Author finds her muse in city

Feb. 6: Art imitates reality. This adage came alive for author Shrabani Basu, who penned Victoria and Abdul about the relationship between Britain’s Queen Victoria and her clerk Abdul Karim, when the descendants of the latter surfaced in Bengaluru soon after the release of the book here.
The family of the Agra native, who was promoted from a waiter to the Empress’ munshi and soon a close confidante, were eagerly waiting to meet the author who researched their ancestor to pen a book. The Indiranagar residence of Qamar Jahan, granddaughter of Abdul Karim, wore a festive look ahead of the meeting with the author.
The 85-year-old woman, who is the child of Abdul Karim’s adopted nephew Abdul Rashid, lives with her son in the city.
Abdul Karim had, Shrabani Basu wrote in her book, taken his nephew Abdul Rashid along with him to London from Agra. He was a witness to the rapport shared between the Queen and Abdul. “It is an incredible feeling to see history leaping out of pages,” said an overjoyed author Basu, adding that, “I knew Abdul Karim’s descendants would be surviving. But I had expected them to be living somewhere in Pakistan and had requested Pakistani journalists to keep an eye out for them. During the Partition, a majority of Karim’s relatives had moved to Pakistan. But then, they happened to surface in India that too in Bengaluru, a day after the book was released,” she said.
Ms Jahan’s son Javed was thrilled to see a book written about his family member and had traced the whereabouts of Ms Basu to meet her. “I will read the book to my mother and in the process, I will also learn the kind of life my ancestor led,” he said.
At their meeting, Ms Basu got to see rare pictures of Abdul Karim, Abdul Rashid and the Queen, and also a few letters exchanged between Buckingham Palace and Abdul Karim’s wife.
She is also likely to receive the diary written by Karim, currently in the possession of Ms Jahan’s brother, Shahid Mahmood, who lives in Karachi. The diary details the day-to-day affairs when munshi Abdul Karim was living in Victoria and unearths more details about his association with the Queen.