Like Minds: Meghnad Desai with his fiancée Kishwar Ahluwalia

Lord Meghnad Desai is in love — truly, deeply, madly. The object of his adoration, as all of India knows following extensive coverage of their engagement, is Kishwar Ahluwalia, who edited his book, Nehru’s Hero Dilip Kumar in the Life of India.

This is the first time, though, they have given a remarkably frank interview about the most intimate aspects of their relationship. For Desai, at least, the memorable lines in The Beatles song seem to take on more than a passing relevance: “Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I am 64?”

The Indian peer, who will be 64 on July 10 this summer, and Ahluwalia, 47, plan a register office ceremony in London, followed by a Mira Nair-type monsoon wedding in India.

Of course, he is not the first prominent Indian to marry a younger woman. V. S. Naipaul was 64 when Nadira Alvi, who was in her 40s, kissed him at a party in Pakistan, and launched him on a romance he subsequently described in Mills & Boon terms. With Ravi Shankar and Sukanya, mother of his love child, the age gap was even greater.

With Desai, what happened seems altogether more innocent. After only five brief business meetings with Ahluwalia in Delhi, he flew home to London in January. “All the action was on the phone,” he reveals. “We had not even touched each other by the time I left India, nor held hands or anything like that,” he adds candidly. “I have been cut off by every telephone provider in England,” he reveals. “BT has cut me off, Vodafone has cut me off on two different mobiles because nobody would believe anybody could spend that much money talking on the phone. I spent £2,500 in four weeks.”

He points out: “It was only by talking we got to know each other better than many people who get into a physical relationship before they talk.” The couple are now inseparable as they walk arm-in-arm through the corridors of the House of Lords, the future Lady Desai looking graceful in a black silk sari. They then settle down, holding hands, on a sofa in one of the magnificent halls in the House of Lords.

Ahluwalia, who was once a senior executive with Zee TV, urges Desai to act as “spokesperson”. “I will behave like a good Hindu wife and nod my head every now and again,” she jokes.

Desai was previously married to an English wife, Gail, but has been separated for over eight years. He remains close to his children, Tanvi, 32, Nuala, 28, and Sven, 26. He was so convinced he would never remarry that he offered odds of “million to one” against it and did not even bother to get divorced (which he will have to do now before he can remarry).

He was blissfully happy, shuttling between the London School of Economics where he remains a professor, and the House of Lords, and living in his Pimlico flat in the week and, at weekends, in his beloved house in Hastings where he had shifted his 10,000 books and painted the walls vivid yellow and red.

“I feel the exact opposite of lonely,” he declared. “I feel absolutely perfect being on my own. It is one of the greatest pleasures in life.”

And then, “lightning struck,” says Desai. “I saw this woman and, by the third day, I suddenly realised that there was something very special happening to me. Since I did not know what the Indian rules of the game are, I did not know how to proceed.”

Ahluwalia was more cautious. “I can’t really say there was any sort of thing that hit me on the head,” she says. “It was a gradual thing which was so nice. There is nothing that engages a woman’s mind more than a man who is interested in her, in the sense of interested in talking to her.”

Cohabitation is now more popular than marriage in Britain but Desai says he had a conversation with himself which went something like this:

Desai 1: “You’ve seen a pretty woman. Calm down, have another drink, forget about it.”

Desai 2: “This is absolutely special.”

Desai 1: “Are you going to give up everything you have achieved to get married?”

Desai 2: “It has to be a complete commitment on my part.”

Desai 1: “You are just saying, ‘Come on, I fancy you.’”

Desai 2: “I want to marry her, I want to spend the rest of my life with her.”

Desai 1: “You must be bloody joking.”

Desai 2 won the argument and the girl.

“It takes a lot of courage — on her part,” he notes. “I could have been a bloody thug.” He agrees he had never been a “good Indian”. “I was never part of any ethnic thing and I came to the House of Lords, not for anything I had done on race relations but because I am an economist and because I was chairman of the Labour Party in Islington South. When Neil Kinnock nominated me for the House of Lords, it had nothing to do with my being Indian.”

With Ahluwalia, he enjoyed their rapport on novels, films and theatre. “The fact that we were both Indian had something to do with the chemistry because we share a number of things,” he acknowledges. “I did not chase her because she was Indian. I chased her because she was Kishwar.”

The “I” in their conversation has been replaced by “we”, as they discuss future collaboration on films and books on Nargis, Begum Sumroo, Amir Khushrau and others. She compares her alliance with Desai with the Saif Ali Khan-Preity Zinta romance in Kal Ho Naa Ho: “Gujju boy, Punjabi girl.”

Desai comments: “What it is to be 63 and to be in love is that you feel like a 23-year-old but it is a very much happier 23-year-old. All the anxieties you have when you are 23 are not there. You are much surer about your own feelings. We made our mistakes in our first marriages.”

Happily, their children — she has a son, Gaurav, 22, and a daughter, Malika, 21, from her first marriage — are supporting their wedding plans, although Desai himself is not sure whether their love affair holds any lessons for young people. “I have taught long enough to know that they don’t listen,” he laughs. “But there is a lesson for older people. That it pays occasionally not to be cynical.”

As for the question in The Beatles song, he knows the answer.