On Father's Day four of India's famous daughters reminisce their dads

Musical Ties

"I don't think they make achievers like him anymore," says Purvi Parikh of her sitarist father Pt Arvind Parikh, who strides the worlds of business and music with equal elan. The classical vocalist and the brain behind the out-of-the-box furniture and lifestyle store Tranceforme Designs in central Mumbai should know. "Through his powerful personality and the example of dedication he set with the way he conducts his own life, he nurtured those values in my brother and me."

She credits this aspect of his personality with helping her achieve whatever she has in life. "He hates clutter and tries to live with the barest minimum. You should see his cupboard. He gives away anything he feels is not absolutely essential. And this was not only about his belongings. To date, every minute of his day is planned down to the last bit and you should see the lengths he goes to to adhere to that schedule."

In fact, the sitarist's legendary generosity has ensured that the Parikh home has always welcomed people from all walks of life. "He will go out of his way to accommodate any request from a student. He is that giving. In fact when it comes to his music, he has always made it clear that he will do exactly like he wants."

Late sitar legend and Arvind Parikh's guru Ustad Vilayat Khan would often stay at the Parikh home when he was in Mumbai. But he wasn't the only one. Greats like Ustad Amir Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan (who wanted bhajiyas fried in pure ghee), Ustad Bismillah Khan (who would regale everyone with his semi-classical folk renditions), Begum Akhtar (who insisted Pt Parikh make her his student) were all frequent visitors of her father.

"There is so much one imbibed from just being around these greats and my father as they talked about music. Even if all of it didn't make immediate sense, it's amazing how bits of it keep coming back to me on my own journey in music."

Pt Arvind Parikh's Pilu, which she calls one of the best improvisations of the raga she has heard, or his own creation Raga Gunjikauns are all the result of the churnings of interaction with those senior legends, according to the junior Parikh. "We'd rarely attend parties or go out socialising. Soon after he came from office, the house would resonate with his sitar and the whole space would be enveloped in it."

And though she understood few intricacies as a child, she brazenly dissected his radio performances. "He'd always humour and encourage me. Now when he reminisces stuff I said, I can only guffaw in embarrassment."

Chairman of the Indian transportation organization Lemuir Group and director of a travel and tourism company and his family-owned group which manufactures printing accessories, Pt Parikh would keep the family abreast of what was going on on that side of his life at the dinner table. "He would talk about his corporate life and the markets over dinner and this was where I picked up so many nuggets that I find handy today as I run Tranceforme Designs."

Though she too trained in sitar, she admits that she never took to it like her brother Snehal "who was very good at it". Purvi stuck to art, painting and vocal music, taking from her late, vocalist mom, Kishoriben.

Yet she insists that in temperament, she is like her Dad. "In fact I am a bit more headstrong than him. So if we argued, we'd often sulk for 3-4 days till he made the first overture to talk." While she celebrates and looks up to her father's legacy she laughs as she calls it a "deterrent." According to her, "The standards that made me set for myself have always been just unrealistically high and I don't see myself surmounting them."

Her Father's Shadow

You see her sitting beside him at events, standing just behind him when he greets people, accompanying him on campaigns — it is evident that Pratibha Advani and her father, senior BJP leader LK Advani are close.

"Dada" - that's what Pratibha calls her father - "and I are many, many years apart but we've been best of friends over the years. He believes in me and trusts my judgement. Especially since mamma took ill in 2012, we've really held each other strong," she says referring to her mother Kamla, who died last year.

Both father and daughter have a common love for cinema, books and music. "Cinema, especially," says Pratibha. "I go and see a film and recommend it to him if I like it and then we go and see it together again. Since childhood, dada has been fond of two things — cinema and cricket. While my brother has inherited his love for cricket, I have his love for cinema."

But what was it like growing up in a household much at the centre of national politics — Advani has been a member of Parliament for close to 50 years, president of his party, held various ministries including home and information and broadcasting, and was designated deputy prime minister for a period?

Quite normal, says Pratibha. "In spite of the fact that dada has always been in political life, and we've always been in the public glare, my parents gave us — my brother Jayant and I — an upbringing which made us feel like normal people. So much so that my father would also drop me to school — I went to Modern School, Barakhamba. Many a times in the morning, he would drop me off. It was a normal childhood." The only difference was that sometimes, as a minister in the government, he would come to the school to preside over annual day functions and give away awards. "I also got a few awards and it was always nice to have him give me an award," says Pratibha.

There was, however, never the feeling that they were more privileged than others and so would be treated differently. The result, says Pratibha, is that "even though I've had security around me all the time, it hasn't stopped me from leading a normal life. I go out shopping or catch a movie with these guys sitting behind — I just give them popcorn and coke."

She is also grateful that both her parents allowed her and her brother to make their own choices. "I did my graduation with honours in zoology from Hindu college (Delhi) but later got into television quite by accident. But they were cool — it wasn't as if anything was forbidden to us, or I had to adhere to certain norms — wearing something or not wearing something. They've been very open," says Pratibha. The same applied to the question of following her father into politics. "He has never pushed me," says Pratibha, who has campaigned regularly for her father in his constituency in Gujarat. "Even when the matter has come up — people bring it up from time to time — I have never seen a reaction from him. I can only conclude that he has left it up to me."

Pratibha, however, has always found it moving how people react to her father — the way they touch his feet with reverence, come up to meet him respectfully, get themselves clicked. "People love him, not just as a politician but as someone who wants to do something for the country. When I've campaigned for him in Gujarat, people older than me come and touch my feet and I feel very embarrassed. 'No, no, no, you're dada's daughter they tell me'. It is quite overwhelming," she says.

A Poetic Legacy

Across the city, actor-activist Shabana Azmi remembers her foreboding while leaving for a padyatra for communal harmony from Delhi to Meerut. "Nervous and uncertain, I'd been warned of dangers on the streets of Uttar Pradesh. Mummy, Baba, his wife Tanvi and Javed were all tense. I walked into Abba's room and hugged him from behind. He pulled me up front, looked me in the eye and said, 'Arrey meri bahadur beti dar rahi hai? Jao, tumhe kuchch nahin hoga!' It was as though oxygen had been pumped into my bloodstream. The padyatra was a big success."

She is talking of the one of the brightest stars of Urdu literature, Kaifi Azmi, whose writings, poetry, life and thinking were resonant of each other. This has ensured it stands the test of time, finding newer, younger fans of his poetry even today.

She underlines how most of his works did not happen in the luxury of quiet solace. "With him, the creative process occurred over the radio blaring, children laughing with friends over taash in the house. We were never told to hush because he was writing. In fact, when I once shifted his desk away from the door to give him privacy, Abba put it back in the original position by evening."

Recollecting early memories of her home, she said: "Begum Akhtar, Josh Malihabadi, Firaq Gorakhpuri, and Faiz Ahmed Faiz would often come stay with us too despite there being no separate guest room. I resented it since I'd have to share Baba's room. Guru Dutt, Chetan Anand, Balraj Sahni, Sanjeev Kumar, MF Husain, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Ismat Chughtai, Farooq Shaikh, MS Sathyu, Shama Zaidi, Sahir Ludhianwi, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Madan Mohan were all regular visitors at our home," and added, "I feel privileged to have grown in that tiny home which was the venue of many mehfils. I'd sit in rapt attention, not even half understanding what they recited, but excited nevertheless. Their beautiful words felt like music to my young ears."

Yet as a young girl, little Shabana found her father "completely different" as he never went to office and wore white, cotton kurta-pyjamas instead of trousers and shirts like other fathers did. "He didn't speak English and I called him abba not daddy. I fretted about my school friends finding out that he was a poet. In my mind that was just a euphemism for someone who didn't work."

Shabana's school required both parents to speak English. "Since neither of mine did, I faked my entry into school. Sultana Jafri, Sardar Jafri's wife, became my mom and Munish Narayan Saxena, a friend of Abba, pretended to be my father. In Class 10, the vice-principal said that she'd heard my father at a mushaira and he looked quite different from the gentleman who came in the morning on the annual parents' day. I went blue in the face and said: 'Oh he's been suffering from typhoid and has lost a lot of weight, you know…' and made up a story to save my skin," she laughs. "It was only when he began writing film lyrics, that his name was mentioned in the newspapers. I was ecstatic that only my father's name was in the newspaper. For the first time, his being a 'different' daughter of a 'different' father felt special."

Having spent her childhood travelling with her mother Shaukat Azmi's Prithvi theatre on one hand, and Mazdoor Kisan meetings with her father, she still remembers the red banners, naarebazi and protest poetry. "Even now, my politics and the stand I take on issues like exclusion are an extension of my father's thought process."

Politically Yours

When Mumbai North Central MP Poonam Mahajan took over as head of her party's youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, she was only the second woman to head the outfit after Uma Bharati. But it's also a post that her late father Pramod Mahajan had held while beginning his innings in an illustrious political career.

"The one thing my father taught me is that no one is bigger than the organisation. I am glad that my hard work has been recognised. I will use this opportunity to work for my party and better its chances everywhere. This is a golden decade for India. My heart is in my city and I want to see Mumbai transformed as among the best global cities,'' Mahajan has said in the past, an indicator of how ably she is carrying the legacy of leadership come down to her from her father.

Explaining what this means to her she says: "Legacy is not leaving something for people, it's leaving something in people. My father believed in institution building, he was a true organisational man and patriot. It's been 11 years but not a single day goes by when I'm in a new city or any session parliament I don't hear a new exciting story about my father. I think that's the legacy he's left. My job is to work on that path and be honest to my work."

Four years after her father's fratricidal murder, when this trained commercial pilot, only 29, contested her first assembly election from Mumbai in 2009. Though she had managed to get a party ticket, many even in her own party were not so supportive. And this only heightened after she lost to her father's former associate, Ram Kadam (now a BJP MLA) of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.

But that was a different Mahajan. From being seen as a pushover novice, she is now respected as an efficient organiser, an aggressive go-getter who negotiates the political turf with elan. He rability to connect with the masses and the way she rebuilt ties with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), party bosses in Delhi and Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis has also not gone unnoticed.

Those close to Poonam pointed out it was the 2009 defeat and consequent turning of friends into foes that steeled her. Her efforts for self-improvement benefited her the most, her associates said. Her endeavour included public speaking tuitions to changing the wardrobe to party work to brushing up on political and social issues to speak at rallies and functions.

Despite the Modi wave in 2014, she had it anything but easy her party's former MP Kirit Somaiya pipped her to the ticket from Mumbai North East, despite the fact that he had lost twice. Not losing heart, she decided to contest from the Mumbai North Central constituency, a Congress stronghold most in the BJP though was akin to political suicide. She not only won that election but it turned her career around.

The way she has made herself indispensable to the city's big projects by using her MP status to co-ordinate and push city's agenda with Union ministers partnering and enjoying the support of CM Fadnavis has seen her earn a lot of respect. "The way she drives key initiatives, works with teams leading from the front and remaining accessible and stays focused on execution instead of being drawn into asides is such a throwback to her father's leadership qualities," said a Union Minister who was once among her staunchest critics. "Now she is not only in full grip of her political aeroplane but flying it new heights with confidence."

(With inputs from Gargi Gupta)