“Please look after Sanju, see that he does not get mixed up with those silly boys again. He is too stupid in his head, he does not realize what he is doing and know it is going to hurt him,” wrote Nargis to Anju, as Namrata is fondly called by the family, while going to US for her treatment.
Talking about the fear and pain of the realisation that she might just have to leave her family behind forever, Nargis wrote, “I am in such a mental condition, I have gone far away from all of you, and I don’t know what is going to happen but I have faith in God, he is not going to be so cruel as to not send me back to all of you. I know how much all of you love me, keep praying for me that all will be well with me.” The letters are part of a forthcoming book written by Priya, Namrata along with some contribution by Sanjay Dutt titled, ‘Mr and Mrs Dutt, Memories of our Parents’ and is scheduled to be released by Roli Books later this month.
In a letter to Sanjay after he was sent to a boarding school, Nargis asking him to concentrate on his studies and keep doing well without even giving a chance to teachers to get angry at him.
“Now you have promised to do even better and I promise I will come and see you every month. You know you are our only son and we have great hopes on you. You must study hard and become a big man so that you can look after us in the old age,” she wrote.
In another letter to Sanjay, she advised, “So no more crying. Pay attention in your class. There is plenty of time for you to play. Please Sanjay, be attentive in your class, you must do this much to please your mother.”
Sanjay has often talked about the trauma that the family had undergone because of the demise of Nargis and how he turned to drugs to overcome his griefs but Namrata provides much deeper insights into how the family reacted after Nargis’ death.
She writes, “Dad was devastated. He couldn’t sleep in their bedroom any more. We volunteered to sleep in the same room as he did, but he’d wake up in the middle of the night and leave. In a panic, we’d get up and look for him, only to discover he was lying on the sofa in the living room, having fallen asleep again. Sometimes he would go to the graveyard at four in the morning and just sit by Mom’s grave. Finally we realized we had to act maturely and be strong for him. He must have felt completely alone. He must have wondered, “What am I going to do with these three children? There’s no one to share my life. No one I can talk to.” He had shared everything with Mom. His work, his life, everything, and now she had gone,” says Namrata in the book.
She adds, “Priya and I gradually took over the running of the house. I had never entered the kitchen before, and now had to take charge. Fortunately we had a cook and staff who lived on the premises, and so the house began to function again. But the ordeal of the past few years caught up with Dad. He was overwhelmed with grief. He was unable to work or sleep. He was falling apart. Nothing made sense to him any longer. He had tried to save Mom, but failed. All the statues and images of gods and goddesses were removed from the house and immersed in the flowing seawater. We were angry with God. How could He have done this to us?”
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