 1 could not understand why I had to do that. I did not hate it. I was merely indifferent to it. My mother, God bless her benevolent soul,
used to heave a sigh each summer the postman delivered my final report home and it was found that I had passed. I was awful in Maths, great in Geography and never passed in Marathi!
But the teachers reluctantly though unanimously agreed I was a brilliant student. And very bold. They just could not understand how anyone could be so bold. Speaking my mind came very easily to me. And the remarks in my report usually were, "Honest, too honest." Or, "Honest, even brutally so." But for all my naughtiness, I was the teachers' pet and the subject of many a conversation in the staff room.
Miss Yasmin Brelvi, a gem of a teacher, wrote in my autograph book on the last day of school, 'God's most agreeable blunder'. To counter this, I remember what someone very nice once told me and it has remained my favourite compliment. He said, when I think of you, I think of a cool breeze blowing somewhere.

Sports was responsible for my making.

I was barely 11 when I first represented Bombay at the Ujjain Nationals which we won. My sweet dad was so proud he wanted to frame the certificate and hang it on the wall in our living room. But he changed his mind soon enough when 1 started collecting certificates and medals, cups and trophies, when others my age were collecting chewing gum wrappers and marbles and tops.
I used to play those games too. As well as fly kites, influenced by my best friend, my brother Asif. My dad pampered me as his fourth son. My mom despaired. The world said I was a tomboy.
As a teenager I was wild. But wild did not mean what it does today. It was my high voltage sense of adventure. I used to swim in a pond full of lotus and a muddy bottom with water snakes in Vithalwadi. I would cycle on Bombay roads, traffic and all, without a hassle; race with ST Buses in Panchgani, scaring the drivers with my recklessness, I could climb really huge trees as quick as a monkey. And on monsoon treks in the Sahyadris, I would be the first to jump into the swollen rivers to attempt crossing them. I was a daredevil. You dare and I do. Like once in Kashmir on a school tour, I walked a plank over a swamp and what could have been quicksand. Or another time when I demonstrated how you gain momentum when you run down a hill. I did, and landed in a ditch and hurt myself considerably!

College was pretty flattering.

Various colleges wooed me to join them. Some even 'booked1 me when I was in class IX — like St Xavier's. But on the morning of the admission, Father Arnold, the college's sports director, was not around, and I was too arrogant to join a queue. So I went and enrolled in Wilson College. Wilson was located so beautifully, opposite the sea, and I liked its architecture. Oh boy! Xavier's was mad.
They wanted me to leave at half-term and join them. I condescended to do so only after my first year.
Life at Xavier's was much the same as in school. I was hardly there. Sports continued to dominate my life and I got Xavier's plenty of laurels. I graduated with a degree in psychology. I was denied English literature, my first choice, by Prof. Nisha Da Cunha, who was head of the English department, on the grounds that I would not be able to cope with literature if I was absent most of the time! It's ok, Nisha is my friend today. And having studied psycho-socio held me in good stead as CEO of 'Afternoon'.

Those were probably the most carefree days of my life

Throughout college I was working and playing for Western Railway, which had formed a hockey team and had invited a few students to join it. Imagine, I was getting paid to do what I loved most! I had a suitcase and a hold-all packed all the time. The team of 16 girls would travel in grand style in a first class bogie, all to ourselves. Coach Satinder Walia, manager Leela (his wife), a cook and a servant travelled with us. We travelled the length and breadth of India always seated at the door, legs dangling out. Our bogie would be parked in a railway yard just away from the station and we would live in it for the entire span of the tournament, which was usually ten days or sometimes two weeks. It was so much fun.
For me, it was romance. We would go to the first class waiting rooms for our baths, chat with passing engine drivers whilst walking on the tracks.
Once, a few of us were almost run over by a stationery goods train that decided to jolt into action just when we were crawling under it to take a short cut to a railway cafeteria to drink espresso coffee! Those were great days when in winters, we would freeze under our blankets, and in summers we would get slabs of ice and cool our coupe. Of course, we won many tournaments for Western and Indian Railways.
When I wasn't travelling for hockey tournaments or on school tours or family holidays, I would go off with a friend or two somewhere offbeat. My best trips have been to Leh (all three times), a trek through unbelievable terrain in the Lahaul Valley to Chandratal, the clearest and bluest of lakes which is at 14,000 feet. And to Bhutan, the tiny kingdom, held in a time warp.
It was when I was in college that I discovered what was to become a passion with me. Skiing. I went three consecutive winters to Gulmarg and did basic, intermediate and advance 21 -day courses, to emerge as a winner in the Slalom Race of the first ever ski nationals held in 1984.

Thanks to my wanderlust, I flirted with the idea of becoming an air-hostess.

This was after I finished BA and started Law. And if I did not become an air-hostess, it is because the area manager of Saudia, Aqeel Hashimi, who hailed from Lucknow (my father's hometown) and became a friend, suppressed my application form! Years later Aqeel revealed that he thought I was not meant to waste my life as a stewardess. I don't know where he is today, but I thank him.
In 1984 when I was still studying Law, I met a very vibrant Persian woman called Malik Taj Sardar. 'Papuli', she was called. She had read a letter written by me and decided I should become a journalist. Papuli lured me to the 'Mid-Day' office by saying Busybee would be the one we would meet. But Behram wasn't at all interested and said, "No, no, no, not here, but she will be very good in the advertising department, take her there."

I was in 'Mid-Day' as a trainee ad executive even while I was playing hockey for the Railways.

I was there for four months, enough time for the ad bug to catch me and make me want to start my own agency. Behram, who by then I would chat with most comfortably (he was Executive Editor and others were most wary of him), recommended I should go to DaCunha Associates for work experience. He even fixed it with Sylvester da Cunha who was his friend.
I was there all of December 1984, being trained by Alka Bhosle and Bharat Dabholkar when it dawned on me that Behram was an angel and I wanted to marry him, and to who I actually proposed, and who (thankfully!) accepted, and the rest is history! And what a history! What a man! A greater human being than Behram I know I won't find. Not in this life, anyway.

To think there was opposition to my decision to marry Behram.

Well not my entire family, just my mom. But she wielded so much influence (naturally), most felt obliged to support her. A meeting was called and I was told I would be ostracised if I went ahead. I guess 1 didn't handle it too well. I told them just two days before marrying Behram. I did leave home but matters were settled soon enough for two reasons: One, a week after I was married, I developed something called 'double vision'. Word reached my mom, who'got paranoid and sent for me.
We met, cried and I was forgiven (I was cured in three weeks time, it was psychosomatic) and the second and more important reason was they started meeting Behram and getting to know him, and to know Behram is to love him.
On the other hand, Behram's family was most happy. His brothers Dadi and Danny who live in Europe and particularly Monique, Dadi's wife, were ecstatic. Also Naju Rustamji, Behram's cousin, was so delighted. She even presented me with some of the jewellery which belonged to Behram's mother. 1 was most touched.
Behram's friends (who were half of Bombay) were so pleased he was married, I became an instant hit. That I was so young added to their mirth. But Behram was one cool guy. If friends like Titoo Ahluwalia or Homi Mulla teased him about cradle-snatching, he'd be most unperturbed, he'd smile and ask 'jealous or what?'
The age difference was never an issue. Actually in our relationship I think Behram was the younger one. He was the party animal. He liked going out, meeting people, having a drink. His mind was so young, his way of thinking so youthful. If at all there were things we could not do together, they were the physically strenuous things like skiing and trekking, going dancing which I loved to do. He had already finished with all this (he had gone hitch-hiking to Europe and back in 1958 when I was not even born) so he would encourage me to do it with my friends.
If there were people envious of our marriage or tried to size me up, I was and am unaware. When I try to remember how I was, I'd say I was most unsawy about people and how important they were.
I was meeting all kinds of people but wasn't ever carried away by their wealth and power. Behram himself was so down to earth and I was quite real and natural.
Within two months of being married we started the Afternoon, which meant there was no honeymoon, no nothing. And it feels like I have just been working at breakneck speed all these years.

I am what I am because of Behram.

His special way of loving and caring, his depth of understanding. His simplicity. His gentleness. Phenomenal. I must have done something good in my past lives to have met him in this one. If I climbed every mountain and thanked every God for having graced my life with a man such as him, it would not be enough. In a world where nothing lasts, least of all relationships, I shared one, the j mere memory of which helps me endure the irreplaceable loss I I felt when Behram went away forever on April 9,2001.

It is one-and-half year now but it feels like it was only yesterday...

And I am not ashamed or embarrassed to say I cry everyday. In the strangest of places, oddest of times. It just happens. Because 1 see connections everywhere. With someone like Behram even strangers connect, then how can I not! As Busybee, he wrote about every darn thing in the city. Even about the pigeons on Marine Drive. There is a memory attached to everything. The Irani restaurant at the corner, the new flyovers... I have a story about every nook and crany of Bombay. How can I then not be overcome when I take a walk at the racecourse or drive past Chowpatty or look at the shimmering Arabian Sea, with the shores of Africa beyond? Only Busybee could imagine and express so evocatively.

Living without Behram does feel very strange.

Bereft of my glorious oak tree and its soothing shade it even feels scary, because now I am responsible for my own life, my future, suddenly I have grown up. I have to make decisions all by myself. Who do you trust? Who can I trust! Trust becomes the operative word. A huge keyword. Fortunately this was something which was strong with Behram. He trusted himself. I have started to think like him. I am now developing this habit and 1 find it helps. I am in the process of becoming my own best friend.

I miss Behram.

I miss holding his hand in bed and falling off to sleep in mid-sentence even while he was talking. I miss his subtle sense of humour, his quiet yet powerful presence. Behram was too huge. He will always live in me, be there in my
thoughts, actions and feelings.
Much to Behram's discomfort (for he was not overtly demonstrative), I used to often fall all over him and keep repeating that I could not love him more even if 1 tried. Now he is no more and I find 1 love him more than I ever did.
I am perplexed at the human spirit. That I continue to exist and carry on in spite of the storm that rages within me. Where do we get this strength from? What is it that quietens you, even if it is an uneasy quiet? I don't know. All I know is that I must be blessed. I have survived the loss of three important relationships in less than one year and four months, I lost my younger sister Shabana, to an illness on December 31, 1999, the eve of the Millennium! My eldest brother, Ishratbhai, in a road accident, on the very morning of the night that Behram went away forever. It was unbelievable, devastating.
For someone who felt like the chosen one all along and whose bed was full of roses, I suffered very much and today am coming to terms with reality and trying to understand that the only thing certain in life is death. And the only constant, change.
I do feel different and may have even changed. But I now have a new insight into the human mind. And lots of respect for it. As also for work. All of us at Afternoon House have assimilated Behram's principles where work is concerned. To acquire his total dedication and discipline will be a tall order and a real uphill task but we try. It's been 17 long years and one hell of a journey. Behram was a remarkable human being. His integrity, his attitude to life, his joie de vivre. In office he didn't encourage any fancy notions, designations were damned. And he had a preference for women journalists, he thought they were more thorough, more reliable.

Behram was a genius.

To write a daily column of that level of satire every morning for 36 years through three newspapers calls for 'God given talent'. No question. And he made everything seem so easy. He'd answer his own phone, would welcome visitors to office and see whoever wanted to see him, however unimportant the person or the task. He was always smiling. His day began at 5 a.m. He always said 'I want to die with my boots on'. And he did. It gives me a sense of calm when I think that on the last working day of his life, his famous 'Round and About' was very much there in the paper.
In his memory and everything that he stood for, I have applied myself to work and that has kind of saved me, kept my sanity. Work is my solace. Especially, 'Afternoon'. I am sensitive and sentimental about it. It's Behram's baby. It was his raison d' etre. Taking care of it zealously, working on it like a maniac, keeping his commitment to our readers, comes easy to me.

People thought, after Behram we would go under.

But now they walk up to us and tell us how proud they are of us, that 'Afternoon' never looked better, that it continues to be their favourite newspaper, and that it is truly a good newspaper. For that we can walk tall. I have much to be grateful to our very loyal readers, as well as Behram's dedicated staff, two of whom I would like to name. Mark Manuel and Rozina Gaziyani. It's impossible to find better colleagues.
It was Behram who urged me to start something new. I am so glad I launched 'UpperCrust' when I did. At least he saw five issues of it. Just a month before I lost him, one night in bed, which was when we always talked, he said to me, "Now I am not worried about you. But remember you must always work very hard."
I suppose Behram, wherever he is, must be watching me. I wish I had started writing when he was here. He would never have expected I would become a writer one day. That with reader support and friendly encouragement, I would attempt to use the space he ruled over for three decades and more... the coveted spot on the back page of our newspaper. Which reminnds me of an incident in the early 1980s...
Anita Juwarkar, my best friend in college, and I used to often ; to her home in Colaba, from St Xavier's College. One day rere stopped by one of those parrot astrologers sitting in arches outside Elphinstone College. We were in a fun mood so we sat down for a reading. The parrot pulled a card, and astrologer started reading our palms and telling us our futures. Anita would marry soon after college and have three sons! Then he looked at me and beamed. I had a great future! I would be famous. I would join the media. 1 would be a journalist. I would write. Anita all but rolled on the pavement. She did not stop laughing. Me, famous, a writer! Well, famous I don't know. But a writer I have become, and an editor and photographer. And Anita became Mrs Antao and got her three is! Moral of the story: never discount parrot tales.

I have had enough adventure in my life and more than my share of happiness in one lifetime.

Notwithstanding the fact that 1 don't have any children. The 28 nieces and nephews 1 have more than make up for this lack. The lestion of somebody replacing Behram does not arise. Frankly, I can't even think of it. I know friends may be well-eaning, but 1 find I can't discuss this issue. Give me a break.
I am content and for the present I have become a loner. I am trying to find new meaning, ways to overcome the emptiness that I do feel. But there is much for me to be thankful for. My loving husband ensured for me a comfortable future, left me a legacy rich in friends and wonderful memories.
Right now, I don't go out socialising too often. I don't feel the need to party. I come to my peaceful home on the 16th floor, shut the door and lock Bombay out. 1 read, I cook, I talk to the sea. I meditate, practice on my flute. 1 am also learning to watch TV. I meet my small circle of good, down-to-earth non-celebrity friends now and then, go for movies, or retreat on Sundays to the BeeHive, my green acre on earth in Karjat, where I work with my bare hands, touching soil, growing flowering plants, fruit trees and potatoes! There are very few hobbies more relaxing and therapeutic than tending a garden, believe me.

More than anything else, life today starts and ends with work.

I learnt froi Jehra- the joy of working relentlessly. I put my heart and soul in both heart and soul in both 'Afternoon' and 'UpperCrust'. Coming home tired every night, knowing I've put in my best, is very satisfying. The good feeling is a reward by itself. For me, that is fulfilment enough.
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