Malavika’s Mumbaistan: Wit, Wisdom, Warmth and Kiki

Long before the advent of social media, Kiki was the original connector of people, her sumptuous book and art-lined apartment at Cuffe Parade, served as one of the city’s most vibrant meeting points, where the cultural doyennes and city intellectuals converged

In an age when the ubiquity of WhatsApp groups is a constant and people find it onerous to keep up with the banality of online chatter, it is curious that some of the most enthusiastic witty and civilised conversations are transpiring between people of diverse professions, persuasions, geographical locations and ages, on a recently formed chat- created by a ninety year old great grandmother based in Shivaji Park.

Malavika’s Mumbaistan: Wit, Wisdom, Warmth and Kiki

But of course, Kiki (Shakuntala) Watsa is no ordinary great-grand mum. Besides being a lady of wit, warmth and wisdom, what makes her such a Mumbai institution is the fact that she has been a trailblazer and pathbreaker for well over seven decades!

Way before the advent of kitchen goddesses like Tarla Dalal and the foodie phenomena, Kiki, writing under the nom de plume of Premila Lal ‘had carved her place in the hearts and minds of urban Indian women as the reigning ‘recipe queen’ of magazines like Femina way back in the Sixties.

It was a very different India that Premila Lal had presided over. No television, limited foreign travel and primitive telecommunication.

In this scenario, the arrival of a magazine which addressed the needs and aspirations of a housewife, in Gauhati or Ghaziabad, was almost like manna from Heaven.

With a deft hand and a steady ladle Kiki had guided a new Indian woman into a growing new India. But it is not only for her success as India’s first food diva that Kiki has won herself such a diverse and vibrant community of fans and admirers.

Long before the advent of social media and Facebook, Kiki was the original connector of people, her sumptuous book and art lined apartment at Cuffe Parade, serving as one of the city’s most vibrant salons, where the doyennes of its intellectual and cultural life like Gerson da Cunha, Pearl Padamsee, Camellia Panjabi, Rahul Singh, Raj and Romesh Thapar, Hiroo and Yash Johar, had feasted, argued and often thought up their brilliant ventures and projects.

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Kiki’s story begins nine decades ago when a prosperous land owning family in Dar es Salaam relocated to India, on the invitation of Prime Minister Nehru.

Kiki’s father had been a brilliant agricultural scientist and on Nehru’s behest, had moved back with his family to the country of his birth to contribute to nation building.

The move had taken the family first to Srinagar, and then to Mumbai

where they lived in a sumptuous apartment at Malabar Hill, with all the trappings of privilege and pelf.

Always being artistically inclined, Kiki had enrolled in the JJ school of Art and found herself greatly drawn to the emerging, progressive artists group and to the many art, theatre and culturally vibrant attractions in the city.

Her marriage to Jay Watsa, a dashing alumni of Cambridge, who worked as an executive with a multinational and was himself the scion of a prominent professional family had made artists, poets writers and thespians flock to the couple’s homes in Bombay and Alibaug.

Because, such had been the adventurous spirit of the young couple that way before Mumbaikers had discovered the salubrious paradise lying on their western shores, the Watsas had bought themselves a piece of land in Alibaug , had endeared themselves to the local populace and along with their three sons, had plunged themselves in to the joys of rural, agricultural living on weekends and whenever their schools and work routines permitted.

Kiki says this was the happiest time in her life But alas, it was not to last. A freak accident at their home in Alibaug in 1975, while Jay was attempting to repair their roof one morning robbed Kiki of the love of her life and to her great shock and grief, she found herself bereft and alone - a widow in her fifties with three young sons to bring up.

From a woolly headed dreamy artistic young girl she says she ‘d had to transform overnight into a dynamic powerhouse.

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Besides becoming the country’s best known recipe queen there were many other firsts to Kiki’s credit. Many remember how her distinctive aesthetic of wearing kaftans and pairing them with exquisite tribal silver jewellery at a time when her contemporaries were weighed down in traditional silks and gold had set a trend.

Then again, it was largely Kiki’s penchant for scouring the by lanes of Chor Bazaar for second hand pieces of antique furniture that had inspired many of her generation to do the same. She had transformed what people discarded into pieces of beauty and value. What she had done with her Alibaug property was just as seminal. Realising way ahead of the curve that the sandy tracts of beach and shore would become prime property for a rapidly developing city, Kiki had astutely bought pieces of adjoining land whenever she could. On these she had built a series of charming cottages which she rented out to grateful tenants.

It was rumoured that the main criteria for renting a cottage from Kiki was that you had to be young, creative and bohemian, which had resulted in some of the city’s leading architects, authors and restaurateurs as her neighbours. To them she played mentor, muse, confidante and agony aunt. And many are the talents that have been nurtured and groomed by her.

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Of course, Kiki’s life had not been left untouched with sadness and tragedy. Which life cannot be? After losing her husband suddenly, one would think Kiki’s chalice of grief would be full, but no, she also had to witness the passing away of her beloved eldest son Hemant.

Not only that, but to add to her challenges, around this time well into her seventies she’d had to relocate from her cherished apartment in Cuffe Parade, where she’d spent most of her life, to the suburbs and a very different lifestyle.

But in all these years that people have known her, few can recall her whining or wailing.

Sure, she will tell you about her various aches and pains in passing – often she will allude to the loneliness and challenges of growing old.

But even as she does this, there will more likely than not be a conspiratorial twinkle in her eye as if to say ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get here too - if you’re lucky’ and just as quickly, she will change the topic to the discussion of art, events, people, current affairs and the issues of the day.

Because unlike others her age, Kiki takes life with a cool handle, her door is always open, her mind is free from prejudice or judgement. She is tech savvy and well informed and not set in her ways or weighed down with expectations.

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Realising that her loved ones are scattered and distracted by their own days and lives and with the help of her twenty- something nurse Mansi, she came up with the idea of keeping in touch with them on a WhatsApp group -thus inviting everybody to join her party.

And what a party it has become-celebratory, devoid of pretence, attitude and aggro and like its creator, full of wit and warmth and wisdom.

For in this doughty woman, almost as old as the hills and certainly as enduring, you have the closest you’ll get to the Wise Old Woman of Mumbai, someone urbane, inclusive and courageous, who has seen it all, done it all, survived it all and continues to do so - much like the spirit of Mumbai itself.