When the cameras moved away

After a quick wedding in 2008,it was the turn of a quick separation. Chand Mohammad went back to being Chander Mohan and returned to his wife and family but Fiza remained Fiza.

She returned to her Mohali house where she lived alone and from where she plotted ways to get back into the public eye. In those last few lonely years,she tried to make an impact and get back at Chander Mohans family. Having lost her job,she attempted to resurrect a public role for herself,which would let her get even with her in-laws (the powerful Bhajan Lal family),whom she held responsible for her loneliness.

After Chander Mohan deserted her,all the energy that Fiza had previously reserved to network,charm and woo the world,was frittered in trying to file cases to avenge her desertion,worrying about petty neighbourhood fights that soon resulted in legal implications,or just trying to take off in the real world as a serious political animal.

Rohit Mahajan,her friend from Panjab University,says,She used to tell me,life mein kucch bada karna hai. Public life mein,kahin bhi,logon ko lage ki hum the. Even after the cameras switched off,she looked for the spotlight.

Fizas lawyer-friend of 12 years,Paramjit,describes the last few months of her life as those of any person whose life gets disturbed and who tries to retrieve some remnants of lost prestige. She hadnt been practising law for a long time and wanted to seek revenge through a presence in politics and public life.

Paramjit says just ten days or so before she died,she had wanted to file a case against Chander Mohan and ask for maintenance. I asked her to get her nikahnama so I could proceed,but I did not hear from here again, he says.

As a bitter Fiza smarted from Chander Mohans betrayal,she decided to campaign against Bhajan Lals family in the October 2009 Assembly elections in their stronghold of Adampur in Hisar district. After that,she firmed up her resolve to find a suitable platform to challenge the family,even meeting the local BSP leadership this June. Her acquaintances say,in August 2010,she floated a party-cum-social organisation called Fiza-e-Hind,playing on her name Fiza,which means atmosphere.

Her friend Paramjit says it was less of a party and more of a cry to be heard. But she managed to collect associates like Panchkula-based Babban Zaidi,who saw her as a victim of her pushy,straight-laced neighbours.

Says Zaidi,Fizaji was once staying in a Panchkula flat,which she had rented and frequented often,for longer than she had planned. She sent me to her home in Mohali to get her a few clothes. When I went there,I faced a lot of aggression from her neighbours. I was worried for her. I told her to move to Panchkula permanently,but she decided to stay on in Mohali.

As she tried desperately to get back into public life,she also tried to keep up with her new faith: reading the namaz and the kalma,keeping rozas and at the same time remaining a Hanuman bhakt,meditating for hours.

***

The eldest of four sisters,Fiza Mohammad,born Anuradha Bali,was the daughter of a military engineering service officer Dharam Paul and a homemaker mother Savitri Devi. The family belonged to Ambala but the children grew up in Chandigarh. Fiza studied at a Kendriya Vidyalaya and went on to study law at Panjab University. She practised at the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Chandigarh and in 2005 was appointed Haryanas assistant advocate general. Her quick rise raised a few eyebrows back then and started whispers about how she had made it.

Her friend Rohit remembers her as a striking-looking girl who turned heads. She was very beautiful. As she stepped into class,all heads would turn to her. But it wasnt just her looks,it was her attitude which ensured that she stood out, he says.

Anil Kaushik,a lawyer who began his practice in 1995,around the same time that she did,says,She had tremendous spirit. Though her mothers death two years ago saddened her,she never gave up.

Dr M Rajiv Lochan,a historian at Panjab University who knew Fiza in the early nineties when she was studying law,says,It was a time when terror and violence had affected student life in Punjab but she did not care two hoots and was never scared to speak her mind.

During this time she also married a little-known transporter but no one knows much about that marriage or how it ended. It was while she was practising as a lawyer in Chandigarh that she is said to have met Chander Mohan,then the deputy chief minister of Haryana and son of Bhajan Lal,one of the most powerful leaders of the state.

In November 2008,Fiza,then Anuradha Bali,disappeared with Chander Mohan,who was already married to Seema Bishnoi. They resurfaced a fortnight later,claiming to have converted to Islam. Bali changed her name to Fiza and Chander Mohan to Chand Mohammad. They got married on December 2,2008 in Meerut but announced their wedding to the media only on January 11,2009 at Fizas home in Mohali. The marriage,with the quick conversion thrown in,had TV audiences under a spell. Images of Fiza and Chand beamed down to background scores of eternal love as they shuttled between Chandigarh and Delhi,holding press conferences on their love.

Then came the desertion. Barely 20 days after they announced their wedding,Chand left her. Fiza alleged he was kidnapped and pointed a finger at Kuldeep Bishnoi,her husbands younger brother. In the meantime,police spotted Chand near Raj Ghat in New Delhi and took him to the police station,from where he said he would go back home. However,he went missing again only to resurface outside his brother Kuldeep Bishnois house in Panchkula where he told TV channels that he was missing his first wife Seema and their children and could not stay away from them.

As relations soured between Fiza and Chander Mohan,she filed a complaint of rape,cheating,intimidation and hurting religious sentiments against him,but the Punjab police gave him a clean chit. On March 14,2009,Chander Mohan called her up from London and uttered talaq three times. He also sent her an SMS with the message.

Fiza was back in the spotlight but this time,the media focus on her was no longer flattering. She was now the fallen woman who liked big cars and loud music and Chander Mohan was projected as the victim who took the bait.

With Chander Mohan back in his family fold,Fiza too returned to her parental home in Mohali where she lived with her mother who died two years ago in 2010.

Fizas neighbours say they saw her come and go but she never stopped to chat with them. She emerged occasionally only to pick fights with them. While her immediate neighbour refuses to even discuss her,others down the road say they saw her sometimes,fighting with neighbours and even with children. One of the fights ended in an FIR,a court case and even a head injury for Fiza.

Fizas family friend Dilip Mahajan says,This injury is what prompted the story that she was on anti-depressants but the medicines she was taking were for her head injury.

In 2009,Fiza allegedly attempted suicide by consuming sedatives,but friends saved her. A neighbour who didnt want to be named says,Anu didi was always keen on being famous. She never had much time for us. Says another neighbour,She used to often shout,saying the down-market activities of her neighbours were bringing down the value of her property and that children were not supposed to play in the park.

But all along,her desire to be in the public sphere never faded away. She took another shot at fame,appearing on the reality TV show Iss Jungle se Mujhe Bachao in April 2010,but its ratings,like her,never made it.

Last week on August 6,Fiza,41,was found dead at her home in Mohali. The body was highly decomposed,swollen and was lying in the bedroom. Police suspect she died four to five days before her body was found.

Santosh Singh,a sociologist who has lived in Chandigarh and who now teaches at Ambedkar University in Delhi,says,Her death is the death of ambition. She was bold,driven and anxious to be famous. But she was a woman and she was not from a well-known family,otherwise she embodied all the values the world celebrates nownetworking,pushing herself and looking for unconventional methods. But even women now cite her ambition as a reason for her downfall and loneliness.

***

On Tuesday,August 7,about 20 people turned up for Fizas cremation in Chandigarh. Her paternal uncle,Sat Paul,lit her pyre. Her sisters,Monica and Aditi,were there but were too disturbed to say anything. The fourth sister,Gudiya,lives in Malaysia and could not make it to the cremation.

She had asked me to come over on Raksha Bandhan. I did not go. I wish I had. I tried reaching her after that on the phone but couldnt. That was my last conversation with her, says Sat Paul.

Naseem Ahmed,who was associated with her organisation Fiza-e-Hind,too regrets not having made it to her house for iftar. She used to keep rozas and had invited me for an iftar on July 30. I couldnt go. I should have.

Fiza,perhaps,was getting familiar with loneliness. Not many of her family came visiting her or reached out to her except for an attempt by an uncle to stake claim to her house by offering to help by coming and staying on the second floor. She shooed him away.

Lochan of Panjab University says,Even a modicum of social support would have ensured Fizas life didnt end as abruptly as it did. The loneliness of her body going undiscovered for days speaks volumes for problems of modern Indiafull of signposts of modernity,but when encountering aggressive women like Fiza,takes them right back to the old worldview.

Her life in focus

July 1994: Gets her law degree from Panjab University,Chandigarh

1995: Marries a small-time transporter but the marriage does not last long

March 2005: Appointed Assistant Advocate General,Haryana

November 2008: Elopes with Haryana Deputy Chief Minister and Bhajan Lals son,Chander Mohan. Both convert to Islam

December 2,2008: They get married but announce it to the media only in January at a press conference at Fizas residence in Sector 48,Mohali

January 29,2009: Chand deserts her

February 1,2009: Fiza accuses Chand of rape,files criminal case in Mohali court. Chand goes missing,is traced in London

March 14,2009: Fiza and Chand get divorced

June 2009: Fiza attempts suicide

August 2010-June 2012: Gets arrested three times for getting into brawls with her neighbours

August 6,2012: Found dead in her house in Mohali