@ Sonali, Thanks. (Please read following rejoinder.)
Kools,
I need to admit here, I've not read the book neither its detailed analysis anywhere. Whatever I said above was part of a formal discussion that we had at a coffee table conversation a few years earlier. The elder cousin who had talked about above parellels had imbibed the novel at the time of its episodic publication in Megazine. His insights are always sharp and factual and had a vast exposure to Guajarati literature. He had spoken about how Chitrlekha magazine used to admire the cause of Dhirubhai in his nascent years of fierce competition with Bombay Dying- an old established giant...more in the following vein (my impressions at recall)..."Sumati Morarjee was drawn to family business at a very early age and during as early as 1920s when Indian society at large was historically known to have ultra conservative standards of patriarchal obstacles for any woman in business. They had added adversity of stifling Governmental control (from both- British and Independent India) and a bolted misfortune of Government nationalization of their established shipyard at Vishakhapattanam. The articles about Sumti Morarjee used to appear in Chitralekha where HK became chief editor after its founder Vaju kotak." So yes HK must have taken the premise from two fond examples, synthesized them and come out with a catching story of his own imagination. How much actual facts had percolated in fiction is not known to me as MB had never been under my reading agenda, partly because my cousin had stated that he missed something substantially in MB by way of a satisfactory tale. One reason was heightened expectations from HK's virtuoso plot construction for his novels in general and some unfulfilled ambiguity on Devki-Vaibhav relationship in particular. About former I can happily vouch face from my own experience of HK novels namely- 'Jad Chetan', 'Sambhav-Asambhav' or 'Jog-Sanjog', interestingly, all deriving from some real life incidents (Jad-Chetan = Aruna Shanbaug, unfortunate nurse at KEM). About later, I think it's time to put hand on MB novel...Please indulge, if I am too verbose here.
Fan Fictions
Kabhi Neem Neem Kabhi Shahad Shahad
Debate Mansion
