Dina Wadia: Farewell, Jinnah's daughter, dead at 98

Dina Wadia died on 2 November at the impressiv

e age of 98. She was the only child of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan - though there was a breach between the two when she did as her father did and married a non-Muslim.

She strenuously avoided public attention. But after five years of striving, I managed to meet her in her apartment off Madison Avenue in New York in September 2002.

I was in the US to cover the first anniversary of 9/11, and Dina said I could come over. She lived in the sort of exclusive apartment building where you didn't get into the lobby, never mind beyond it, unless you were expected.

She wouldn't allow me to record an interview - she insisted nothing should be on-the-record - she wouldn't permit herself to be photographed... though she relented as I was leaving, and let me take a photo of a life-size, full-length portrait of her painted in London in 1943 when she was expecting her son, the businessman Nusli Wadia. (Alas, the photo didn't come out too well.)

With her death, I am released from the bonds of confidentiality - and while there's nothing particularly surprising about what she said, I can at least set it down.

I was struck as soon as she opened the door by her appearance. She was spry and petite, wearing bright red lipstick - and with her high cheekbones and aquiline nose, and somewhat imperious expression, she looked strikingly like her father.

Indeed, I remember the shock of that first glance upon her - her father's daughter.

Dina Wadia was charming and friendly. She showed me a photo of her beautiful mother, Rattanbai "Ruttie" Petit, a Parsi, who died when her daughter was nine. She was brought up largely by her maternal grandmother.

On her desk was a photo of her father. She spoke of her pride in Jinnah. Yes, they had quarrelled over her marriage to Neville Wadia - who was born a Parsi but converted to Christianity - but they made it up, and often spoke and wrote to each other. She says her father rang her from Delhi to say "We've got it!" when he won the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan. Her own temperament and personality, she reckoned, came more from her father than her mother.

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