Feisty at 90: Netaji's disciple keeps his spirit alive

She turns 90 in five months, but you'd never know from Momota Mehta's erect posture and her forthright way of airing her views. At the recent high-profile launch of In Search of Freedom, in which author Sagari Chhabra looked up and spoke to members of the Indian National Army (INA) in India and Southeast Asia, Momotadi surprised many by publicly reprimanding its publishers for the seven-year delay in bringing out the book. Not for her the polite platitudes that usually get spoken on such occasions. "This is an important book and many who Sagari met and interviewed were eagerly looking forward to it. It is sad that many of them never saw it," she said, loudly and firmly.

Perhaps it is from Subhas Chandra Bose that she imbibed this spirit of undaunted spunk when she joined the INA in 1943 in response to his call, "Tum mujhe khoon do, mein tumhe azaadi doonga". Momotadi was 16 and studying at the Bengal Academy School in Rangoon then. "My aunt Pratima Sen, a schoolteacher, had been invited by Netaji to join INA. Everywhere, people were giving their money, jewellery and children to the cause. All of us six brothers and sisters joined."

Netaji's charisma was clearly a huge influence on the impressionable youngsters then, and remains so now. "You will not find anyone from the INA without all their teeth or a straight back," Momotadi claims. "Do you know why? Because all of us take care to rub our gums when we brush our teeth. Netaji told us that. He also directed us how to have a proper bath. Most people simply rub soap over the body and wash it off. Netaji told us to always use a small towel to vigorously scrub the body with. He showed us how to clean the back by rubbing the towel diagonally across," she says, demonstrating how it pulled back the shoulders.

Momotadi remembers how the girls, who became part of the Rani Jhansi Regiment, the first all women regiment in Asia, were lodged in a camp outside Rangoon and given training in how to wield Bren (light machine) guns, machine guns and revolvers, the same as men. "Only the ack ack [anti-aircraft] guns were not given to the girls – they are heavy and dangerous, Netaji said, so let the boys handle them," Momotadi recalls.

But the heady excitement of those days was offset by later upheavals. In 1947, Momotadi married BC Mehta, the son of Pranjiwan Jagjivan Mehta, a rich Rangoon businessman and close friend of Mahatma Gandhi. By the 1960s, however, the family had lost most of its wealth and when her husband died in 1965, Momotadi moved to India. With two sons to support, she needed a job and, thankfully, had little difficulty finding one due to her impeccable English pronunciation and authoritative personality. But it was a tough life.

Today, Momotadi lives in a small apartment in central Delhi allotted to her by the government, along with her son, his family and a large, golden brown Labrador. She was on the verge of being evicted around a decade ago, when the efforts of Chhabra and others helped secure a letter from former Prime Minister IK Gujral assuring her that she would not be turned out during her lifetime. She gets a pension, but it's a "small amount", she says.

"When I go to the government office to meet the officer to speak to him about it, they don't allow me past the reception. But you should see the way I tell them, clearly and loudly, how this was the office of the government and the government was ours."

Inevitably, she says with a twinkle in her eye, she gets her way.