A mother's defence

Indrani Mukerjea's memoir tells her truth-unvarnished and unfiltered

- MANDIRA NAYAR

Indrani Mukerjea is learning to live alone. She is home after six and a half years in the Byculla women’s prison, in the house no longer for Mr Mukerjea. Single, and with a lot of “me time’’. She dances everyday. She’s been getting lessons in ballroom dancing with a friend. There is yoga four times a week, and each morning begins with kickboxing. At 51, she is now fit, free and fighting. “I am almost healed,” she says.

On Instagram, Indrani is kitted out in boxing gloves and still learning to throw a right hook with force. But on paper, she is in form. Her memoir, Unbroken: The Untold Story, is defence at its most damning. “[The book] is my response, not a reaction,” she says. “Which is why I took my time.”

She spares no punches. Unbroken is her side of the story in one of the most sensational murder cases in India. It is a blockbuster of a book, a no-holds-barred account of everything, from her first husband Sanjeev Khanna’s conservatism to the relationship of Peter, her “favourite” husband, with his first wife, Shabnam, which became a cause of marital discord and her reason to “testify” in the Karti Chidambaram case. “It was something that was on my conscience for a long time,” she writes.

It is a Monday afternoon, and Indrani is back from Kashmir. We are having a Zoom interaction, and she sits on a rust leather couch with deep orange cushions. You can see a lift button in the beige background—a hint at the sprawling house she now lives in. Unlike the sheer white earlier, her hair is now completely black. Hair dye is a detail that she is clearly obsessed with. (Appearances are important to her.)