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One of the common certitudes of our species is that we know the world that we live in.
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I would argue that not only do we not know it, we don't even see it.
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All of us exist in a bubble of our own, surrounded by infinite invisible worlds.
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If we are in a car in a traffic jam, the beggar at the signal or the hawkers on the pavement
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may be invisible to us, the waiters at the restaurants we dine at, the domestic help
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around us, the building watchmen, all invisible.
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If we are men, we do not see the extra layer of awareness all women carry, such as when
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a stranger walks in their direction on the footpath, or when they enter a lift filled
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The exact construction of our bubble changes from moment to moment, but there are always
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things we do not see, and often, things we choose not to see.
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Defining ourselves by identities of happenstance, we divide the world into categories based
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on class, religion, caste, gender, nationality, and so on.
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We wear these identities like straight jackets, restricting ourselves and the better angels
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But one thing that can temporarily make us forget these barriers we have built is art.
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We can all be transported by a beautiful image, or get lost in a piece of music, and then
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the divisions between us don't matter.
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But even that art may be shaped by those divisions.
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And in any case, when the music stops, we are back to being our narrow parochial selves.
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It is a rare artist who, even after the song is over, can continue to peel back the layers
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics, and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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My guest today is the remarkable T.M.
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Krishna, who is not just a legend of the Carnatic music world, but also a fearless public intellectual
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who has spoken out repeatedly over the years against the very structures of power that
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he himself benefited from, the orthodoxies of Brahmanism and patriarchy.
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T.M. has written numerous books, most recently Sebastian and Sons, and is arguably one of
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India's most powerful voices today.
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In the context of his art, an uplifting voice, and in the context of his politics, a discordant
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And honestly, in these times, we need both.
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Before I begin my conversation with him though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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If you're listening to The Scene and the Unseen, it means you like listening to audio and you're
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TM, welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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Lovely to be here, Amit.
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So you know, you know, before we start talking about your book or about your music or about
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your politics, let's kind of go back to how you started as a musician.
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Like you were a bit of a child prodigy, weren't you?
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I like the word prodigy.
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You know, my home was a home of Karnatic music, definitely of Bharatanatyam, all these arts.
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But we are a business family.
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My dad was a business person.
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So we are not a family of musicians like we usually hear about in India.
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But at the age of four or five, apparently I showed some talent.
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I used to hum the tunes my mother used to sing.
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My mother herself was a trained vocalist, not on the professional stage, but she was
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She did a graduation in music actually, post-graduation in English.
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So what happened was, I mean, I started singing when I was about five or six, formally.
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I never wanted to be a musician.
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I grew up playing cricket on the streets, hated the music class thrice a week.
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Me, I'm a left-hand batswain.
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I'm very proud of the fact that I'm a left-hand batswain.
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So presumed that I'm naturally elegant basically.
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I used to love to sing.
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There's one thing I never felt any inhibition.
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I know that you go to anybody's home and they say sing a song, I would just belt it out.
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So that was one thing I was quite fearless about singing.
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But I never thought I'd be a musician.
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I got to school, 10th grader, I was economics.
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I wanted to be an economist.
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And that was my big dream.
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My God, you could have been on the show talking about something else entirely.
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How horrible the show would have been.
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So I must tell you what Amartya Sen told me when I told him, he said, thank God.
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He feared the competition would out.
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He's like, oh, I couldn't have tolerated another economist in the world probably.
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But I wanted to be an economist and I had this whole plan in my head, Delhi school,
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LSE, as if they're going to call me and invite me, but anyway.
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But I started performing when I was about 12.
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My first concert was when I was 12.
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And people thought I was talented and yes, he has a bright big voice, young guy, sings
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And I was within the world of Carnatic music and I was within the power structures.
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My uncle was the president of the music academy, Chennai, which is like one of the premier
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And you were descended from T.T.
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He actually started the academy.
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T. Krishnamachari is one of the founders and he is my grand uncle.
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So I come from within the power structures of high art, whatever that is.
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And therefore even, so then I started taking it more seriously.
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And I think it was about 92, 91 when I had a series of concerts and I remember a lot
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of senior musicians and colleagues, young coming and telling me, you should take this
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And that's when it struck me that, okay, maybe this is something I should be doing.
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And you're like 15, 16.
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I'm just getting into college.
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And when I went into college, my honor grads in economics, of course, and by the second
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year I was singing concerts a bit here and there and people said, okay, this is kid who
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I had to make a choice whether it's music or whether it is economics.
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And I come from all the privileges in the world.
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I looked, I went to my dad and said, he said, do what you want and I'll support you.
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That's when I took the plunge to become a singer.
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And then things just kind of rolled.
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There was this association formed in 1985 called Youth Association of Classical Music.
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It's very interesting that young people who were interested in Carnatic music formed this
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organization because in the eighties there was this whole thing that Carnatic music is
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It's all old people stuff.
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There are no young people singing, no young people listening.
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Although there were young people who were willing to sing, they never got opportunities.
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In India, the grayer you get, the more intelligent you're presumed or more talented you're presumed.
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And so these guys did something quite remarkable for its time.
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They said, you know what, we will organize concerts only for young people below the age
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And those were days when there were no sponsorships.
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So for the first time they went to Corpitz and got like 500 rupees, thousand.
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So I became a member there later and then all that.
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So we had a community where you could talk about a raga and a tala, which is not a cool
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thing to do in school, right?
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But I think all that was part of growing up for me and my interest in jamming with people,
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So it was a lot of fun, I must say.
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And there seem to be, have been two other journeys you've been on.
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One of course, as a scholar, where you've all studied the history of the music and kind
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of looked at all of that, a scholar come historian, so to say.
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And two, of course, there's politics.
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How did these two sort of evolve?
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Like initially, like, you know, you said you, you were going to be an economist and then,
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you know, you decided that fine, these concerts are being received well.
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So was it partly that the concerts are being received well, or did you just love the music
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enough to say, this is what I want to do and nothing else?
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And when did the tendency towards A, the scholarship, figuring out what the history of this is
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and figuring out what is behind all of this come from and B, is that what then led to
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Well, most of this is like a post-facto kind of understanding how the movement took place.
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Because honestly, I think many of these movements just take place and you're in the flow of
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And it's, I don't believe it's ever a moment.
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I think the moment we talk about is a moment when you realize it.
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It's already happening in its background.
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So I think it's, it starts with my home and my school in terms of how I grew up in at
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There was nothing that was taboo.
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You could talk about anything.
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You could ask any question.
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And so there was this, there was this definitely Catholicity in that at home and open speaking.
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My school was a school that came from J. Krishnamurthy's philosophy where it was about asking questions.
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So you know, even the notion of how does one ask a question?
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You know, those are things discussed in school, you know?
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So I think that place of these two places play a very important role in what happened
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to me later because they kept me open.
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And they kept me in check and though, see, once I started performing and opportunities
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came by, I mean, it's a drug.
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It's like being high always.
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I mean, when somebody comes, you know, whether you're young or, you know, someone says that
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you're like incredible.
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I mean, you have incredible talent and they keep telling you that you just love it.
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In fact, if the applause is not enough, it bothers you.
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And then as a musician, you will do something to get that thunderous applause.
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And I always tell my students, you know, when do you really practice, for example, you know,
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we say sadhana and all that, Riyaz, whatever.
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The truth is most of the times when we are practicing at home, we hear the applause.
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So it's, it's fascinating how it works.
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Like you're singing at home and you finished a phrase and you can actually hear it in your
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head because you're dreaming of it the next day on stage.
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So can you cut yourself off that?
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And actually really these are, these are all very interesting challenges that I think artists
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And so I went through this.
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I was extremely ambitious guy who just want to be at the top.
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My wife will vouch for my ambitiousness and my cutthroatness.
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So I want to say this because it's not like, you know, I've always been like this and asking
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No, I've had this whole ride where I just didn't care a shit, that's the truth.
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But I think what happened after a while is I kind of figured how to be successful as
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And that's can be a good feeling and a bad feeling.
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The good feeling is because you can then belt out successful concerts.
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You know what you need to add to your repertoire, add to your skillset to keep moving ahead.
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But then I think something happened to me saying, is this all this is about?
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You know, is this all music is about?
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I mean, is it just the fact that I can please X number of people and I know how to please
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them again and again and again.
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I'm going to do this all my life.
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So I loved it, but that question did come up in my head.
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And I think that's when I started diving into history.
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So you know, even questions like, you know, what was this music like 100 years ago?
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What was it like 150 years ago?
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And once I started doing that and did some research and we did some archival work, I
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It was about 2002, 2003.
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So you're about 26, 27 at this time.
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And then we started doing this research in this archival work and this reading up.
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I started reading treatises.
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I started bothering scholars with questions on Sanskrit on what does this word mean in
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Matanga has said this, you know, all these crazy things.
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And I spent a lot of time trying to understand it with my limited abilities.
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I think that's when a lot of things hit me, you know, about history, about everything
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being old, that we are some way continuing something that was preciously given to us
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All these things became question marks for me, first musically and nothing to do with
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society or politics, just aesthetically.
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You know, I'm it, you know, I believe I'm a carrier of Indian culture, you know, especially
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if you're in the classical world, you believe somehow you represent this incredible idea
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You know, this has been sold by us to the world over for the last 70 odd years.
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So what am I really selling?
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You are selling something.
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Let's be very brutally honest.
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This is not some pristine thing that you're protecting.
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Do I mean, and I believe it.
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So what am I holding on to?
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What are these notions of this antiquity, the sense of purity, sense of something that's
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unchanged that, you know, people just handed over like this precious ceramic piece of art
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that you can't even crack or modify.
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So all these questions started appearing and then some of the things that I thought that
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music was like, I thought today, if somebody sang like that, it would sound horrible.
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So I'm like, so what is beautiful?
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You know, we look at certain colors, certain designs, and we say that's Indian beauty.
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Is what construction is that?
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So I think all this started the moment this started within a few years, and I can tell
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you that I never wrote a book for a long time.
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You know, I was just doing this because I have an OCD, I get obsessive on something.
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I'll just keep doing it.
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So I just kept doing it.
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And I was not doing a PhD or anything.
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I was just doing it because I was just fascinated by what was happening to me and to my understanding
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And did it sort of help that this is also the time when the internet is taking off?
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So you have a lot of sources online or you didn't have so many then?
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I, well, the early 2000, not so much, but I think through the years it did help.
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But a lot of my sources then were actually the texts and actually scholars.
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I used to go call them at 10 o'clock in the night, spend one hour talking to them.
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They were very kind people, putting up with this young guy who was asking this question
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You know, but the first impact of all this happened in the way I was singing.
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And I very naturally, I started fiddling around with the idea of the performance.
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Every art practice has a performative, a form.
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And the, we should realize that the form is, is a reflection of the art, right?
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But after a point of time, that performative becomes the solidified notion of the art.
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So slowly I started playing with the performative, you know, because I felt, you know, if it's
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all just about the way I design something and offer it packaged and give it to you,
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then it's just so simple.
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So that was a moment when I started, my music started changing.
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I didn't notice it was changing.
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The audience didn't notice it.
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They didn't see anything radical.
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I had not like made a big shift for a long time.
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But I, after a point, I knew I was listening differently, you know, I was, I was looking
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at a concert differently.
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So that's where it began.
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But the moment all this happens, I think you're also asking questions of society, of, of people
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who's singing this, you know, who was singing it.
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So when they sang it, how did it sound?
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So when you ask these questions, then you're automatically asking political questions.
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And first of all, you're asking these questions of yourself.
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So I must tell you that it is not like these ideas of a cast or anything, but in my, any
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part of the horizon for a long time, it is a word I never used in my life.
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You know, it is even in the most democratic open home of mine cast was never discussed.
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It came only because of this kind of confusions and all these struggles that were happening.
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And that's when identity became gender.
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All these questions started appearing in my view.
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And people often have the view that in contrast with other kinds of music, and I'm sort of,
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I don't know Carnatic music very well, so the listeners and you will have to forgive
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me if I say something hopelessly naive, but it's often looked at as something that is
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very rigid and that has become ossified through the years.
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Is that rigidity also a consequence of what's happening in, in the background socially?
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First of all, like burst the bubble of Hindustani Khayal musicians.
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They are also ossified and rigid.
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It says the notion of rigidity and ossification is different.
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So I have to put it out there.
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So the point is, I think it's true.
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So without going into the idea of rigidity and what it means, I think there is definitely
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this, um, it becomes crusty, no doubt, whether it is Hindustani music or that's also because
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of what we think it represents.
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I think that's a very important aspect we should think about.
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Because we believe that in that form, it symbolizes something and we are more interested in the
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That's the point of the performative.
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So the performative becomes a symbol of identifying something about India, something about our
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sound nada, uh, you know, all these notions and you know, whether you believe in it or
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not is a different issue altogether.
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So we want that symbol to remain and we believe that any movement there kind of demolishes
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the symbol and we've created this symbol and there's no doubt that all that has played
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a role in keeping something unquestioned.
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And I want to say something.
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People make us say that, no, no, no, but certain things have changed in the last 60 years.
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Neither Khayal, neither Carnatic music is the same.
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So the question is, what do you allow to be questioned?
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What don't you allow to be questioned that society does brilliantly, right?
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We know what can change.
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I can probably change a raga.
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I can introduce a new raga.
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I can do some, you know, all these are surface level operations, right?
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Because after a point, a musician should be able to do this, but then what about the fundamentals
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of what the music itself represents?
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What are the non-negotiables in your, in your idea of the music?
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You ask those questions, those are political questions.
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And those questions will never be asked, especially of the so-called classicals and I call them
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the so-called classicals because you believe that you are the moral, ethical, aesthetic
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identity of what is Indian culture.
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Everything else plays around.
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So you know, so when you start figuring this stuff out, like one, I think it's almost then
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if I read you correctly, an act of rebellion and changing the music itself, because that
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itself is a political statement by changing the way you perform your questioning the sort
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of existing structures.
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But what it also strikes me is that what must be very difficult about figuring out the politics
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behind all of it, how these entrenched cast structures have played a part, the damage
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that they've done to society in general, the privileging of the classical over the non-classical,
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all of this, you're also questioning yourself and your own place because you are a product
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You are at the center of it.
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How hard was that process?
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Like it must be so tempting to say, you know, everything has its own place and I'm just,
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you know, art is by itself and all of this doesn't matter and you know, well, it was
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very difficult, especially in the beginning because there was a time period when I was
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worried I will lose the music because my question was if everything is so political, if everything
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is so entrenched in, in ugliness of sorts, then is there anything to this at all?
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You know, should I be saying aha or is saying aha itself an act of violence, for example,
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in the sense that am I saying aha because I am doing that out of habituation of reiteration
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of identities or is the aha beyond that, you know, you can't really say honestly, you can't
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So there was a point I was saying, suppose after this whole exercise, I don't feel the
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That feeling, that fear was real because I knew if an, if I push honestly, I could get
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a point where everything in this music sounds ugly to me because I believe I've said everything
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Everything is political.
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Everything is discriminated.
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So the whole thing is then collapses, right?
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In my own emotional and psychological world that fear I did have, were there moments when
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Uh, no, I think what's, what saved me, if you want to use that expression, I won't use
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that expression is that there were moments in the music still when I believed that that
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sound somehow at least temporarily made me see the ugliness with greater clarity.
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Um, so I said, okay, maybe it could be a myth that I'm creating this whole thing.
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What I'm telling you right now, it could be, I'm not, I'm not a psychologist.
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I'm not a person who can judge that.
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But there were moments when I said the clarity with which I could see the ugliness because
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I was singing or I was listening to the music, I was not having a discourse.
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I'm singing a raga and then pop for about five minutes.
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There is greater clarity.
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I said, okay, if the sound can give me that, maybe there is some truth to it.
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Maybe there is something that is true to art that it can really move across it, but we
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There is something that drags us back into who we are.
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So that's what gave me a hope that, okay, I can still sing.
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I can still feel, and I can still say I'm ugly.
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So what I thought was a contradiction then moved away from becoming a contradiction became
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more real that these things always exist together.
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The profound and the profane are not opposites.
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They are constantly with each other and they're truly real when in a way you feel both, right?
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So I mean, this question about art is also something that I think is alive in other contexts.
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Like is art something separate from itself from a, uh, the social structures and the
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politics that have led to it and from me, from the artists, because more and more we
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find that we look back upon time and we say that, all right, these artists were accused
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Should we read their books or these artists were, you know, assaulters or Neruda raped
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someone when he was whatever.
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Should we read their work?
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And that becomes sort of a big question.
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And on the one hand, it seems to me that at this moment in time, if you sing a couple
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of notes and it moves me in a particular way, my being moved by just the sound is something
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that is surely independent of where it is coming from.
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So that art, that music per se stands apart, but at the same time, it's, it's kind of,
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uh, I mean, do you agree that it stands apart or do you think that, uh, I'll try and answer
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So this notion of art for our sake, you know, it's a very well used cliche.
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My problem with that, that construction is somehow inside that construction is a disassociation
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with reality that somehow with this bubble floating at 7,000 meters up there and we're
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all looking at it in wonderment, but I'm saying, suppose you redefine art in that statement
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and say art is reality with all its layers.
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And when everything, something has multiple layers, it's automatically profound.
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When it is flat and literal, there is nothing else to it.
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So we make it a bubble.
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We're making it flat and literal.
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We are taking away the layers of it.
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But when we say art is, we are in the studio, having this conversation.
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Art is not just what I'm saying and what you're saying.
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It's about what you're evoking.
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It's about what the recorder is looking at.
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It's about what I see out of the window.
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It's about all the complexities that's going in my head and your head as we're having this
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conversation beyond this room, then it becomes something so vibrant, right?
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So I would like to trust that kind of art, okay?
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It doesn't mean that art has to be, that has to be like overtly political.
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No, I'm not saying that to your second question.
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That's in fact, something I've struggled with, the artist and the art, you know, what does
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And I don't have a correct answer to it.
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I tried grappling with it in a piece I wrote about Wagner, Tiagaraja and about Polanski,
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very three different reasons.
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And I want to bring Daniel Barron-Bowen here.
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He's a very well-known Jewish conductor and he did something which really impacted me,
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So you know what Wagner's music represents, an anti-Semitic kind of history and he's performing
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in Jerusalem and Barron-Bowen says he's going to perform Wagner with an audience of Jews.
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That was such a profound idea to me.
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Now, do we dissociate Wagner from the music or do we say Wagner is independent to what
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the history, historical impressions he leaves and it's just music?
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But Barron-Bowen does something interesting.
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He kind of conflates both.
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He brings the individual in or what the individual represents in and he says, I still want us
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Now, what does this do to the experience?
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I think that's where we have an interesting muddle.
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So do I not stop watching Grumman-Polanski?
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No, but I'm saying if we can in a way keep that tension real between the horrible things
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of the artist and the most moving things of the art produced or art object, then that
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tension gives us a different experience.
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So we can condemn what the artists read, but celebrate the art.
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At the same time, but we can't forget it.
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I'm saying at the same time, I have a problem if you say, I don't care what kind of person
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I'm not willing to do that.
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I'm saying you have to allow that tension to be there in your experience.
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It may change the way you experience the art.
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But if you say, I don't care about who the person, the artist is, that to me is again
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another way of just brushing something under the carpet.
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So it's a complicated situation for which there's no absolute answer.
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I find it evocative what you say about art being so complex with so many layers and that's
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what makes it beautiful.
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But in modern times, what often happens is that politics looks for simple narratives
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and therefore embracing this complexity and accepting that this one is like you pointed
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out that on the one hand there is the ugliness to deal with and on the other hand there is
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all this beauty can get hard.
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And a related question to that is when you were writing Sebastian and Sons, for example,
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whenever you've kind of looked back on history, how hard is it to not judge historical characters
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by contemporary morality?
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For example, some of the people in Sebastian and Sons like Vaidyanathan Iyer or later,
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you know, Palgatmani Iyer, where you write about Palgatmani Iyer, you can see how a lot
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of that entrenched Brahmanism is there in his behavior and the things he does.
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But at the same time, he has an extremely tender relationship with Parlandu, who is
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his, you know, chief maker and it's almost touching the sort of bond that they have.
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So, you know, and versions of this question can go back forever to Jefferson and his
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slaves and all the way.
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So, you know, when you look back at history, do you try to disassociate contemporary morality
#
Or you say that, no, you know, there's also something useful in looking at the things
#
they did with this lens.
#
I mean, I think it's important to look at all this as a flow, okay, whatever direction
#
I don't think it's correct to impose upon modern morality or modern ethical living because
#
this is also a movement.
#
We are not in some absolute position even today, right?
#
But at the same time, I think putting a lens on what happened is very, very important because
#
the tendency for us is to say it was all then like this and now we're all somehow perfect
#
in some sense, you know.
#
And I find that deeply disturbing.
#
So when you put the lens on something behind, you're also saying, okay, but what does it
#
And what I like to do is also when I put the lens on history to add some layer of nuance
#
into that because Manir is not a flat person.
#
I mean, he's not like, you know, so as you said, there is this whole tenderness, there
#
is love, but there is hierarchy.
#
There is this inability to accept the reality, inability to go beyond his own limitations.
#
So that is interesting for me because that is as real today as it was then because I
#
I think we all like that in the sense that there are some things we can see and it's
#
almost poignant that they're invisible to him.
#
And there are so many things that must be invisible to you.
#
And which is why that lens is important.
#
Even putting the lens on Manir with the things that he was blind to somehow reflect upon
#
That is what I find interesting.
#
It is not about the character itself.
#
It's about the fact, okay, just to see if I'm, you know, somebody that Sebastian Sons
#
and just see what you described as, you know, this tenderness.
#
And they also see this, can they think about themselves, you know, in some way, can I think
#
about, I mean, I do that.
#
Can they think about what they have normalized in their own lives?
#
That is truly the hope that that is why it makes sense.
#
Looking at the past for me, at least as a writer, because it then, I think I, you can
#
use those because I don't think society in terms of how it operates in frameworks has
#
The frameworks are all the same.
#
It's the interior, the semantics and the structures that may vary.
#
The basic framework is the same.
#
So can we just shift the framework and say, so even in the book, when you see it move
#
through time, you will see that the framework is constantly there.
#
It's just a negotiational table is changing, right?
#
So that is for me very important.
#
And for me where your book also works is that it's not, it is both a political and a non
#
It's a political book because of course it is looking at all of these things that are
#
All of these power structures of Brahmanism is playing out how misogyny and patriarchy
#
and all of those are playing out.
#
But what it also refreshingly does is that all of these people are humans to me.
#
You know, I begin to feel that like someone like Mani, where I both have enormous empathy
#
for him and you know, you feel like, okay, he's trapped in that, you know, he might be
#
doing some things which we would not approve of today or do ourselves, but he's kind of
#
trapped before we sort of get to talking about the book, which is a very rich and interesting
#
For those of us who are not so familiar with it, which really includes me also to an extent,
#
give us a summary of what you discovered about this world of Carnatic music, about all the
#
sort of the unexpected ugliness that lay behind through the book, not through this book particularly,
#
So I mean, I grew up in the interiors of Carnatic music.
#
Um, and I grew up in the interiors having the privilege of being an elite in the interior.
#
So, you know, I had it all, you know, yeah, I mean, it's, it's like, I was not a middle
#
class interior representative.
#
I was an elite interior representative, you know?
#
So I even looked down upon the middle class structures within it.
#
You are the Karan Johar of Carnatic music.
#
I'm going to let that pass, but I will go on.
#
But so, um, I lived it, um, I was definitely part of the power corridors.
#
How much do I dissociate from it?
#
And that's, that's what I live with all my life.
#
And so I did not see any of these things for a very long time.
#
But then when all these, you know, internal churnings happened towards me, I mean, within
#
me, I think I was asking these questions of myself.
#
Uh, you know, I was asking these questions of, you know, okay, what am I really representing?
#
What am I really singing?
#
And what is that, that pleasure that I'm getting from it?
#
The moment that the ugliness I discovered and is not unique of Carnatic music, Carnatic
#
music is my entry point because that's, that's all I knew.
#
Uh, is the fact of how patriarchy, how casteism are so normalized, I think that's the biggest
#
learning for me that it's so normalized.
#
There's a homogenousness to it.
#
And homogenousness is, is in fact taken as a conditionality, you know, the kind of people
#
who should come, where should this art be produced?
#
What is the ideal place that you should consume it?
#
How should the people there behave?
#
How should the women who come to the concert dress and how, what did my music class tell
#
I had to, why was that the music class was not just about music, but it was about so
#
And what was being conveyed to me, you know, all these likes started hitting me.
#
And I realized that the entire world is a world of, of a certain homogeneous upper caste
#
patriarchal structure and within this we are celebrating Indian culture.
#
And not just by default, there are rigidly enforced entry barriers you cannot enter from
#
You know, it's very important to understand how these entry barriers operate, you know,
#
and they've operated in different ways through time.
#
Again, when you go back to the past, but the barrier is still there.
#
It's these invisible screens, you know, it's, it's everybody knows that, I mean, it's,
#
there's this move I always use this, I have used in reshaping art.
#
There's this time movie called Kaka Muttai and I would urge everybody to watch it.
#
I think it's one Amazon prime or something.
#
And there is this scene and the scene is this, the story is very simple.
#
It's about these two kids who a pizzeria is open in their locality and they are kids from
#
a neighboring slum and they want to get into pizzeria and the watchman looks at them and
#
So they then decide they need better clothes.
#
And if they wear better clothes, they'll be allowed in.
#
So they decide to go to a mall.
#
So they go to this, two kids go and they turn the, you know, just turn the end of the road
#
and they see the mall and one of their brothers, one of them looks at them and said, Oh, as
#
if they're going to let us in, you know, nobody has said they can't enter the mall.
#
The kids have seen the mall and they have decided that they're not going to be allowed
#
So this is what we should understand with great care.
#
So these designs are always there.
#
We design society to decide who can come in, who cannot come in, what sound can come in,
#
When do we throw somebody out, when, when do we allow somebody in?
#
So for example, how do I need to change in order to be acceptable?
#
We see this world over.
#
It's not just in India with ethnicity, it's color, it's race.
#
So it's like everybody's is playing a part.
#
The person who has power, cultural power is making sure these notions are there, making
#
sure that they keep changing according to time, but fundamentals are there.
#
People who want to look at social and cultural mobility are saying, okay, how can I become
#
And that's such an ugly structure in it that you need to give up something of yourself.
#
You want acceptability at this place.
#
First of all, you place it at a higher level.
#
What about different cultures?
#
What about different habits?
#
You know, it is, it's very honestly, even as I say, this is so deeply disturbing for
#
And a lot of it is invisible and unstated, as you just said, in the sense that, you know,
#
if a lower caste person enters the house of, you know, someone from a higher caste, he
#
will instinctively sit on the floor or he'll be embarrassed about entering.
#
And this is so instinctive that to, you know, to someone who's grown up like that, it's
#
You don't think about it.
#
So I can, if that person did not sit on the floor and just sat on the sofa, what would
#
my instinct to react, even the progressive TM Krishna think for a split second in my
#
mind will go this thought, Oh, now what does that mean?
#
It means that somehow I expected a certain behavior from this individual and the person
#
I may correct myself to take off the liberal box, but the fact is that feeling is there.
#
I mean, I always find it very interesting that when you talk about cast, people find
#
it problematic, but you know, if you just in the frame and talk about gender, you know,
#
women and trans people know this every day, you know, and it's always fascinating for
#
me when upper caste women, feminists don't get it in cast, but they get it in feminism.
#
I'm like, do you realize it's the same framework?
#
It's that look that you talk about.
#
It's the inequality in looking at two people that you talk about that you feel it.
#
I would never feed it because I'm a man and I'm, I have everything going for me, but it's
#
the same framework that happens in cast and race and in ethnicity.
#
And in fact, there's a nice bit from Sebastian and sons, which I marked out, which expresses
#
And I'll quote from your book.
#
And this is someone speaking quote, the relationship between the with one and honorific often used
#
for seasoned artists and the worker is like that of a husband and wife.
#
Only if there are arguments and disagreements between the husband and the wife will the
#
If I am upset, I will not say much.
#
They will notice that from my facial expression and introspect about how they spoke to me.
#
It has been going on like this and it should hopefully continue.
#
And I mean, this spoke to me so much because it's, it's casteism and the patriarchy and
#
And all of us have experienced, you know, if not one, at least the other in some form
#
And I was also reminded of this, but there was this very interesting tweet by a writer
#
on Twitter called Asim Ali, who's a journalist writing in various people where he pointed
#
out that if you are at a restaurant and you're mistaken for the waiter, you know, you immediately
#
feel a sense of hurt pride and of course you do.
#
And the very fact that we do say something about all of this, that's exactly what I'm
#
I mean, I was actually at a bookstore, this happened just about last week and somebody
#
came behind me and he tapped me and he said, uh, where is the fiction section for a second
#
I mean, how dare you ask me that question.
#
Because then I turned around, he said, sorry, sir.
#
But the fact is that somebody could presume that I'm just a person of the shop floor.
#
We definitely are offended.
#
That's a sharp observation.
#
And you were talking about pizza.
#
So I have to tell you this before this, when we were at lunch, I told you about how much
#
I love tick tock and you should check it out.
#
So there is this nice tick tock video doing the rounds where, you know, this girl calls
#
a pizza hut and she says a pizza hut and voice at the other end says yes.
#
And she says, and the voice at the other end says yes.
#
And then the girl gives this wistful look and says, you know, which is both very funny,
#
but it's got resonance with that completely has a resonance with that.
#
And there's a sort of a lot of that happening on a tick tock, but we'll sort of define
#
You know, so just to kind of sum it up, there are two things happening.
#
One as you described is in the world of Carnatic music.
#
One as you described that they have traditionally been all of these entry barriers.
#
But also what is happening is that is a, there is a denigration of other forms of art and
#
this elevation of the classical into a fine art.
#
Like even I have grown up with this impression that Hindustani classical and Carnatic are
#
like the high forms of art.
#
And of course, in my case, they have intimidated me and said, name a rock music sununga.
#
But that's the whole impression.
#
And as you also point out in your book of essays as well before this about art, we've
#
seen what, for example, in America, supposedly lower forms of art like jazz, gospel, hip
#
And you know, now jazz is pretty much considered, you know, you're supposed to be classy.
#
You're supposed to be a classy person if you listen to jazz and you're very sophisticated
#
if you argue a bit about who's better, Miles Davis, and all of that happens, but you know,
#
that is still a deep problem here and entrenched problem.
#
So what's been your sort of experience of trying to do something about that?
#
So initially I was only thinking of Carnatic music.
#
So now retrospectively, I can see why that was problematic in the sense it was about
#
this music, about the fact that I felt that this, it lacked any kind of societal political
#
ethicalness and also the music needed to kind of breathe, so to speak, but it was still
#
I mean, I had not really given a year to different cultures.
#
And I think that happened slowly and slowly I started looking at different cultures and
#
that's when I started questioning that word classical.
#
You know, some people may say classical is not an Indian word.
#
It's a, but I think Shastri is as deeply problematic as classical.
#
Who writes the Shastra?
#
We can ask hundred questions about it.
#
But I also believe that classical music in some way was superior and to be able to appreciate
#
you, we've all been told this that to appreciate classical music, you need to kind of a certain
#
level of sophistication.
#
You must have kind of trained.
#
So you know, and I believed it.
#
I honestly believed it.
#
So what we have is this is representative of what Indian culture has been to the world.
#
We always have the main shows being the classical world and the side shows being some drum dance
#
from Manipur or Nagal and Meghalaya.
#
Then some other thing, you know, that those are the diversity, they are the little crumbs
#
we throw for diversity.
#
But the main real representative has been these forms we have, we have, we have represented
#
India culture like this in India and across the world.
#
We treat those artists differently.
#
We treat the classical artists differently.
#
All this has been happening.
#
But I think what happened was when I started engaging with other art forms, you know, other
#
forms which were not within the classical tag is when things started becoming clear.
#
But the first person who put the seed in my head is a musicologist named was Harold Powers.
#
Powers studied Carnatic music and also actually did his PhD on Hindustani music.
#
And he was towards the end of his life and he visited my home and I was much younger
#
and very casually asked Harold.
#
So Harold, what's the difference between classical and folk?
#
And he did them in baton eyelid.
#
He said, very simple, as an art form goes up the ladder of society, it moves from becoming
#
And when he first told me that I thought that was rubbish.
#
But I'm happy that that quote never went out of my head.
#
It stayed with me and kept bothering me.
#
You know, how can you say this?
#
Are you saying there's nothing intrinsic about the art that makes it more special?
#
I mean, I sing it, it has to be more special.
#
But when I started then investigating it, you see that he's absolutely right.
#
It's a question of who is participating in the creation of that art.
#
And that defines what you call a classical or you take the world classical across the
#
globe everywhere in the world.
#
It is the cultural elite who are defining the classical.
#
So there has to be something about it.
#
So this was the first thing, the other thing is when I started engaging with art forms,
#
which were not considered classical and I will never forget one experience.
#
I went to a little village near Chennai and this is art form called Kattai Koothu and
#
incredible artist, Mr. Rajagopal and his sister runs a school for this art form.
#
And I performed at that point, I was engaging with art forms, but I think the snoot in me
#
You know, you still feel somebody, I mean, this has to be special.
#
And I remember I performed that day.
#
So I was performing in an area which was alien.
#
I was culturally alien to the people there.
#
So it was extremely intimidating.
#
Classical musicians never usually do that.
#
They were about a thousand villagers from across the villages.
#
And then was a Koothu performance.
#
Now the Koothu unfolded.
#
I was, I had no clue what was going on.
#
Every person sitting there knew every nuance, every little joke, and I'm thinking to myself,
#
who is the sophisticated here?
#
Me or the thousand villagers who I will consider uneducated, crude, you know, these words called
#
ethnic, all these words that we use, you know, raw, real in, in aesthetic senses, when we
#
use that word, it's not a compliment.
#
And that's when it hit me that this whole notion of sophistication, complexity, subtlety
#
is very specific to every art form.
#
If I'm able to dive into another culture, then I will feel it in that way.
#
And that's when this whole thing like crumbled that these words are only social constructions.
#
They are political constructions, which is why, even if you know, jazz is considered
#
this profound thing, it's never called classical.
#
Because it takes every box that you want to take.
#
It's difficult to understand.
#
You have to, even if you read a hundred books, you can do an online course on jazz.
#
You still want to understand.
#
I want to still understand it, but it still is not called classical.
#
Classical is still white man's music.
#
There is something to it.
#
So that's when I realized that this is not an aesthetic point.
#
This is not a musical point.
#
This is purely about people and about society and about politics of it.
#
When you change the politics, something else may become, in fact, you've got a very nice
#
line in your book, which I'll just read out, which, you know, is in the context of North
#
Chennai, where all the Dalits live and all of that.
#
And your sentence goes, quote, culture is not a word commonly associated with North
#
Chennai simply because it's culture is not that of the upper cast stop quote, which kind
#
of says everything is then, and is it a fair analogy to say that what you're talking about,
#
you know, you're trained in Carnatic music.
#
So you'll see all the sophistication and all that.
#
But is it a fair analogy to say that it's like you're being really good at a language
#
and a language, which you know, nothing of sounds like noise to you till you actually
#
take the effort to immerse yourself.
#
And at some point in the book, you've spoken about noise becoming music, you know, and,
#
and the analogies is very true.
#
And I, what we should also realize how difficult it is for us to actually move to another culture
#
or cell cell, we dive into another culture.
#
It's we're always carrying something with us.
#
And because we always carry something, it's so much harder to do.
#
And so really to be immersed yourself in multiple cultures is not an easy thing.
#
And probably we're all never going to be able to do it.
#
But even if you do it once with something, then we realize about this whole idea of how
#
can noise become music.
#
So, you know, I'll give you a very, very Indian example.
#
Many Hindustani musicians sing that think that Carnatic musicians sing Besur.
#
They're not singing Besur because the movement that they hear is Besur is actually a technical
#
required movement in Carnatic music.
#
Now is it off tune or not?
#
Is that an absolute answer to the question?
#
When is somebody singing in pitch?
#
Even a simple idea like that is so complicated to your ear, it may seem off pitch to my ear
#
musically that's in pitch.
#
So, I mean, this is a classic.
#
And then listen to Macaam music.
#
I mean, their movements sound Besur to me, all of us sound Besur to the Western classical
#
So, who is singing off tune?
#
That's what I'm saying.
#
So, and this is very important, not just musically to understand, to culturally understand, you
#
So, it happened to me when I heard so many kinds of music first, I thought it was just
#
But now I feel the music inside sometimes.
#
So, is there a journey then you then make from this intellectual understanding that
#
no, this kind of music is also legit in its own way to an emotional understanding where
#
you can just sit back and enjoy that music and it doesn't sound Besura anymore?
#
I think that's the most important part.
#
The intellectual understanding doesn't even scratch the surface.
#
The fact is that none of us are going to change because we comprehend something or we believe
#
that intellectually that's right.
#
We have to feel the music.
#
I mean, you have to feel the people.
#
You have to feel the dancer.
#
You have to feel the culture.
#
You have to feel the streets.
#
You have to feel the, you have to taste the food.
#
You have to, I mean, it's all that, right?
#
And then somewhere, at least momentarily, you feel you're part of it.
#
And then that drum beat is right at the bottom of your stomach.
#
And that's happened to you, obviously, from your smile.
#
I mean, and that moment is incredibly emotional.
#
And does it then change the way you look at your own music?
#
Are you taking some of that into your music?
#
I mean, it does change the way you hear.
#
I mean, they often say that the music is not in the singing or playing.
#
The painting is not in the brush.
#
There's a similar thing I like to say that, you know, great art is not about talent.
#
But I'm saying that, you know, when you start feeling it, then you hear differently.
#
You know, the lines kind of disappear, you know, you kind of understand context for
#
You know, what are the things you can charge?
#
I mean, I mean, how do you separate things?
#
These things become far more fluid.
#
And I can tell you the way I hear Carnatic music, which is musically my home, is entirely
#
It's entirely different.
#
I know I hear it differently.
#
I don't look for, when I sing, I don't look for the things that I was looking for in my
#
I know I'm not looking for it.
#
I don't care a damn about so many things that I care so much about in the music that I sang.
#
So as a performer, where is then the intersection between your new way of hearing this music
#
and you know, how your understanding of your own music has evolved and how the audience
#
is because it's still the same audience and you still want to push the buttons and get
#
So, uh, so the thing is that I do like to hope that I push less buttons now, but nevertheless,
#
but actually that has been an interesting journey itself.
#
The one is that when things started changing the way I performed, the people who thought
#
that I was committing blasphemy, that I was killing the art form, that I was disrespecting
#
tradition, um, a lot of people just disliked what I was doing.
#
And um, though I was singing over within the structures, within the environment and this
#
and what, what I want to say, it was also tough for me.
#
So again, you know, you may believe in something, but when you actually do it, it may not still
#
It takes some time because before it becomes you.
#
So as the audience was struggling, I was also struggling, right?
#
Because you're kind of de-molding yourself in some way and that process can be very difficult
#
because you're grappling.
#
You have nothing to follow.
#
You don't know what you're doing.
#
You just know, you just have to get out of this and your problems are visible only to
#
There's incredible discomfort, enormous difficulty to understand what is this guy doing?
#
I'm going through discomfort saying, you know, does this answer what I'm asking for or am
#
I asking for, what am I asking for?
#
I don't even know that.
#
So there is this great amount of churn that's happening to everybody who's participating
#
And then there is, there is the whole other idea of how does this respond to the politics
#
that you're talking about, to the social, so, you know, things like, where do I sit?
#
This changed the way I sat on stage.
#
I completely changed the way we sat on stage.
#
And then the interesting thing happened is I started also questioning space, place.
#
So I, you know, sang in open spaces where the audience was not the traditional audience.
#
I have sung at a beach when there were six kids listening to me with their hands in their
#
ears saying, this is awful.
#
To them, mine was noise.
#
How does an artist react to that?
#
You know, singing in a bus, singing to people that have no clue, you know, they have different
#
In my city, just one kilometer away from the suburb where everybody will applaud everything
#
One kilometer later, these people think this is noisy stuff, man, ask them to stop.
#
So what does that do to me?
#
You know, that also changed me.
#
That also changed the way I was, I was thinking I was singing.
#
So it's multiple things involved here.
#
One is that internal musical rediscovery, hopefully.
#
Then there is the idea of place and the idea of people.
#
All these three are at play.
#
And which is why I think all these three need to be at play for art to remain true.
#
You know, you can say that I'm making art, which is not elitist, but if you're just going
#
to make it and make it make sure that it's only in a gallery where a few people can enter,
#
So can you deconstruct a gallery?
#
Not only deconstruct your art, but deconstruct the gallery, this, you know, also the kind
#
The moment you do this, it's all fluid, which means it's mayhem.
#
Which means you really don't know what's going to come out of all this.
#
You know, when I sang on a moving public transport bus, it was the most incredible experience
#
So this is part of many projects that we are involved in, right?
#
So as we moved from, as I moved from not just talking about Carnatic music, the fact that
#
we are looking at different cultures and each are occupying different spaces and also at
#
a different hierarchical position.
#
How do we create little contestation?
#
You need to create contestation between different cultures.
#
You need to allow them to kind of come and kind of bang each other and some amount of
#
equality at least for some time.
#
So one of the things we said is, why don't we just take the Carnatics and the classicals
#
onto a bus, this public transport bus.
#
So we call it, now it's called MTC, I think it used to be called PTC when we were child
#
young and we, I was not going to sing.
#
So we did this relay of music.
#
So we had not just Carnatic music, but we had some Tamil rock, we had Carnatic, we
#
had some Namsankeertan, all happening like a relay.
#
So these musicians, all young musicians had to board the bus at different bus stops and
#
they hand over the baton to the other person.
#
So I said the first time we did it, I said, I want to check out how it is.
#
Yes, video on YouTube of it, of me singing.
#
That'll be linked from the show.
#
So what I did was I just got onto the bus in one of the bus stops.
#
I was just going to check it out.
#
But these young guys said, you have to sing.
#
I mean, how can you not sing?
#
I mean, just the experience, you see, it was unbelievable because I was completely exposed.
#
I was entirely vulnerable.
#
I couldn't push any button, you couldn't push any button.
#
Once you know your audience, you push a button.
#
Once you know your environment, you can push a button.
#
You know, the place, the people, the content, everything.
#
If everything is removed, you can't push any button.
#
You don't know whether the person is going to hate what you're doing.
#
You don't know you're going to get acceptability.
#
You want to be accepted.
#
But you have no clue how to get it, man.
#
And it was, it was exhilarating.
#
I have, it was also panic, you're scared.
#
You know, I've, by the time I did this, I've been in the field for what, two decades.
#
I've never been scared of being on stage.
#
But that day I was terrified.
#
I was terrified when I sang on the beach for the first time because I didn't know who's
#
going to, what's going to happen.
#
Am I going to be discarded?
#
You know, is somebody going to say stop?
#
Is somebody going to scream, for example, say, Hey, please stop.
#
I mean, so on the bus this happened, I'll never forget, it was the last leg when these
#
young guys said you have to sing.
#
So I belted out a song and I remember as we came to the terminus, bus terminus, everybody
#
on the roads were wondering where music was coming from, right?
#
And there was this man who was drunk and he started dancing.
#
He was on the road and he's like walking with the bus dancing.
#
I don't think that's in the video, unfortunately, so imagine it.
#
And I was like, this is the most beautiful connection I've made.
#
You know, we belong to very different worlds, very different ideas.
#
He just heard the music and danced.
#
And because he's drunk now, he'll forget the connection.
#
Maybe they would have leveled it off.
#
How did your traditional audience, what you've called the 25,000 Brahmins who congregate
#
every December in Chennai, how did your traditional audience react to you in light of the politics
#
that you were now expressing?
#
React to your music in light of the politics you're now expressing.
#
You've had two, three different reactions.
#
Of course, my politics was, is and was very disconcerting and I can understand why it
#
At this point, I can't pontificate because it's true.
#
I mean, I guess 20 years ago, I would have probably also looked at somebody who was doing
#
this and what the hell is he doing?
#
You know, so I can understand it at some level.
#
So there were people who either said, I've had people sending me an email saying I've
#
I don't have any CD of yours anymore.
#
You've disrespected Hindu gods, you've disrespected Indian culture.
#
Therefore, I don't listen to you anymore.
#
They can't do that anymore because you can't throw MP3s.
#
I'm on YouTube, they're stuck with me.
#
So I've had people who have actually, even now many people say, how is this guy who produces
#
such divine music speak such filth?
#
I've had many people say that.
#
So how can he be so filthy and say all these horrible things, but when he sings, it's divine.
#
You have that and you have also the other end of people who have never heard me who
#
listen to me because of my politics, usually younger, younger people.
#
And many people who don't belong within the Carnatic world, who have now said, you know,
#
I want to listen to this music because I find it interesting that you can actually challenge
#
it from being inside, which they never thought was possible.
#
So you have different shades of all this happening.
#
So the power structures are uncomfortable with me, but the fact of the matter is I'm
#
doing all this because I'm powerful.
#
So let's not run away from the fact that if I did this 20 years ago, I would have been
#
And nobody would, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
#
So the fact also is the fact that I can, I can handle all this is because I know I have
#
But you have also been deplatformed and stuff.
#
There'd be many concerts canceled.
#
It's happened in India.
#
It's happened in the U.S.
#
It's happened in the U.S.
#
So this was about a couple of years, 2018, when actually some colleagues of mine were
#
targeted for singing Christian themes in Carnatic music.
#
And they were really bullied.
#
And especially the women, I mean, the trolling was just, you know, I can't even quote the
#
kind of things that were said.
#
And I really pissed me off.
#
And there was some guy who said he'll break my legs also.
#
I mean, that also happened, but that is not so important.
#
So I put out saying, a video saying, I'm going to release a song on Allah and Jesus every
#
month in Carnatic music.
#
And it was done as a protest, saying that nobody has a right to tell me what I can sing
#
And this music doesn't belong to any community, any religion.
#
And when I did that, I was just going to the U.S. on a tour.
#
And the concert was at Washington, D.C. at a Shiva Vishnu temple where I've sung Amti
#
And they canceled the concert.
#
And they said that they have been threatened by right-wing groups.
#
And there was this huge blog, this woman wrote about how they celebrated that the concert
#
was canceled and I was shown my place and that Indian culture was protected.
#
And I understand recently that she's going to stand for election to something that the
#
That's very interesting.
#
So I think it's Trump land, but yeah, so that's happened too.
#
But I must say the positive of that, that happened.
#
But then a group got together on the very same day, same time, a concert in D.C. did
#
Yes, it was canceled, but there are also people who came together and said, this cannot happen
#
and we will do the concert.
#
So there are both sides to it.
#
And it's interesting that it's not just casteism.
#
There is, of course, you know, the sexism is there in the sense women cannot play the
#
maritimum and all of that.
#
But there's also racism.
#
For example, you know, Sudha Raghunathan, whose daughter married an African-American
#
gentleman and her concerts got canceled because her son-in-law was African-American.
#
I knew she was trolled and her shows were canceled in July, apparently.
#
But you know, if you think of it, how far is casteism from racism?
#
It's the same insularity, we are the group, everyone else is the other.
#
I think in fact, we Indians are probably the most racist lot, especially, you know.
#
And what we also forget is there's a homogenousness more or less in bandwidth of so-called Indians
#
Who are the majority of Indians who have migrated?
#
There are most of them coming from forward caste or shall we say socially mobile OBCs,
#
if you look at the government categorization.
#
And therefore, there's a certain homogenousness of ideas and there is a certain commonness
#
with the way they want to build a narrative.
#
And the narrative casteism is entrenched.
#
And aim casteism is color.
#
And therefore, the notion of the darker skin, notion of the African-American is also seen
#
The African-American is seen as a lower caste.
#
So this just works perfectly in casteist narrative.
#
And that is why you have this ridiculous thing happening and there's a personal thing about
#
somebody getting married and has got nothing to do with anybody.
#
And but then the person is actually harassed and trolled for a personal decision.
#
And her son-in-law was called the N-word.
#
I mean, the surprising thing, Amit, is after all this, even people who are viewing it,
#
you know, forget the people who are throwing this nonsense out, maybe, you know, maybe
#
we can't have a conversation with people.
#
But even people are viewing it.
#
Just don't see the horribleness of it or say, you know, they shouldn't say this, but I just
#
I mean, I just don't get it.
#
I said, you know, there can't be any but over there.
#
I mean, but a lot of us speak that way.
#
You know, they should have not made this public.
#
They should have done the marriage quietly.
#
You want to just say that these things don't happen?
#
You know, so you'll be happy if she had married a Jewish white person.
#
I mean, what are we saying?
#
So, I mean, these moments are horrible for the person experiencing it.
#
These moments are also revealing.
#
And I think the point I'd like to clarify is, and this is a common confusion that when
#
you talk about all of, you know, these upper caste NRIs taking their caste baggage with
#
them, you don't mean to say that they are necessarily casteist or they are thinking
#
in terms of caste consciously.
#
It's just that they're carrying those entrenched ways of thinking and responding to the world
#
and it's completely internalized.
#
They may be the best human beings otherwise and all of that.
#
You know, that's not a big problem, right?
#
When you speak in these terms, people think that you're painting somebody as evil people.
#
They react defensively.
#
But that's why I keep saying, I am still casteist.
#
You know, all these invisible ways, I do it every day, I do it, especially, you know,
#
sexist, casteist, I mean, you know, in your relationship with your wife, there are things
#
that you presume that your wife should be doing without even thinking about it twice.
#
Where is it coming from?
#
Comes from patriarchy that you don't recognize.
#
And then you, when you talk about it, you realize, yup, where is this coming?
#
So these things are so ingrained and normalized that we just don't see it.
#
So actually a lot of times I will say that these are not intentional in that sense.
#
You're not purposely saying, I look at Amit, I'm, you're, you're like this and therefore
#
No, my, see, we're all pattern recognizers as a species and these are all patterns we've
#
been taught to recognize, you know, starting from gender.
#
These are instinctive aversions or you don't think about it.
#
So we do all this automatically.
#
We do this automatically and these engines start working.
#
But it's important that we are aware that we are functioning in that manner.
#
I mean, that's the problem.
#
And I think what gets accentuated in a place like with the NRAs is the fact that at least
#
in India you have to walk the street and go to the Dukan.
#
You know, you meet, even if you don't want to people of diversity, you know, but what
#
happens in the States is you are a homogeneous lot only meeting those people, carrying these
#
things from India and constantly reaffirming that over 20, 30 years.
#
That makes it much harder.
#
Actually, I'm saying that it's much harder for the NRAs to break free of this because
#
they don't, that they lose that connection of the possibility of being hit by something
#
that they never expected or experiencing people in a way that they never expected because
#
you are this little bubble in these little cities.
#
And once you get into a comfort zone, you don't question it, which is why your journey
#
is so surprising that you've reached the top of the Carnatic music ladder.
#
And then you are, you know, you have the level of self-reflection.
#
I can imagine someone from the outside or someone who's not so successful doing that.
#
You know, just speaking to this point, there's a beautiful poem by Akhil Katyal, who just
#
had a book out and I'm just going to read that out and I'm sure you're familiar with
#
But for those of my listeners who aren't, and the poem is called Poetic License is by
#
One day when he was about 10 or 12, he asked his mother, what is my caste?
#
Some boys in the school were asking.
#
I didn't know what to say.
#
The mother got up in the middle of a supper beta.
#
If you don't know it by now, it must be upper.
#
That's a very important poem because it's true of most of us.
#
You know, it's like somebody told me is that if you are a Dalit every day, every moment
#
of your life, you're reminded that you're a Dalit.
#
So when we all say, especially that what caste, we never spoke about caste at home.
#
This is said very often, just means exactly what he said.
#
It's that extra layer of awareness.
#
You know, when women walk on the street, they have this extra layer of awareness, which
#
is not important to us.
#
We can take our being male for granted.
#
You enter a lift, you're looking at everyone who's there before you get in and that's consistent
#
and it's normalized and it's, it's, and men don't see it.
#
And men think it's normal to look at a woman in a certain manner and you have to catch
#
yourself sometimes doing things that you would not normally think, you know, it's not about
#
whether you're liberal, progressive, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
#
This is not about being conservative or anything.
#
This is just about these in entrenched habits.
#
So I catch myself looking in a certain manner at a woman so many times that I see it myself.
#
This is things that we do, you know, wife is listening to this.
#
Before we go into a break and after the break, we have to get to your wonderful book.
#
We're not doing it justice if we don't, but sort of a final question, just, you know,
#
going back to that old theme we were exploring of, um, you know, the evolution of Carnatic
#
music and the setting it apart from other kinds of lower art, which are not classical
#
and all that did also the academies play a part in this.
#
For example, in your book, there is this passage about the music academy, which, you know,
#
your grand uncle T. T. Krishnamacharya played a part in founding court, the music academy
#
established in 1928 had quickly become the sanctum sanctorum of Carnatic music.
#
Sabha such as Parthasarati Swami Saba, Perambur Sangeet Saba, Jagannath Bhakt Saba were changing
#
the nature of Carnatic music consumption.
#
Ticket paying public and membership driven models became the accepted norm.
#
This was enabled by Brahmin families migrating from Tanjavur, Tirunelveli and surrounding
#
areas, the Chettiyars from Karaikudi district and other high culture seeking business communities
#
such as the Moduliars, stop quote.
#
And what seems to me to be happening here and where say Carnatic music gets this kind
#
of advantage as it were over the other forms, which are looked down upon is that you have
#
an academy, you have theory building around it.
#
You have a pedagogy building around it.
#
You have a community building around it while other forms of music may survive sort of as
#
oral traditions do without this accumulated knowledge passing through to future generations.
#
Very important point you make.
#
So I think we have to go back to the political context of the times.
#
So this is a times of Hindu nationalism.
#
So this is not just a Carnatic phenomena.
#
You see Bhatkan Day trying to do the same thing.
#
You see Paluskar trying to do the something.
#
This whole notion of presenting Indian culture as this very old, very pristine idea.
#
And so you have these people, all upper caste people.
#
In the case of Khyal, they feel that the Muslims have basically spoiled this art form, they
#
sing whatever they want.
#
And so we need to get the original music.
#
So Bhatkan Day decides to go through the musicological way.
#
Paluskar said Bhakti is the way, Bhakti is the essence of this music.
#
So he uses another channel.
#
So you have that happening.
#
And that's when you have all the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya is forming.
#
You have all these things.
#
A similar narrative is happening in the South.
#
But in the South, what is happening is that Devadasis are the targets.
#
They are now by then considered niche.
#
So then they can't be part of something we are considered old and pure.
#
So then you again building a very, very nationalistic, very upper caste notion, theosophical society
#
plays a very important role in these constructions of what Hindu philosophy, Hindu history, the
#
Rishis in the Himalayas, all these notions.
#
So you have these art forms forming in that.
#
Tyagaraja is now becoming this saint.
#
He becomes this real beyond reality human being.
#
So all this construction is happening at the same time, everybody recognizes the another
#
battle you have to fight with the British is not just emotionally getting this music,
#
but also say that it's technical, also say that it is intellectual.
#
So then you have this music academy forming and it's fascinating if you go through music
#
academy discussions and it's all documented.
#
You have lawyers, they're not professional musicians.
#
So all these lawyers and well-educated upper caste Brahmin men who are having these debates
#
on Carnatic music with musicians.
#
So they are saying, so that's when the rules are then being formed.
#
Like you're then giving knowledge, validity in document.
#
This sounds like the Constituent Assembly debates.
#
So that's part of creating intellectual capital.
#
That's actually creating knowledge and it has been modern.
#
And you're codifying it.
#
Basically it's a modern notion.
#
The same thing is happening with Hindustani music.
#
And then the interesting part is post-independence.
#
We just continued the same narrative.
#
Just look at the institutions that were created for culture across the country.
#
It was for Bharatanatyam, private Carnatic music or Hindustani music for Kathakali.
#
So again, you're only looking at those art forms that are practiced by a certain group
#
of people or enjoyed by a certain group of people that has decided that you believe needs
#
That deserves even codification of intellectual activity.
#
So you're actually designing cultural knowledge.
#
You're actually defining what is knowledge in culture and art.
#
So all this played a very important role in placing these art forms where they are.
#
In placing them in the fact that this is what we want to present ourselves without doubt.
#
And the fact that this did not happen for so many art forms meant that for 70 years,
#
they are still considered just, they're considered of course, exotic, very important or, or you
#
say one thing, they are the source for this.
#
You know, I always find it deeply disturbing when classical music say, you know what folks
#
say I thought, no, what do you mean by that?
#
It's like it was something that was an, you know, unpolished diamond that we took from
#
there and made it polished.
#
So those were like resource material and they have their beauty, they have their limitedness,
#
but then the classical is what is an evolution of them.
#
So all this allowed for this kind of cultural discourse to be entrenched in our psyche and
#
in our emotional beings because we feel that way.
#
And you know, just thinking in terms of cultural equity, it just seems that the inequality
#
in cultural equity was enormously exacerbated by these institutions.
#
We just keep, you know, doing what they're doing, which is not to say that these forms
#
of music should not have academies or, you know, theoretic development or whatever, but
#
the other forms are definitely, you know, and I can, we can point to so many forms across
#
this country, you know, so I won't say I'm not talking about what I would like to call.
#
I don't like the word folk, social music, for example, harvest songs or a lullaby.
#
Those are social music that is passed on from mother to daughter or, you know, all the villages
#
that's different from organized art and you've organized art across this country and none
#
of them had the benefit of being codified or being given theorization or being written
#
about in, you know, with the nuances and the technicalities that they all have simply because
#
of where they belonged in society.
#
So does that now, assuming that this started out as, I don't want to use the word equal
#
because we're not weighing different art forms, but assuming that at one time they were all
#
art forms at a similar level of evolution.
#
Have those kind of fallen back?
#
I mean, I'm uncomfortable about using this language itself because of this codification
#
I would think that it's not in a purview does not mean that it has not had its own evolution.
#
You go to any of these art forms and the practitioners will tell you how things have changed.
#
Narratives have changed.
#
Storytelling has changed.
#
And maybe the absence of codification is a feature, not a bug.
#
And then that kind of takes it to a different kind of a journey.
#
It's definitely happened.
#
I think the fact that they are, they seem to be invisible is what the problem is, that
#
they don't exist in serious discussion, you know, we know all these high bro.
#
So I think an important point that you're raising and it's all important is knowledge.
#
How does knowledge get created?
#
When is something knowledge and who is deciding these things, you know, and what is documentation?
#
You know, it's very odd, no?
#
At one point we keep saying Indian culture is not written culture.
#
Indian culture is what we carry forward.
#
But then we decide to only codify some of them.
#
We say Indian culture is oral history or we are an oral system.
#
We didn't believe in, you know, writing things down.
#
But when it comes to judging art or judging cultures, we give more importance to the ones
#
that have documents that have some Shastra and that is not Shastra.
#
So you know, we play this little game, we choose when we want to be oral and oral, when
#
we want to be organized.
#
And this reminds me of a similar privileging you mentioned in your book where you point
#
out that documentaries about Chennai will always show Mylapore and, you know, those areas
#
I'm from the innermost circles.
#
You are from the innermost circles.
#
We'll take a quick commercial break and then we shall come back to talk about Sebastian
#
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Welcome back to the Scene in the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with TM Krishna about Karnatic music and especially about his new book Sebastian
#
and Sons, which carries this delightful quote from C. Rajgopalachari.
#
You talk about how you know Palgatmani Iyer goes to C. Rajgopalachari with a problem about
#
the contradiction that the instrument that he uses involves taking the lives of three
#
animals because there are three kinds of hide on there.
#
And Raja Ji tells him, quote, don't look for the source of a river or the antecedents
#
of a saint, stop quote.
#
And this seems to me to not only speak to the question of the Mridangam itself, but
#
to all of Karnatic music.
#
And you've actually, you know, you've done that, you've questioned the source of the
#
I mean, in Tamil, it's like Rishi Moolam, Nadi Moolam, Kekka Kodaadhu.
#
I'm sending you a hoax out in Tamil.
#
Rishi Moolam, Nadi Moolam.
#
So Rishi Moolam, Nadi Moolam.
#
You know, when I first, it was told to me, this story was told to me, it seemed very
#
It's like certain questions don't ask, you know, why do you want to know?
#
But then when I looked at it again and again, this is like, wow, that's so convenient.
#
We decide what we don't want to see.
#
That's a rationalization of denial.
#
Exactly, entirely denial that, you know, cow skin is required for the Muradangam.
#
And I find Palgad Mani are most interesting here.
#
He's a guy who didn't brush it into the carpet, right?
#
He could have very easily said, I don't want to talk about this, but he's this man who
#
He's really obsessed with it.
#
And he wants to get the best tone.
#
He wants the best skin.
#
He wants to improve the tone.
#
And then it suddenly hits him like, wow.
#
But isn't this the cow that I worship, but I want the skin.
#
So he kind of, you can see.
#
So he's then asking, he wants, he wants reconciliation.
#
He wants somehow to make sure that he feels better about it.
#
And we all do that, right?
#
And he goes and asks Rajaji and Rasiraja Gopalchari comes up with his answer.
#
And to me, his answer is more problematic than Mani is seeking.
#
Mani is seeking is very honest.
#
But Rajaji Gopalchari isn't, he's saying, don't ask this because he's almost saying,
#
if you go there, you won't be in peace.
#
You won't be able to do what you're great at.
#
You won't be able to play the Muradangam and be this incredible musician because you don't,
#
you'll have to see things that you should not be seeing.
#
So that means you forget the maker.
#
You forget the person who's cutting the skin out.
#
You forget the person who's cleaning their skin for you.
#
So you're actually removing a whole section of people and culture from the conversation.
#
You're just saying, I don't, I know what lies behind it.
#
He knows what happens, but I don't want to see it.
#
So basically Palgad Mani accepted Rajaji's advice, but you did not.
#
This reminds me of this old story about Tolstoy, that Tolstoy once he became a vegetarian and
#
he was very, you know, rigid about his vegetarianism and an aunt came to visit one day and the
#
aunt said, I would really like to eat some chicken.
#
And Tolstoy was unhappy, but he couldn't say no to the aunt.
#
And then at dinner time, the aunt gets to the dining table and she finds a live chicken
#
And Tolstoy said that none of us had the heart to carve it up.
#
And this reminds me of this beautiful bit I'm going to quote from your book about Palgad
#
Mani Ayyar, who is, and this is in the context of Alcotton, who is Parilandu's cousin.
#
And quote, Ayyar gave Alcotton a job.
#
He said he wanted top draw cow skin, no compromises and the cost did not matter.
#
Alcotton said it would cost rupees 100.
#
Ayyar gave him that amount immediately in advance and headed out to a restaurant around
#
When he returned, he found Alcotton standing outside his house, cow in tow.
#
Ayyar was startled to say the least.
#
Alcotton informed him that this cow had great skin, but the seller wanted rupees 120.
#
So he wanted to check with Ayyar before completing the transaction.
#
Ayyar was shocked, almost certainly this would have been the first time he had to make a
#
decision on the slaughtering itself and take responsibility for something that was thus
#
He just showed Alcotton away and demanded that he take the cow with him.
#
This incident from Ayyar's life is a universal condition.
#
I am certain that no Mridangam artist would like to be placed in a similar situation.
#
Skin just drops down from the heavens as far as they are concerned.
#
This is such a beautiful line.
#
Skin just drops down from the heavens.
#
So you know, thank you for that moment.
#
We'll sort of come back to this later and I want to especially delve into your chapter
#
on how you went to an abattoir and enjoyed the experience.
#
I'm totally judging you on that.
#
First, first, first tell me about how the thought of the book came to you.
#
You know, my first book was called Southern music, Carnatic story, and the book is a more
#
academic book in that sense into technicalities, history, and in a way, I think all the journey
#
that I went through within music for myself somehow got encapsulated in the book.
#
And I actually think that the book, that book helped me in gaining clarity with all the
#
different streams of thoughts I had.
#
So the book really helped me in, you know, figuring out what was happening through almost
#
And there is a whole section on the sociology and the politics of the music and there's
#
a whole chapter on caste.
#
And that chapter was very heavily debated when the book came out.
#
And I remember with my editor, we were looking at the second edition or something, and I
#
just flipping through that chapter, suddenly the instrument maker came into my head and
#
I said, and I'll interrupt you because you said editor and I'll point out, I'm a big
#
fan of your editor, Ajitaji has fantastic job she did on that book and this one continue.
#
She's a fantastic editor.
#
So what happened was I suddenly realized I'd said nothing about the instrument maker.
#
And I was like, what did I do?
#
In my head, music was only about the performance.
#
In my head, the instrument was, got its life because of the instrumentalist.
#
What about the person who actually gives it the sound?
#
And that's when I said, what about the murdanga maker?
#
And that's also because the murdanga is slightly different from other instruments.
#
I mean, tabla is also close by the sense if I buy a tanpura, the tanpura stays with me
#
and my connection with the maker is lost.
#
I can change the strings unless there's something, it gets damaged.
#
The tanpura then is just with me.
#
So there is no constant relationship.
#
It's not the case with the murdanga.
#
The murdanga needs constant change.
#
It needs that black spot to be changed.
#
So all the murdangam makers, I mean, players will come and say, you know, this is old.
#
And they're constantly at the murdangam shop.
#
You've heard stories about what happens in the murdangam shop.
#
So I know all this folklore.
#
So I said, what about them?
#
And Amit actually wrote a paragraph to plug in and you know, you're writing this to save
#
yourself actually, right?
#
Because you want to be politically correct.
#
Clause-able deniability.
#
And I think I, I stopped.
#
And I stopped because I realized that it was fake and I realized it had been completely
#
I also realized I knew nothing about them.
#
I mean, I knew the names.
#
That was one name people knew.
#
I knew a few of the stories that people have told me, but I didn't know anything.
#
So I paused and I said, maybe I should learn about them.
#
Maybe there's, there is a story, there are stories to tell.
#
That's when I first started going and interviewing murdangam makers.
#
And I did this for about three and a half years, met, I don't know how many of them
#
I've been, I mean, the book comes out of about close to 15 interviews.
#
30 of them are long, one and a half hour interviews and then short conversations.
#
And I just kept interviewing people, makers of different generations, different parts
#
I also spoke to Murdangam players and it was that whole journey.
#
And then sitting with them, honestly, I remember the points in the interview stage, the fieldwork
#
stage when I was overwhelmed by all the stuff I was hearing, I was like, how am I going
#
I mean, how am I going to tell this story?
#
There are so many streams, there are so many voices.
#
Is it even possible to say this?
#
And then it took me a long time to just sit with the interviews, watch them again and
#
again, look at the transcripts.
#
And then from there evolved the book.
#
So you actually recorded those?
#
I actually videoed almost every interview along with audio and I did.
#
So you know, I find you extraordinarily and I'm jealous of this because I wish I had that
#
quality extremely self aware.
#
So therefore, you know, when it comes to these interviews that you're doing, you are talking
#
essentially to lower class Murdangam makers who have essentially played a secondary role
#
to the people who actually play the Murdangam, who are upper caste people.
#
And there is in what you're doing itself, an echo of that instrumentality where you're
#
using these lower caste people for your own purposes of writing this book and you are
#
an upper caste man yourself, which is clearly something you must have pondered.
#
How did you sort of negotiate that?
#
And this is, you know, even outside of this caste angle, this is a question that nonfiction
#
writers get all the time, that at the end of the day, you might feel tremendous empathy
#
with the people you're writing about.
#
You might even be friends with them, but there is a sense that you're using them.
#
And I guess the standard answer is that, look, I am being very upfront and honest about what
#
And they are responding to that.
#
And then what happens is happens.
#
No, I don't think it's as simple as that.
#
I think it's, it's very problematic.
#
I've struggled with it because I didn't know at what point, I mean, these are, these are
#
people and these are their lives.
#
These are their realities.
#
These are the stories they've experienced have been told.
#
I mean, it's, I mean, it's not just information they're giving you, they're sharing themselves
#
So it's really matters.
#
And the big problem is that you come from such privilege and you know, you can't treat
#
them as some resource material, they're not resource material.
#
I mean, it's like if somebody came and asked me about my life, I mean, I'm opening myself
#
And I'm, you know, I'm asking difficult questions.
#
So for example, I mean, I've never done any work like this before.
#
My writing has always been in a way in the, in the more ideational observation and ideational
#
I have not done work where I was speaking to people and what they told me is the story.
#
You've done essays before.
#
This was almost journalistic.
#
Yeah, this is, it is very journalistic.
#
And in fact, all the journalists I know understand how difficult your job is.
#
So it was very different territory for me.
#
I learned through the process.
#
I mean, what question crosses the line?
#
And I say it in the book at one point that I don't know, I really don't know what line,
#
You know, when am I really pushing it?
#
And I'm not being insensitive and not seeing that I'm able to ask that question only because
#
I mean, I would not ask this question if not for that.
#
I wouldn't, I wouldn't even think about asking that question.
#
So I don't know what that line was and I don't know, I may have transgressed, I'm sure.
#
And but I was always aware of it.
#
You know, I mean, you know, when I, when I interview a maker, does the maker feel confident
#
enough about that conversation to express this pleasure in a question I asked, for example,
#
I don't know because that's very, you will probably tell me, you know, if I asked you
#
a question that cross line, you'll just take me off and say, boss, stop because we're both
#
So I can know the maker is not going to do that.
#
The maker is going to look at me, TM Krishna, who is a great singer.
#
I'm like I said in the book, it's, you know, when I was looking back at the materials,
#
when it hits you, right?
#
So I want to respect, I got by people who are like three times my age, you know, I automatically,
#
I mean, just by my presence, I was considered to be somebody who has to be respected and
#
somebody who has value.
#
And is there a danger that they want to please you so they want to tell you what they think
#
So that is where you build trust.
#
That is where it's very important.
#
You have to spend time.
#
You have to spend time.
#
There were interviews there where the trust came early, there were interviews where it
#
took a long time where you could ask questions that were personal.
#
So that completely depended on the relationship and the bond you were trying to make, how
#
You know, I think the first thing was does a person trust you, telling you all this,
#
you know, sometimes it took a long time.
#
It took a long time to the person feel comfortable to, you know, say these things or, you know,
#
I had to coax and ask these, these questions and move sometimes, sometimes they did not
#
say to their interviews where they did not answer difficult questions.
#
They were not willing to answer difficult questions, which is also fine.
#
That also happens, but it's still, it is, you asked me a question for which honestly
#
speaking there is, I don't know whether I did the right thing or the wrong thing.
#
I mean, I really don't know.
#
I, all I can say is that I remained absolutely truthful to what was said.
#
I also took care and that is the way I could respond to what you said is to, for example,
#
change names when I felt the court were very sensitive, though they never asked me to,
#
like you said, they're even coming into the horizon.
#
They could say that to me.
#
They wouldn't even have realized how the sort of journalism works.
#
I took the decision sometimes when I felt the courts were sensitive, that I changed
#
Those, I think those were ways by which I was also trying to say that this is not just
#
This is not just people who are giving me something so that I could gloat for having
#
written this radical book that, you know, that says these things, but these are people,
#
They are leading lives and I need to respect that.
#
I need to, I need to remember that.
#
So I think that that was my way of, of remembering that, you know, when I wrote the book.
#
And before we come to the book itself, a final question about the craft that, you know, your
#
earlier books are essays.
#
This is journalistic nonfiction in a sense is very accessible and as is obvious from
#
the parts I read out very well written.
#
I think my listeners get that and they should certainly buy the book.
#
So when it came to craft, what kind of thought did you put into it?
#
Like were there books that you looked at and said, hi, it should be like this or
#
So, um, I did read a lot, but I, I think there was one thing that I kept in mind is I wanted
#
it to be as close to the language as possible.
#
So for example, you know, uh, I'll tell you why this, I felt sometimes there could be
#
a disconnection between commentary and quoting, right?
#
So the quotes, many of them are in Tamil, right?
#
So you're then transcribing it and then you're translating.
#
How much can the English remain Tamil in source, you know, I kept that in mind.
#
So it remains as close to the court as possible because it's possible to change the word to
#
an extent where it almost transforms in its intonation, in its, in its messaging.
#
Then when I write commentary and commentary, I felt that there should be a connection between
#
my style of writing and the voices of the makers, because ultimately this book is about
#
the voice of the makers.
#
So the way I tell the story must also be part of the voice that is coming.
#
So I kept that in mind right through.
#
So the style of writing in this is entirely different from anything I've written.
#
In terms of, um, language usage, in terms of even vocabulary, it's very different.
#
And that was because I said it should sound as close to the voices that the book is off
#
that is of the makers primarily.
#
This is a book being told from the voice of the maker.
#
So that's, those are the things I kept in mind because I felt then there'll be fluidity
#
Uh, if I remained a kind of an academic kind of, uh, of a tone, then there's a disconnect
#
between that and the voice of the, of the maker, which is full of the book.
#
So though I won't understand it for the Tamil listeners of the show, is there an illustration
#
of, uh, that you can give about a translating translation, translating decision that you
#
So somebody may, some people, the one important thing, the decision is that we also wanted
#
to document the various words, technical words in Tamil itself.
#
So you'd have words like, which are all completely technical Tamil words.
#
And it was very important that they remain that way.
#
I give descriptions once in a while to remind the reader, but we wanted it that way because
#
you wanted to feel what that vocabulary is.
#
I'll give you an example of something.
#
So many times, you know, you retain sounds and retain these expressions that are said.
#
Um, here is one from, uh, Baradhan.
#
So I'll start with the paragraph.
#
The most beautiful part of our conversation was the elegant simplicity with which he described
#
the music of artists and Chandrasekhar violinist was set for Madurai Sobu.
#
Now was set for Madurai Sobu is very much from Tamil.
#
That means they are a team together.
#
We retain, I retained it because I wanted that sound.
#
So and it's, then it's Varadhan's voice, right?
#
Otherwise it becomes my voice and Varadhan says basically M. Chandrasekhar was set for
#
That's a classic Tamil expression.
#
Rumba is of course Tamil.
#
At a concert in, in May tour, people just lifted him up.
#
He played so well of Ramabhadran's playing technique.
#
He said he provided the groove so beautifully.
#
It would come along like jilly, jilly, jilly.
#
Now all this was very important for the way I, we took the courts and retained its Tamilness
#
And that was part of a decision that I made that it should remain close to the sound possible.
#
I remember there's some expression called sweet.
#
I remember my editor Ajitha and I had this huge discussion about this expression that
#
over Johnson or somebody says there should be this sweetness, ah, the make something
#
I don't remember the point, but something, the fact that sweetness in sound or something
#
like that, you know, which doesn't make any sense, but it's a expression of an idea of
#
We retained all that as close as possible to the Tamil original as possible.
#
So that is very important part.
#
So because we've been reading this book, you're not only reading the stories, but actually
#
immersing yourself in language, in the culture, in the way things are said, in the way things
#
And that was very important for me.
#
So I recently did an episode on translation, recorded an episode on the art of translation
#
with Arunavasena who's more than 50 Bengali novels, though it will broadcast after this
#
But one of the interesting things I came across while researching for that was this quote
#
by Richard Pevere about translation being a dialogue between two languages and what
#
you just said about the example that so-and-so was set for so-and-so, you know, almost seems
#
like you're modifying English as well.
#
So who knows that could take off because it's a, it's very important that we think in that,
#
in those terms, especially in India, when and where English is spoken, I think there
#
are many kinds of, you know, this language snootiness is also something we're all obsessed
#
I think there are different kinds of English.
#
There are different, you know, even in whether it's Kannada or Tamil, there are different
#
kinds of Tamil, different kinds of Hindi.
#
There is a different forms of idea of English too.
#
And it's very closely connected with Malayalam or with Hindi or with Tamil and these terms
#
And that's a feature, not a bug.
#
If you're, you know, taking some of that local flavor and becoming something of your own,
#
that's how languages evolve.
#
That flexibility is what really makes language interesting, right?
#
If not, you would not, language would die.
#
I mean, you have language Nazis saying that, you know, oh, preponing is not a word and
#
I'm saying everybody uses preponing.
#
My dad used to keep saying that by the way, I used to say preponing, you say advanced.
#
But preponing, one, it has become a word because so many people have used it and two, it's
#
Everybody knows what it means.
#
I'm sticking with preponing.
#
So by the way, that's another thing that I love creating words.
#
So sometimes I just land up just creating this word and then we'd have this, my editor
#
and I'll just say, what is this word you've used, I said, no, I just created it.
#
So that's, I think part of the, and then what does your editor do is depends on the worship.
#
And then we argue about it.
#
And if it's acceptable, we let it go.
#
Sometimes I know you just can't use it.
#
Give me an example of a neologism.
#
So I'll give you one from the older book, um, syllabomelodic identity, syllabomelodic
#
It comes from a Southern music that was entirely my creation.
#
So when I said that language in music is not about the word, but it's about the syllable
#
and the movement of the syllable musically.
#
So I called it syllabomelodic identity.
#
We'll have to sort of discuss that at a separate time.
#
Let's kind of get to the book.
#
And one of the first things that struck me because it's on page one.
#
That's why it struck me is, uh, your whole notion when you're talking about Nanganallur,
#
you write quote, Nanganallur is a congested urban village, more specifically a Brahman
#
enclave within a village, stop quote.
#
And then later you say, quote, I've always sort of Nanganallur as a poor man's mylopode
#
at least shade symbol of Brahmanism, a stop code.
#
But one theme that sort of comes up at times during your book is how geographical location
#
and social location are so interlinked.
#
It's true of every city.
#
It's true of every place.
#
You know, we think that urbanization somehow dissolves all this.
#
We have this notion that in the village, it's more stock.
#
There's no doubt that the lines are sharper and you can see it.
#
I think urbanization helps, but nothing is a panacea.
#
It helps in certain ways because transactions change and requirements change.
#
But if you look at any city, look at Mumbai, look at any other city, you will find these
#
multiple enclaves that are created, right?
#
You know, for example, who's going to live in South Bombay, you know, you know, all these
#
That's what the South Indian population is.
#
So, you know, and so I know some people, actually my friends, said, how can you start the book
#
by saying you thought of it as a Brahmin enclave got upset.
#
I said, but that's exactly how I've seen it.
#
You see it that way too, because if you think of Nanganallur, it was a place where people
#
who did not live in Mylapore, which is a middle-class Brahmin enclave moved to at some point of
#
It's like Bandra is to South Bombay.
#
I mean, we all have it.
#
So it's very important for us to identify that within our city structures, within our
#
you know, habitations, these, none of these habitations are accidental.
#
We are making these decisions because of so many reasons.
#
So we're looking for similar people.
#
So when I say similar people, what are we saying?
#
We look at all these markers, we're looking at a cast, we're looking at school, we look
#
Who is going to be my children's classmate in the school?
#
I mean, it's not necessary.
#
Like we said earlier at your thinking of caste per se, but it's what your comfort zone is.
#
And your comfort zone is designed by all these things.
#
I mean, I mean, you know, how many, how many people be comfortable to live in a gay neighborhood,
#
you know, because they look at it and say, Oh, I don't want to be here.
#
You may not even think that you processed it that way, but you are making these decisions
#
and therefore cities themselves have these little, little pockets that function in those,
#
And that's why Nanganluru is a certain pocket.
#
Even within Mylapore and Alwarpet, there's a difference because there is certain money
#
involved and you see those distinctions coming in.
#
So all our habitations, all our city living is filled with these kind of, I had this huge
#
argument for the man from Kolkata about this, you know, Kolkata is not like that.
#
So I said, I'm, I'm going to put a wager on this one.
#
You said, okay, he's promised to spend two months about it and get back to me.
#
I said, I'm sure you can draw these lines everywhere.
#
So if you're listening to this Kolkata person kindly bite the bullet, it will help society
#
if you confess that you, that you were wrong.
#
No, but I got to tell you, I mean, although caste is not necessarily involved, there is
#
more class and coolness, but I live on Johu-Versova link road, which is basically next to Versova
#
and very far from Johu, but all my neighbors say, oh, we live in upper Johu.
#
It's the same kind of shit that's going down there though.
#
In this case, it's more, so I live in a place called Neelangare now in Chennai.
#
The road we live in is not the cool road, the next road.
#
So anybody I say Neelangare, oh, you live in Kashurina drive, I said, no, I don't live
#
I live in this little thing called Singaravel and Toro street.
#
Kashurina drive sounds very nice.
#
If you were living there, I would have visited you, but now I'm not, no, you're not going
#
You're going to make of the woods.
#
So, so tell me who are Sebastian and Svans, give me the background of this.
#
So, um, Sebastian's, um, all these names have their Tamil equivalent, it's Savityan.
#
And Savityan seems to be from my research, the oldest Muradangam, full Muradangam maker
#
So Sebastian's cousin Ratnam is somebody who's in the cover of the book.
#
He had moved to Madurai when he was much younger, but he identified and came to, told Sebastian
#
and his father that, you know, you have so many Muradangam players in Tanjavur.
#
Why are you making Tavals?
#
This must be around that time.
#
See other thing, no timelines, very difficult in, in oral stories.
#
You don't know exactly when you're trying to trace it.
#
So I'll place it around that time.
#
And he says, what are you guys doing with Taval?
#
You guys have so many Muradangam players in Tanjavur, in Tanjavur had a Muradangam players
#
because there was Harikatha happening.
#
There was Bharatanatyam or then called Sathir, Sathir was happening.
#
And you also had, uh, concerts, Carnatic concerts happening.
#
So you had a lot of people playing the Muradangam.
#
So the market was there and he was saying, why are you not exploiting the market?
#
So Sebastian begins, uh, he begins first working with, uh, Tanjavur Vaidya Nadiyar.
#
And that's when the story, their family story begins.
#
And Sebastian's three sons turn out to be the most important three names in Muradangam
#
Um, Sengol, the oldest, probably, probably not the most skilled of the three.
#
So, uh, Parland's actual name is Fernandez.
#
And the third is Shetty.
#
And the point to note is that, uh, you know, there's a distinction, as you point out in
#
your book, which people make between, uh, converted Christians and you know, Christians
#
And this sort of carries the implication that these are actually lower cast people who converted
#
So they're still lower cast.
#
So to become Christians does not change the, move them away from the cast identity.
#
You can check out, but you can never leave.
#
And then in a way you're also saying that's why they're still there.
#
I mean, upper cast people are not going to convert.
#
You know, so there's that whole, um, narration that's going subconsciously in this.
#
I mean, I tried, I mean, again, the whole notion that who's converted, who's not converted,
#
you know, we don't know.
#
So they've seemed to have embraced Christianity, I would say early 20th century.
#
I mean, late 19th century, maybe early 20th century is when they seem to have that period
#
they've embraced Christianity.
#
And this family lived in the street called keep the car as the street.
#
And they still have their homes there and these three brothers start going to all these
#
towns nearby, you know, all these places and doing work.
#
And at the same time you have this, why they're not there, who's becomes this great teacher.
#
And then you have the biggest superstar of Carnatic percussion, Palgat Manir moving to
#
Because the best makers are there and Paralan is there.
#
And then because of such a huge stature that Manir has within the whole Carnatic imagination,
#
the makers that make for Manir automatically become those that everybody else seeks because
#
they want that kind of sound.
#
So Manir's most powerful competitor was Parani Subramanian Pillai.
#
And there is this tussle for makers between them, you know, and Parani is not a Brahmin.
#
So there is a tussle there between them, not only because of abilities, because of caste
#
differences, but there's also tussle for getting the best maker for themselves.
#
So there is this multiple little competitions that are happening.
#
And from Paralan, if you see, in fact, that family tree is mind boggling.
#
Now there are about, I don't know how many makers in that family, I think 30 plus.
#
And that whole family is now in the business of making Murdangams.
#
Then you have a tradition that is happening in Chennai, then Madras.
#
You have Telugu speaking people making Madras.
#
You also have a pretty old tradition in near Palakkad.
#
Then you have a tradition in Andhra.
#
So you have other pockets also.
#
But the major contribution and the influence comes from the Tanjavur tradition.
#
And I found one story really entertaining and telling about how Mani Iyer wants a particular
#
kind of sound on his left side, which Palani gets, but even though they have the same maker,
#
which is Paralan, as you said, if I pronounced it correctly, throughout this episode, I have
#
pronounced everything wrong.
#
I actually have done a pretty decent job, by the way, but you know, I have no bones
#
about my bad pronunciation in every single language.
#
That's what, you know, being half Bengali does.
#
You pronounce everything wrong in every language.
#
So tell us a story of Murdangams.
#
So that's a very interesting story.
#
This is a very famous story that has been told many times in the folklore.
#
And it's a, it's a very telling story.
#
Like you said, it's a very interesting story.
#
So basically the Murdangam has two sides.
#
The one that you see, if you just go on YouTube, click any Carnatic concert, you will see the
#
black spot and the right side.
#
That's the dominant side.
#
Then you have a bassy end, like the Daga of the Tabla, which on the left, which you don't
#
So Pairani was known for his, when Pairani, by the way, is not his name, his name is Subramanya
#
We all call him Pairani.
#
We all call him Pairani.
#
So that's a very, very South Indian thing.
#
We start talking, you know, we call Aryakudi, Aryakudi, Ramanuja Engar is his name, Aryakudi
#
We start calling them by the place.
#
So Pairani's left is like exquisite.
#
He gets this little very interesting baritone kind of movement kind of sound.
#
And he has a special technique also.
#
Now there is this battle between Pairani and Pairani.
#
Nobody can, I mean, they had, they were congenial with each other.
#
They were friends and they even shared diocese, but yet there is this little thing.
#
And but the sound of Pairani's on, on this left, on the bass side, Pairani could never
#
So in that competition, Parland is making Muradangams for both these people.
#
So once Parland has gone to Trichy where Pairani lived, done some work and come back.
#
So his Maneer doesn't stop.
#
He said, okay, what do you do there?
#
No, I did some couple of, I made a couple of Muradangams for him.
#
What do you do special for him?
#
No, I just did what I do for you.
#
Then he leaves it, but he's like, he really wants to know.
#
He comes back and keeps bothering Parland, but I never get the sound on the left like
#
You do something for him.
#
And finally he says, you have to make a Muradangam for me.
#
So that the left sound is as good as Pairani's left sound.
#
So this man does it once, does it twice, does it thrice every time Maneer comes and says,
#
It's not, I'm not getting the same effect that he gets.
#
Finally Maneer is off to some city for a concert.
#
So Parland tells him, you go and come, sir, by the time you come, I will get it organized
#
I will get special skin also for it.
#
He's testing all Muradangams.
#
He says, where is that Muradangam?
#
The family were telling me soon that Muradangam started, they start calling the Muradangam
#
itself Pairani Muradangam.
#
So he comes back and then he tests that one.
#
He says, no, I think by this time Parland has had enough of it, right?
#
So he turns around and says, sir, I will say something.
#
You should not misunderstand.
#
He says that sound is in his hand, not in the skin.
#
So I can't imagine anybody who would probably tell Maneer this, right?
#
Because he's this huge figure, but he's like, you're telling me that I'll never get the
#
So in Tamil, the word is Kaivag.
#
We say it also for cooking, right?
#
When people, you make the same dish somebody, somebody have is in the hair or green fingers.
#
It's very similar to that.
#
So he says that sound is in Pairani's hand.
#
So almost Maneer gives up.
#
But what's interesting is, is that this is a story that has been retold many times.
#
And that also tells you about that relationship between Maneer and Parlaan, which is actually
#
It's like an outlier, definitely unusual, which is why I found that relationship extremely
#
I wish Parlaan was alive.
#
I wish Maneer was alive.
#
I could interview them separately and find out what there was because it's a complicated
#
But in that relationship, there, there are these interesting, what you could call transgressions
#
of norms in the way Parlaan could take liberties with Maneer or in the care that Maneer had
#
Not just because he was a great maker, but also because there was some, there was something
#
It's, it's actually very, very beautiful.
#
Fascinating film to be made on this if someone is sort of interested and you talk about how
#
the relationship between the players and the makers is one of the term you use as paternalistic
#
So, so kind of just elaborate on that a bit for me, but that's, that's the reality of
#
This is not special of only of these two, but it's true if the Indian society is power
#
equation, it's paternalistic feudalism.
#
So there is, it's important for us to understand this because we also engage in it every time.
#
Every time we say that, you know, we are, you know, we are, look at our house.
#
We take care of all the people who come into domestic work.
#
We pay for their education.
#
We make sure that the healthcare is taken care of.
#
Um, you know, I grew up in this lady's arms as a child.
#
So she's like my mother, she's like my mother.
#
So, but just like, if you just dig a little deeper, I mean, are these really equalizes?
#
I mean, does it make that relationship really like a friend or even like a friend?
#
So the, there is feudalism allows for this possibility of care.
#
And, but it never removes the feudalistic nature of it.
#
You're still the giver.
#
That individual is still the receiver that never goes away in a real friendship.
#
This doesn't exist between you and me.
#
If you wanted something, obviously there's no conversation about it.
#
You don't want to ask, right?
#
This is not how feudalism works.
#
So there is this paternalistic, I need to take care of these people.
#
You know, I know what's good for them.
#
I know what's good for them.
#
I know that the children need education.
#
They have to be educated.
#
So we have to take care of it.
#
So, I mean, there is a certain positivity to it, right?
#
In some sense at the same time, it's very important that the power to make the decision
#
You are deciding what is good.
#
You are deciding that this is how it should be.
#
And the other person is constantly subconsciously, sometimes overtly reminded that you are the
#
giver who's taking care of them.
#
There is always a feeling that if not for this individual, why would I sun go?
#
So this is the structure of paternalistic feudalism.
#
When you give an example of this, where at different times in the book, you have a maker
#
growing old and saying, I can't work anymore and you know, what will happen to me?
#
And the advice given by the player is that let your sons come into the profession.
#
When the player's sons themselves have gone abroad and they're doctors and they're computer
#
engineers, but to him, it's logical that the maker's son must be a maker.
#
And then there's no questioning of that.
#
You believe, you know, I took care of you, I'll take care of your son.
#
Just make sure that your son is also making murdangams for me.
#
That continues the whole thing.
#
It continues to this day.
#
That idea still continues to large.
#
But I think the younger generation are very different.
#
Younger generation makers are also tougher.
#
And I think there is great affirmation and there is also aspiration.
#
So not many of them are going to really want to send their children in this profession.
#
Though I know the older generation would hope that what I'm saying is wrong because there
#
is that whole, whatever I said, none, this is our family, that is also there.
#
That feeling is also there.
#
But I think the younger generation are not probably going to do that.
#
In fact, I've had one murdangam player feel very bad that it's not going to happen.
#
They said, you know, if these people are all going to these IT companies, there's one quote,
#
one maker, one player told me that they would rather be a peon or a guard in an AC room
#
than do this work, though this work pays well.
#
That's very interesting.
#
Where do you think that comes from?
#
So that's very, that is not just here.
#
Is it striking out at the future as well?
#
No, this is said by the player.
#
The player is upset that the person would rather be, you know, a peon who's inside this
#
AC room or this peon than be a murdangam maker, though murdangam making has money, forgetting
#
that there's so many other things involved in why they don't want to do this.
#
This is classic and this you find everywhere else.
#
People who say that, no, I don't find any agricultural laborers anymore.
#
They would rather go and work in an office.
#
You've heard many people say these things, right?
#
So it's the same mindset again.
#
It is, you know, it's same kind of feudalism that is at play.
#
So they would rather have these people in control, take care of them, but make sure
#
they are there and any kind of mobility which is seen by the individual as being far better
#
because it is not just about being the peon.
#
You know, many people like to wear that uniform.
#
When they become a, you know, like the security in a, in a, in a corporate office, there is
#
dignity that, that is felt by the individual when they wear the uniform and stand there.
#
You and I may not understand it, but then I'm happier if they are going to the abattoir
#
making sure they get the skin, making sure they're standing under the sun for hours because
#
I believe they make 2000 rupees more because of that.
#
You know, this is, this is a very, very classic behavior.
#
And is it more possible today in your, in your book, you write out in your book, you
#
write about how at one time it was very difficult for a maker to be a player.
#
You, you, no point even aspiring to that.
#
You immediately knew that, Oh, this is not going to happen.
#
And you're reconciled with what you have.
#
Is it more possible today with a more upwardly mobile aspiration generation?
#
Well, I like to believe it is, but it's, it's not so easy.
#
I mean, I know it's not.
#
You still have the end.
#
I mean, it's not just about the maker, the cast entrenchment is there.
#
So it's not just because I'm not just, uh, as far as the maker's children are concerned.
#
I think it's true of people coming from multiple communities.
#
Very difficult to break through this, uh, through the fiefdom.
#
It's very hard, but I would like to believe that it's gradually change.
#
Already I know there are two, three people learning, um, whether they will become professional
#
I don't know, but maybe that itself is a transition, you know, that slowly in the next generation,
#
the next pedal will be pushed and then you have them as players, but, um, it's not easy.
#
It's, it's, it is hard because still the structures are at play, you know, still these attitudes
#
are subconsciously there.
#
Um, so does the teacher teach with the same intensity to the son of a murder maker compared
#
Even though the teacher is not consciously recognizing it, you know, probably not.
#
They presume that, you know, how much is this guy going to get, you know, enough for him.
#
This is enough for him.
#
Whereas team Krishna's son, Oh, this guy's, uh, you know, a lot of talent will also get
#
those early opportunities and all of that, which are a lot of these things that you think
#
of and who would have rather put on stage first, you know, all these things are, are
#
definitely operational.
#
So I don't know, it's going to be hard.
#
That's very interesting and I'm just thinking that game theoretically, even if every single
#
person fee, every single person who's deciding a concert has a choice between a say a lower
#
caste, a new player and an upper caste new player, even if their individual instinct
#
say take the lower caste guy, they will still not do it because they worry of what the others
#
may say and they might take the safer route.
#
And also it's a very simple thing.
#
I give an example of names, you know, names, give away identities.
#
So a lot of people who come from other non Brahminical communities have names that are
#
very Tamil, Arul Selvan, okay.
#
Whereas Brahminical communities will be Mukund, Srinivas, TM Krishna.
#
So if I was given two names, I was given the name Mukundan Mukund somebody, and I was given
#
the name, you know, like I said, Arul, instinctively, I look for Mukund.
#
It's just something I do like reflex, right?
#
And somehow I feel in the concert list, TM Krishna vocal, somebody else violin, Arul
#
Muradangam doesn't sound as cool as Mukund Muradangam, sounds natural.
#
You know, so you are thinking of these things.
#
I mean, you're thinking of so many things.
#
You're thinking of the way the person looks.
#
You're thinking whether the person will be able to speak in, if you're traveling abroad.
#
I mean, I, we all do this, you're traveling abroad.
#
My colleagues, I'm at thinking, can that colleague speak English when we go to a dinner?
#
We are thinking all these things.
#
It's not just about the stage.
#
We're thinking of so many other things.
#
Culturally, will I be able to have conversations?
#
You know, will there be disconnect?
#
All this plays a role in these choices.
#
Can we hang together is a very important part, community building.
#
So you want a similar kind of person with whom you can build, you can have a conversation.
#
You said that's such an important idea.
#
So in all this, the person who's within quote an outsider is in a hugely disadvantaged
#
I mean, even women, for example, I've heard so many men say, you know, I don't want to
#
take a woman wildness because you know, it's a, it's a kind of, you know, we'll all be
#
So, you know, conversations cannot be free.
#
We're not talking about talent.
#
So basically they want the freedom to make sexist jokes and stuff like that.
#
So you don't feel it's, it's there, you know, it's, it's easy enough.
#
You know, this is being said even for women.
#
Or they will say, you know, they, you know, we can, we can just share rooms, but you know,
#
with women, then it becomes a little complicated.
#
All these ridiculous things are said as far as gender is concerned.
#
So the same thing in different ways works here too.
#
So this is how people are thinking.
#
Now you are thinking about how you are thinking.
#
Even if these instinctive thoughts come, you are correcting for them.
#
So, you know, how do you then do it?
#
I mean, you've then added this extra layer of consciousness to your decisions, right?
#
So some people think that I just, I've just complicated my own life because they'll accuse
#
you of posturing or doing tokenism or not doing enough or not doing enough.
#
People have asked me, you know, name people from other costs that you have on stage with
#
I'm not going to be naming people, their choice, you know, I'm not going to do that, you know.
#
So I think that what I try to do is constantly be, like you said, have that layer, make sure
#
that layer doesn't go away and I don't find it to be any way limiting my free flow of
#
You know, because people may think it just stops you from doing very easy thing.
#
No, actually it helps me a lot.
#
It makes me see people I've never seen before, makes me spot talent that I would not notice,
#
Because I realized why I've not spotted that talent, you know, or when I go somewhere and
#
I listen to this person is talented, you know?
#
And so it allows me in fact to take a lot of the rubbish in front of my eyes and see
#
things in a way that I would not see before.
#
If anything, it's helped me find many interesting artists, share non-stage time with people
#
who are very different and find ways in which you can connect and not limited by wanting
#
the similar kind of person.
#
So it has been extremely liberating.
#
So I'll share with you, so the study comes to mind, which I read about in a book, I keep
#
talking about brilliant book called Super Forecasting by Philip Detlock, where he talks
#
about this study, which showed that the most important factor in good decision-making is
#
not the things you would expect like intelligence or education or whatever is diversity.
#
You know, that's, and obviously this is not about decision-making, but do you feel that
#
diversity, just ensuring diversity without necessarily compromising on whatever, but
#
just ensuring diversity sort of enhances the level of your thinking or the level of your
#
See, diversity is very important.
#
Diversity also enhances the art form itself.
#
I mean, if, I mean, take the work of journalism or take anything, you need diverse people,
#
diverse voices saying different things.
#
Diverse points of view.
#
Even in a supposedly rigid form like Karnatic.
#
So even in music, you have different tonalities, different notions.
#
You need, for example, the Nadaswaram, which is now not considered, not presented as mainstream
#
You need that voice to be amplified because you need that different sound to come in,
#
different notion of, of Karnatic music or different notion of Kayaal.
#
So the diversity is lacking entirely across Indian art forms to a large extent.
#
So the diversity brings different ways of even hearing the same Sa.
#
So it is diversity linguistically, diversity geographically, diversity in caste, in gender,
#
in all this, I mean, we need people from the trans community singing these art forms, you
#
know, playing these art forms.
#
We need more women playing Murugangam because we need less matches more in all these things.
#
It's all full of, you know, showing off, showing off.
#
We need, we need a different idea.
#
So diversity is essential for any community building, which is truly open.
#
It also is essential for art, for any job, any, any area of work to really be alive and
#
You want vibrancy of ideas, you need diversity, otherwise it's not going to happen.
#
You will be happy with what you're experiencing.
#
That's a different thing, but you're not going to have contestation.
#
You're going to have conflicting thoughts.
#
You're not going to have interesting bouts.
#
You're not going to have different perceptions and you're not going to have any movement
#
And comfort zones are inherently very restricting.
#
I mean, they are like straight jackets.
#
You know, I want to move to a bunch of general questions, uh, leaving the book aside, but
#
first I have to ask you about your visit to the Abattoir, which I found absolutely fascinating
#
because you, uh, like first of all, what really interested me is the intricate, uh, science
#
and, and almost the knowledge of which can only come from lived experience of actually
#
constructing them, ridden them and the different skins involved.
#
Like you point out that, you know, there are three layers.
#
It's cow, goat, cow or buffalo, uh, goat, buffalo, as it were.
#
And um, uh, the, the cow layer is always a female who's had two kids because then the
#
skin is stretchable enough to just the right degree.
#
And uh, and your, uh, you know, description of how you went to the Abattoir and the makers
#
who were with you, what they looked for, how they chose, what they chose was absolutely
#
But tell me about you, you know, you expected to go there and be disgusted and repelled
#
I really thought I would.
#
I was warned by all the, by the maker who took me, uh, Susi Nath and said, are you sure
#
I don't think you'll survive.
#
Um, and I expected myself to really find a place just difficult to handle.
#
I still, I'm not able to explain why I did not go through that experience.
#
You know, I'm able to kind of understand it and I try and place it in the book, but how
#
I think what was most intriguing was how there are so many reals in the world, right?
#
And we don't see so many of the realities in the reals.
#
And I entered a new real for me as an outsider, that this is an everyday happening.
#
This is every day in the morning.
#
You have this happening in the Abattoir.
#
This is their old normal, the blood and the gore and the skin.
#
And this is part of it.
#
You know, the meat is taken, I like, uh, the murder make always told me that there's nothing
#
I told me that many times.
#
It's like from the skin to the meat, everything has the bones, everything has some utility
#
So we don't waste anything.
#
I don't know that that stays with me.
#
That whole point that nothing is thrown away, you know, nothing is discarded as, you know,
#
And you go there, you sit there, you see them work.
#
You see the conversation and you're like, this is very normal.
#
This happens every day.
#
They're having cup of tea.
#
There is gooey stuff all over the place is blood everywhere.
#
But what does that mean?
#
I mean, what does that say of that?
#
I mean, can I pass judgment on that job?
#
Can I pass, you know, that is why it confused a lot of things.
#
You know, I know that, you know, animal activists may find this problematic and, you know, maybe
#
think that I'm being insensitive.
#
I don't know, but this is how I experienced it, that there was something that I, this
#
was something I couldn't judge.
#
There's something I couldn't be judgmental in.
#
Like you asked me about the old and the new, the previous question you asked me about,
#
are we judging money here, for example, from this, these standards?
#
So am I judging the people there who do this every day from my standards of animal rights,
#
But the fact is that there was something very real about it.
#
There was something, I'm going to use this word with great care when I use it, there's
#
something nonviolent about it.
#
I know this seems like a misplaced word when cows are being killed, but I'm saying that
#
because it was not an act of anger.
#
There was no, there was no aggression.
#
There's something very, very weird about it.
#
There's something, the way I experienced it is weird.
#
And they go, and I want to tell you that even now people say that, you know, that any skin
#
No, when a Mridangam maker wants a certain kind of skin, the maker informs a person inside
#
the Apartheid, who chooses a cow correctly for it.
#
It has to be skinned in a certain manner.
#
So the cuts are not on the skin.
#
There are no cuts on the skin.
#
And you attempted this apparently.
#
I tried peeling out the flesh and it's, oh God, it's very hard to do.
#
And so there is great science specificity, observation skills and the way it's nailed,
#
It's, it's something else and it's not easy and it's a very hard job.
#
No, and I've always sort of complained about the hypocrisy of people who are vegetarians,
#
but they wear leather belts, so they'll carry purses and all that.
#
And in this case, any vegetarian Brahmin who is enjoying Carnatic music is enjoying the
#
sound of a midangam, which is put together with all this animal skin and all of this
#
death and blood and gore and all of that.
#
And the question is not to pass judgment on it and say that, okay, don't listen to the
#
The question is just to, you know, at least don't be in denial.
#
This is where I see, I have a problem with Raju Gopalachari.
#
Exactly what he said, right?
#
This denial that, you know, you don't want to talk about this, this doesn't exist, but
#
you will say, oh, what nada in that midangam artistry, oh, I enjoyed it.
#
But you realize that if that nada came because cow skin was vibrating and it's in that resonance
#
that you're experiencing ecstasy, you're experiencing divinity, let's juxtapose those words, notion
#
of experiencing divinity from the skin of a cow.
#
I mean, you have to accept that this is real.
#
You have to, there has to be some acknowledgement and also means it's not just acknowledgement
#
of that, acknowledgement of the people who make sure that that's possible for you, acknowledgement
#
Because someone else is going out there and selling that cow.
#
You know, I don't want to sound like I was, you know, just as you were speaking, I'm insensitive
#
to, you know, animals or insensitive to animal rights.
#
No, but I just want to say it's far more complicated in experience than we think it is.
#
You know, I don't know.
#
I mean, it's very, very complicated.
#
You know, like I was saying, a villager rears a goat, loves the goat, any, any agriculturalist
#
They'll rear the goats.
#
They love the goat, take it every day out to graze, bring it back.
#
They can drink the milk and then they send it out to be killed.
#
Now was there love for the goat?
#
Was there a relationship with the goat?
#
So are they heartless human beings because they sent it to the abattoir?
#
I think we need this nuance when we are dealing with these things, you know, otherwise there
#
is this again, evil, good, correct, wrong, you know, judgments that we throw.
#
So I think we need to be far more careful with these things.
#
And that's what that experience taught me.
#
You know, that experience taught me that even in an act of killing, there is nuance in some
#
You know, I'm not encouraging violence.
#
I'm not saying that we should be killing each other, but I'm trying to say that there is
#
I mean, there's an acceptance that this is the way things are.
#
Even if you're not skinning cows, we are killing tiny beings all the time.
#
Like you said, we're consuming things, we're consuming bells and shoes and, and you know,
#
we ourselves are colonized by bacteria, so why do you think you are better than a cow?
#
And Sanyasi sat on deer skin or tiger skin and spoke about nonviolence and about love
#
Now that's very interesting, isn't it?
#
I'm reminded of Talib's turkey.
#
So Naseem Nicholas Talib tells a story of a turkey where a turkey wakes up one day and
#
it has a really good day.
#
It's taken out, it's given a lot of grain, it has its time in the sun.
#
And then it assumes, okay, next tomorrow will be like this and lo and behold tomorrow is
#
like that and it's like that for 364 days in a row and it's completely chilling and
#
the 365th day is Christmas.
#
So, you know, I think your book is something that listeners of the show are definitely
#
should pick up and I'll kind of recommend that I want to move on to some bigger questions
#
because I've taken more than two hours of your time and let's kind of move on.
#
One thing that you've written about in some of your essays is I see disparaging mentions
#
of the market and I get where that's coming from.
#
The way I see it is that I really object to people who classify state society and market
#
as three separate things.
#
I think there are two separate things and the market and society, I mean the markets
#
are the mechanism by which society fulfills its own needs and where markets seem misogynist
#
and patriarchal and Brahmanistic is whatever if, is if those are the people who can really
#
afford to buy things and who are sort of controlling it.
#
But I think what we've seen in recent times and I was chatting with you over lunch about
#
this is for example, there is stick talk and you could say there is even YouTube and various
#
other means by which and ironically GEO has played a part in this by making bandwidth
#
so cheap that by which you suddenly have different classes of people possessing both the means
#
of production and the means of distribution, which they did not earlier.
#
The means of production did come a while ago, but and the means of distribution, which is
#
why I find some tremendous cutting edge art on tick tock.
#
If people look for it, which is far removed from the art, for example, produced by Bollywood
#
So do you think there is something to this?
#
So I mean, I think my criticism of the market is to presume that the market by itself is
#
That's my problem because there is this belief that the capitalist market kind of levels
#
And I think my criticism comes from that belief system that somehow that the capitalist market
#
structure is going to like solve all these issues because everybody has access, which
#
You know, like you said, it only functions how society functions.
#
My criticism being that the market is only going to reflect what society is.
#
It's not going to do anything.
#
So unless you ask, allow society to ask those questions, the market will not transform.
#
So I agree with you, but I'll say that's a criticism of society, not markets.
#
No, but market is just a part of society.
#
I mean, you can't separate it from society at all.
#
It behaves because market is constructed by people.
#
So therefore social construction itself is a market, right?
#
Because everything is being consumed, everything is being produced and everything is being
#
I'd say all voluntary interactions are part of the market.
#
So you and I speaking, this is in a sense of market interaction.
#
But to your point of the subversion that happens, that's also always true of most market structures.
#
When something is pushed in a certain manner, you always find through history, you'll always
#
find the counter voices, subversive voice, finding an opening that allows to ask that
#
difficult question, which is why you had incredible subversive voice right through history irrespective
#
of which part of the world you're talking about.
#
Now tick tock, I'm not exposed as much to talk as you are, but I can see tick tock as
#
being another example of that.
#
Now here we go to the idea of technology also, especially in our times.
#
So my criticism of that is again comes from this notion that technology by itself will
#
I think tick tock is an example that you have a robust part of society that is willing to
#
ask these difficult questions, which actually is a good sign for any society.
#
And now technology enables that as a possibility to give it visibility and to be a counter
#
point to what is being consumed by most of us.
#
I see it like that kind of interaction.
#
I think it's a very important interaction.
#
And I think that that's where technology can help.
#
But for example, people believe that YouTube is going to democratize art rubbish.
#
It's not going to democratize art.
#
So you need a counter movement, which is going to allow to push that to happen.
#
And that comes from these conversations that we are having.
#
So I'll, I'll, I'll just say that we are actually in complete agreement.
#
We are phrasing it slightly differently.
#
I do not at all mean that markets are a panacea.
#
In fact, I will be completely with you and say that markets will just reflect what society
#
But at the same time in different interesting ways, especially through technology, like
#
I've actually said that in these difficult political times, I believe that technology
#
is a one thing that could surprise us by empowering individuals.
#
I mean, you always had something that surprises, but it's not a panacea.
#
I'm not addressing it as if, uh, yeah, I'm just saying that, you know, now it's technology,
#
And technology is just a medium.
#
Technology could mean so many things.
#
So people who wrote, for example, uh, texts, uh, in the early 19th century, women who wrote
#
very sensuous texts that were banned at that point, I'm saying those, the medium of technology
#
is always being used, I think through history to challenge these structures.
#
The problem happens is when, if the dominant power, societal power becomes so powerful
#
that it's not going to, suppose we ban tick tock and the tick tock in this country, or
#
we ban ban the internet, suppose I'm in China, for example, I can't even Google search.
#
No, I don't dispute the coercive power of the state, but to use an example that you
#
yourself have brought up in your writing that if you look at the USA, what has happened
#
over the last century that first jazz and then hip hop have become dominant cultural
#
forms and classical music is basically dying.
#
Opera is dying in mainland England.
#
So you know, you're those elite forms are dying because of the reach of mass media.
#
I don't think they were, but I don't think they will die.
#
Well, I mean, and the reason for that is because of where they're placed.
#
And they shouldn't die.
#
I mean, that's a different thing.
#
That's a different thing where they should or should not die is a different thing.
#
But I think they will not die fundamentally because they still occupy the same space.
#
The numbers see numbers dominance of jazz and hip hop still speaks to a lot in that
#
is a success of the market and no doubt it speaks to a lot, but it also speaks to the
#
fact that even now aspirational culture remains with classical, it remains with that niche.
#
The niche may be only 25,000, but it's still aspirational.
#
And the question is for me is while something like hip hop dominates imagination, mass imagination,
#
how can hip hop also dominate or shall we say challenged very, very frontally the notions
#
of the niche because the niche still control these kinds of systems of what is accepted.
#
I, you know, I totally agree with you in terms of, uh, the sort of cultural domination of
#
certain elites and all that.
#
But I think if there is going to be a fight back from counterculture has been in the past
#
and it will happen through markets and technology.
#
But I think they're broadly in agreement just saying yes.
#
The other question that I want to move on, which we discussed during lunch, um, uh, at
#
which point we were in agreement.
#
I don't know what now, no, but is essentially about, you know, moving away for a moment
#
from music and your sort of insights on music and, and the structures around music and moving
#
on to what's happening around us in this country and the crisis of liberalism, so to say, is
#
that one of the debates between Ambedkar and Gandhi on caste and I'm mostly on the side
#
of Ambedkar, but I think Gandhi had one valid point and Ambedkar's point was that we have
#
to reform society from the top down sort of echoing what Nehru also believed while Gandhi
#
and others believed that no, the change can only happen in the culture.
#
Now despite my other agreements with Ambedkar and my other disagreements with Gandhi, I
#
think there is something to this in the sense that I think what has happened in India and
#
tell me what you think about it is that we had a liberal elite found this country with
#
a relatively liberal constitution when society itself was illiberal, uh, society has remained
#
illiberal politics has caught up and that is a great failure.
#
Is that something you'd agree with?
#
Well, uh, more or less, yes, I mean now in retrospect, this may be wrong to say now,
#
but I don't know whether we, we, as a society, um, were ready for the idea of India that
#
we were given with the constitution.
#
I don't know because like you said, it was, it was a notion idea based on some, it was
#
a hope actually our constitution is hope is like, can we, with its limitations, whatever
#
it is that can we be like this?
#
But what it does not consider and what it does not, the people do not consider this
#
unless there is ground level actual work with the multiple culture structures that are there
#
in society, which are the complete antithesis of what we hope to be, we are never going
#
If anything, things will get worse, which is a big liberal failure in my opinion, because
#
you have this notion, limited notions, whatever they are of equality, of, you know, of equity,
#
all these notions, but how is it going to really happen in society?
#
Because children, schools, culture systems, art forms are actually engaging in that manner.
#
I mean, even elite private schools, where did we ever speak about equality?
#
When we ever speak about, uh, rights, you know, we don't have a notion of rights in
#
We don't have what it means.
#
We believe it's favorism.
#
We believe that we should be always grateful to somebody who has done what they should
#
So there is a complete gap between this hope and the fact is that we never actually worked
#
So as a society, we were not ready for any of this because this was not part of our culture
#
This is not part of the fact that this is the India that we're hoping for.
#
There is a top down model and people, this doesn't mean the people on top actually completely
#
agreed with this model.
#
We should also remember that, that the elite who put this structure, many of them themselves
#
were like feudal lords.
#
So they wanted this notion of India, but they were not like that.
#
So there is this multiple contradictions in the, at the level of the constructors at the
#
level of social structures and right through our independent history, we have never addressed
#
I'll give you one example.
#
Look at our education, private education system.
#
I mean, we expect, you know, my children go to private school.
#
So I expect my daughter who studied 12 years in a private school with similar kind of people
#
with same kind of ideas to suddenly come, go to the new world in college and understand
#
You're creating an education system that is fundamentally discriminatory.
#
We know who are the people going to public schools, we know who are the people going
#
Those who are aspiration want to move from public school to private school.
#
So you have not addressed a fundamental idea of even education.
#
So when you don't have a, don't build a culture, I mean, my daughter has not had shared meal
#
with people of diversity.
#
So she's never going to understand what that is.
#
So how is she ever going to understand equality?
#
You know, so we don't have a culture of equality, we don't have a culture of fraternity, we
#
have no culture of socialism.
#
So the intrinsic point is that unless there is cultural transformation in the way we behave,
#
in the way we see each other, this preamble of our constitution is never going to be a
#
reality, which is why the constitution itself has so many, so many problematic parts.
#
The preamble has this incredible set of lines, but there are multiple parts of the constitution
#
that are exactly a counterpoint to that.
#
How do we let that pass after 72 years?
#
How do we have draconian laws?
#
How do you don't see that even in the liberal world, we've done nothing.
#
So let's not talk about X government or Y government.
#
The socialist spirited government of this country did not do anything.
#
Because somewhere we are still feudalistic, somewhere we want that power.
#
We want to make sure you have freedom expression, but we don't want it fully.
#
We want to draw that line and I want to decide where that line is.
#
So that's the problem we are in.
#
So cultural transformation is essential for us if we want to move anywhere.
#
In fact, I recorded an episode with Madhav Khosla, author of the brilliant book, India's
#
Founding Moment, which will air in I think three weeks time after you listen to this,
#
which kind of talks about many of the decisions that I think our founders got wrong.
#
For example, all the reasonable restrictions to our rights, which I think make some of
#
those rights meaningless with the over-centralization of the state, which they did for very interesting
#
Some sort of automatic decisions, but you'll have to wait for that episode.
#
I'm also reminded in this context of what Andrew Breitbart once said, where he said politics
#
is downstream of culture.
#
You want politics to change, you change the culture first, it doesn't go the other way
#
And this is something I had done an episode with Akshay Mukul on the Geeta Press.
#
And this is something that is so demonstrated by what the Hindutva folks got absolutely
#
In terms of tactics, they completely nailed it.
#
Is it a sort of a fundamental problem of liberal elites like us that we want a thousand flowers
#
So we can't, you know, put a program in place like the communist word or like the Hindutva
#
There's no programmatic way of thinking because that's alien to us as it should be.
#
We just want to let diversity flourish.
#
But in the process, what happens is that we haven't been able to counter these dangerous
#
They got it absolutely right when they realized that if you want to influence people, we influence
#
their behavior and behavior comes from cultural habituation.
#
So as long as we keep playing that and they had this very, very divisive, you can easily
#
manipulate these cultures and they manipulated it right through and now we are where we are.
#
So they got it right when they realized that culture is where you need to change.
#
Even the anger and the hate you see today is a result of years and decades and decades
#
and decades of actually playing around with those notions of cultures.
#
Now at the same time, we have this liberal world in India.
#
I think one of the, I believe, I know what I said, what I'm going to say is kind of difficult
#
and problematic is this inability of the liberal world to engage with faith and belief and
#
ritual and also propagate a certain condescension towards any of that, almost say that is not
#
modern India, almost say that that is not the way we should be thinking now.
#
That is something of the old and that is, of course it is intrinsically entrenched in
#
different discriminative things, but there is also something very real about it.
#
The fact that's ritual faith belief is a fundamental human need and you need to respect it.
#
You need to engage with it.
#
Otherwise what has happened and what the RSS has done very effectively is they've almost
#
I mean the BJP and RSS is almost saying independent India is a fraud.
#
That whatever you had for 70 years is an evil.
#
It's almost against everything that Indianness is that civilization.
#
We were this people who loved each other.
#
We had no discrimination.
#
Everything was correct.
#
And all that was destroyed by what?
#
The constitution of India without saying it, they're actually saying that the constitution
#
and the democratic idea of India is actually a destruction of the idea of India.
#
And the reason they're able to say that effectively is because of the inability of the liberal
#
and the center in the central left to engage with these very, very nuanced notions of faith
#
respected because people of faith feel disrespected.
#
Let's be very honest here.
#
They do feel disrespected.
#
I know how problematic is what I'm saying.
#
Of course you have to challenge notions.
#
You have to challenge patriarchy, you have to challenge caste, you have to challenge
#
gender, but we have to find a way by which we can find partnership there because otherwise
#
you're pushing more people towards being fanatical, you know, because now they're feeling threatened.
#
And like I said, Amit, how much of explanation can you actually give me when I feel threatened?
#
Then you lash out viscerally.
#
I believe I'm being cornered.
#
I believe I'm threatened.
#
You can say this makes, there's no logic in this.
#
What are you talking about?
#
But this feeling is real.
#
There are two conflicting impulses here.
#
The first impulse is to say that, listen, we have to engage with the reality out there.
#
So at a tactical level to be able to win, we need to reclaim nationalism, like you've
#
said, and reclaim Hinduism, perhaps as some have said, like I think that's Shashi Tharoor's
#
whole point, but there's another way of looking at it where somebody could say from conviction
#
that I don't want to reclaim nationalism because nationalism by definition is exclusionary,
#
that I don't want to reclaim Hinduism even though it's better and different from Hindutva,
#
but I don't want to reclaim it because I want to move past it because I want to move past
#
caste and all these other things, which is part of the baggage of Hinduism.
#
So it's a battle between first principles and beliefs you might come from and the tactics
#
required to win the battle and there is, and I'm thinking aloud, so I'm sorry if I'm rambling,
#
but it seems to me at some point that if you compromise on those core convictions for the
#
sake of tactics, you change until you're no longer living.
#
I am not talking tactically.
#
I am not talking tactically.
#
I'm not talking about reclaiming Hinduism at all.
#
You've spoken about reclaiming nationalism.
#
I want to place them very different.
#
I am not talking about reclaiming Hinduism.
#
I wasn't referring to you.
#
I disagree with that notion of reclaiming Hinduism.
#
I disagree with Mr. Tarur's position in that because I think it's about, see, every discourse
#
I don't believe Hinduism is some ideal discourse in whatever form that we want to reclaim.
#
Hinduism is discriminative.
#
Let's be very clear, Islam is discriminative, Christianity is discriminative.
#
So when we say we want to reclaim something, you're almost saying there was a point of
#
time when it was this perfect body, nonsense.
#
I am saying, can we find a way, I don't know how, okay, can we find a way by which we don't
#
need to discard the feeling of hope and feeling of security that people get from certain things?
#
It could be faith, it could be religious, it could be even ritual, which is not necessarily
#
Can we find a way to have that as a part of our democratic narrative?
#
Can that be part of the way we feel?
#
That's my intriguing question here.
#
Can we, do we need new rituals, for example?
#
You know, because ritual is a very important part of how we live our lives.
#
Do we need new imagination of faith?
#
We have to think in that manner that there are certain things that people do and we do
#
that is part of who we are.
#
That may not essentially be discriminative.
#
Everything in the past is not that, but everything in the past also not positive.
#
So it's not about reclaiming Hinduism, it's not about reclaiming anything.
#
It's about finding a connection between cultural practices that are there across this country
#
and giving those cultural practices a democratic, modern space.
#
Because right now we don't want to give it space.
#
We are saying, oh, leave all that.
#
I don't think that works.
#
I don't think that works.
#
You know, coming from anyone else, I would just say those are just words, but coming
#
from you does very credible because in a sense that's what you're trying to do with Carnatic
#
music and you know, not, you're not abandoning the form into something else.
#
Exactly the point, right?
#
So how do I complicate that when you engage with different art forms, you let them communicate
#
with each other, talk to each other in some fashion.
#
It's a very uncomfortable conversation.
#
It's a, it's sometimes just doesn't work, but there is something interesting that form.
#
There is a reflection that happens.
#
There is a seeing that happens.
#
That's why I feel art plays an important role in what I'm saying now.
#
And I'm not talking about, you know, another thing, this country, you know, the political
#
world has no sense of art.
#
The left thing, art is protests and slogans and plays and songs that is about propaganda.
#
These are we've been viewing.
#
But no, I'm just talking about art forms that exist.
#
You know, they practice across this country.
#
How can they become part of this country?
#
Because I think that's where they can find ways in what I'm saying that you can't find
#
any other, any other place.
#
You know, how can we create places where these, you know, shall we say collaborate or maybe
#
even contest each other or maybe reach out to people that they don't reach out before.
#
Sometimes when you experience an art form from a community that you have no connection with,
#
just that experience changes the way you relate to the community.
#
There's so much possible, but I feel discarding these practices as beings archaic or as being
#
being reductionist in only a sociological sense without taking the experience as being
#
an important part is problematic.
#
And I, I feel even more sure that in our present situation, it is essential that we do this.
#
Otherwise we're going to just lose more because you're not one talking about it.
#
So you know, you and I are almost the same age.
#
And sometimes I have to remind myself that listen, 60% of the country is born after 1991.
#
The average age is something like 27.
#
Everybody's like, everybody's like a kid to me.
#
And it's okay for me to feel this, you know, disconnected because I'm a solitary animal
#
But you actually travel around, you engage with young people, you perform everywhere,
#
you speak everywhere, you know, you've been to Shaheen Bagh recently, you're part of all
#
of this ferment that is happening.
#
You've actively made yourself participate in all of this.
#
What's your sense that is there hope to be had from this young generation coming up that
#
on the one hand, we have a terrible jobs crisis, a terrible employment crisis.
#
A lot of it feeds into these, you know, divisive narratives that are floating around.
#
But on the other hand, you interact at an artistic level with a tremendous number of
#
What's the sense you get or where this country is going?
#
Well, I don't know if there can be a generality in that, but I do think that younger people
#
have definitely surprised me.
#
I would have thought some time ago that there's no energy there.
#
And I actually think it's our generation that has failed.
#
It's you and I who I think really did not engage robustly with ourselves and with what
#
was around us, especially if it comes from, you know, social capital and cultural capital.
#
And in a way, I think the younger generation is reminding us of what we should have been
#
So it's, it's not just about the protest.
#
It's not just about the protest.
#
It's also in the way, you know, this whole idea of culture we discussed, I found the
#
most interesting conversations about that with young people.
#
Because when I talk about this, when I talk about the need to find these ways we can bridge
#
culture or old culture with the democratic idea of India, and I don't see it as necessarily
#
being an impossibility.
#
They almost feel like, yeah, we're unable to connect because however you are, wherever
#
you are, I think there is this disconnection and they feel that we don't have a language
#
to counter that discourse.
#
We don't have a language to counter this, your anti-culture discourse, your anti-Indian
#
We have a political point, we have an intellectual way, but we don't have an emotional way to
#
And I think that's something I find the younger people willing to engage with.
#
I've had a couple of very interesting conversations with younger groups about this, you know,
#
and they're great ideas.
#
I think one important thing that I think young people have, which we need is imagination.
#
And that gives me the greatest hope because I think if there's anything that is dead in
#
political India today, it's imagination.
#
Because all we have is rhetoric, reaction, followed by a cycle of rhetoric and reaction.
#
There is no imagination.
#
There is no creativity because unless there is creativity, there can't be politics.
#
You're a waste of time.
#
And that's why people are getting bored, especially of opposition politics, because everybody
#
is saying the same parroted thing again and again.
#
You and I can see it, you know?
#
So where is the imagination?
#
And I think the younger people in the way they protest and the creative ways in which
#
they're expressing themselves and saying things of great importance and profundity in sometimes
#
just two words, in just an image is magnificent.
#
But does that mean everything will change tomorrow?
#
Maybe another generation.
#
Shame on you for saying that.
#
We were ending on such a nice note of hope and I was suddenly for the first time in months
#
feeling good about the world and you've done that.
#
I have like two more pages of questions, but we'll save it for another episode.
#
I've taken up more than two and a half hours of your time.
#
Thank you so much for being so generous.
#
Pleasure to talk to you.
#
If you enjoyed listening to the show, do head on over to your nearest bookstore online or
#
offline and pick up Sebastian and Sons.
#
I'll also link TM's other books from the show notes as well as other relevant links.
#
You can follow TM on Twitter at TM Krishna.
#
You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes of The Scene in the Unseen at sceneunseen.in and thinkpragati.com.
#
The Scene in the Unseen is supported by the Takshashila Institution.
#
Check out their awesome public policy courses at takshashila.org.in.
#
Thank you for listening.
