And All Is Said : Memoire Of A Home Divided

In this unflinchingly candid memoir, Zareer Masani draws on the letters and diaries of his parents, charismatic politician Minoo Masani and his gifted wife Shakuntala, to paint an intimate portrait of two remarkable individuals and two families—the Masanis, Bombay Parsis, and the Srivastavas, U.P. Kayasths—united by marriage but divided by temperament, lifestyle and political affiliation. Minoo’s father, Sir Rustom Masani, was an ascetic scholar who scorned wealth and all the comforts it could buy. Shakuntala’s father, Sir J.P. Srivastava, arch-loyalist of the British Raj, made a fortune as a textile mill owner and brought up his daughter in the lap of hedonistic luxury. When the two fell in love and eloped, Minoo Masani was the twice-divorced leader of the left-wing Congress Socialist party. Later, he became a founder-member of the pro-free market Swatantra party, a man whom Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as his main ideological inspiration.