Let's keep loving each other: Jiske liye sab kuch chhoda, usne hi mere dil ko toda : Ruti Petit

38 years old, when I met him for the first time, I was 16. Seeing them, I was shocked. It was the summer of 1916. My father had a house in Darjeeling. My father was a client of 'J'. He invited 'J'-to spend the holidays. We met there for the first time. MC Chagla assisted 'J' at that time. There were also those in Darjeeling. He was witness to our relationship growing. In the mill industry of Mumbai, my father was considered a king. There were twenty four servants in our house at that time. Waiter and other people apart! To be honest, 'J' didn't have much fault. I was very beautiful… still I am beautiful, but then many rich people from Mumbai were befriending my father to marry me… I understood this and sometimes even told 'J', 'I will not commit suicide if you betray me. Marry a wealthy Parsi in Mumbai and remember that I will meet you at parties.' At that time 'J' used to smile…he spoke very little. He was relatively secretive and can be called a complex character. He rarely talked about his personal life, but when he did, his words always seemed lacking and lonely. I was fascinated by this tough personality of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. I was proud of his power, his fame and the women who surrounded him. I used to tell him repeatedly, 'You talk to my daddy.' Saying, 'I will do it when the time comes.' We meet privately. Sometimes he would stand on the road with his motorbike, just to see me! In Mumbai at that time, the Willingdon Club gymkhana and racecourse were places where the moneyed Mumbaikars spent their evenings. I used to insist my dad to take me in the evening. 'J' also used to come there. We used to meet in Daddy's presence. Then I would stand up and walk inside. 'J' would also make excuses and come in. We used to secretly steal the joy of meeting in private when daddy was busy talking to other people. One day suddenly he came to our house on the pretext of breakfast and said to my father, 'I want to marry your daughter.' My dad could never accept this. I was put under house arrest. If I go out, a woman goes with me. I was never left alone anywhere, but 'J' kept waiting for me for two years. I turned 18 on February 20, 1918 and we got married soon after. Daddy broke up with me. There was a lot of opposition to our marriage, so we got married in a Jewish ceremony. I converted to Islam and named myself 'Maryam'. However, we never used this name. I kept feeling like there should be a party. April 19, 1918… We got married again at Jinnah House. The wedding ring he gave me was brought by Rajaji of Mahamudabad. A beautiful party was held in the presence of personal friends and a few lawyer friends. We went to Nainital for honeymoon at Mahmudabad Palace. We spent the rest of the day at the Maidens Hotel near the Red Fort. 'J' was 40 and I was 16, but he never let me feel. He constantly surprises me, treats me like a wonderful lover! During his studies in England, he wanted to act in the play Romeo-Juliet. It would not be wrong to say that for a few months after our marriage, he played the role of Romeo day and night. *** This is the story of Ruti Petit… who was married to Mohammad Ali Jinnah (Jeena). Before that Jinnah got married which was arranged by his mother. His first wife's name was Amiben and she died while Jinnah was studying to be a barrister in England. Dinkar Joshi has written in the preface of the book 'Pratinayak', written after his extensive study, that Gandhiji and Jina are two names in the history of India in which one of them is called a hero and the other has to be called a Pratinayak or a villain. Jhinna's paternal grandfather Poonjabhai Thakkar, from a Vaishnav family originally from Lohana, was converted to Vaishnav mati as an Ismaili Khoja, then his youngest son Jhinya moved to Karachi to earn money. He earned money, became a barrister and came to Mumbai and formed a cult, a circle of his own. There will be many other couples like Ruti Pettit and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, in which a teenage girl is attracted to a middle-aged man and married against her parents' wishes because of his money, prestige, power, and the marriage lives like a fairy tale in the early years, but over time That marriage becomes such a horrible ruin that even its remnants become difficult to find. Ruti Petit's personal friend Kanji Dwarkadas also avoids mentioning this marriage and married life in his book. Tomorrow is Jeena's death anniversary. Many books have been written about him, but Dinkar Joshi's novel is perhaps the most informative and yet interesting book for Gujaratis and Indians. He has written in the preface, 'Gandhiji was a supreme man. No one can ever point a finger at his sincerity or insistence on truth, even his staunchest enemies. There is a glaring difference between the two, which is also seen in Gandhi and Jinnah, the two great characters of Hindustan in the present age. If Gandhi is called Yudhishthira, Jina has to be called Duryodhana. If Gandhi is given the title of hero, then Jinnah has to be called not a villain but a protagonist. If Duryodhana had not had the rampant Yudhishthira-hatred and the atom-by-atom ego, Aryavarta's eighteen Aksauhinis might have been spared. Today, thousands of years later, the same may have been repeated in the year 1947.'

Image Credit: (Divya-Bhaskar): Images/graphics belong to (Divya-Bhaskar).