New Delhi: Regrets, None by Dolly Thakore and Arghya Lahiri, Thakore’s memoir of her life and career as a feminist theatre artist, offers readers a rare glimpse into the world of glamour, fashion, films and theatre — from the 1960s to the present.
Published by HarperCollins India, the book will be released on 14 September on ‘SoftCover’ — ThePrint’s e-venue to launch select non-fiction books.
A witty, no-holds-barred memoir, Regrets, None is dedicated to Thakore’s son, Quasar. The book, Thakore hopes, will help him understand that she was not the first woman to be abandoned or the first single mother.
“It’s taken me eight decades of living, 40 years of sifting through memories, and finally Arghya Lahiri, to distill it all into a book,” Thakore said.
The memoir starts with an analogy for and an admission of the three decades it took to complete the book — akin to an individual attempting to quit smoking and relapsing, writes Thakore.
“Brief periods on the wagon — a chapter or two at a time. A process begun in a headlong rush, finished in wry contemplation. Anger burnt out. Realisation tended to with care. The slightly astonished realisation that there aren’t any regrets at all,” she writes.
There are mentions of her childhood in the national capital (or “Dolly from Delhi” as she labels herself), her years in London, her work in the award-winning film Gandhi and her lifelong love for theatre.
While Dolly Thakore is an experienced actor, casting director and columnist who has worked in several different industries, co-author Arghya Lahiri is a writer, theatre director, filmmaker and lighting designer with over 20 years of experience in the theatre industry.
“I feel privileged to have been able to help transmit some of [Thakore’s] stories — a sense of this incredible tapestry she’s managed to assemble over the decades, as a woman, a mother, a theatre-person, and a Mumbai-living, fire-breathing Indian of a very particular kind — to the world at large,” Lahiri said.
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