Vijaya Sharma


When Sylvia met Kawas

Sylvia the beguiling English beauty for which one man lost his life and the other turned a murderer… It all began one day in 1949. In Porstmouth, England…

An eighteen-year old English teenager Sylvia met a dashing and brilliant Indian 24-year old Navy commander Kawas Nanavati. The young girl was swept off her feet by the handsome young voyager and perhaps swept away with his exotic and dangerous tales on the turbulent waters, battling the inclement weather and unforeseen dangers.

A whirlwind romance followed and in a month when Commander Kawas Nanavati proposed to Sylvia: "Will you be my wife, " Sylvia gave her assent.

Soon they were married. A simple civil registered marriage in England and then they were off to India. To Bombay. A strange land and new people for the young Englishwoman.

Hot, muggy and dirty Bombay from the eyes of the young English girl. People seemed to be in each others way always, milling around.

The Bombay social circuit unfurled in all its glamour and dazzle before Sylvia. On the social circuit, among other people in 1956, Sylvia was introduced to Prem Ahuja, the dashing highsociety playboy and his sister Mamie Ahuja. With Kawas life was wonderfully happy, writes Sylvia in one of her letters. Says Mr Karl Mehta, Director, Cine Blitz: "Sylvia and Kawas always seemed happy together." Prem, Mamie Kawas and Sylvia were soon friends and visited each other quite often.

But there were those times when Kawas would be away for long on his naval duty. There would be those problems. A new set of people and their diametrically different responses to cope with.
And no one to share the dilemma with…