Dolly Thakore
Dolly Thakore
Dolly is a rockstar! She has waltzed her way through life, continuing even now, dancing to various tunes that play on in her mind
Text: Farzana Contractor Photographs: Rozina Gaziyani
Location: Gustoso, Mumbai
So Dolly, your book, Regrets, None, was just launched and you have told all there was to tell, how does it feel?
Wonderful! Making notes when Alyque (Padamsee) left me was cathartic. To see my handwritten notes in print, in the form of a book, was coming to terms with all that left me empty, lonely and devastated. A culmination of sorts.
But you did forgive Alyque, eventually. You spent the last year of his life, when he was unwell, looking after him…
My dear, holding a grudge for 42 years was bad enough. How could I not be with him in his hour of need?
You cooked for him…
Yes, he wanted to eat kheema aloo and akuri and French toast; things he used to like, that I cooked when we lived together for 13 years.
Do you cook now also?
Oh no, I hate it now. All that looking after the kitchen and the home is not something I enjoy at all, anymore.
Then who does it for you?
Murari, my man Friday. He walked into my life miraculously two years ago. Didn't know a thing about cooking, but I taught him. And today, he is an excellent cook. Not just a cook, he is an electrician, a computer repairman, a smartphone teacher, all in one. Thank God my routine life is sorted.
What're your meals like these days?
Oh, my diet has shrunk! Dal, sabzi, roti at lunch and Western food at nights. You know, like fish and chips, or a tiny piece of grilled chicken with a salad. But food is not a priority anymore.
Like it was in the heydays, when you kept an open house…
That's nostalgia now, my open house started when I used to live in London, when all kinds of friends would drop in for my cooking. Aloo gosht, yakhni pulao, tehri… It's another matter that each of those friends went on to become celebrities in their own rights.
Which are your favourite restaurants in Bombay?
Look darling, I could never afford to eat out on the money I made. So, it was always when friends were treating or celebrating an occasion. Which was usually at The Taj or The Oberoi. But yes, Khyber I went to often and Trishna, next door, too, always with Vinod Dua. When Sir Richard Attenborough was in town, it was always yum kakori kebab at Copper Chimney.
Vinod Dua… he just passed away, the world is mourning his loss…
I am, too. He was a dear, dear friend. From the time I was production-in-charge of his food programme on TV. I travelled with him to Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and Punjab, eating street food for the show. I always stayed with Vinod and Chinna when I was in Delhi, and I was in Delhi very frequently. Now with both gone, I don't have a home in Delhi. In fact, it was Chinna who taught Raju, my previous cook, how to make Khao Suay, the best in the world.
Raju, who has been with you for 40 years…
And is now looking after my Quasar, ever since he moved into his own pad, 15 years ago!
Theatre has been your mainstay, you've acted in 70 plays and still counting, name your most favourite ones.
Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire. Also Wings, which was not directed by Alyque, but by Janak Toprani.
Vagina Monologues has been going on for 20 years… quite a riot!
And finally we are being paid 1000 bucks each show! Started with Rs 100. Nothing I ever did paid well. As a newsreader I earned Rs 50 each day and we couldn't do more than two readings a week!
But TV and newsreading gave you your trademark!
Oh, you mean, my big red bindi. That it did. The bindi began when I used to live in Delhi, we all wore it to match the colour of our kurtas. Then when I started newsreading in 1974, I switched to saris and the big red bindi, made of velvet fabric, easy to use; stick on, peel off!
And your other trademark, the silver bangles that you never, never remove…
This was thanks to Dilip Thakore, the only husband I had. After we divorced, he got me a thin, slim silver bangle on our first divorce anniversary. Then another for the second year and the third… After that I just started buying myself silver bangles and that's how my collection grew.
So what do you look forward to now?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Been everywhere, done everything. Now I am ready to go up and play the harp. Join all the friends who have preceded me and who I miss: Protima Bedi, Lalita Das, Frank Simoes, Bal Mundkur, Shagufta Jaffery, my darling nephew, Ziya, and of course Behram Contractor whom I loved so dearly!
