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Hemabati Sen was born in 1866 in Khulna, then a small village in eastern Bengal.
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When she was 9 years old, she was married off to a 45 year old widower.
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During the days, she would play with dolls with her husband's children.
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At night, she would lie on her bed, paralysed in fear, unable to process what was happening,
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waking up naked without understanding why.
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Three years into her marriage, her husband died.
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Soon her mother-in-law died, and her mother died, and her father died.
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At the age of 12, she was an orphan and a widow, abandoned by the family that remained,
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penniless in this poor village in the middle of the 19th century.
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You'd think that there wasn't much left in life for her.
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But this 12 year old girl left the small village, made her way in the world, educated herself,
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became a doctor, an actual doctor in an age where female doctors were rare, when women
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were not supposed to study.
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She even got a gold medal in a medical college, but the boys protested, saying girls are not
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supposed to be studying in the first place.
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They threatened to kill her.
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She didn't get the medal.
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Later in life, she fought for equal pay for female doctors and became a prominent social
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Every day for years, she sat down and wrote.
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And when she died in 1933, those pages disappeared into a trunk.
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They lay at the bottom of that trunk for 80 years, till they were discovered.
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And even then, her descendants thought, what's a big deal about this book?
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But that book was a big deal.
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And so we now know the story of Hemabati Sen.
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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 Kavita Rao, who's just written this powerful book called Lady Doctors, the
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Untold Stories of India's First Women in Medicine.
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This book profiles six pioneering women who fought all odds to become doctors in an age
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when girls were supposed to sit at home and learn cooking and needlework, and faced misogyny
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and violence if they dared to enter the man's world.
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These include Hemabati Sen, who I mentioned in the introduction to this episode, and the
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other women are just as remarkable.
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In one sense, this book chronicles how women were second class citizens in 19th century
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India, sometimes treated worse than cattle.
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In other ways, it is a reflection of our society even today.
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Yeah, the customs of getting girls married off when they are nine may no longer be common,
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but women are still thought of as a property of men, as instrumental to the well-being
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of others without autonomy of their own.
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I often say that the India of today inhabits multiple centuries, the 19th, the 20th, and
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some of us elites in the 21st.
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So there is a lot in this book that is familiar, ugly undercurrents today that were explicit
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then, that are almost hardwired into our society, that go back a long way and still remain with
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My conversation with Kavita wasn't just about these lady doctors though, or the society
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Kavita is a wonderful writer and storyteller, and we also spent a lot of time talking about
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her craft, the life of a writer in these times, and the possibilities of being a late bloomer.
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She also had some terrific advice for women trying to juggle family and writing.
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Before we get to the conversation though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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In the course itself, through four webinars spread over four weekends, I share all I know
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There are many exercises, much interaction, and a lovely and lively community at the end
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and a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills.
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Kavitha, welcome to The Scene in the Unseen.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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I loved reading your book, Lady Doctors.
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In fact, it's really interesting that, you know, one of the things that I noticed about
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your book is that on the one hand, it tells you how bad things used to be for women once
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But then you realize with a start that in many cases, they are still like that for most
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So, you know, I find that it's not just a sort of a historical book, but has many resonances
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But we'll discuss that a little later in this episode.
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I want to begin by sort of asking you about your journey so far.
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You know, tell me a little bit about what your childhood was like, where you grew up,
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So, basically, I've been an expatriate all my life, I mean, since the age of four.
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I was born in Bangalore, but my father was a pediatrician.
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So when I was about two or three, we moved to the UK because he had a fellowship there.
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Then after a couple of years, we moved back.
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We were in Bangalore for a bit.
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And then around when this was a very long time ago, in 1975 or so, my father was one
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of the pediatricians sent to Iran.
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This was pre-revolution Iran by Indira Gandhi.
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She sent a convoy of doctors to help Iran because in those days, India and Iran were
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And around 1975, I moved, you know, with my family to Iran.
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Did not live in big towns.
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We lived in small towns.
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We did not live in Tehran, and we lived there for about four years.
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We had to quickly leave when the revolution came, when the Khomeini came in.
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And then we returned to Bangalore again.
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And after a few years, my dad again got itchy feet and we moved to Bahrain.
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And I spent, I guess you could say I spent most of my early childhood there because we
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stayed there for about eight years.
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Then again, returned to Bangalore and I did my schooling and I went to law school in Bangalore.
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So that's me up to that point.
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So you've written a really nice piece that I'll link from the show notes on your childhood
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in Iran where you talk about how when you went there, there was a snowstorm, your roof
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Tell me a bit more about how it was to be a kid in all these different places.
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Like first you're in Iran, then you're in Bahrain.
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And you've essentially, as we'll discuss, kind of been traveling all your life.
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So you know, what kind of books did you read?
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Was there a sort of an early desire to be a writer and so on?
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I mean, it's true that I've been traveling all my life.
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Like my father was a rolling stone.
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Then the man I married, when I married him, he deceptively said, I'm going to stay in
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And then he too started rolling.
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So you know, we have moved around a lot.
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That's been my life for better or for worse.
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So Iran, to be perfectly honest, I have very few memories because I was four years old.
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At that time, but you know, through photos and you know, talking with my mom, I've reconstructed
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And you asked about what I read, I mean, right from the time I was small, I was reading.
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And one of the reasons for that was until I was in Iran, we didn't have a proper school
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because there weren't, there were not enough people or not enough children to have a proper
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school there because we were in small towns like Kermanshah and Zahedan.
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So my school basically had five kids and of these five children, one of them was my older
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So the other four kids were not related to me, but we had an American teacher who really
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And I mean, I should say my father was not like many Indian fathers, I suppose.
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He was all about reading.
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He used to get us a lot of books and he didn't have a lot of money at that time because he
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was a young doctor in Iran.
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So he wasn't getting paid much, but he used to get us secondhand books or books from some
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sort of library, whatever.
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And he used to be constantly encouraged us to read.
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And I suppose the books I read were, initially were the kind of books that most children
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in India might possibly be reading, Enid Blyton, though she is not popular these days, but
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I read her, Roald Dahl and the Just William books, those ones, those were available.
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Of Indian books, I think mostly the Soviet books, the books that were cheaply available,
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which used to pick up on our trips to India, all the Soviet books.
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So he used to encourage me to read virtually everything and a lot of history books as well,
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not just fiction, but a lot of history books as well as I got older.
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So in that way, I was extremely lucky.
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My parents were not like many other Indian parents, they were not just about the studies
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and getting marks and being good at maths and stuff like that.
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And I was terrible at maths and I've always been terrible at maths anyway.
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So I was happy to escape to reading.
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Yeah, sorry, I missed something.
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Yeah, you said about my memories of Bahrain, which are much clearer.
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I mean, I moved to Bahrain when I was about eight and it's a very small country.
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And back then it was even smaller before the internet and before easy transport and all
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But we had, I suppose, a very Indian life because I went to an Indian school, I did
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not go to the posh international schools, parents couldn't afford that.
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So I went to an Indian school, a CBSE school, I didn't enjoy school at all, to be honest.
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I didn't like that school.
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I honestly don't think that school taught me anything or very little.
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I mean, basically all my teaching was at the hands of my father and my mother to a slightly
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lesser extent because she had all the housework to be getting on with.
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So really I feel like all my reading was due to my father and it was a very Indian lifestyle.
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We met only other Indians and we went to an Indian school, we ate Indian food, we did
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Indian things, we learned classical music and it's not the life that I later led as
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It was very different to that.
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In those days, Indians stuck to other Indians for the comfort of familiarity.
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I don't really, I haven't followed that in my later life.
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I mean, these days, I just, I do not want to hang out with other Indians for the sake
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I like to meet people from various different countries.
#
I mean, that's interesting because in my years as a professional poker player, I would spend
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a lot of time in Macau where I would play a fair bit and I would of course go with other
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people from here and on one such trip, they had this insane craving for Indian food.
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And I'm like, we are going back to India, why are you craving Indian food?
#
So I remember one afternoon we had to catch the ferry at Macau and go to Hong Kong and
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catch a flight back to India.
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And they said, before catching the ferry, let's have lunch at an Indian restaurant.
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And I was like, what are you talking about?
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We will be there tonight.
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You know, you have dinner there and they're like, no, let's go.
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And they insisted on going somewhere and we ended up missing the ferry because of which
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And this insularity that Indians often have that I understand the craving for familiarity,
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but the whole point of traveling is to kind of expand those horizons.
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So I just find it bewildering and bizarre.
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But I guess when people aren't traveling, traveling per se, but they're settled somewhere,
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I also understand that need for comfort.
#
So in your article, there were a couple of very interesting quotes, one from your mom
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So it's kind of interesting that, you know, one speaks to one's parents for quotes from
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So I just want to read those quotes out and then I have a couple of unrelated questions
#
First, you quote your mom on how fashionable Iran was, pre-revolution Iran was, where she
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says, quote, I felt so unfashionable next to the Iranian woman with their lipstick,
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high heels and French perfume.
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And then later you quote your father talking about how things changed after revolution
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where he says, quote, everything had changed.
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The streets were filled with young boys, only 15 or 16 toting machine guns.
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There were no women anywhere.
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One young boy branding a Kalashnikov came up to me and asked me what I thought of the
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I don't think anyone, even Khomeini, had ever been so enthusiastic about the revolution
#
And the first of my questions is about the exploration of memories, because I might have
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a few memories of my childhood, but I noticed a few months back, what I did was I kind of
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sat with my dad with a recorder and I just wanted him to talk about his memories and
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his growing up and all of that.
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And it was interesting.
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And when those memories kind of coincide with a time when I was alive and I also have memories,
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it was sort of interesting to sort of see them play off against each other.
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And this whole act of talking to people about what happened in the past, I wonder to what
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extent it changes one's impression of the past, not just in terms of the person asking,
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but even in terms of the person remembering.
#
Like I did an episode with Aanchal Malhotra and she wrote a beautiful book about the objects
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people carried with them from partition and the memories that those represented.
#
And while researching for that, one of the sort of TIL moments for me was that, you know,
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when we remember an event, the first time we remember it, we remember the event.
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But every subsequent time, we remember the remembering.
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So memory is very malleable that way and can do strange things.
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So when you talk to people about your memories, like one, I wonder if you've done more of
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this spoken to your parents or others about memories of the past and you know, what is
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this sort of experience like, especially when in some small manner, you are also part of
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I mean, this is a very complicated question.
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One thing I notice is that obviously, you know, when I speak to my mother about these
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memories, at the time she was going through this journey in Iran, life was very difficult
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You know, she grew up in a time when there was no internet and no easy access to books.
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And she was suddenly, you know, transported to a country where she didn't know anybody.
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She didn't speak the language.
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She, you know, she was just like a clonk down in there.
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My father went off to work in his satisfying and interesting work as a pediatrician.
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And she was stuck with two small kids.
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I have an older sister who's just two years apart from me.
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So there were two small kids under the age of, you know, five.
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And she was sitting in, you know, looking after them, running the house.
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And I'm sure when she actually went through it, I mean, she says this, it was very hard
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And she had many times when she totally missed her family.
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And, you know, and also, you know, in the early expatriates, they didn't have much money.
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They don't lead the comfortable life that we later expatriates do.
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They didn't have the internet.
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I mean, they really suffered.
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If you look at that picture, I mean, when you see that photo, it's like everybody is
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slightly out of place, you know, there's my mom in her sari and, you know, all that.
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But at the same time, now when she looks back upon it, she sees it as an enriching experience
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because memories tend to become rosy with time.
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And she sees it as, wow, it was such an interesting experience and had such a, you know, wonderful
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time kind of doing that.
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And as I said, pre-revolution, they were very good relations between the Iranians and the
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I mean, my mother got a lot of attention because she was wearing, you know, saris and, you
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know, those 60s and 70s saris, chiffon saris, which are like sort of, you know, they're
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quite sort of, you know, revealing and all that.
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But there was no sort of blowback from that because in those days, all the Iranian women
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were, you know, dressing in perfectly, you know, normal as I say, normal in quotes way.
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And then, of course, the revolution came and, you know, the revolution is a complicated
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It's not like Reza Shah Pallavi was such a wonderful person.
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I mean, he was incredibly corrupt and, you know, was a tyrant and a dictator and all
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So it's not as simple as, you know, good people were set aside for bad people and everything
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became worse after that and all.
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It can't be really be covered in a podcast and, you know, I don't want to comment on
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that since I have not been back to Iran since then.
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But just speaking from the memories of my parents and also when my father, as I say
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in the article, my father had to go back to collect his salary.
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And obviously that was very important.
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So we quickly got out when the revolution came, we got news from Tehran that Khomeini
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is coming and everybody needs to get out because if you have no idea what's going to happen
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with the, you know, revolutionary guards are going to take over.
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So we all got out on the first plane and then, unfortunately, we went to Mangalore, which
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is where my maternal grandmother was and we were all sort of like refugees there.
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We didn't have a house.
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We didn't have anything.
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We left some stuff behind, we just went with a few suitcases.
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And then my father had to go back.
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And while I don't remember this, my mother says like, you know, how scared she was, but
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they had no choice because his money was with the government and he had to collect it.
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So basically he flew back into a revolution.
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And that was very scary for him.
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And as I said, he described how all the streets were filled with 15 year olds with Kalashnikovs
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or whatever gun they had back then.
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And he just, you know, decided to put on this act of being very supportive of the revolution.
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You know, basically he started the Iranian equivalent of Khomeini Zindabad and it was
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like very enthusiastic because, you know, he was like, I have to stay alive, get my
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And on the way back, he had, there was no flight.
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For some reason, there was no flight direct from Tehran to India.
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Maybe they were stopped because of the revolution.
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He had to go through Pakistan.
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So I mean, you can just imagine at the time, I think General Ziyal Haq was in power.
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So he was like, Oh my God, what if, you know, I have to change planes in Pakistan.
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What if they, you know, arrest me there that time relations between India and Pakistan
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The wars were just over.
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So he was like, I don't even, you know, I mean, he didn't say any of this, but my mother
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And again, remember no mobile phones, no email, no internet.
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And he just had to sit and wait in Mangalore until he finally came back with his money.
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And I think after that, she must have told him, I mean, no more of these kinds of expatriate
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assignments, which are ridiculously risky.
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And I've been through my own journey in that regard, but you know, when I went through
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it, I thought about how worried she must have been when the times when there was absolutely
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no communication and she just had to wait for him to come back.
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The only communication was telegram, I think at that time.
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So yeah, I don't know whether that answers your question.
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I may have wondered a bit.
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No, no, this is a show meant for wondering.
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And if I might wonder myself, a couple of modern resonances, you spoke about 15 years
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old with Kalashnikov's, which is basically what Twitter is like today in a sense.
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And you also spoke of your dad having to go all the way back to Iran to get his money.
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And you've written a book on freelancing.
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So I think many freelancers would also know how hard it is.
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I don't think I have had it even a quarter as hard as my parents have had, you know,
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Yeah, no, just and just to continue that thought, I mean, there's also a sort of strain of choosing
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your memories, as it were in your book where you, for example, while you were speaking,
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I got reminded of Anandi by Joshi, you know, who went to the US to study and she's writing
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all these letters back to her husband.
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And her husband is both sort of has been good to her and bad to her.
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Good to her that he sort of sent her to study and all of that and wanted her to be educated
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In the sense, he would just beat her up.
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In fact, once famously, as you said, he beat her up because she wasn't studying.
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She was cooking, which is a good reason, but the wrong action entirely.
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But we'll come to her later.
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But I thought of this in the context of just choosing the memories like you yourself pointed
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out that, you know, it's easy to look back at a particular point in time and say that,
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oh, the before was all good and it was all rosy and the after was all bad.
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And while everything kind of contains multitudes, and this is also something I've been thinking
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about that when we look back on the past, what we remember as a happy time or a sad
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time is really up to us, right?
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Because we can choose those slivers of memories to remember and kind of, you know, discard
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the rest and then it's up to us what we choose.
#
So tell me a little bit about after you've come back at this point in time, what's your
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conception of yourself forming up to be?
#
And I ask this because I find that and we are almost the same age.
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I think I might be a little younger, but we're almost the same age.
#
And it kind of strikes me that, you know, people today can conceive of themselves as
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anything because everything is open to them through the Internet and, you know, just in
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terms of the options you have open to you and all of that.
#
Now I remember back as an 80s kid, I mean, I'm too young to remember the 70s, so of course
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I was around then, and as an 80s kid, you had all the traditional options open to you
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and that's obviously for the boys, at least, you know, doctor, engineering and civil services
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or later, you know, MBA opens up in the 90s, all of that shit, but nothing really beyond
#
What was your conception of yourself and how did it evolve as time went by as you grew
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older and reached adulthood?
#
I mean, I returned from Bahrain to India in 1987 and I was about 15 then, okay.
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And I did my second PUC in Bangalore and my parents decided that they wanted to settle
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in Bangalore for a while.
#
And you know, my father got a job there, set up his practice there, you know, etc., etc.
#
My father had a very different concept of expat life than I do.
#
He was incredibly patriotic, okay.
#
I'm not very patriotic at all.
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So okay, I almost believe that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
#
He was an incredibly patriotic man and he had all these ideas about giving back to his
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And I don't scoff at those ideas, mind you, I just, I don't feel the same way or quite
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often I don't feel the same way or, you know, I have very muddled and mixed feelings probably.
#
So anyway, so that's the reason why we returned.
#
And when I came back to India, I felt like a complete misfit.
#
I mean, I can be frank here because I don't think I hope that any of my relatives or parents,
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my mother is listening to this.
#
You know, I come from this very sort of tiny sort of Brahmin community, which is extremely
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sort of stultifying and, you know, everybody gets married only within the tiny, tiny sub
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It's not even like, you know, we get married within the state or anything.
#
It's like very, very sort of, you know, basically originally from Udupi and everybody gets married
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within that tiny, tiny sub subcast.
#
Everybody becomes a doctor or an engineer, though I have to say the women of my time,
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you know, many of them didn't have any option to become anything, you know, that kind of
#
And when I came back, I felt completely suffocated.
#
I was like, Oh my God, this is hideous.
#
And I have to behave like this.
#
In those days, 1987, Bangalore was a small town.
#
It was not the Silicon Valley that it is today.
#
So everybody knew your business.
#
I mean, you know, everybody knew what you were doing, what you were wearing, what you
#
were that was especially true of my community.
#
So I felt incredibly suffocated for a while.
#
Then I just got used to it because there was no other option.
#
And then, you know, I studied at national law school little later on, and I wasn't quite
#
sure whether I wanted to study law, to be honest.
#
I mean, the other thing that I wanted to do was something in English literature, which
#
has always been my passion.
#
But my dad quite rightly said, and I think he was right.
#
He said that that in an English literature degree may not have much value in the job
#
If you want to get a job, probably law is a better idea.
#
And this was in the early years of NLSIU.
#
So I was the second batch very long time ago, when NLSIU was new, and it was honestly pretty
#
It's not the incredibly difficult thing that it is today where you study for two years
#
and you still can't get in.
#
So I studied law for five years, and I really enjoyed studying law.
#
But I didn't like practicing it so much, which I'll come to later.
#
But I still have friends from my time in law school.
#
My best friends are still from law school.
#
When I was writing this book, Lady Doctors, I realized that some of the habits that I
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had learned in law school came back to me.
#
And honestly, I had not used them for 20 years.
#
I had not used these skills of research and all that, because law school was incredibly
#
I mean, this was pre-internet, remember, so 1989, 1990.
#
So pre-internet, we had to do something like about 12 projects a year on various subjects.
#
And each project was, I don't know, maybe about, certainly about 5,000 words or more
#
and well-researched at any way.
#
And we had to do all this without any internet.
#
So we had to go to the library and there will be one relevant book and all of us, 80 of
#
us will be jostling for that book.
#
And some people would even hide the book in the library so that somebody else couldn't
#
So all those habits of research and working hard on a long, long project and endurance
#
really helped me with this book.
#
So, you know, I'm glad I went to law school in some way, though I didn't actually use
#
my degree in a related way, but still I'm glad I did that.
#
So does that sort of answer your question?
#
Yeah, it's useful to move ahead to the next question, which is what every good answer
#
So before we get to your, you know, your practice as a lawyer and why you chose not to do that,
#
elaborate a little bit more for me on the exact kind of research that you did in a couple
#
That one does, you know, I'm guessing, learning to practice a particular profession with its
#
conventions for research and all, also then changes the way that you read, changes the
#
way that you accumulate knowledge and does that then shape the way that you think?
#
Like do you begin to think about everything else in a different way, maybe a more systematic
#
way or maybe a different kind of systematic way?
#
Is there a sort of an influencer?
#
And also, what exactly was your research process for the book like, like, did you have any
#
of the modern tools in terms of, you know, note taking and knowledge management for that?
#
What was that process like?
#
I'm very curious to know more.
#
So I do think that, yes, the, you know, the methods that I had in law school, you know,
#
we had these heavily footnoted projects, right?
#
I mean, though I'm sure that, you know, plagiarism back then wasn't the, you know, hanging offense
#
it is right now because, you know, we didn't have proper books and we didn't have the internet
#
So it was all sort of very rudimentary, our research.
#
Nevertheless, I think it really helped me because organizing huge sets of material,
#
finding the right sources, all these skills helped me some 20 years later, as did my journalism
#
I mean, but, and for this book, I had to read a lot of very dry material and my aim in this
#
book was not to just make it well researched and well footnoted and all that.
#
My main aim in this book was to make it readable.
#
And I have to see where the readers find it readable.
#
I won't know until I get some feedback from readers as to whether it is readable.
#
That was the main thing for me.
#
Take all this extremely dry jargon.
#
Some of it legal jargon because there are a couple of court cases also and turn it into
#
something interesting and readable and compelling.
#
I wanted it to read like fiction while it is nonfiction.
#
I mean, I hope that that's sort of clear.
#
I mean that I don't mean, you know, being inaccurate, but I wanted it to be a page turner
#
as far as I can possibly make it.
#
And I think all my legal writing really helped in that because, you know, basically in law,
#
you take a bunch of, you know, facts and try to boil them down to the essential fact.
#
And that is what I've tried to do with this book.
#
So that really helped regarding the research for this book.
#
It's a very archival book by which I mean that, you know, I did want to talk to some
#
of the relatives and the friends of the lady doctors, but honestly, I couldn't find any
#
that had or I just found a couple maybe that had memories.
#
So basically everybody else had forgotten about them.
#
I mean, they knew that X person was their great grandmother or grandmother, but they
#
couldn't remember a thing about her because by the time they arrived, you know, they were
#
born or something, she was already really old.
#
And when you think about it, this is quite common because my paternal grandmother, for
#
instance, I have almost zero memories for her.
#
By the time I was born, she was very old in her nineties or whatever, and she had dementia
#
and she wasn't able to talk to me or anything like that.
#
So I mean, that's quite common.
#
If you ask me what memories I have of her, I don't have any memories of her, to be honest.
#
And so I had, when I say archival, I had to look at the letters of the lady doctors and
#
many of them didn't even write letters like Kadhim Biri.
#
I had to look at some memoirs.
#
Some of them didn't write memoirs.
#
Then I went to memoirs, biographies of them written by other people.
#
There were a couple of those, though not many.
#
Some of them were in languages that I could not get easily translated.
#
So I had to do a lot of work to get an English translation because they were in Marathi or
#
they were in Bangla, you know, languages that I do not read.
#
So I had to look into all those things.
#
And eventually I even like for the last one, Mary Poonan Lukos, she started writing a memoir
#
and then just stopped abruptly, probably because she got married, she had children.
#
This is always a thing with women.
#
I mean, with most of the lady doctors, suddenly they would stop keeping records when they
#
got married and had children because they were too busy looking after the children then,
#
So suddenly her memoir stopped and I was like, how do I find some record of what it was like
#
And I had to go to the memoir of a person called Somerville, T.H Somerville, who was
#
a doctor in Travancore.
#
He was a British missionary who was a doctor in Travancore and a friend of Mary's.
#
So I actually had to use his memoir to give an idea of what practicing medicine was like.
#
So obviously it's not the same experience that Mary had, but I didn't have a choice
#
because it was either that or leave like a big gap in the book where she comes back to
#
Kerala, gets married and then silence for the next 40 years.
#
That couldn't have worked.
#
So I had to go to the memoirs of other people living at the same time that the lady doctors
#
So that was, you know, like as it regarding modern tools and I'm not a very technically
#
savvy person, though I can learn stuff if I have to, you know, most of the material
#
was still from libraries, though maybe from digital archives and things like that.
#
And you know, I don't think I, I tried Scrivener for keeping notes and I just, I just couldn't
#
So I just resorted to the old fashioned methods that I perhaps learned in law school, which
#
is like, you know, I just kept detailed notes of everything and I made sure that I, or I've
#
I've tried my best to make sure that everything is accurately footnoted.
#
I, I don't want to sit up here and say I have done it perfectly in case a mistake comes
#
up to haunt me, but I've kind of, you know, tried my best, you know, I obviously recorded
#
all interviews and things like that.
#
So I don't think very modern methods, probably old fashioned methods.
#
No, I have to say at this point that I love reading your book.
#
For me, it wasn't a page turner, it was a page clicker, because even though you sent
#
me the physical book, I kind of prefer to just read it on my screen, I bought a Kindle
#
version and just easier to take notes and all of that.
#
So a couple of questions regarding the actual writing of it, and one of those is that one
#
of the qualities of your prose, which is also there in your journalism, obviously, is the
#
clarity of your prose, which is interesting coming from your legal backgrounds, because,
#
you know, I teach this online writing class, and occasionally, there'll be somebody there
#
who will be like, I have a legal background, and we are expected to write in this kind
#
And these are the conventions.
#
And all those are there.
#
Now, it seems clear that you sort of confronted that and beat that it wasn't really an issue
#
You know, when I look back on my older writing, I always cringe, which I think happens to
#
If you look back on something you wrote five years back, of course, you'll cringe, because
#
you're kind of growing and learning all the time, take me through, you know, your journey
#
as far as your writing style is concerned, in terms of arriving at the kind of clarity
#
which your book and your writing clearly has, because it's not something that is with anybody
#
right from the start, you have to work at it.
#
And initially, what happens is that there is this sort of dual thing playing out that
#
there is a battle between judgment and ability.
#
So you know, whenever a young writer will tell me that, you know, I'm such a crap writer,
#
I am like, No, you are not the fact that you're saying that means your judgment is better
#
And that's a great thing, because you just do more of it, and your ability will catch
#
Well, with me, when I was young, I realized my judgment was also impaired, because I actually
#
thought I was a good writer.
#
So what was that sort of journey with you like?
#
And how was it that you began to arrive at certain values of prose?
#
And was that sort of associated with your journey in journalism as well?
#
I might answer this in great length, because this is a really interesting question and
#
one that I have grappled with for years.
#
And you're absolutely right.
#
When I graduated from law school, I had many skills, but I don't think the skill of good
#
writing was one of them, because obviously, legal writing is different from other writing.
#
And it was very convoluted.
#
I mean, if you have read all those judgments, and like, it's embarrassing, really.
#
So I used to write like that.
#
And my first writing job was as legal correspondent for the Economic Times.
#
This was a very long time ago, and I didn't do that job for long.
#
Nevertheless, it was a big learning experience for me.
#
And when I look at my clips back then, and I still have them, and they're all hard copies,
#
because in those days, there was no internet.
#
So I had painstakingly cut them out and send them to my parents.
#
And my writing was so rubbish back then.
#
And I really wonder why anybody didn't turn around and tell me.
#
Maybe because everybody's writing was quite bad back then.
#
Because this was before the internet, and we didn't have access to the great writing
#
of the Americans and the British and other people.
#
So my writing was just so convoluted.
#
I never used a short word when a long word would do.
#
And it was just so, I don't have words to describe it, really.
#
And I think the process of writing, learning better was very slow.
#
Because what happened was, I mean, maybe we'll get to this later, just a couple of years
#
after my, you know, working for the Economic Times, I moved with my husband to Hong Kong.
#
And suddenly I was exposed to all these journals that were there at the time, Far Eastern Economic
#
Review, Time Magazine, Asia Week, where, you know, people were writing in a completely
#
And I suddenly realized that, oh, wow, okay, this is what good writing is.
#
You know, you don't need to use big words to sound important.
#
And I actually did some work there for a magazine called Asia Week.
#
I was a correspondent for them.
#
And this was like really long ago.
#
And I had a mentor, a British man called Peter Cordingley.
#
And he told me, I want to see every sentence of yours no longer than 20 words.
#
And I was like, what do you mean by 20 words?
#
I'm just getting started.
#
I mean, I'm not going to, I'm going to carry on for another 30 words at least.
#
And he's like, no, every sentence has to, Asia Week was part of time at that time.
#
And they had a certain writing style, very punchy, every sentence no longer than 20 words.
#
And I just sort of slashed and burned through my writing, you know, under Peter's supervision.
#
And he was like, the other thing I have to say about, you know, working in Hong Kong
#
and Bangkok in those early years was there was so much prejudice against Indians.
#
Like every job I interviewed for, they would say, huh, but we're actually looking for
#
native English speakers.
#
And I'm like, you know, I am a native English speaker.
#
Believe me, my Hindi is like not worth reading and my Kannada is probably worse.
#
And they will be like, no, no, we're looking for native English speakers.
#
And then they would turn around and hire a French person or a Polish person or something.
#
So there was this incredible amount of racial prejudice and people were like, oh, we are
#
And that made me very angry and sad and I wept buckets and all that kind of thing.
#
And this was, you know, when my husband was forging ahead in his career, because you see,
#
he works in finance and Indian people in finance is perfectly okay.
#
I mean, they can't write well, but they're good with numbers, so it's okay.
#
And so I decided, you know, I can sit and cry or I can fix my writing and I can fix
#
I can't turn myself into a native English speaker, but I can do this much.
#
So I fixed it and it didn't happen overnight.
#
Obviously I read, I read, I read and you know, I looked at good writing and I'm so glad these
#
days that, you know, there's so many wonderful writers in India these days whose prose is
#
as good or sometimes better than, you know, British people or American people or, you
#
know, the so-called native English speakers.
#
There are lots and lots of them who are writing the most amazing nonfiction and very, very
#
And you had one of them on your show, Saman Subramaniam.
#
So, you know, that kind of really simple and colorful writing, I'm still working on it.
#
I mean, it's an ongoing journey.
#
I'll keep learning, I hope.
#
And that wasn't a long answer at all.
#
People go on for half an hour when they say they're going on a long answer.
#
This is quite pithy, but I guess pithiness is one of the skills that you learned in your
#
The other sort of thing I loved about your book is that I noticed that every chapter
#
of, you know, from the introduction and then the seven chapters in the epilogue, every
#
chapter starts with something that really draws you in, that you're telling a story
#
and there's something really telling there and then it unfolds from there.
#
And it's just structured so beautifully and it's invisible.
#
I mean, I noticed it because, you know, one notices these matters of craft and I thought
#
I was so well done because really punchy start to the chapter and you want to know more about
#
this person and what's going on and there's so much drama and then the whole thing kind
#
So, at one level, obviously, as a journalist, also with every piece that you write, there
#
is a structure, you're telling a story of sorts, but at the other level, you mentioned
#
earlier that you wanted this book to be accessible, a page turner or a page clicker as in my case.
#
So what was sort of your models there in terms of writers who've tackled such interesting
#
nonfiction subjects and managed to, you know, use the tools of fiction, use the tools of
#
And you've, of course, been a novelist before you wrote a nonfiction book with your book
#
So, you know, who were your kind of models there and how did your sort of ethic for approaching
#
something a project like this evolve?
#
So this is going to be another long answer.
#
It's a complicated question.
#
And I'm so glad you like the structure because, you know, that's probably the nicest thing
#
anybody has ever said to me about any of my work because I really thought about the structure.
#
I thought about it so much.
#
And I think I can say that the structure is entirely mine.
#
Nobody has helped me with it.
#
I just sat up all night thinking about it.
#
And I said, how do I humanize these women?
#
Because I didn't want them to be sort of these plaster saints, oh, they're so worthy and,
#
you know, they're so wonderful.
#
And I mean, like, that'll immediately put the reader off, oh, my God, they're so sanctimonious
#
and good and pioneers and blah, blah.
#
I wanted to humanize them because none of them are perfect.
#
You know, they all have their, you know, kind of, you know, foibles and faults and things
#
on which they were probably wrong when you look back with hindsight.
#
So I worked so hard on the structure and I decided that, you know, because of my journalistic
#
training and the other thing is that I've been a freelancer for many years for many
#
reasons, which we may go into later.
#
And I know that, you know, in India, people think that freelancers are rubbish and badly
#
paid and they can't hack a, you know, a staff job.
#
I think there's a lot of great journalism out there which is done by freelancers.
#
I don't include myself in that category.
#
But one thing you do learn as a freelancer is to get the attention of the commissioning
#
That is a very important skill because he has an inbox filled with, you know, hundreds
#
and hundreds of story pictures.
#
And you know, he could assign any of these pictures to his staff.
#
And one thing I've learned in so many years of freelancing, which I've done on and off
#
depending on where I was moving, is that I can get the attention of editors.
#
I don't know about the rest of it, but this much I have learned.
#
I know how to not bury the lead and I hope I have done that in my book because my main
#
thing was every chapter must grab the reader.
#
It must not start with, I basically did not want to start with Anandi Bhai who was born
#
on 15th January in 1863 in this testing.
#
She then went on to study, no, nothing like that.
#
I wanted her to just absolutely grab the reader, which is why, you know, I've sort of titled
#
the chapters like that.
#
You know, I mean, the titles may be a bit of a simplification of the women, but they
#
sort of summed them up.
#
You know, the good wife, the rule breaker, the working mom, the fighter, the lawmaker.
#
So this sort of sums them up and I thought that would sort of center them in the imagination
#
Regarding the writing of this book, I didn't mention my previous answer, but a lot of the
#
style of the book is due to the fantastic editing of Deepthi Talwar at Westland, who
#
is my editor and who is a fantastic editor.
#
And I must say that every writer needs an editor.
#
I do not believe that there is any writer who does not need one.
#
And she kicked this book and the style into shape to make it really simple and accessible
#
and readable for everybody.
#
So definitely a shout out for her.
#
I've forgotten the second part of your question now.
#
The second part of my question was about what models did you have in terms of this kind
#
of writing, nonfiction writing and so on?
#
You know, while I've been obviously reading journalism for years and years trying to learn
#
from, you know, great journalists, I used to read only fiction until a few years ago.
#
So in my, you know, the books I read were just fiction, literary fiction, crime fiction.
#
I'm a big crime fiction fan.
#
And only about a few years ago, I suddenly woke up and realized, wow, there's so much
#
interesting nonfiction out there, which in some cases is far more interesting than the
#
fiction, which is not something I ever said before.
#
I suddenly woke up and realized that.
#
And among the nonfiction writers that I really love who write such exciting nonfiction, who
#
make it like thrillers, probably my favorite nonfiction writer of all time is David Grant,
#
who writes for the New Yorker.
#
And he's written several books and one of the books is called Killers of the Flower
#
It is about the founding of the FBI after a string of murders in the Osage tribe in
#
And you know, when I looked at it, I was like, oh, sounds dull, sounds boring and all that
#
I don't want to read this.
#
And it's just so thrilling.
#
It's like a page turner.
#
And I suddenly looked at that and said, wow, you know, nonfiction, this doesn't read like
#
So I started reading everything he wrote and he's written a lot of magazine pieces.
#
He's written this amazing piece.
#
I mean, if you can put it in your notes, David Grant, it's, I don't remember the name of
#
the piece, but it's about, he meets somebody who hunts the giant squid.
#
The giant squid hunter, something like that.
#
It's basically about a giant squid.
#
I mean, you just read that and you feel like you're on a boat in the Pacific hunting a
#
And that is a kind of writing that I'm trying to achieve.
#
I'm nowhere there yet, but I'm trying, I'm trying really hard.
#
So he was one, David Grant.
#
And you know, then, you know, I suddenly started seeing such wonderful nonfiction in India
#
And I've mentioned Salman Subramaniam before, but Salman Subramaniam was one of them, Finding
#
Fish's book and his latest book, I also read that before writing this book, quite recently
#
before writing this book, a dominant character.
#
So in that book, he just takes the most complicated scientific concepts and boils them down and
#
makes it beautifully simple for someone like me who has no science background.
#
And so many wonderful writers, I was, I was very influenced by, and I used to read Dal
#
Rimpel back in the day and I still read him and I still enjoy him.
#
But now I've, I also read many Indians writing about their own history.
#
So I read everything that Manu Pillai has ever written.
#
And he's quite a big source for me in the chapter on Meri Poonam Lokos.
#
I love Ira Mukoti, or maybe it's pronounced Ira Mukoti, her, and she's sort of getting
#
better and better with each book.
#
I love Snigda Poonam, loved her book, Dreamers.
#
So there are all these amazing Indian writers who are writing fantastic nonfiction and you
#
know, writing our own stories.
#
So I've been very influenced by that and in the last few years, I was thinking I should
#
write something about our own history, even if I make a big mess of it, but I should attempt
#
it at least, you know, and other people I've, I've read in nonfiction who really, I loved
#
John Carrero's Bad Blood.
#
That's also another, you know, book, which could have been very dull, but again, he writes
#
it like a, you know, thriller.
#
So these are the kind of people who have influenced me, and I think it's a very exciting time
#
for nonfiction in India because most of the great books that I see, they're often nonfiction
#
and they tend to be, I think in my view, better edited than fiction often is, and editing
#
is very important, I think.
#
So I just think it's an exciting time for nonfiction.
#
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more and I've, we'll have all these links in the show notes,
#
of course, and I've had episodes with many of the people you named like Samant, like
#
Manu Pillai, Ira Mukhoti, Narayani Basu, also you had mentioned you liked Stink Da Poonam,
#
I had an episode back in the day, my episodes were only one hour, so maybe I'll have her
#
on for a longer time, sometime.
#
Let's move on from here to another sort of fascinating aspect of your life.
#
Now, before we go back to your practicing law and journalism, can I just interrupt and
#
say one more shout out?
#
I have been reading all their stories and I mean, that is just fantastic nonfiction
#
that they started with that Bhavya Dore piece on that collision.
#
So I am sitting and reading all these pieces and learning how to make a long read interesting.
#
So that is really great writing and they are all Indian writers.
#
So this thing that Indians write like X and white people write like Y, it's no longer
#
We write as well as anybody else now.
#
So let's just carry on with it.
#
And 52, by the way, is 52.in.
#
It's a magazine that brings out one long fiction, one long format piece of nonfiction every
#
That's why it's called 52.
#
It's edited by my good friend Supriya Nair, who was also on this show, by the way, I seem
#
to, you know, at some point, I'm going to have had everybody on here and then what do
#
I have so many suggestions.
#
There are so many wonderful people out there you should have on your show.
#
So that's a discussion for after this episode, because I definitely will pick your brains
#
Let's move on to my next question connected both to your life and to the book itself.
#
In fact, the thoughts struck me were in your chapter called The Originals about pioneers
#
And you mentioned this lady back in Athens called Agnodice, who may or may not have existed
#
And I'm going to ramble a little bit here because that's kind of how my thoughts went.
#
This is a woman who wanted to practice as a doctor, but women weren't doctors.
#
So she dressed up as a man basically.
#
And you know, so she would help women with their deliveries.
#
But their husbands got jealous because they were like, you know, this man is seducing
#
our wives and all that.
#
And there was a court case.
#
And then in that she had to in desperation show she was a woman.
#
So you write in your book quote, she lifted up her tunic and showed the court her pudenda
#
stop quote, which immediately reminded me of the film Yentl.
#
I'm obviously heard of it, but I haven't.
#
It basically shows Barbara Streisand, who also kind of dresses up as a man.
#
And at one point, she's sort of in love with this man called Avigdor.
#
I hope I got his name right.
#
And he doesn't know that she's a girl.
#
So to prove that she shows him her breasts and they kiss and all that.
#
But then they decide to go their different ways because Yentl decides that either she
#
pursues her career or she chooses love.
#
And this dichotomy springs up.
#
And similarly in your book, you write about how another pioneer Elizabeth Blackwell also
#
ditches a suitor because she says that no, if I have to do medicine, I have to choose.
#
I can't do one or the other.
#
And these are choices that in different ways confront the actual the six women you write
#
about in your book, though they often don't have so much volition as to this matter.
#
In some cases, they're already married by the time they get into it and so on.
#
And some of them do exercise whatever volition they have in interesting ways.
#
This kind of leads me back to your predicament also as someone who's a traveling spouse.
#
So you're traveling everywhere with your husband.
#
As you pointed out, you've lived all across the world.
#
You've described yourself as a trailing spouse, in fact.
#
And you've pointed out that between 1996 and 2006, you moved to a different country every
#
You've lived and worked in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Tokyo, London.
#
So tell me a little bit about what this phase was for you.
#
Like how was it for you to kind of come to terms with not completely being in control
#
of where you are at a given point in time?
#
Was this something that led into your freelancing and so on?
#
Would your life have taken a very different turn?
#
Like would you have written many more books or gone in different directions?
#
Had you kind of been in one place, whichever place it would have been?
#
What's your thinking on this like?
#
I mean, it's another very complicated question.
#
And I do not talk about being a trailing spouse much on social media.
#
Probably many people don't realize that I am one or it's just I'm very defensive about
#
that aspect of my life.
#
And it's only now that I'm a lot older that I have come to terms with it.
#
I have been defensive about it and, you know, not talking about it for years.
#
And believe me, it was not my I didn't grow up thinking I will marry a man and follow
#
That was like really not my plan.
#
What can I say when I married my husband?
#
And by the way, I also mean I married out of caste, out of community, out of everything.
#
And I was the first person in my family to do so.
#
I'm not saying this as, you know, some sort of that I need some sort of pat on the back.
#
That's not my intention.
#
I'm just saying that I had already kind of, you know, gone through hell and high water
#
to marry him in the first place.
#
So I wasn't about to give up on him because of an unforeseen in the women, because I had
#
already kind of, you know, fought and cried and screamed and left home and all that just
#
So very soon into our marriage, very early on into our marriage.
#
And my husband works in finance, by the way.
#
I mean, somebody asked me the other day if he was a diplomat.
#
And you know, the whole idea of me being a diplomat's wife with, you know, a bunch of
#
staff and a palatial house and people making orders for me.
#
And basically yesterday I have made khichdi in an insta pot.
#
So my husband works in finance and he's worked very hard to get where he is.
#
He does not come from a privileged family at all.
#
Let's I won't go into the details, but let's just say he grew up in rural West Bengal and
#
he is practically the first educated person in his family.
#
So he has worked for this in a way that has come very easily to me, coming from a much
#
more privileged family.
#
So very soon into our marriage, he got this unbelievable offer to move to Hong Kong.
#
And I had very mixed feelings at that time because I didn't want to give up my job.
#
I didn't know what I would do in Hong Kong.
#
I had no Chinese skills at that time.
#
The handover was going on and Chinese skills were very, very important, ninety seven.
#
And all these fears were borne out.
#
When I got there, I was like a pariah.
#
People were like, what?
#
You worked for ECO Times.
#
I had never heard of that.
#
What National Law School?
#
I mean, like, you know, they never heard of it.
#
I was proud to have gone to National Law School, but, you know, I was competing with people
#
from Yale and Harvard and actually not even that.
#
I mean, there was also competing with people who hadn't even passed standard 12.
#
So I was absolutely struggling and for years, I mean, we kept moving every two years.
#
Our trajectory was something like Hong Kong, Bangkok, back to Hong Kong, Tokyo, London
#
in the first five years, because at that point he was moved very often when you're a junior
#
And it's a very good kind of program.
#
They really take care of you in terms of perks, but it's also a very fifties program.
#
It's basically the husband goes into work and the wife will sort everything out.
#
So, you know, I was like, and people, people say, wow, what a glamorous life and all that.
#
There were many points when I was like, you know, in complete tears, like, you know, I
#
had just landed in Tokyo.
#
I had a two year old, my daughter, my older one was about two then I had to find an English
#
speaking doctor, which was very difficult in the Tokyo of that time.
#
This was before this was just when the internet was sort of, had just arrived on the horizon.
#
And, you know, I had to find an English speaking doctor.
#
There was an earthquake.
#
I think one day after we got there, my husband went off to work and I stayed at home to deal
#
Remember, I don't have any Japanese language skills and not very good at languages, to
#
And with moving every two years, you don't really pick up much language.
#
So I'm stuck here with a two year old and I don't have any family help.
#
And obviously paid help and all is very expensive in foreign countries.
#
I have to deal with an earthquake.
#
I looked up what I'm sup, we had actually got an earthquake pack.
#
You're basically supposed to hide under the dining table.
#
And then you're supposed to have an earthquake pack, which you keep at any time so you can
#
And then you have these broadcasts coming out in the local radio, you know, hide under
#
that this thing don't move.
#
So we can't understand.
#
So I got on the table with my daughter and I kept her there.
#
And this was a frequent occurrence.
#
So you know, complete challenges like that.
#
You have children, you don't speak the language, your husband will go off to work where he
#
will be a very important person, you know, and you are not an important person.
#
You are just a trailing spouse.
#
At the time I was going through it, I was really suffering.
#
I was like, you know what, I'm, I'm, I'm quite intelligent.
#
I don't need to do all these coffee mornings and, you know, expat spouse parties and shopping
#
trips to buy Chinese porcelain and all that's just not me.
#
And I really resisted it.
#
And probably because I was young and when you're young, you think, you know, the more
#
you fight, the more you can, you know, have your way.
#
And as I'm older now, I realized I should have not exactly accepted it, but gone with
#
the flow because it taught me lots of things.
#
The problem is that the learnings were not apparent until 10 years later.
#
So when I was actually going through it, I was like, why am I doing this?
#
And this is nonsense and I deserve better and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
#
I mean, meanwhile, all the people that I studied, it was scaling the, you know, corporate ladder
#
either in law or in journalism.
#
I was just sitting there doing a bit of freelancing and whatnot.
#
Having said that, if I had not moved, I think I would not be the writer I am today because
#
I think I might have just stuck with, you know, legal journalism, which is what I, after
#
I graduated from national law school, I practiced very briefly with a law firm.
#
I decided I can't do this nonsense.
#
And I started working for the ECO times as a legal correspondent.
#
And then I moved to business India.
#
I think I would have stuck with financial journalism simply because, you know, it's
#
better paid than some others.
#
And I had some skills and I had some legal skills and blah, blah.
#
And I would have stuck with that and I would not have written features, which is where
#
I would not have written long form.
#
I may not even have written any books.
#
I might have said, no, I, because the people that I used to work with back then are still
#
there and they are still doing what they did when I left.
#
So I feel like I wouldn't have had some of the kind of growth.
#
And all this is now just after the fact, when I was actually going through this, I was like,
#
you know, weeping and crying and all that.
#
I mean, I'm making it sound that all I did was weep and cry.
#
That's not true because I have a very adventurous spirit.
#
That's one thing that I do have.
#
And I've only become more adventurous as I've gotten older.
#
And something in me really loves this thing of starting over, doing everything again.
#
You know, it's a big pain and there's a lot of boring admin and rubbish like that.
#
And, you know, but there is also an incredible excitement in seeing new things that you would
#
never see, meeting new people.
#
And before I became an expatriate, I was a bit shy.
#
I was like very reserved and, you know, I would be like, oh, what are people thinking
#
And, you know, and one thing I have realized in this expatriate lifestyle is that you don't
#
need to worry about what people are thinking about you because nobody's thinking about
#
I mean, you're not that important to people.
#
They're really not thinking about you.
#
Everybody has their own problems.
#
And one thing that I learned in this expat life is to just try to make the most of everything,
#
get out there, speak to people, you know, ask for help if need be.
#
And I think that has been useful.
#
Obviously, I've also made great sacrifices.
#
So, you know, does that answer your question?
#
The whole thing is a big muddle.
#
No, a lot of it is very resonant and this is something I speak about in my writing class
#
as well because so many young writers, including me once upon a time, including I'm sure you,
#
including everybody, we are so paralyzed by the anxiety of what other people will think
#
What will the editor think?
#
What will the reader think?
#
And it's something that I think you need to reach middle age to realize as I did that
#
no one's thinking of you.
#
Everybody's got their heads up their own ass and, you know, you can do whatever the hell
#
But there is one aspect in which things are kind of different if you're a public figure,
#
they're taking screenshots of you every day and they'll be on Twitter 20 years later.
#
But by and large, everybody's dealing with their own problems.
#
So that whole anxiety, which is perhaps a fundamental human anxiety, because we are
#
so wired to crave validation and all that is completely pointless.
#
My follow up question to this is this.
#
Something else that you have also spoken about is late bloomers.
#
And that's something that's kind of resonant with me because I find myself in the second
#
half of my 40s thinking that, damn it, there are so many things I wanted to do, basically
#
everything I dreamed of when I was 20.
#
And most of it is not done.
#
The good things might have happened by accident here and there, but most of it is not done.
#
And you think, is it too late?
#
And when we are young, we think that we have done everything by 30, 35, we will be burnt
#
And, you know, here we are, and there's not so much of that.
#
And one can, of course, get inspired by people like one of my favorite novelists, Penelope
#
She started her literary career when she was 58 years old.
#
And then she wrote a bunch of great books like The Bookshop, The Blue Flower, and my
#
favorite The Gate of Angels, which she wrote, I think, when she was in her 70s.
#
So there is kind of scope.
#
And you would imagine that if life teaches you life lessons, then it stands to reason
#
that one can do one's best work a little later on in life.
#
What do you feel about this?
#
Because at one level, I guess you must have been to some extent bogged down by all the
#
duties one has towards family and the fact that you have to, you know, uproot yourself
#
every couple of years and all of that.
#
So tell me your thoughts on this.
#
So I'm very much a fan of late blooming.
#
I talk a lot about this and I hope to talk more about it.
#
I didn't want to talk about this earlier because I was like, I'm not successful enough to
#
talk about being a late bloomer.
#
Nobody knows whom I am.
#
I mean, how can I even say I have bloomed?
#
But now I've decided to talk about it, even if I'm not successful, because maybe I'm
#
not successful, but I'm at least enjoying what I do.
#
That's good enough, right?
#
I mean, that is still blooming.
#
So I think I can still talk about it.
#
My 20s and 30s were mostly spent moving and supporting my husband's career.
#
I mean, I sound like such a stepford wife here, but, you know, this is the path that
#
our life took and there were many great advantages and obviously financial.
#
But other than that, I mean, just seeing the world at such a young age is a huge gift in
#
So I went along with it.
#
So I looked after the children.
#
I practically rear them completely on my own when they were young, certainly because I
#
didn't have any family help or whatever.
#
In some ways that's good.
#
I'm not dependent on anybody.
#
Nobody has helped me do anything in my life.
#
I'm not beholden to anybody as some people are, you know, so I looked after children
#
I was really not thinking of writing a book.
#
I was doing a lot of freelancing and learning to find my voice.
#
And as I said, trying to write in a more simple and international style.
#
So wherever I went, I reported on that country.
#
I mean, I didn't want to be a parachute journalist, so I didn't write about like big political
#
stories and all that kind of thing.
#
But I just kept writing and it was some days, some years I wrote more than other years.
#
And I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing.
#
And nobody knew me in India because these were all for, you know, foreign papers like,
#
you know, Asia Week, Far Eastern Economic Journal, South China Morning Post, I did a
#
lot of work for back in the day, Japan Times, all these, you know, sort of local kind of
#
papers, then some American newspapers called Women's News.
#
I never thought of writing a book.
#
And I'm not even sure that even if I'd stayed in one place, I might have written a book
#
because at that point I was thinking I'm not competent to write a book.
#
I also don't have the discipline that discipline had to be cultivated.
#
And it obviously got easier as my kids got older and I got back my brain.
#
I mean, when my kids were young and I know that many, there are many, many women on Twitter
#
I think in India, you have a sort of a sect kind of thing.
#
You must enter college at around 18.
#
Then four years later, you must finish.
#
After that, you may go for a master's, which will be one year.
#
So by 23, you will start earning.
#
Then you have to progress in your career.
#
Then by 30, you may have one child, 28 or 30.
#
Then you might, after a few years, couple of years, you might have another child.
#
And it's a sort of a very linear, signposted way for you.
#
And if you deviate from this post, people are alarmed.
#
They're like, no, but you aren't in your 20s, you should be doing X or you should be doing
#
And I've spoken this about this on Twitter before and Twitter is a very young medium
#
But quite often I feel like this is a really ageist medium because everybody on Twitter
#
is saying, I'm 25 next year.
#
You know, I have not achieved anything.
#
And I'm thinking, you know what?
#
We're all going to live so much longer than our parents or our parents' parents, apart
#
I'm not going to consider COVID in this scenario.
#
If COVID had not come along, we would all have expected to live into our 90s, possibly.
#
I mean, my granny just passed away last month.
#
She was 96 years old and she was active and well and doing things till the very last day.
#
So I feel like there is a lot of time and there's no point in getting panicked into
#
thinking I should be doing X and I should be doing Y.
#
And there's nothing wrong with doing X and Y.
#
But for a lot of Indian women, it doesn't happen for us because we are looking after
#
children or we are doing other things.
#
And then of course, these days, a lot of people don't have children, perfectly valid choice.
#
But I just want to say one thing.
#
I mean, I want to remind once on Twitter, I had this unpleasant conversation with somebody
#
And this conversation has actually motivated me and in some ways, my books have been written
#
I mean, that spite is the main sort of motivating factor because she said something to me like
#
mothers can't achieve anything.
#
Once Indian women become mothers, they can't do anything.
#
And she's like, you know, my mother, after she became a mother, she could have written
#
And I was like, you think we can't write books just because we are mothers?
#
And she's like, yeah, I don't think mothers have the mental space to write books.
#
And she was very confident in this, even though there were millions and millions of women
#
who are mothers and writing.
#
So I took that as a challenge.
#
This was before my first book and I didn't say anything to her.
#
Invertly I said to myself, you know what, it's time to write a book.
#
Let me get up and write a book.
#
And obviously my first book is a how to book.
#
It's like a guide to freelance journalism.
#
So maybe it's not great literature, whatever, I have got a lot of very positive feedback
#
and it has sold reasonably well for somebody who is completely unknown and that it's still
#
I'm still getting, you know, figures for that selling it's like six years old now.
#
So people responded to that and I was happy with it.
#
And basically I wrote it to prove that, yes, I'm not just mummy, you know, I don't have
#
to be this domestic goddess all the time, though I'm not actually a domestic goddess,
#
but still, and I feel like so many women on Twitter are saying things like, yeah, but
#
you know, I have to look after my children now and by the time I finish that I have to
#
look after my in-laws and by the time I finish that I have to look after my parents.
#
And by that time I'll be 90 years old and I will just, you know, or actually they don't
#
even think they like that.
#
They think by that time I will be 50 years old and my life is over.
#
And then, you know, it's just singing bhajans, preparing to die and, you know, getting aches
#
and pains and I just don't have any patience with this kind of thinking because I honestly
#
think that possibly I may live, all the women in my family are very long lived and they
#
live to the mid nineties.
#
I think I have another, possibly another 45 years, okay, possibly.
#
And if COVID doesn't get me, that is, and I plan to make the most of them.
#
I'm not going to sit around mourning that I'm old, you know, I'll be older by the time
#
So I do, I also think that, you know, sometimes you don't come to these things until later.
#
So I don't think, first of all, I couldn't have written the book about freelance journalism
#
unless I had some experience in freelance journalism.
#
So there would have been no point writing it, you know, when I was 30 or something.
#
My second book was a novel, a librarian.
#
It's a very flawed book.
#
And I can see now that I have gone very wrong in that having said that there are people
#
who love it and have written to me saying, so a very small audience, but still an audience.
#
And this book, I feel like I needed to really work and understand these women before writing
#
And I do not think I could have written this book when I was in my twenties or even in
#
I needed to get a little life experience and know a little about things before writing
#
So I'm just a big fan of late-blooming in general.
#
So yeah, I mean, I haven't read the librarian, but I must say that welcome to the club of
#
people who have written flawed first books, flawed first novels, and while we are both
#
kind of hitting the bhajan singing age, I don't think we'll be singing bhajans anytime
#
But having said that, I think I should clarify on both our behalves that we have nothing
#
against people who like to sing bhajans.
#
No, no, nothing against that.
#
If that's what your passion is, you should do it.
#
And that kind of brings me to the next sort, which is kind of sparked by this young person
#
you mentioned on Twitter, whoever it was who said mothers can't write books and thus provoked
#
you into writing these books.
#
So it shows that young people do have their uses after all.
#
But this reminds me of something that Jonathan Haidt once pointed out where he spoke about
#
what has been happening over the last 10 years on the internet, where earlier it used to
#
be a fashionable notion that what will happen to the boys, they are playing video games
#
But it turns out that that's actually a good thing because they're doing problem solving
#
and they're immersed and it is also social.
#
It's not affecting them so much.
#
But his point was an appointment by many others who've been writing about social media as
#
well is that it has a more worrisome effect on the young girls because typically the social
#
life of young girls would be with other girls where they're socializing, they're hanging
#
out, they're talking about stuff.
#
But what the internet does and especially what social media does is that it forces you
#
into this performative space where you are all the time performing to enhance a brand
#
And it therefore seems to me that one, there is this performative element of everything
#
on social media, even for people who are not necessarily so young and this performative
#
thing can become very toxic sometimes and can drive people to extremes.
#
But what it also then does is that you begin to think in terms of life.
#
I often used to say when I was younger that there are two kinds of writers, which is those
#
who want to be known as writers and those who love to write, you know, and obviously
#
the good writing will emerge from those in the second category who just love to write
#
and then things happen while if you just, you know, want that whole kind of branding
#
of I am a writer, it doesn't really work out.
#
And I feel that a lot of young people are falling into those straps of thinking that
#
I have to achieve X, Y, Z or A, B, C before I am so and so age, which is where that lament
#
that you quoted came from that, oh, I'm 25 and my life is over and all of that, which
#
And I think this is kind of something to watch out for.
#
But the other thing that I must also say here is that it's easy to look at the vocal minorities
#
on social media and think that, oh, what has happened to young people today?
#
But if one looks at the silent majority is from my experience of interacting with younger
#
people and I'm sounding so much like an old foggy just by using that phrase.
#
But I kind of find that they're mostly sensible, hardworking, great ethic, humble, willing
#
It's just a vocal minority that really spoils their image.
#
But kind of leaving that aside, let's let's move back to freelancing, right?
#
You know, that one, why did you choose freelancing?
#
Was it because you were so itinerant and moving around?
#
That was that was a main that was the chief reason.
#
And I mean, I know it doesn't sound very cool to say it, but let's let me just be honest
#
And, you know, it was very itinerant.
#
I could do it from everywhere and I could do it without having to get childcare for
#
my children, which was difficult in some countries.
#
So yeah, sadly, I don't have a very cool reason.
#
I mean, since then, there are many things I like about it.
#
I like the fact that, I mean, I haven't specialized, which is also maybe not a good thing.
#
Like I'm not a health journalist or I'm not a political journalist.
#
I write on lots and lots of things which interest me.
#
And I don't think that's actually very good for your career.
#
I do say in my book that you should try to specialize, but this is the way it's worked
#
See, the other thing that you have to realize about me is that I have a lot of advice for
#
other people, which I've been completely unable to follow myself.
#
So don't take me as some kind of guru.
#
So I have written on so many things.
#
I've written on books, I've written on health, I've written on society, I've written on young
#
women, I've written on this, I've written on that, depending on what I saw around me
#
in whichever country I've done travel, I've done this.
#
And I really enjoyed that kind of variety.
#
It's probably not the best professional decision, but whatever, I have enjoyed it.
#
And let me also say that, let me just acknowledge this once and I'm not going to talk about
#
Obviously, I am coming from a lot of privilege and nobody should take my advice on anything
#
because young people these days, they have to earn money immediately they graduate and
#
especially with the pandemic.
#
So I'm not going to give financial advice or any kind of life advice to anybody.
#
Obviously, I have a lot of privilege in my life.
#
So having said that, it is not easy to keep uprooting your life every two years and dealing
#
with all that kind of change.
#
And I know a lot of people have meltdowns even when they have to move from one part
#
of the city to another.
#
So I would also say that I'm fairly resilient and I don't, I have learned to stop moaning
#
and just get on with things because this is the way my life has been.
#
So that's how I took to freelancing.
#
And I'm not sure that I, these days, freelancing is very difficult and I'm really not sure
#
that I want to continue doing it.
#
I think I may want to do something else, but we'll have to see.
#
Like write many, many books or discover the joy of singing bhajans.
#
I mean, the reason I mentioned that earlier was that if that's what you enjoy doing,
#
You should not think that, oh, I am 25, life is almost over.
#
You know, why should I sing bhajans?
#
I have to do something which will get me acclaimed in my circles.
#
But no, if you love doing bhajans, sing bhajans.
#
I mean, I should also mention my mother at this stage.
#
I mean, she's not only listening to this podcast, but my mother is an amazing person.
#
I have talked about my father.
#
I have not talked about my mother.
#
Let me also say that, you know, I'm saying nice things about my parents.
#
Now people may get, get the impression that I have zero conflict with them and that I
#
have a wonderful functional relationship.
#
No, that is not the case.
#
I've had a lot of conflict with them.
#
It's just that as I get older, I have learned to look past that conflict and look at the
#
I don't really have time to, you know, keep battling with my mother all day.
#
My father has been gone for a while now, so it's just my mother.
#
My mother is an amazing woman.
#
I mean, she's 76 years old now and at 75, she started learning the sitar and now she
#
has passed her first exam.
#
And I have never heard the words, I'm too old for this, come out of her mouth.
#
In fact, she spends most of her time saying, I don't want to hang out with all these oldies.
#
And when you actually look, you can see that the oldies are some 10 years younger than
#
And she hangs out with people in their thirties because she does a lot of volunteer work,
#
you know, she's a bonsai, she basically a bonsai teacher and you know, she was like,
#
you know, she has about 400 bonsai, so she gardens, she plays the sitar.
#
Before the pandemic, she used to do solo travel.
#
She used to just pack up and go to various hill stations and this, that to look at gardens
#
So she is an amazing woman and I've never seen her say anything like I'm old, I'm going
#
She is, which is such a relief, you know, given the parents that some people have, even
#
with COVID, she's a little, little down because of the restriction on our social circle, but
#
still she never says things like that.
#
She just gets on with it and she does a lot of exciting things.
#
She learns music online, she has completely become completely tech savvy.
#
I mean, before I left Bangalore, I taught her whatever tech and initially she said,
#
that was the first time I heard her say, Oh, I don't know whether I can cope with all this
#
And I said, yes, you can cope.
#
And I taught her and now she's zooming, she's using GP, she's doing 101 other things all
#
So in a way she is my model that I honestly think that it's never too late.
#
And I just wanted to say something to, I assume there are a lot of women listening to you
#
who are currently struggling, struggling with childcare because obviously no schools for
#
more than a year and struggling with homeschooling and struggling with all of it.
#
And probably wondering what they're on this planet for and when they will ever do anything
#
And I just wanted to say, you know, this is all very normal.
#
And I have done it for years where it's not so much time.
#
It's not, you don't need time to write a book.
#
What you need is focus.
#
This is why, you know, there are lots of people who have all the time in the world, but have
#
not actually written any books.
#
They don't have focus and focus can be achieved by anybody.
#
Even if you have 10 children, you can achieve focus.
#
You just have to find that half an hour in your life and all these books.
#
And I'm going on a bit because I feel quite strongly about the subject.
#
All my books were written between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. in the morning.
#
Yes, you have to give up something.
#
I decided that I'm going to give up getting up at a human time.
#
I decided that I would, when I'm writing this book, I will get up at 5 a.m. because I am
#
Get up at 5 a.m. put in two hours or maybe even one hour, write even 500 words a day.
#
Write even 200 words a day, but try to write every day except maybe possibly on the weekend
#
you could take a thing.
#
Just keep that going because if you write 200 words a day, I mean, you can write a book
#
You can still write a book in a year or so.
#
So continue doing that.
#
And even if you don't have all the time in the world, think about your book and muse
#
and find the creative muse, none of that matters.
#
Just find the focus to do 200 words a day or 500 words a day if you can manage that
#
and keep doing that and keep doing that and keep doing that until finally you end up with
#
something worth printing or publishing.
#
So yeah, very wise words and I feel watched in multiple ways.
#
First of all, you said people who have all the time in the world, but they don't write
#
the books they should because they have no focus.
#
The other thing you said is actually one of the slides in the final webinar I give for
#
my writing course, which is set yourself easy targets.
#
And the exact target that I point out is 200 words a day.
#
And my whole point being that you have to keep exercising your writing muscle 200 words
#
is about how much I speak in a minute, right?
#
It's about how much we speak in a minute.
#
Even if you're having a busy day, you're in bed with fever or you're going to the airport
#
to catch a flight in post COVID times, you can just write it on your phone.
#
It's important to keep that muscle moving.
#
And obviously most days you'll write more than 200.
#
But if you just set yourself a bloody minded target of 200 words, get it done no matter
#
what in a year like you pointed out, that's 75,000 words, it's novel length.
#
And even if you're not physically writing a novel, it is still incredibly useful because
#
you're writing muscle is working and that really counts for a lot.
#
And in fact, you know, one question that I sometimes get is, but I don't have anything
#
to write about what shall I write?
#
And I'm like, at the very least, you can even do journaling, write about what happened that
#
day, write about anything.
#
Write about anything as long as you're kind of writing.
#
So these are really wise words and you know, I'm reminded of an interview I read of some
#
sports person 20 years ago, I don't even remember who it was.
#
It sounds very dravid like, but I don't think it is.
#
I mean, I know it isn't, but sounds a lot like that.
#
Where this person was asked about talent, that what is the most important talent in
#
And what he said was the most important talent is this, that you've been waking up every
#
day at whatever time to go running.
#
And one day you wake up at that time and your whole body is aching and it's raining outside.
#
There's a storm and you still get up from your bed and you still go running.
#
And I don't think people think of sort of discipline as a talent in itself.
#
And I think discipline comes easier to some than others.
#
But the point is ultimately things get written, not when you get inspired, but when you put
#
get your butt down on the chair and you just get the job done.
#
And you know, a lot of women and I keep saying women because you know, in our society, women
#
have obviously still have more child care than men.
#
It's just the way it is.
#
For me, it was because my husband was earning so much more than me that it made more sense
#
for me to take care of the children.
#
So anyway, whatever reason, women have more child care.
#
And I know so many women who say, oh, you know, because of my children, I can't write
#
And let me say now that you need not write any books if you don't want to believe me.
#
Writing books is not the exalted pursuit that people think it is.
#
It's a lot of work for very little money and you may decide you don't want to write any
#
books, but whatever you want to do, like maybe some writing endeavor, maybe just even start
#
a blog, whatever, you know, or write like, you know, an essay, people keep saying, oh,
#
you know, it's my children.
#
You know, my children, my children.
#
And please do not blame your children because you can write around children.
#
I admit that I wrote very little when my children was really young, like babies.
#
But you know, once they crossed a year or so, I started writing.
#
And I just find that trope is going to become dangerous because believe me, children do
#
not get any easier as they get older.
#
It's just that, you know, maybe physically they may be easier, but mentally you will
#
still be constantly thinking about them.
#
And in this pandemic, you'll be wondering what the hell they're going to do.
#
And you know, that kind of thing.
#
So you are going to be going on with that for a while.
#
So just start writing whatever you want to now.
#
I mean, kind of don't wait.
#
One of the things about being a late bloomer, which is me, one of my big regrets with being
#
a late bloomer is my father has not seen any of my books.
#
And in fact, he has not even seen some of my good writing because for the last few years
#
of his life, he had cancer and he was like bedridden and he didn't have the brain space
#
to kind of look at my writing.
#
I mean, he would look as much as he couldn't give me a few tips, but that is the downside
#
of being a late bloomer that the people in your life who really encourage you didn't
#
get, don't get to see it, I suppose.
#
So, but I just, I just wanted to say that discipline is so important.
#
I think it was, it could have been Rushdie who said this, but I'm saying it again, that
#
anyone can start a book, any, any person, talent connections, whatever, any person can
#
start a book to finish it is a real thing.
#
That's where it, that's where the achievement is to finish it.
#
And you can go on endlessly for years, but remember perfect is the enemy of done.
#
I mean, I could have, I could have gone on with this book and there was a time when I
#
thought, you know what, I'm just going to wait until the pandemic is over and then I'm
#
going to finish it when I have better research.
#
And then at some point I realized that the pandemic is not going to be over anytime soon.
#
And then I got up and I finished it.
#
So you know, that's what it is.
#
Yeah, one of my previous guests in a previous episode, Bines Sitapathy, once said on that
#
episode in fact, that perfection is the enemy of production, which is very true.
#
And I keep, I keep talking to my writing students about how in anything that you do in life,
#
there's really this trade off between getting it done and getting it right.
#
And as a writer, if you just focus on getting it right, you will just paralyze yourself,
#
you know, as far as the first draft is concerned, your job is to get it done.
#
It's a dump of the brain, just get it out there.
#
And then you have something to work with.
#
Let's kind of move on now to this specific book.
#
Like, how did you arrive at this specific subject?
#
Because it's not just, it's a one, it's a book that's hard to categorize in a good way
#
in the sense that it is nonfiction.
#
It's also a book of history, where you've also looked at primary sources and so on and
#
And it's also a page runner, like you said, the kind of book you could pick up at an airport
#
and finish on a flight again in a good way.
#
So how did you arrive at the subject?
#
And how did your thinking on it evolve?
#
And what are the kind of challenges you face just in terms of the material available to
#
you, which you already referred to earlier, but just in terms of the fact that some of
#
this stuff is in other languages, that some of these women haven't, you know, written
#
How did you deal with all those issues?
#
So I have spoken about this quite often, because I've done a lot of interviews, so you may
#
It actually all began with like a Google Doodle.
#
I saw this Google Doodle of Rukmabai Raut on her 153rd birthday, which was, I think,
#
And I suddenly realized that I didn't know much about Rukmabai Raut.
#
I knew she had done cool things.
#
That was the extent of my knowledge on her.
#
And I did a bit of digging and I was like, this is just amazing.
#
This woman in the 1880s left a child marriage, went to court and divorced her husband, gave
#
all her thoughts on Hindu patriarchy and how women were married off when they should actually
#
be educated, and wrote to the Times of India about how she wanted to get an education and
#
she didn't want to be married to her useless, wasteful husband.
#
Stood up to Tilak and the conservatives.
#
And we always think of Tilak as such a great man in her textbooks, he's revered.
#
And he was a great man.
#
But at the same time, he also had very antiquated views on things.
#
So I read about, and then she eventually went to London, the London School of Medicine,
#
She came back to India.
#
She had a full and independent life.
#
She never married and she continued her career.
#
And I read about this woman and I said, wow, she was so ahead of her time.
#
And I read about some of the other women.
#
I just sort of fell down this sort of rabbit hole of research.
#
And I've read about all these other women, Anandi by, you know, Kadambini, Hemabati.
#
And I said, wow, they're all fascinating.
#
I should write about these women.
#
And the other book that really influenced me, and I haven't acknowledged her in the
#
And I think that was a mistake on my part, because I've only now realized how much she
#
influenced me, how much her book influenced me.
#
This wonderful book by this British Indian writer called Angela Sainy, it's called Inferior.
#
And she writes about how women have been completely eliminated from science and erased from science
#
because their histories have been forgotten and all the histories have been written by
#
And, you know, if you are on Twitter a lot, and I am on Twitter a lot, I'm completely
#
addicted when I shouldn't be, you see a lot of young men saying, you know, completely
#
stupid things, things like, oh, well, men have invented everything in this world.
#
Women haven't done anything.
#
Women should be grateful to men, we have invented this, we have invented that.
#
And then they'll come out with a long list of things that people have invented.
#
The fact is that women weren't really sort of, you know, encouraged to enter science.
#
And when they did enter science, there were so many, you know, limitations and restrictions
#
And Angela talks about this in her book, how colleges banned women, how women won medals
#
and were denied them because they were given to the men.
#
And I realized I had the same stories, like one of the women in my book, Hemabati Sen,
#
she won a gold medal and it was taken away from her.
#
The male students protested and they threatened to kill her.
#
They were like, women should not be pampered.
#
Let's just kill the women students who win medals ahead of us.
#
We should get all the medals.
#
I mean, the entitlement of men, I mean, this is just an example.
#
And she didn't want the medal because she thought it would make her a target for more
#
abuse and she wanted money because she had to support her baby son because her husband
#
was a complete wastrel.
#
So she asked for money and they gave her the money and took away the medal and gave it
#
And all this is in a memoir, which is an astonishing memoir.
#
So when I read this, I said, I just want to tell these stories.
#
I mean, I didn't have any lofty aims.
#
I just said, I feel like people should know about this, you know, what they do with that
#
knowledge is up to them, but they should know about this.
#
So this is what I thought.
#
So that's how it all arose.
#
You know, thematically, this can like, again, I'm going back to my writing course, but I
#
give an example of, you know, show, don't tell, where I say, you know, write in pictures,
#
write, you know, make something concrete.
#
And there's a beautiful example on this theme from a book called History Boys by Alan Bennett,
#
where first he has an abstract sentence and then a concrete one with an image.
#
You know, I'll read them both out and anyone listening can just see how much difference
#
an image can make, where he says, quote, history is a commentary on the various and continuing
#
in capabilities of men.
#
History is women following behind with the bucket.
#
And that image women following behind with the bucket, you know, just tells you so much
#
that if you were to do it in abstract terms, it would take you a full para to do.
#
But this is such a great example of show, don't tell.
#
It tells you that they played a subsidiary role.
#
It tells you they were often cleaning up the mess and all of that.
#
So having decided to write this book and to embark upon this book, now, obviously, the
#
rabbit hole you would have gone down on the initial easily accessible rabbit hole would
#
At a certain point, you kind of find yourself going deeper.
#
So what was that process like, like one of the things you pointed out is that the libraries
#
in the Western countries like Britain and so on actually had more material on these
#
Of course, some of them were educated in London than you would find in India.
#
So what was that process like of first beginning to discover what is available on their lives,
#
immersing yourself in that?
#
When does a narrative begin to emerge like, you know, all your chapter titles kind of
#
hint at the essence of the women, the good wife, the working mom, the rule breaker.
#
But at the same time, they're not simplistic.
#
You manage to capture the complexity of the women through their journeys and the stories
#
you tell, but you also get to their essence.
#
So when do those narratives begin to form as you start researching, do you start out
#
with a thesis on what the story will look like or do you leave yourself open?
#
Do you change it midway as you discover interesting things?
#
Are there this crazy TIL moments which just have you sitting back and going, my God, I
#
So tell me a bit about that.
#
So yeah, coming to my research, it was really difficult.
#
I mean, this book, I mean, halfway through, I just wanted to quit and say I can't do it.
#
I'm just going to quit and go back to, you know, and I nearly gave up many times and
#
many things made it hard.
#
One was like, as you said, the libraries in India were not great, plus the pandemic.
#
The pandemic hit about halfway through the research of this book and all the libraries
#
just shut down and I had no way of learning when they would open up again.
#
So I appealed to my contacts and friends in other countries.
#
And when I say contacts, people will think I'm a very well-connected person, nothing
#
I just went on Facebook and I've not been on Facebook for years because I have kind
#
of left sort of, I reactivated Facebook, went on there and said, I'm writing X book.
#
And people are so kind, you know, a person that I knew 15, 20 years ago in Canada, she
#
got back and said, how are you?
#
I can find this book for you.
#
And she went and did it and got the book for me.
#
I mean, people just have been so nice.
#
Another book I found, which was completely out of print in India, which is the memoir
#
of Hemabati Sen, which was absolutely crucial for me because she's one of my favorites.
#
I couldn't find it in India.
#
It was a bit difficult to find.
#
So I emailed the person who had worked on the translation, a woman called, the actual
#
person who translated it, Tapan Roy Chaudhary has sadly passed away.
#
It's really sad for the book because I think that he would have given me so much.
#
But Geraldine Forbes, the core sort of writer was, she was alive.
#
So I wrote to her and she said, I will send you a PDF.
#
Do what you want with it.
#
And so like that, I had to tap many people.
#
And the other thing is like, as I said, many of the lady doctors didn't write memoirs,
#
Their husbands wrote a lot of letters, but they didn't, you know, so it was very much
#
seen through the gaze of the men in their lives, which is not what I wanted.
#
So I had to dig a little deeper and then halfway through the researching of this book, I moved
#
to London, which was like a complete out of the blue.
#
It didn't happen easily.
#
My husband's job in India was eliminated.
#
So he had to find another job to pay school fees and all that.
#
And he found the only one he could find was this because he's getting a little older.
#
So I had to move in a pandemic and I was actually thrilled.
#
I was like, this will be great for my book, British library, here I come.
#
And I came and I arrived and within one month, it was shut down again, again.
#
And to be honest, I don't feel like the research for this book is perfect.
#
I feel like I've done the best I can.
#
And sometimes it has to be enough.
#
There is also the fact that the more research, you know, in footnotes you add, the more unreadable
#
and unwieldy the book becomes.
#
So I decided to stop at a certain time when I felt like I had enough.
#
When talking about amazing discoveries, for me, the most amazing discovery in this book
#
is one that these lady doctors had a sense of humor.
#
They weren't just these worthy pioneers who never felt any doubt, who never felt any fear.
#
And you know, even though they didn't write a lot, but what they did, I could glean that
#
they had a sense of humor.
#
For instance, Anandibai, I mean, I have titled my chapter, The Good Wife simply to make it,
#
you know, easy to leap off the page.
#
But she was not just a conservative Indian wife.
#
She had a lot more to her.
#
She was a very complex woman.
#
And this is where I think these days everybody is black and white and, you know, social media
#
sort of flattens all nuance and we are all, we are all terrible or we are wonderful.
#
But there's nothing in between and most people are a bit of both.
#
And Anandibai, the discovery I had with her, initially, I had a lot of trouble with her
#
because all the material on her is in Marathi.
#
She wrote her letters in Marathi.
#
So you know, they're in Marathi, they have not been trans and people wrote Marathi biographies
#
And I actually hired a translator to translate Marathi biographies.
#
I paid money and got one, but she just gave up after a few chapters and she said, no,
#
I just can't translate this translation is another difficult skill.
#
So, I was like, what the hell should I do?
#
And then suddenly I happened upon this wonderful book by Meera Kosambi, who has passed away
#
She is in the acknowledgments and she talked all about Anandibai and she said fragmented
#
She was a feminist, but not she was advanced, but not.
#
And that's all of us, right?
#
I mean, even to, you know, 150 years later, we are all somethings, but we're not.
#
And Anandibai had such a sense of humor, like, I mean, I actually want to read this, I actually
#
mark this because when Anandibai was in the US, you know, she was a Hindu at that time
#
all education was dominated by Christian missionaries and she absolutely refused to convert.
#
And I'm not a religious person at all, but I admire this about her.
#
She refused to convert and she continued with her Hindu customs and ways.
#
And because of this, she got a lot of condescension and flack from, you know, Western missionaries
#
who sort of looked down upon her and, you know, wrote about her in a very orientalist
#
I mean, and here is, and she was so frustrated, but she had to cover that up because she was
#
there under their largesse and she wrote her husband Gopal Rao and she writes this really
#
I mean, when I saw this, I was like, this is so funny.
#
There is a new fashion of wearing girdles.
#
Already the practice of tight lacing makes it impossible to breathe freely.
#
And now this fashion, if the Chinese bind their feet, it is because they're ignorant
#
If Westerners do such things, it is because they're very advanced.
#
So you know, she could see that the way that that whole Western gaze where, you know, what
#
Western people did was cool and what Indian people did was not cool.
#
And she could see that.
#
Like 18 years old at this time.
#
I mean, like my children are this smart, I can tell you that.
#
So I just feel like these women had so much, you know, humor about them.
#
The other big revelation for me was Himabati Sen because I have her entire memoir.
#
I refer to her entire memoir and it is, I think it is out print in India, but I'm sure
#
you people can still lay their hands on it somehow.
#
And it was translated from the Bangla.
#
So by Taupan Roy Chaudhary and Geraldine Forbes.
#
It is an amazing piece of work.
#
I cannot believe that this has mostly gone unnoticed, okay.
#
Because I just feel that this is the first time an Indian woman has been so frank.
#
I mean, Himabati was a child widow.
#
She was married at nine to a man of 45 and she came from privilege.
#
She came from a rich Kulin Khaista family in West Bengal.
#
She had all the privileges initially.
#
Then she was married to a man at nine and she didn't get any education because nobody
#
educated girls back then.
#
And she was very keen to get education, she sat in the back of the class, she kept sneaking
#
off to read, but she didn't have, you know, enough support though her father was supportive,
#
but there was so much he could do and she had been married.
#
And eventually her husband died when she was like just a year later.
#
She just, you know, sort of completely scathing criticism of Hindu society.
#
She's like, why have you married me at nine to this 45 year old man?
#
I have no money because in those days in West Bengal, you're a child widow, you're cast
#
So her money was taken by her uncle, her brothers, her mother did nothing for her and after that,
#
she was entirely on her own for the rest of her life.
#
And she married again because she thought that she would get support from her husband.
#
He turned out to be another wastrel who was into spirituality and you know, like went
#
off to, you know, find himself leaving her, which is why she became a doctor.
#
And what is amazing about her book is her, I really identified with her because her problems
#
are so human and small.
#
She's not thinking that I must get a great education and I must become a famous and renowned
#
She's thinking tomorrow I have to feed, I have to find some money to buy some rice.
#
How will I buy rice if I don't have any money?
#
I need to find some way to make money.
#
Then she's thinking I need to feed this child and then I have to feed the next child.
#
I really identified with her.
#
I think her memory is amazing and she scathingly, you know, she plays her husband.
#
This society is no good.
#
And at a time when women were not feminists, I mean, the feminism as such didn't exist.
#
She says I'm getting paid less than a man for the same work.
#
You know, women doctors are just pawns in the hand of men doctors.
#
I just think she was so ahead of her time.
#
So that, and obviously she wrote the entire thing in her own words.
#
There's no man shoehorning in to say, oh, this didn't happen or that.
#
And so I just sort of identified with her, oh, the last revelation was, Himamati worked
#
in a hospital called the Campbell Medical College.
#
That is now the Neel Ratan Sarkar Hospital in Calcutta.
#
And the best bit is I discovered that my husband was born in that hospital.
#
So there was a connection.
#
And I didn't know this until recently and you know, until I had already started.
#
My mother-in-law told me and my husband is by the way, the only person in his family
#
to ever be born in the hospital.
#
He doesn't come from a rich family.
#
So he comes from rural kind of very humble roots where everybody was born at home.
#
He's the only one who went into the hospital because he was the first child and he was
#
So that is sort of like a odd coincidence.
#
These, these crazy connections of history and yeah, and one does get a sense in your
#
book about how these people contain multitudes like Anandibai, even Tilak for that matter.
#
And you know, there are things to like and not like about them and it's interesting
#
how you contrasted Anandibai with Pandita Ramabai, who actually did convert to Christianity
#
and the two women kind of knew each other and very different approaches, but at the
#
same time you see that Anandibai like in that quote, which I also noted about the girdle
#
and all that, that she's not awed by, you know, the people who are our colonial masters.
#
She's sinking independently and evaluating that and all of that.
#
So at that age to have that kind of incredible maturity, you wonder what kind of life she
#
would have lived had she lived a full life, which is sort of so incredibly sad.
#
Let's take a quick commercial break now and on the other side of the break, we'll talk
#
Long before I was a podcaster, I was a writer.
#
In fact, chances are that many of you first heard of me because of my blog, India Uncut,
#
which was active between 2003 and 2009 and became somewhat popular at the time.
#
I love the freedom the form gave me and I feel I was shaped by it in many ways.
#
I exercise my writing muscle every day and was forced to think about many different things
#
because I wrote about many different things.
#
Well, that phase in my life ended for various reasons and now it is time to revive it.
#
Only now I'm doing it through a newsletter.
#
I have started the India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com where I will write
#
regularly about whatever catches my fancy.
#
I'll write about some of the themes I cover in this podcast and about much else.
#
So please do head on over to indiancut.substack.com and subscribe.
#
Once you sign up, each new installment that I write will land up in your email inbox.
#
You don't need to go anywhere.
#
So subscribe now for free.
#
The India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com.
#
Welcome back to The Scene In The Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Kavita Rao about her wonderful book Lady Doctors and indeed about the even
#
more wonderful lady doctors that she has profiled in that.
#
So let's actually now that you've also spoken about the process of talking about the book
#
and by the way, I should point out at this point that Hemabati Sen's autobiography which
#
she was speaking about, the English translation is available.
#
In fact, in India, at least it's available on Kindle, translated by Tappan Roy Chaudhary
#
I think at the time it was out of print, but perhaps it's come back into print.
#
Maybe because of your book, people said that, okay, Kavita's book is going to be.
#
I'm not that important.
#
No, no, I love the excerpts from it.
#
But what really struck me was that this lady basically wrote this memoir, put it in a trunk
#
and it lay there for 80 years.
#
And nobody within the family realized that my God, this is such an amazing book.
#
And it's called Because I'm a Woman.
#
And nobody realized the importance of this book.
#
It was just lying there and nobody thinks that she is important.
#
I think she's very important.
#
And if I can suggest anybody reading this book, please try to pick up this book.
#
I think it's from Roli.
#
So it'll be in the footnotes.
#
Try to read it in its original because there's lots of stuff that I had to read out because
#
obviously it would make the book too long and complicated.
#
So let's let's get on to the book itself, and it's very interesting that you start the
#
book with a quote by Anandibai where she says, quote, You ask me why I should do what is
#
not done by any of my sex.
#
To this, I can only say that society has a right to our work as individuals.
#
If anything seems best for all mankind, each one of us should try to bring it about.
#
And this is a very interesting kind of framing because here she is not asserting individual
#
autonomy or my right to do what I want.
#
She's instead framing it in the sense that it will be good for society.
#
Therefore, please let me do this.
#
You know, and this is a framing that one comes across in other places as well from some of
#
your other people, though some of the doctors don't.
#
They talk about it in terms of their own fulfillment.
#
But some of them often frame it in the context of let me do this because it's good for society
#
or India needs women doctors or you know, it'll be good for my family and all of those
#
And this mindset to a large extent seems prevalent today as well.
#
So like when you read all this, how do you how do you kind of disentangle this stuff?
#
Do you think that she was incredibly perceptive in understanding what kind of narrative would
#
work in her times and sort of framing everything accordingly?
#
What was kind of going on there?
#
See, it's hard to plumb the depths of any person, you know, after so many years.
#
And you know, it's probably true that Anandibai said what people wanted to hear.
#
But that doesn't mean that she did not also feel that way.
#
Because in another letter to Gopal Rao, Gopal Rao says, I will come to the US and let us
#
You know, like the first green carders type of thing.
#
And Anandibai said, why should I settle down here?
#
I want to come back and make a difference.
#
I want to do something.
#
And you know, you have to remember that in those days, I feel people were very idealistic.
#
I mean, when I talk to my grandmother and people who, you know, obviously, my grandmother
#
was not living in the 1880s, but, you know, she was born in, you know, in 1915 or something
#
She was, she still remains to the end so idealistic.
#
That generation had this feeling.
#
My father had that feeling.
#
I mean, he could have stayed on and barren and earned pots and pots of money and stayed
#
People we worked with back then are still there.
#
But he had this amazing feeling that I must come back and I must contribute.
#
I guess many of us do not feel the same way now.
#
But in those days, people did feel that way.
#
Of course, not all of them felt that way.
#
Like I said earlier, Hemabati Sen's memoir is very sort of basic and her concerns are
#
very small and domestic.
#
Maybe that's why I like her so much.
#
She's not trying to impress anybody.
#
She's just saying things like, well, I decided to live on rice all day.
#
The fact is that I would love to have some fish, but I can't afford it.
#
You know, I mean, you know, it's so difficult for a Bengali to be denied fish.
#
I mean, I felt for her.
#
I really did feel for her.
#
And I mean, I've heard these tales from my mother-in-law also.
#
My mother-in-law grew up in a very poor family.
#
My mother-in-law was one of 17.
#
That was how it was in those days.
#
So I have heard those tales of hunger from her.
#
So I've identified with the thing.
#
But then again, Muthulakshmi, who came later, was so idealistic and, you know, and I met
#
one of Muthulakshmi's contemporaries, Dr. Vishanta, who has again sadly passed away.
#
You know, another person who I think would have really enjoyed this book, I hope.
#
She is the chairperson of the Adyar Cancer Institute and Dr. Vishanta said, when we heard
#
Nehru, you know, give that speech, India awakes to life and freedom.
#
We were so full of idealism, we were so full of Josh, we wanted to make a change.
#
And Muthulakshmi was like that.
#
She was entirely full of idealism.
#
And even the chapter with Mary, you know, it may sound very priggish that Mary starts
#
her chapter with saying, you know, a person of privilege should help others, because maybe
#
we don't identify with these feelings, we're all just desperately trying to, you know,
#
help ourselves in this pandemic.
#
But these women, partly, maybe they said things that people wanted to hear, like Anandibai
#
had to give that whole speech to get permission to go, so she said certain things.
#
But I also feel that many of them certainly felt that way.
#
Maybe Rukmabai, I feel, was more of an individualist, because she wanted to study for herself.
#
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
#
You know, she wanted to get away from this horrible, horrible man who was her husband.
#
And she wanted to, you know, explore her intellectual, you know, limits because she was a very intelligent
#
And she did just that and managed to help a lot of people.
#
So I think the two can be sort of combined.
#
Yeah, I'll think aloud in a very sort of unstructured way.
#
But from, you know, just thinking aloud, it also strikes me that when we say that people
#
of a certain time are idealistic, I think the question that, you know, I can ask myself
#
is what do we aspire to?
#
And the thing is, in modern times, there is a lot that someone like you or me or even
#
a young person today who's 15 years old can aspire to, because there are so many possibilities
#
But if you're growing up in a very constricted world, in a very small kind of economy, you
#
know, particular circumstance, what do you aspire to?
#
And then I would imagine that if there is nothing practical that you can aspire to that
#
really lifts you up, then it is natural to aspire to these lofty abstract things.
#
And that kind of idealism can become ingrained that way.
#
And like in Rukmabai's case, she could at least aspire to getting out of a bad situation,
#
which she manages to do.
#
And like you point out that after that incredible epic court battle, which we'll talk about,
#
when she does eventually go to England, one of her contemporaries writes about how she
#
was not interested in politics or feminism or whatever.
#
She just she had got out of the situation and she just put her nose down and got on
#
So that's that's just an aside and any comment on that or shall I go to my next question?
#
You're right about Rukmabai.
#
I mean, when she returned to India, that's the last we hear of her in being involved
#
in any sort of big concerns.
#
She didn't set herself up as a feminist and as a, you know, as a sort of, you know, harbinger
#
for the Dalit community and as a sort of figurehead.
#
She just went to work and she seems to have really enjoyed her work.
#
You know, she seems to have led a really wonderful life.
#
She had a wide range of friends at a time when Indian women were not even stepping out
#
of the house because she didn't have a man telling her what to do and how to do it.
#
And she just did whatever she wanted to, more or less.
#
And I feel like you're right.
#
She just sort of it is not necessary that every lady doctor be like a figurehead or
#
They can just lead their lives.
#
I feel like Hemabati did so much to kind of help women working in rural West Bengal and,
#
you know, lady doctors working in rural West Bengal by just being herself.
#
She just went to work and came back.
#
And in her memoir, she writes very little about her work.
#
Most of her occupations are so, you know, preoccupations are so domestic, you know.
#
So, again, I'm not sure if I've answered or understood the question, but...
#
No, I made an observation.
#
I kind of rambled a bit as one tends to do.
#
So let's talk about each of the doctors one by one.
#
But before we do, just set a little bit of context of what it was like for women and
#
medicine in the 18th century, like in your excellent opening chapter, the originals,
#
you talk about how someone like Florence Nightingale actually didn't believe that there should
#
At one point, she said women doctors, quote, have tried to be men and only succeeded in
#
being third rate men, stop quote.
#
And later on, there's another rant where she advises women to avoid the popular jargon
#
of the time, which includes the word rights.
#
You know, so it was actually incredibly unusual for even a woman in a Western country like
#
England to actually be a doctor, like one of the people you wrote about, which was just
#
And that's a rabbit hole I'm definitely going to go down into is the story of James Miranda
#
I'll read those lines out because I was so struck by it.
#
Quote, in the mid 19th century, Dr. James Miranda Barry was one of Britain's most famous
#
The US military doctor was known for his foul temper, but also admired for his extensive
#
work across the British Empire.
#
In the Crimea, he made an enemy of Florence Nightingale, who described him as the most
#
hardened creature I have ever met, a brute and a blackguard.
#
Others who had met the doctor described him as a flirt and lady killer.
#
In 1865, when Barry died, it was discovered that he was a woman, a woman with stretch
#
marks indicating childbirth, which were noticed by the charwoman who prepared him for burial,
#
This is a mad story, and this is a mad story of someone who wanted a woman who wanted to
#
And the only way of doing so was to live an entire life disguised as a man.
#
Tell me a bit more about how impossible it was for women to have such aspirations in
#
I mean, the early women doctors in the UK and the US are fascinating.
#
And I would have gone more into detail except that I did write this book for an Indian audience
#
and I didn't want them to put off with endless sort of quotes from, you know, another country.
#
But James Barry, as you say, is a fascinating person and, you know, one can even read biographies
#
He was a woman pretending to be a man for years.
#
Okay, he pretended to be a man for years, for 30, 40 years.
#
I mean, he got into college, I mean, sorry, University Edinburgh.
#
He went and joined the army.
#
I have no idea how he managed that.
#
To be honest, I mean, if people read this, I haven't gone into the intricate details
#
of whether he, you know, was a trans man, because, you know, that becomes another book.
#
And, you know, I, and it's very difficult to realize now, I have gone with his biographers
#
view that he was just a woman who wanted to get into medical school, or she was just a
#
woman who wanted to get into medical school.
#
And therefore, he did this, what he could think of, which is that he dressed himself
#
And it is an amazing story.
#
I mean, like, this is what women had to do.
#
When we come to Elizabeth Blackwell, who had such a hard time, I mean, when you read about
#
her life, like, you know, she applied to colleges in the US and they thought it was a joke and
#
admitted her as a joke.
#
And then she actually turned up in her Quaker dress and they were like, oh, you're here.
#
They actually thought it was a joke and she was denied admission to practically every
#
I think she applied to some 20 and she finally got into Geneva College.
#
I think you mentioned in your book that after 29 schools rejected her, the 30th accepted
#
And this was at the time when, you know, women were like, you know, if you stay unmarried
#
beyond 20, you're like some old maid and this, that.
#
And Elizabeth had this amazing journey.
#
I mean, a lot of opposition from women, Elizabeth was a friend of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
#
And she asked Harriet Beecher Stowe and she said, I want to become a woman doctor.
#
And Harriet Beecher Stowe, who we all think of as so progressive after Uncle Tom's Cabin
#
said really bad idea, nobody will come to you.
#
And in those times it was women were considered, oh yes, very nurturing, very caring, very
#
They're fit for nursing.
#
That's the right place for men.
#
And even Florence Nightingale, believe this, Florence Nightingale is on record as saying
#
a number of things against women doctors.
#
She thought they were just, as you said, they were just imitating men and becoming very
#
And there was this idea that women cannot do science.
#
They're not capable of the rigor, physics, chemistry, that is, and you know, biology
#
that is required to be a doctor.
#
And the reason is because women were consistently denied scientific education.
#
Women both in the UK, both in the US and in India eventually were just given lessons in,
#
you know, history, English, needlework, domestic science, kukri, hygiene, things like that.
#
Things that people thought they could do.
#
They never got a foundation in maths and science.
#
And therefore it is no surprise that when they got to college, they struggled because
#
they're like, they never learned science before.
#
Imagine just landing in, you know, a university like Mary, Mary did not get a foundation in
#
science because in Travancore in those days, the women were not being educated in science.
#
Imagine landing in London and saying, okay, you have entered the London School of Medicine.
#
Here, study all this physics and chemistry, which you have never studied, you know, not
#
physics, I keep saying physics, chemistry, biology and okay.
#
And so this was the feeling then that women are just too dumb to learn science, let them
#
And the early women doctors really had to fight against it, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth
#
And to that extent, they partly maybe because they didn't want to say that a lot of them
#
never said that women doctors are the best women, make the best doctors and all that.
#
They just felt it should, the profession should be open to them.
#
I mean, I think there's a quote from Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, I can't remember it off
#
hand, but she says, it is often said that women will understand women's ailments so
#
much better than men do.
#
This is Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who was maybe the first British woman doctor and probably
#
the second doctor who qualified in Western medicine.
#
And she did not believe that women automatically were the best choice to treat other women.
#
She says, no one would say, for instance, that a horse or a dog would make a better
#
veterinary doctor than a man.
#
She said women doctors will understand a disease because of their knowledge and intelligence,
#
not because of any occult sympathy with the subject.
#
And she was also a very interesting woman.
#
I just wanted to keep this section short because I didn't want to put the reader off right
#
at the beginning, but she's worth reading about because a lot of women that at that
#
point, they didn't understand the path to take.
#
They were like, should we get colleges to open the doors for us or should we just go
#
Like a lot of British women went to France, qualified as apothecaries, which is Elizabeth
#
She qualified as an apothecary and came back.
#
And in that way, she managed to squeak into medicine and she didn't think that that was
#
the wrong thing to do because she felt that, no, we're not at the stage where colleges
#
will open doors for us.
#
And then we come to the Edinburgh seven, who were, I think, amazing women and headed by,
#
you know, Sophia Jex Blake.
#
And she actually got the University of Edinburgh and these women were admitted by the University
#
of Edinburgh, seven of them.
#
And after two years of studying, suddenly the university said, oh, well, your degrees
#
are invalid by, you know, that kind of thing.
#
It just threw them out because there was so much anger by men that women are entering
#
Edinburgh University and becoming doctors.
#
And amongst these seven women, there was a woman called Edith Petchy, who later became
#
the chief medical officer at the Karma Hospital in Bombay.
#
And she would mentor many Indian women and she actually topped chemistry, I think.
#
She won the HOPE scholarship for standing in the top four in chemistry and physics.
#
And this made the men so angry that, you know, there was a riot at Edinburgh and, you know,
#
They called them filthy names.
#
They called them whores.
#
They called them various other names, you know, which can't be printed and, you know,
#
And then they eventually, they threw them out, three years, actually, yes, I would say
#
Three years of their lives, they studied in Edinburgh, topping classes, doing the very
#
difficult curriculum, and suddenly they threw them out.
#
And this is why Sophia Jex Blake had to start the London School of Medicine, which still,
#
you know, I went and saw the old building the other day.
#
And along with, you know, several other women, she started the London School of Medicine,
#
which was the first, world's first medical school entirely for women.
#
And later, Rukmabai came and studied there, Mary Poonan-Lukos came and studied there.
#
So these women helped mentor other women from the empire.
#
And we shall see that often it was a very colonialist mentoring, but nevertheless it
#
So yes, these women had an incredibly hard time and quite often some of the, you know,
#
misogyny and all was from other women as well, you know, that basically sums up their journey.
#
Incredibly difficult, met with resistance at every turn, you know, that kind of thing
#
and begging colleges to admit them and then having to be the best in the college so that
#
people would not say, oh, you have gotten because you're a woman, you know.
#
Yeah, absolutely groaning.
#
And your chapter also shows the full spectrum of responses that they got, like, you know,
#
in the case of Elizabeth Blackwell, you know, you write quote, the articles were uniformly
#
She was described in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal as a pretty little specimen
#
of the feminine gender.
#
And the Baltimore Sun wrote that it hoped she would confine her practice to diseases
#
Yeah, it's so funny, right?
#
And then you later you talk about the riots and what was also kind of moving in a way
#
that when the Edinburgh Seven were attacked, when all of that happened, and you speak about
#
how Edith Petchy was called a whore in the streets, and that's not even the first person
#
It's like almost a pattern through the book that that's how women are dealt with.
#
But what I also found interesting was that some of the male students who were earlier
#
skeptical, some of the male students that actually protected them, some of them with
#
sticks and all of that.
#
I mean, it's I don't want to say that all men were against all women.
#
Like history is a lot more complicated than, you know, the binaries that we think about
#
on Twitter and all that.
#
So yes, a lot of men helped them.
#
And you know, Elizabeth Blackwell was aided so much by Dr. Webster, who was an anatomy
#
And there's a lovely anecdote there.
#
You know, when he was teaching anatomy and she was only a woman, then, you know, he was
#
discussing the reproductive system and, you know, that kind of thing.
#
But Elizabeth Blackwell would fast for hours or maybe possibly even days, weeks I say here,
#
And the reason is she wanted to decrease the blood to her system so that she would not
#
blush when her anatomy professor was talking about matters of the anatomy.
#
And it was and he even offered that she should sit separately for the anatomy class.
#
But she wasn't having any of that.
#
She said, no, I will sit in the class.
#
I'll just be like a boy.
#
You know, I will be like one of the boys that you have.
#
So it is it is truly amazing the things that the women resorted to.
#
And quite often, as you say, you know, like newspapers and people on the surface welcomed
#
But no patients would actually come to them.
#
So Elizabeth and her sister had to, you know, work in like really difficult areas in the
#
slums and do like really difficult work in order to gain the sympathy of patients.
#
And the corresponding anecdote to that is Rukma by Raut.
#
When she first came back to India, nobody would come to her.
#
So she got a pregnant sheep into her hospital and delivered the lamb in order to show people
#
that, yes, I can do this just as well as any man.
#
You know, these are the things that women had to resort to in order to get people to
#
So I have a tangential question here before we get to the meat of the book.
#
You know, and this is an interesting thought that actually goes back to something that
#
Gautam Menon, the biologist, told me when we did an episode on Covid and we were discussing
#
theories about why during the first wave, the mortality rate among older people seemed
#
And one of the theories, not his theory, but he shared this theory with me, which others
#
had about this is that is because of the survivorship bias in the sense that because health care
#
in India is so bad, the older people get knocked off by a lot of diseases that they would otherwise
#
survive in the West because they are so good.
#
So the ones, the older people who do survive in India are actually much hardier in terms
#
of their immune system and all that.
#
And therefore less of them died during Covid.
#
This was a theory, the survivorship bias, the stronger people have survived here.
#
So therefore they are more likely to survive against Covid as well.
#
And this brought me to thinking about the survivorship bias in something like a field
#
like women in medicine, that because of women getting into medicine in the 19th century
#
or the early 20th century would have had so many incredible obstacles to fight, so many
#
incredible obstacles that just to get to the point where you become a lady doctor as the
#
phrase is, just to get to that point means you are remarkable.
#
You are already an outlier, you know, whereas a male doctor might be some average mediocre
#
But if you're a lady doctor, just by virtue of everything you have had to do to get there,
#
you are already incredibly remarkable.
#
And in that sense, it is not as if you're selecting six individual stories for this
#
book, which are stories of remarkable people, you know, that kind of selection bias also
#
But simply that anyone who beat these odds had a remarkable story of some kind or the
#
Would you say there's something to that?
#
Yes, I guess I would agree.
#
I mean, all these women were incredible women.
#
Okay, and they did things that perhaps other women would not be able to do.
#
A lot of the women were very much encouraged by their fathers, some of them not so much
#
by their husbands, but by their fathers.
#
And I think that this still continues in India today.
#
It's very much easier to support your daughter than to support your wife.
#
You know, when you actually have to pitch in with the housework, then suddenly you realize
#
that it's not so easy to support anybody.
#
So but many of their fathers are very supportive and very keen on education for the women.
#
And then, of course, when they got married, some of them were supportive and husbands
#
are supportive and some were not.
#
But yes, I would agree that these women are outliers.
#
I mean, when picking them, also there is a bit of survivorship bias, like they were very
#
There was this, you know, Anne Jagannathan, Jerusha Girard, there's one woman called Moti
#
Bhai Kapadia, who was, I think, even before, you know, Rukma Bhai.
#
The problem was, I could not find a damn thing about these women.
#
I mean, I can't just have a chapter saying Jerusha Girard and, you know, Anne Jagannathan
#
and nothing else in the chapter.
#
So sadly, a lot of very interesting women have been left out.
#
There was also Hilda Vaz, who started the CMC velor.
#
But I had to just I had to stick to, you know, I decided that I will confine it to this.
#
And I'm sure a lot of people will say, but there is my grandmother, Hilda Vaz or whatever.
#
You have not covered her.
#
And I can only apologize for that.
#
I just decided to choose the ones which have the best anecdotes and, you know, who have
#
written memoirs and there's some letters.
#
And obviously, some are no brainers, Anandi Bhai has to be there because she is the first.
#
Okay, nobody can take that away from her.
#
Rukma Bhai has to be there because she had the most difficult journey, most difficult
#
challenges like which the others didn't have.
#
And Kadam Bini has to be there because she was the first one to practice and, you know,
#
to defy the sort of colonialism of the Dufferin Front.
#
So then there were the other three, Hemabati, after reading that memoir, I said, I have
#
Then Mutlaxmi and Mary, I chose because, you know, they were institution builders.
#
They didn't just sit back and, you know, confine it to a small practice.
#
By that time, you know, the role of women had become more important and they were supported
#
by Gandhi, they were supported by Travancore Rani.
#
And therefore, they decided that they will start institutions.
#
And actually, I honestly feel you can see such a journey from Anandi Bhai to Mary, though
#
we don't know too much about Mary because she didn't write too much about her life.
#
But still, but the difference in them is so, even the, actually, Mutlaxmi wrote, she wrote
#
two memoirs, Mutlaxmi Reddy.
#
The difference between Anandi Bhai and Mutlaxmi is so marked, you know, like Anandi Bhai was
#
very much about traditional medicine and Ayurveda and all that.
#
But time of Mutlaxmi, Mutlaxmi was very much in favor of modern medicine.
#
Then she started the ADR Cancer Institute.
#
The women started to change and evolve, you know, as the book went on.
#
And I found that very interesting as well.
#
So yeah, in fact, you know, when you later write about Mary Poonoon Lukos, you also talk
#
about how she fought for modern medicine in the sense she wanted compulsory vaccination
#
And some of the arguments in that day almost sort of mirror the arguments of today.
#
And she was also against homeopathy, you know, outspoken against it.
#
So just such a wonderful lady.
#
And you know, one actually wishes each of these chapters were, you know, expanded into
#
books because there's so much material there.
#
Let's begin by talking about Anandi Bhai, Joshi Hu.
#
And her story is so rich at so many different levels.
#
And she's married at nine to a man of 26, Gopal Vinayak Joshi, referred to as Gopal
#
And he's a very interesting character.
#
Like at one hand, you talk about how, you know, he's a clerk in the postal department,
#
but because he hasn't really done anything in his life, he kind of tries to live vicariously
#
He wants her to get educated.
#
Her opening scene has him beating her because she is cooking and not studying, where in
#
that time, it would really be the other way around.
#
But this becomes complicated later on as she becomes successful.
#
I mean, there are almost shades of a star is born kind of situation here.
#
And I love this quote from Aban Mukherjee in your book, and I'll read that out quote.
#
Many of the reformers were deeply ambivalent about the outcome of the reforms they themselves
#
Such deep rooted insecurity and anxiety led many reformers such as Anandi Bhai's husband
#
Gopal Rao Joshi to backtrack from or vacillate between the orthodox and reformist camps,
#
propagating the education of women and widow remarriage one moment and then extolling child
#
marriage the next quote.
#
And then later on, you write about how, you know, after Anandi Bhai had gone to the US,
#
got her medical training, that Gopal Rao felt powerless and deserted and Anandi Bhai would
#
have to, you know, she was what you describe as quote, a constant juggling act to placate
#
him and yet retain her own identity, stop quote.
#
So it's so it's such an amazing I mean, I'm totally indebted to Meera Kosambi's book in
#
this regard, because which was translated by Aban Mukherjee, you're absolutely right.
#
See, educating a wife was a double edged sword in those days, because of the reformist movement
#
in Maharashtra, Ranade, Fule, and you know, all these amazing men who wanted their wives
#
to be on the same par as then, you know, people like Gopal Rao would follow but not quite
#
be able to, you know, sustain this kind of reformation of wife, because suddenly, wife
#
gets up and starts to think for herself and starts to talk for herself and starts to give,
#
you know, little soirees in the US and talking about herself.
#
And then suddenly, I feel that, you know, Gopal Rao wanted her to be educated and he
#
was very keen that she be the first woman doctor, maybe he wanted to reflect in her
#
glory and you know, I, possibly I'm making Gopal Rao too much of a caricature, we can
#
never know what went on in his head.
#
It may also be that he wanted her to, you know, live up to her potential, we can't really
#
paint him in black or white.
#
But what we do know is that after she went to the US and then she started writing him
#
letters, he started getting more and more insecure, like there's an incident where she,
#
she was not wearing the Maharashtrian saree, she was decided to drape her saree in a different
#
way, simply because the winters in Philadelphia is so cold, okay.
#
And then he writes to her, why have you draped your, I mean, I'm not quoting exactly, but
#
this, the gist is why have you wearing your saree in this way, it's very immodest.
#
And then she writes a placatory letter to her, to him, because she had to, you know,
#
she had to placate her husband because in those days you can't be running around in
#
You had to have the husband to show that you're a pure, good woman, you know.
#
So she writes to him and she re-coaxes him just like almost like a mother does with her
#
child, no, no, no, no, I'm trying my best.
#
I'm only dressed this way because it's cold, but you know, I'm doing my best and this and
#
And every time she keeps writing these letters to him saying, you know, no, no, don't get
#
Then eventually Gopal Rao lands up in the US and he is roundly and he talks a bit too
#
much because you know, he feels very, you know, he doesn't like to be obligated to missionaries
#
for Anandibai's education and he is not a big fan of missionaries and he's not a big
#
And while he was a very difficult and maybe slightly crazy person, what he says also was
#
I mean, he was not in favor of all this orientalism where they are putting pressure on Anandibai
#
to change her religion and you know, be this way.
#
The other thing is that Gopal Rao was very much in favor of early marriages and Anandibai
#
is also on record as having spoken out in favor of early marriages, which completely
#
astonished her set there.
#
They're like, this woman seems so advanced and then, you know, her husband arrives and
#
she's in favor of early marriages.
#
And one can't really blame Anandibai for that because everything that she got in life was
#
through her early marriage.
#
And she and Gopal Rao were looking at the West from an Indian sort of view where they
#
were seeing what they considered as debauchery, I mean, very mild by today's standards.
#
But in those days they were like, oh, you know, women are not getting married until
#
late and they're wandering around doing this and that and with nobody, you know, family
#
And so they looked at it from the view that we do not want all this in India.
#
We are keen on early marriages and we are also keen on education of women.
#
Women can get educated after they get married.
#
And this is, till today, I think this is quite a common view in India.
#
I mean, it's like people still say to their daughters who, if they want to study abroad
#
or in another city, they say, first you get married, then you ask permission from your
#
mother-in-law, then you can study.
#
So this is not a very unusual view.
#
And he came there and he started talking all kinds of nonsense about early marriages and
#
trying to grab the spotlight.
#
And even after Anandibai passed away, he staged this Pune tea party, which I talk about in
#
So I do feel that he wanted a bit of her fame.
#
And I feel that if Anandibai had lived, she might have pulled away from him at some point
#
and she might have got more independence and pulled away from him and done things on her
#
But as it was, she had to kind of, you know, keep him sweet so that she could continue
#
Yeah, she seems to be a woman of both tremendous will and tremendous pragmatism and kind of
#
always balancing the two.
#
I want to read out a bit of that letter because, you know, he had berated her for sort of not
#
covering her shoulders in bosom adequately, as you put it.
#
So she wrote back quote, in your letter, you have critiqued the blouse I wore in the photograph,
#
but I promise you I never thought of it.
#
I am sorry it made you unhappy.
#
The pudder of the pitambar fell off my shoulder, not because of carelessness, but inadvertently.
#
I was not aware of it, nor was anyone else.
#
That is why the photograph was taken as it was.
#
So thinking of Gopal Rao and again from a distance one never knows and people contain
#
multitudes, but it also sort of strikes me as a common danger that we all have to consider
#
even within ourselves that sometimes we do things because in a sense we are posturing
#
perhaps to ourselves that we are a certain kind of person.
#
It is easy for somebody to want to build an image of himself as someone who stands for
#
women's liberation and look I educated my child bride and she is now a doctor and all
#
But then everything, all the motivation for that is coming from your self-image and you
#
are not really, you are looking at the other person as a means to an end, not as an end
#
And when that other person has an identity, when their pallu happens to fall a little
#
bit and whatever, then suddenly you can't stand that.
#
You can't stand that independence or that autonomy.
#
It's like a clash between the abstract conception of yourself and the actual sort of the concrete
#
manifestation of that as it were.
#
Is this something that strikes you when you look at these characters that, you know, with
#
these women we clearly get that they are what they are.
#
They are fighting so hard and what you get is in a sense kind of what you see.
#
Even when Anandibai is kind of being diplomatic and hedging, you can make out exactly what
#
She's being dishonest to herself in a way, but many of the men, you know, in these stories,
#
one senses that they are just, they are being dishonest to themselves at some point there
#
are so many contradictions and so on.
#
And I'm sorry, I'm looking down.
#
It's because I'm looking for that passage by, you know, where Abhan Mukherjee says that,
#
you know, all these men educated their women, but then they, you know, they just felt like
#
every time the women made an independent decision, then they would be like, huh.
#
And this is exactly what happened with later with Rukmabai.
#
She decided that, yeah, well, I'm going to do X.
#
And everybody rose up in arms when they were, you know, they contrasted Anandibai to Rukmabai
#
in all the popular press, Tilak's Kesari and Namaratha.
#
They all said that, you know, this is a good woman and this is what a bad woman looks like
#
because she has decided to follow her own path.
#
And to be honest, we all posture, I mean, I'm sure I posture endlessly on Twitter or
#
We all posture and it is one of the things, especially in parenthood, that you think you
#
want your child to be independent and have your own views.
#
And then your child runs out and says, I will get a tattoo.
#
That is the best way I can express my independent view.
#
And then you're like, hello, I didn't mean like that.
#
And it is a very painful process and in some ways I have a lot of sympathy with Gopal Rao
#
because he was one of the early, he didn't have any peers.
#
He didn't have a, you know, a men's supportive society where he can go and, you know, talk
#
with all these guys and say, well, my wife has done this and my wife has done that.
#
So in that way, I feel like I do sympathize because I struggle with this every day.
#
I mean, I'm like, I want people in my family to be independent.
#
When they do something independent and I'm like, but why did you do this?
#
Why didn't you do what I said?
#
So it's a, I think every human being in the world feels this way.
#
It's like, you know, even those who are not parents, you will be like, I want my mother
#
to do this and then she does it and then she does something else.
#
And then you're like, but I wanted her to do this.
#
So it's that desire for control is always there.
#
And I think Gopal Rao, you know, he died completely alone and, you know, in poverty and with no
#
And I feel he must have felt a little sad that he wanted to do so many radical things
#
and through Anandibai, who was sort of like, I won't say his puppet, but in a way like
#
his creation and nobody recognized him at the end.
#
And you know, he just sort of died alone and that kind of thing.
#
So I do feel sorry for him.
#
And there is a lot of posturing by the men, later chapters also you, it's hard to exactly
#
see what they're thinking because nobody has actually sat down and said, I've just seen
#
my wife go out to her practice and what does she think of herself?
#
No, this will not do and that kind of thing.
#
But I guess it's the constant push and pull in India, like now we all want our daughters
#
to become doctors, but perhaps we don't want them to become something else, which they
#
may want to become, you know, so.
#
All very wise words, talking of the sort of dramatic event in Anandibai's life.
#
And you know, one of the most striking things about her story is that she basically died
#
So, and when she was 18, there is a striking event where her husband kind of, I think begins
#
to set these events into motion, where he organizes an auditorium so he can explain
#
to the local community that why she is going abroad and please allow her.
#
But she says that she wants to speak instead and she speaks about how it will help society
#
and she makes a case and, you know, please let me break caste rules and go abroad and
#
And the interesting thing about her is that while some of the other doctors you speak
#
about are not kindly looked upon, in fact, the way Rukmabai is treated is just horrendous
#
and we'll come to that.
#
But with Anandibai, she is, after a point in time, it's almost as if she is accepted
#
She is a bit valorized.
#
You know, Tilak offers a hundred rupees because she becomes like a symbol of Marathi pride
#
And then she decides to return, like Gopal Rao wants to stay on in America and whatever.
#
And perhaps because she has seen the kind of nonsense he can get up to, she decides
#
But she decides to come back because her logic is that, you know, that there's already a
#
glut of women doctors in the US and they're not getting jobs.
#
Let's go back to India.
#
In fact, she says, why leave a full plate to go begging elsewhere?
#
So tell me a bit about this phase.
#
What else can you glean about her?
#
And if there had to be a counterfactual that she has come back and as you know, some of
#
the doctors later in the book go on to do things within the legal system, they go on
#
to become legislators, they found colleges, they found institutions, all of that.
#
And with Anandipai, there is almost as someone reading a story, a feeling that you've been
#
cheated that she's gone at 22.
#
What was your sense of what kind of woman she was or would have gone on to become?
#
See one thing is that she was privileged, I mean, she was a Brahmin and all the press
#
about her like, you know, Kesari says, it is indeed wonderful that a Brahmin lady has
#
proved to the world that the great qualities, perseverance, unselfishness, undaunted courage
#
and an eager desire to serve one's country do exist in the so-called weaker sex.
#
So they did valorize her and her devotion to her husband was constantly noted in all
#
the press, you know, although Anandipai was so young, her undaunted courage and devotion
#
to her husband were unparalleled, wrote the Yana Chakshu paper.
#
So like, you know, in that way, she, you know, she was valorized.
#
At the same time, I forgot to mention, I think we haven't mentioned this so far that Anandipai
#
lost her child very early and she had a baby and before she went to the US and the baby
#
And she says that I don't think it affects the father so much, but it affects the mother.
#
And while she doesn't write about it much, I have a feeling and I'm only theorizing here
#
that this did affect her.
#
I do not imagine that there will be any mother who is not affected by the loss of a child.
#
And she never had a child after that because her health was so damaged.
#
And I have a feeling that this really did affect her desire to come back to India.
#
And I give her the benefit of the doubt.
#
I think if she had lived, she would have helped, you know, at least, you know, pregnant women
#
and all that, maybe not with super modern medicine, but with whatever medicine she did
#
learn and whatever medicine she could, which would still have been a help.
#
The other thing that you notice with Anandipai and Gopal Rao is I wanted to bring this out.
#
I don't know if I have adequately, is that like many people married at a very young age,
#
he was her friend also because in by modern standards, he's an abusive joke.
#
But by those standards, and I know this because like my paternal grandmother was married at
#
11, okay, and that was the way it was for women and back in those days.
#
And she sort of grew up with her husband and he was a friend.
#
And in Anandipai's letters, you see this, like she writes very excitedly to Gopal Rao,
#
I wore my red pitambar saree.
#
I mean, I can't imagine writing that to my husband, he'd be like, yeah, I don't really
#
I mean, like, you know, I mean, what do you want?
#
And like, you know, but the way she writes it, she's very excited because she's like
#
sort of seeking his approval because they've grown up together and he's her mentor, friend,
#
And she's writing to him.
#
And I found that very endearing because it's not that she hated him all the time.
#
It was a very complex relationship, okay.
#
And you know, it was very, she was really sort of a very complex woman.
#
She was not just a privileged, good Brahmin wife, let's put it that way.
#
There was more to her than that.
#
So, yeah, I found those snapshots from her letters really fascinating because there is
#
a sense of anger and resentment, there is a sense of longing, there is a sense that,
#
oh, you're really missing somebody, there is this warmth and there is kind of all of
#
Where are these letters?
#
You know, are they anywhere in the public domain where people can read them?
#
I got all these from Meera Kosambi's book, okay, where she has translated them all from
#
Okay, so clearly I don't know how to read Marathi and I could not easily find a translator.
#
So I have used her book as a very important source and I have footnoted it.
#
So I hope that it's kind of okay.
#
But you can read a lot of these translated version of these letters in Meera Kosambi's
#
book, A Fragmented Feminism.
#
It's an expensive book and maybe not easily accessible to everybody.
#
So yeah, it's an academic kind of book.
#
I mean, that was my aim behind this book to take all these incredibly expensive, but obviously
#
fantastic academic books, Meera Kosambi, you know, all these other people who have written
#
about these women and make it accessible to people so that they can read this, you know.
#
And another thing I was struck by where you describe her routine while she's studying
#
in college and you write quote, on a typical day, she rested seven to eight hours, spent
#
two hours on letter writing, an hour and a half on meals, half an hour on visits, half
#
an hour on a toilet and the rest of the time on lectures and studies, stop quote.
#
And I was struck by that little bit there, spent two hours on letter writing and the
#
fact that she got seven letters a day.
#
And I remember even when I left home in the early nineties and all that, I would write
#
physical letters to my parents and my mother would send me back these inland letter thingies
#
and you know, saying things like, you know, I hope you're bathing enough and this and
#
And there's a certain charm to that because the act of sitting down and physically writing
#
a letter almost means you're sharing a part of yourself, giving a part of yourself with
#
the person you are writing to, you're giving them that much importance that you're actually
#
writing a physical letter.
#
And I think in modern times, some of that is a little bit lost where everything is cursory,
#
WhatsApp messages, or you just, you know, the level of communication has become much
#
more shallow and transient.
#
And I think it also perhaps changes us as people that instead of sitting down and writing
#
a long letter in long hand and all that, I'm just sending a quick WhatsApp message and
#
whatever and it changes the kind of thinking you do, it changes the kind of communication,
#
it changes relationships.
#
Is this something you've thought about because you've kind of lived through the same years
#
So yes, I used to write a lot of letters.
#
I actually had a pen pal in Indiana and she used to write to me all about her life in
#
India and I used to write to her about, you know, what I'm doing in India and whatnot.
#
And yes, I do miss those letter writing days because I used to write a lot of letters.
#
A huge number of letters.
#
I wrote so many letters to my husband, you know, in our early years of our courtship
#
And I do miss that, but I don't think I'll go back to it.
#
It's like, you know, the other problem is like social media.
#
Those of us who are very active on social media, I think our brains are just completely
#
a mess and, you know, jangled up.
#
I can see the difference in the way my husband's on any social media.
#
He's not even on Facebook.
#
He's just like the ghost who walks.
#
He doesn't exist except, you know, and he hates social media.
#
He's very different from me and occasionally he comes on and reads my Twitter feed and
#
then he says, you all have too much time on your hands and he goes back to doing something
#
I think his level of concentration is so much better than mine.
#
I mean, I read some 50 times more than him.
#
I read this, I read that.
#
I know everything that's going on.
#
I know all the social media fights, but I have no focus or concentration and his concentration
#
He has, he can read a book and he will take ages to read it, but he will tell you everything
#
that's in the book and, you know, with a really good commentary.
#
And I do find that social media makes me very jangled and my mind a mess.
#
But what can I say, I'm not going to give it up.
#
I mean, I'm not sitting here saying I'm going to go off Twitter and become a better person.
#
No, I will be on Twitter and I'll be a worse person, but I'm continuing.
#
So we are both, I think, two addicts talking to each other and in full acknowledgement
#
You know, there's a great book by Cal Newport called Deep Work where he kind of speaks exactly
#
Basically what happens is that what you need to do anything seriously, including writing
#
is you need a state of deep concentration, but every time you're distracted, it takes
#
about 15 to 20 minutes to get back to that state of concentration.
#
And if like me, and like I suppose you, if you're looking at your phone all the time
#
and all of that, then you're constantly, the distractions are so many, especially through
#
your smartphone, that are constantly in a shade of shallow concentration and it becomes
#
really difficult to get deep.
#
And I guess your husband's way is something like Neil Stephenson, like the writer of Cryptonomicon
#
and so many great books.
#
What Stephenson does is he doesn't even have an email account, forget social media.
#
So there is zero chance of distraction.
#
You just sit and you write and you engage with the real world as it is.
#
And of course, I think the internet is a massive net benefit, but I also get the sort of the
#
allure of being able to get away from it.
#
But also I should say to defend my addiction to social media is that unlike many writers,
#
possibly, I'm not an introvert.
#
I am not a person who goes around saying, well, I hate people.
#
I don't want to meet anybody.
#
I just want to be with my books.
#
I love books, but I like meeting people.
#
And these days it's become very cool to say that you're an introvert.
#
And my husband is a true introvert.
#
He really, really doesn't want to meet anybody.
#
And perhaps it's a function of his work where he's always in meetings.
#
But I find writing an extremely lonely business, especially writing books.
#
And Twitter is my sort of internet water cooler and lots of people have told me, including
#
people like my agent and all that, they're like, why do you spend so much time on Twitter?
#
Imagine what you could do with that time.
#
But the thing is that Twitter gives me that little interest and some interaction with
#
And then I go back to my solitary work plodding on.
#
So I don't feel that I'm going to give up social media anytime soon.
#
I may reduce the time I spend on it.
#
I may restrict the things I talk about on social media.
#
There are a lot of things I never talk about.
#
I find that there is a tendency to suddenly start 20 tweet threads about things that you
#
know nothing about, absolutely nothing, but you will be like pontificating for hours and
#
hours and you know, and I don't want to get into all that because I don't know so much
#
So yeah, the worst aspects of Twitter can be shallow and toxic, but the best aspects
#
are that you can reach out to some really interesting people and curate feeds for yourself
#
where you're getting incredible Gyan from people who would otherwise never know who
#
So not going to give it up anytime soon.
#
So let's move on to the second of your fascinating doctors, which is Kadamani Ganguly, who is
#
also, by the way, as you point out, called a whore in 1891 by a publication called Bongobashi.
#
And later on, another publication called the Indian Messenger says, quote, the maintenance
#
of female virtue is incompatible with their liberty, stop quote, which is something I
#
think people would, some people would say today as well, and not just for women.
#
So tell me a little bit about Kadamani Ganguly because she's also an incredibly fascinating
#
character, also privileged in many ways, but at the same time has, you know, a massive
#
fight on her hands to kind of get where she gets.
#
So Kadamani was very, she maybe suffered a bit by being between two very interesting
#
and dramatic women, Anandi Bai before her, who was the first, and Rukma Bai after her,
#
And there is always a lot of confusion about who was the first woman doctor, blah, blah,
#
And as I say in my book, I find these kind of debates a bit unnecessary because it doesn't
#
The fact is they all had their own challenges and they were all incredible women.
#
But if we are going to be strictly accurate, Kadamani was the first to practice before
#
And it's often said that Rukma Bai was before Kadamani, but that is not true.
#
And you know, if you just look at the facts, and Kadamani was a very quiet woman, I think.
#
That's the sense I get of her.
#
There's very little written about her.
#
And she had eight children, though some accounts say seven, I think one died.
#
And she didn't have much time to write about herself.
#
She was busy looking after these eight children and struggling to start, be the first Indian
#
So whatever we have of her is from other accounts.
#
You know, and obviously the chapter on her suffers because of that.
#
But I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that really, I just have to move on.
#
So Kadamani's main struggle was, and she was a Brahmo.
#
And she was very lucky in that the Brahmo movement at that time was working very hard
#
for the education of women.
#
And her husband was a Brahmo and helped her greatly.
#
And by all accounts, they did have a good marriage.
#
I tried to find some sense of more about their marriage and there's not much written, but
#
by all accounts, he did try to educate her in every way.
#
And he was different among the Brahmos in that he believed that women should be educated
#
So she had a decent education as compared to the other women.
#
And she was studied at Bethune College.
#
And then she went and then her struggle began because Calcutta Medical College did not admit
#
women and she really fought for that.
#
And that really changed lives for many of women in a very discreet way.
#
She was just working hard and she sent various letters and eventually Calcutta Medical College
#
And then even with that degree, she could not get the respect that she was due.
#
She could not get patients to come.
#
And therefore she went to Edinburgh and I could not find a single mention of her in
#
I don't know where it's gone.
#
Maybe it'll turn up, but I have to admit that I could not find any mention of her in Edinburgh.
#
I contacted Edinburgh and they said, yes, we know that she was on the roll, serious dates.
#
We don't have any information of her.
#
So I mean, she was only there a year and she got like, you know, a sort of a triple degree
#
and she had to fight against the Dufferin Fund.
#
And this is where this book has been so revelatory for me because, you know, one of the journalists
#
who interviewed me, I think he asked me a very good question.
#
He was like, have you thought about, you know, global hegemonies in feminism?
#
And initially when I read that question, I didn't understand it.
#
So I read it some three, four times and then I realized what he meant, which is what I've
#
Like so many of these women, they had to fight against, you know, things that were ostensibly
#
Like Kadamini had to fight against the Dufferin Fund, which is a fund started by Harriet Dufferin
#
to bring more women doctors to India and to bring medical facilities to India.
#
And that was a very good idea.
#
But what they actually did was bring a lot of European women, the ones who could not
#
find jobs in the Europe and in the UK.
#
And they brought them all in here and set them up in, you know, West Bengal without
#
any local language knowledge, without any knowledge of, you know, the customs of people
#
and set them up and said, hello, carry on practicing.
#
It was hailed as a wonderful thing.
#
But as I see in my book, the Dufferin Fund was a mixed blessing because they did not
#
decide to train Indian women.
#
They decided that, oh, Indian women are, you know, they are subject to the Pardhanashin
#
system and they're in Zinanas, they can't study and people will not go to Indian women.
#
Even other Indian women will not go to Indian women.
#
And Kadamini fought against all this and the few letters she writes, she says that Indian
#
women are just as capable as any other women.
#
And slowly over the years, and especially after getting a foreign degree, there was
#
And then she got a job under the Dufferin Fund and she was hailed by Florence Nightingale,
#
who I think by that time had changed her mind, clearly seems to have changed her mind after
#
seeing so many women doctors.
#
And she managed to practice on her own.
#
And which in those days was like a huge thing and eventually entered public life, joined
#
the Indian National Congress, you know, when Gandhi called for more women to enter the
#
So she was an amazing woman, but she was a very quiet woman.
#
There's so little about her.
#
I wish maybe somebody might come forth and we can do a little addition to the book if
#
somebody has heard of her.
#
And also just to place the times in context, you know, it's okay at one point to posture
#
about how men and women should be equal, but that abstract sentiment also needs a concrete
#
commitment to something like education.
#
Like at one point you give context by saying, quote, the Brahmos believed that husbands
#
and wives should have shared interests, which given how uneducated most Indian women were,
#
was almost impossible at the time.
#
An article titled Ardhangini in the Bodhini Potrika stated, quote, when the husband is
#
busy determining the distance between the sun and other constellations, the wife is
#
busy measuring the dimensions of her pillowcases.
#
When the husband thinks about the stars and planets in the sky, the wife is then at the
#
kitchen determining the reflexes and speed of the cock, stop quote.
#
And therefore, you know, her husband comes across as the one actual husband in this book
#
who you kind of feel, you know, there are no mixed feelings.
#
He just seems like a good guy.
#
Of course, when the marriage happened, she's 21, he's 39, he's got three kids, but he's
#
so incredibly supportive.
#
Like both her father and her husband are just so incredibly supportive all the way, not
#
just posturing, but also really, you know, putting their hearts into supporting their
#
See, I mean, Dwarkanath Ganguly, he did say things like in his writings, and I haven't,
#
I have just acknowledged them, but I haven't gone too much into detail.
#
In his writings, he does say that, you know, women should be educated so that their husbands
#
won't go to prostitutes in order to sustain their interest.
#
But this was the general feeling in them, even amongst the Brahmois, okay.
#
So there was a very strong Puritan streak, the basic, like I say, the objective of education
#
was to make women better wives and mothers so that they can, you know, maybe good mothers
#
and, you know, be, not have their children die from lack of care and also to discourage
#
husbands from a life of vice, visiting prostitutes, drinking and smoking.
#
Because in those days, many of the husbands were like 20 years older than their wives
#
or 25 years, and therefore the husbands would go to courtesans or prostitutes in order to
#
get some kind of intellectual stimulation, which they were not getting from their nine
#
year old wife, whom like, you know, they have just been landed with.
#
So while I say that, yes, we should say that women should be educated for their own sakes,
#
but this was too much of a radical idea at the time.
#
At the time, they were just educating women in order to make her like, you know, like
#
a sort of like a, on a pedestal, like, you know, good wife and mother and this kind of
#
But still, you know, the Dwarkanath was very advanced for the time.
#
So you can't really judge people of that time by the standards of today.
#
You're never going to arrive at a resolution.
#
So and when Kadambini was called a whore by the Bangabashi editor, she was called a whore
#
in print by, you know, Indian messenger.
#
And the Indian messenger, like you said, said it published an article arguing that giving
#
women opportunities for education would make them unchaste.
#
And it is so incongruous because by this time, Kadambini had some eight children.
#
Where did she have the time to be unchaste?
#
She was just basically, I mean, she was like, you know, she was doing her embroidery, her
#
work and looking after her eight children.
#
And Dwarkanath immediately kind of filed a suit for defamation.
#
He was like the knight in shining armor kind of thing.
#
And the Indian messenger sort of, you know, changed its tune.
#
But I mean, this is like an incident.
#
You can have eight children and still, still somebody will think that you have the time
#
I mean, most of us are like just struggling to just carry on.
#
We have no time to be unchaste or anything like that, you know.
#
And also there's nothing wrong with being quote unquote unchaste.
#
But I mean, why be like kind of, you know, brand her as, oh, you know, because she is
#
a doctor, she'll have more opportunities to leave the home.
#
She will leave the home.
#
Unchaste is the most convenient pejorative.
#
You also write about how, you know, when Dwarkanath sued the Bongabashi, the Bongabashi editor
#
Mahesh Chandra Pal was found guilty, fined 100 rupees and sentenced to six months imprisonment.
#
I think he did the right thing.
#
You know, some people have asked me whether he was just trying to grab her limelight.
#
I don't see it that way because I think he had to step up and set a precedent, you know.
#
And I think possibly of all the men here, you know, he possibly might be the most supportive
#
But of course we have no idea whether he ever, you know, did the cooking or, you know, washed
#
Probably didn't do any of that.
#
It's men didn't in those days.
#
In the 19th century, you are expecting so much from men.
#
You can't really, you know, expect all that.
#
So I have a note about here called Pony and Politics, which both of which come from this
#
I'll just read out quote.
#
What does survive is a picture of a woman initially much sought after by the rich and
#
In 1895, Kadambini treated the queen mother of the royal family of Nepal and apparently
#
In return, along with gifts of money and jewellery, she was given a pony, which her children and
#
grandchildren greatly enjoyed playing with.
#
However, Kadambini was also gradually becoming responsible, becoming conscious of her social
#
She treated Pardhanashin women, women who observed rigid rules of seclusion and would
#
And she actually became the first woman to speak at the Indian National Congress annual
#
meeting, the Congress that they had.
#
She spoke in the sixth session, but she kind of doesn't really play a big part in politics
#
And in those days, that was a lot to actually go up and speak was a lot, you know, and and
#
by that time she was getting older and all that kind of thing.
#
So I think she was an amazing woman, it's just that as compared to some of the others
#
is not enough material, so she maybe doesn't stand out.
#
Okay, but she certainly deserves to be remembered.
#
So yeah, I mean, if you fought and won those battles, you are, in a sense, amazing by default
#
and the word amazing seems an understatement when you talk about the next woman, Rukma Bhairaut.
#
So the rule breaker, as it were.
#
So tell me a little bit about her, because this this woman is completely at a different
#
She's at a different level.
#
And she had the biggest challenge of anybody.
#
And you know, I must mention here, and I hope it won't become a big thing that some people
#
have asked me why you have put Anandibai on the cover.
#
Why is you saying that Anandibai is the best?
#
There's nothing woke about this, honestly, the only reason that Anandibai is on the cover
#
is because we had a lot of trouble getting photographs for this book.
#
I got some photographs, but they're of very poor quality, and the designer said, I cannot
#
make this stand out enough.
#
It's as simple as that.
#
We're not trying to say that Anandibai is better than Rukma Bhai by putting her on the
#
This photo of Anandibai was taken from Drexel University, which was earlier the Women's
#
Medical College, and they had kept a good print.
#
It's as simple as that.
#
That's a pragmatic reason, but she's the first anyway.
#
So why does one even have to justify that?
#
She's the first anyway, and that photograph of hers is very sort of striking, that gaze
#
So any case, Rukma Bhai, to my mind, is the most amazing, if I had to choose one.
#
The beginning of this chapter starts with, men cannot in the least understand the wretchedness
#
which we Hindu women have to endure.
#
Because you cannot enter our feelings, do not think that we are satisfied with the life
#
of drudgery that we live, and that we have no taste for an aspiration after a higher
#
Rukma Bhai's entire life was aspiring to something better.
#
Like I said, she was from the carpenter caste, so she was from a lower caste in quotes kind
#
That also made a big difference because she had to face so much caste prejudice from Tilak
#
She was an amazing woman, again she had a progressive father figure, Dr. Sakaram Arjun,
#
who is quite a famous botanist, and he was her stepfather.
#
But even he could not break the Hindu custom, which was that you have to marry all your
#
girls before they attain puberty, otherwise you will be cursed with bad luck for generations.
#
And so she was married young to a man named Dadaji Bikaji at 11, and after that she decided
#
that she wanted to study, and she did not want to join him, and she kept delaying the
#
process of joining him until finally he said, come, I have to assert my conjugal rights,
#
you have given me enough trouble.
#
And Rukma Bhai really wanted to study, and she was encouraged by her stepfather.
#
And she finally filed a court case, which in those days was an amazing thing.
#
And she wrote two letters to the Times of India, which were anonymous, but later identity
#
And she talks at such length about the misery of women and how marriage is such a terrible
#
institution for women, and a great institution for men.
#
I mean, this is what people are saying today, she was so ahead of her time.
#
And she says, she writes in the first letter, and she had titled it a Hindu lady, so nobody
#
She wrote a letter to the Times of India saying, marriage does not impose any inseparable obstacle
#
on men in the course of their studies.
#
If married early, they are not called upon to go to the house and to submit to the tender
#
mercies of a mother-in-law.
#
So a lot of men on Twitter and all, when I was dropping hints about this book, a lot
#
of men are saying, oh no, but in those times, even men were married early, look at our Prime
#
The point is that the men did not have to go to a mother-in-law's house and have restrictions
#
put on their education.
#
They could study even after marriage.
#
And then she says, but the case with women is a very reverse of this.
#
If the girl is married at the age of eight, her parents are at liberty to send her to
#
school till she's 10, but if they wish to continue her at school, they must obtain the
#
express permission of the girl's mother-in-law.
#
Thus, Mr. Editor, when we are just beginning to appreciate education, we are taken away
#
And I am one of those unfortunate Hindu women whose hard lot it is to suffer the miseries
#
entailed by the custom of early marriage.
#
It comes between me and that thing which I prize above all others, study and mental cultivation.
#
And then she suggests that the age of marriage be raised to 15 for the bride and 20 for the
#
groom, which in those days was like, wow, radical, you know, kind of thing.
#
And like, you know, like other commenters has said, there were lots of people who condemned
#
infant marriage, but society had not progressed to the point where they condemned child marriage.
#
By 11, everybody was agreed that by 11, you should all get married kind of thing.
#
I mean, she went and wrote these letters and then she got a lot of flak.
#
And then she made her powerful enemy who continued to be her lifelong enemy, Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
#
And Tilak, you know, was a conservative.
#
He always, he started out as a conservative and he ended as a conservative.
#
And there are people who say, do not judge him by the values of today.
#
To some extent, that's true.
#
However, his contemporaries were not as conservative as him.
#
They were the amazing Fules, which, you know, I mentioned briefly, but I don't go into detail
#
because that is not the purpose of the story.
#
And the Fules had set up a school for girls some 40 years before Rakhma Bhai came along,
#
Ranade set up the school in the Huzurpaga Girls School in Pune, along with all Tilak's
#
contemporaries from Pune like R.J.
#
And all of these people were in support of the education of girls.
#
And Tilak believed that education should go so far and no further.
#
So again, he believed that women could not understand mathematics and science, so they
#
should be taught Sanskrit, needlework, kukri, that kind of thing.
#
And you know, in his excerpts, his fear at women sort of rising up and overthrowing this
#
sort of, you know, Brahmin patriarchy is very clear.
#
It's very clear, you know, he just keeps saying just enough education to be good wives
#
Just, just, just enough.
#
And he really rose against Rakhma Bhai and he marshaled his papers, the Kesari and the
#
And in order to vilify her, he was like, well, if we allow this, then, you know, every, he
#
was basically, Tilak believed that marriage is a sacred Hindu sacrament and he did not
#
believe that the customs of Hindus should be interfered with the government.
#
And it is not that he did not believe in social reform, mind you, he did believe in social
#
reform, but he thought that it should come, you know, from society and it should sort
#
of trickle down and it should come slowly and it should not be forced by the British
#
And I mean, that is one view, which I frankly, you know, I do not really support.
#
And he kind of, you know, argued that she cannot leave her conjugal rights, marriage
#
is sacred and she has to continue to be a good wife to him and all that.
#
And then eventually, you know, she went to court, Rakhma Bhai went to court and the lower
#
court judgment was in her favor, but the higher court judgment said that she has to either
#
go to jail for six months or go and live with her husband.
#
And she was so incredibly brave that she said, I will go to jail.
#
I am not going to live with this dude.
#
And it just sort of reached a stalemate at then and, you know, Tilak got even more angry
#
and they, you know, they ran a series of scathing pieces against Rakhma Bhai.
#
They actually, Tilak actually compared Rakhma Bhai to the Shikhandi in the Mahabharat, okay.
#
And this is what he says, he says, even as the Pandavas tried to conquer Bhishma by putting
#
forth Shikhandi, so also the reformers have the audacity to fire bullets at our ancient
#
religion under the cover of Rakhma Bhai with the intention of castrating our eternal religion.
#
We agree with public opinion that government should not interfere with our customs, which
#
have been carried on in our society from time immemorial.
#
And again, they compared her to Anand Bhai.
#
They said, you know, the Kesari says Anand Bhai did not give up her own religion, proper
#
conduct as a woman, our own customs and conventions.
#
She realized that otherwise people will call her Dharmabhrashta, fallen from religion,
#
that women from her society will not honor her.
#
As a result, she would not be able to secure the good of her sisters.
#
And the thing with Rakhma Bhai is, with all this, like, even now, I think if, you know,
#
all these people had risen up against me, I'd have just quietly given up and gone away.
#
But she didn't, she didn't give up.
#
And she mobilized a lot of, you know, liberal support, including from, you know, Bairam
#
Malabari and, you know, the liberals and all that.
#
And she, she was instrumental bringing about the Age of Consent Act.
#
That was some years later, in which they raised the age of marriage for women because people
#
realized that this is such a barbaric custom.
#
And eventually she decided to, you know, there was a lot of debate, but I think Rakhma Bhai
#
felt that she was becoming a bit of a political football and she arrived at some kind of settlement
#
with Dadaji and her husband.
#
And she decided to go, leave the country and go and study in the London School of Medicine.
#
And this show was held by Edith Pichy, who was like with the Kamma Hospital.
#
And you know, it's very sort of characteristic.
#
She decided that, you know, she was 24 years old and you have to note that, you know, Anandibai
#
and Kadamini were forged ahead of her because she was spending her life fighting things
#
So she paid Dadaji 2000 rupees, which was a lot in that time.
#
And she said, I'm, you know, I'm done being your wife.
#
And immediately she left Dadaji married again.
#
So he couldn't have been so keen on her anyway.
#
He just wanted to stop her from doing stuff.
#
Dadaji married again and she went to the London School of Medicine where she met a lot of
#
She studied and she, there's very little written about her experiences there.
#
And she comes back to India.
#
She goes to Surat and she works there for years.
#
And then she eventually goes to Rajkot and she leads a very quiet life.
#
She does not perhaps want to, you know, get any press, but she leads a quiet life.
#
She helps during the plague, the great plague, and she gets a medal during the great plague.
#
And she works very quietly there, not trying to draw any publicity.
#
And she remains alone, alone means, I mean, that's not the way to describe it.
#
She remains single for the rest of her life, but she is surrounded by a family of nephews,
#
nieces, peers, friends, and this is why she was, I think, the most amazing.
#
And while talking about caste, it's very hard to find actual mentions where somebody says,
#
oh, she's a lower caste woman and therefore, but it's, if you read between the lines, the
#
constant contrast between Anandibai and Rukmabai, it's always there, you know, and the kind
#
of recuperation she received from Tilak, I do not think she would have received if she
#
was from a higher caste.
#
It was all sort of reading between the lines, you know.
#
So you know, before I ask my next question on Rukmabai, I'd just like to make a quick
#
comment on what I consider Tilak's Hippocratic conservatism.
#
I actually have a little bit of sympathy for conservatism, but not for the way Tilak practiced
#
Now, as you correctly pointed out, some of his contemporaries, especially two great heroes
#
of mine, Agarkar and Gokhale, were, you know, in a sense, both liberal and conservative
#
in different ways, like Agarkar was one of the founders of the college where I did my
#
education, Ferguson College in Pune, and there's a famous story of the late 1890s, and mind
#
you, not the late 1990s, where such a story would still be an outlier, but late 1890s,
#
he was speaking with a biology class and he asked this group of students there, that
#
if donkeys had a god, what would the god look like?
#
And then he raised his hands above his ear, you know, to indicate donkey's ears.
#
And in fact, Ferguson was known as a hotbed of atheism in those days.
#
Now, when I think back on what Agarkar and Gokhale were doing, they were changing society
#
from within the right way, right?
#
So I don't really buy, like, I buy the point that very often society change cannot be imposed
#
from the top down, it has to come from within society.
#
But the people I see actually doing that are the people like Agarkar and Gokhale and before
#
them, their mentor, Ranade and so on.
#
And the Foules also, like, I mean, Foules himself.
#
And the Foules even before that, Foules actually came out and said that women are kept uneducated
#
by men, you know, with this Hindu scriptures to kind of bludgeon them into submission.
#
Those are not his words.
#
But you know, that kind of thing.
#
And I think in 1848, they founded the school for girls of all castes.
#
And on the other hand, Tilak said in Maratha that women are, quote, incapable of understanding
#
English history, mathematics and science as it interfered in the natural aspect of a woman's
#
Women should be taught at the most Sanskrit sanitation and needlework, teaching Hindu
#
women to read English would ruin their precious traditional values and would make them immoral
#
and insubordinate, stop quote.
#
So you know, the thing is that he is in that sense misogynist and regressive and all this
#
talk of society must change from within and not have top down imposition.
#
I agree with that principle, but he's not changing it from within Agarkar and Gokhale
#
are changing it from within.
#
I mean, with his own daughter, Tilak's own daughter, he actually married her off only
#
at 16, which in those days was like, wow, cool and all that, you know.
#
But so he did follow it in a limited constraints of his own family.
#
But he didn't believe in this kind of, you know, starting girls schools for everybody.
#
And that word insubordinate, like, you know, that is the key word.
#
And I just feel that, you know, he saw Rukmabai as a woman from a lower caste who was a threat
#
to the whole Brahmin supremacy.
#
And he thought once we open this door, women will be, because Tilak also said a lot of
#
terrible things about Ramabai and, you know, her conversion to Christianity sent him into
#
How can she do this kind of thing?
#
She's a good Pune woman and this, that and what not.
#
She was also from Pune, like all these people were from Pune.
#
So yes, you're absolutely right that, you know, his contemporaries and even people before
#
him, like the Fules, you know, Jyoti bhai and Sayathri were much, much more advanced.
#
So I don't give Tilak a free pass in this.
#
And see, this is history.
#
One can applaud Tilak for amazing bravery, okay, later.
#
And this is in his early career.
#
Later he goes on for Swaraj, for charged with sedition, everything, Tilak was an amazing
#
We do not have to say that he was amazing with regard to women.
#
We can give him just like Gandhi, right?
#
I mean, like Gandhi was an incredible man.
#
But the problem with, you know, everything these days is that everything is black and
#
Bad person, good person.
#
Bad person, good person.
#
This is not the case when you actually read history.
#
The cliche on my show, which is of course taken from Walt Whitman's poem is that people
#
The one part I found really remarkable about Rukmamba, like when I got to this passage,
#
I just stopped reading to just process the enormity of this, is that initially when she's
#
trying to, you know, get her divorce, the initial argument is that my husband can't
#
He doesn't have a house and you know, all of that.
#
These are the initial arguments.
#
But then at one point, the argument changes and it changes to a much more fundamental
#
And I quote from your book, quote, but even as Rukmabai was responding to these petty
#
charges, she was moving firmly in inexorably towards a revolutionary position, which must
#
have frightened even her.
#
In her reply to Dadaji's plaint, she argued that as she was too young to give consent
#
to the marriage, she could not be bound by it.
#
This was essentially an attack on the entire Hindu family system.
#
The custom of child marriage and the concept of marriage as a sacred union.
#
It was one woman against the might of the Hindu sacrament.
#
And this is sort of a very different argument from the kind of arguments, you know, Anandi
#
Bhai made or whatever, which were taking into account the prejudices of society where she's
#
saying, let me be free because it's good for society.
#
Society needs women doctors.
#
And Rukmabai is planting her foot down and saying consent.
#
Absolutely, which is why she is the greatest because she is the rule breaker.
#
She burned all the bridges.
#
She didn't leave that bridge.
#
She started with the bridge.
#
She said she must have thought she was like, I will say that he doesn't have enough money
#
to support me and let me see if I can get along, get away with it.
#
But then she realized that Dadaji will just say that, oh, well, no, I will find some money
#
and I will support you.
#
And at some point she just got up and said, I'm going to burn all my bridges.
#
I'm going to burn it all down.
#
I mean, she was just a woman, not a privileged woman.
#
And you know, she, she decided that she is going to challenge the entire Hindu sacrament.
#
I can tell you that I don't think I would be able to do it.
#
I would have just crumbled and gone away and gone and lived with that person.
#
You know, I wouldn't have been able to do it.
#
And I don't think most people even now would be able to do it.
#
To do it like over a, you know, in 1884 is just amazing.
#
And her whole thinking is so advanced.
#
I mean, look at this thing that she has written in one of her letters, being men, the shastric
#
lawgivers have painted themselves noble and pure and have laid every conceivable sin and
#
impurity at our door, our meaning women.
#
If these were these are to be trusted, we are a set of unclean animals created by God
#
for the special service and gratification of man who by divine right can treat or maltreat
#
And you know, I had a question the other day when somebody asked me, do you think these
#
I say, without exception, they were all feminists.
#
Maybe they don't fit your definition of a feminist because feminism has evolved into
#
third and fourth wave feminism.
#
But just for her to have these advanced views to challenge the shastras is amazing.
#
And you're right that Anandibai decided that she wouldn't, Anandibai had some rumblings
#
and was uneasy about the way Hindu women were treated.
#
But she kept those to her letters.
#
Meanwhile, Rukmabai went out and wrote a public letter and wandered around saying these things,
#
you know, and you know, I sometimes I wonder how she even survived, I mean, how she was
#
not killed or harassed or, or so physically assaulted.
#
I mean, she was harassed, but she was not physically assaulted.
#
And yeah, and absolutely a feminist and more than that also, because she's not just fighting
#
for a right for a divorce or to further education, she's just questioning the whole fricking
#
edifice of values on which that society is built and saying all of you are full of shit
#
and of course they were and she was right, but to say it like, my God, that's and what
#
indicates that also is that, you know, her final court case judgment was in March 1887,
#
but in 1885, she actually won the first case where the judge Robert Pihe ruled in her favour
#
and you write in your book quote, when Dadaji's council, Dadaji is her husband, just to remind
#
the listeners, when Dadaji's council pledded for cause, Pihe left the court in no doubt
#
about his leaning, chastising the plaintiff for trying to recover an unwilling young lady
#
as if she were a bullock or a cow, stop quote, last few words were his.
#
And then in Maratha, you write about the Maratha argument where you say quote, the Maratha
#
argument that the Maratha argued that the Hindu marriage was a contract and Dadaji had
#
incurred a heavy loss on the marriage, non restoration of his conjugal rights was a dead
#
Who is to reimburse him for the pecuniary loss he has suffered, it asked, stop quote.
#
And again, classic illustration of how women are just a property of men, it's taken as
#
Yeah, this is so like, you know, revelatory by the Maratha, but who will, you know, compensate
#
Dadaji, he has bought this wife and he has spent so much money on her, kya karu, and
#
you know, it's like, it's just amazing that she had this thing to kind of, you know, challenge
#
And you know, the Kaisari Hind also, which is like a Gujarati weekly in Bombay, it wrote,
#
millions of Hindu girls married in their infancy may with impunity break the sacred matrimonial
#
And this is absolutely right.
#
I mean, once basically Hindu men were scared because they knew that their child brides
#
with them only because they have no choice in the matter and they have been delivered
#
to them like a package, you know, like the cow that they own.
#
And they were suddenly, there was panic, I mean, I obviously I had, you know, word limitations,
#
but if you can imagine the atmosphere, then, you know, all these papers flying back and
#
forth saying Hindu women now say they will leave their wives and all the men saying,
#
oh my God, my wife is going to leave me and then who will find me, who will wash my clothes
#
and who will cook and you know, who will provide me with sex on a tap and all that kind of
#
So it's, it's just, it's just amazing that she had the guts to stand up and say this.
#
I'm constantly lost in awe.
#
I mean, at a certain point, I also feel like I cannot go on kind of praising these women.
#
I mean, just read for yourself and you will know, but she really like even this, this
#
I have quoted this academic called Sudhir Chandra and I have tried not to quote too
#
many academics because I do not want this to be an academic book, but he says extraordinary
#
by any reckoning, Rukmabai's defiance is even more impressive because it was made before
#
passive resistance had captured political theory or popular imagination.
#
So she said, I will go to jail, which really shocked people.
#
She said, yeah, I'll go to jail.
#
I will not go to pay any fine.
#
And this was before like, you know, Gandhi made, you know, passive resistance and you
#
know, the Ahimsa and Satyagraha and all that popular.
#
So it was at a time where, you know, people just didn't understand these concepts at
#
Then she came out and she just broke every rule and I am glad that she remained single
#
and had the freedom to lead what seems to have been a very happy life.
#
So yeah, she even, you refer to how she started a women's group back in the day and you know,
#
the sisterhood of women as it were.
#
She started women's groups and in those days women were not allowed to go to groups.
#
So she made it a religious group so that they could all say, we are here to sing bhajans.
#
But inside they were subversively doing things like, you know, trying to figure out what
#
jobs they can get, how could they can make their own money by making chutneys and stitching
#
and you know, and they would read newspapers.
#
So she, I am really glad that she led this amazing life because you know, other women
#
didn't have that, Himabati never led a happy life.
#
But Rukmabai I think ended her life happy and independent and you know, really sort
#
of self-sufficient, you know.
#
Before we move on to the next hero of the book, Anandibai's husband Gopal Rao wrote
#
about, you know, when this court case happened and the ruling went against her.
#
He wrote, quote, we don't want your marriage system, we don't want your divorce, we don't
#
want your swindles and frauds.
#
Keep them all to yourselves.
#
We don't envy you, but don't condemn our child marriage system and call us by hard
#
Which is almost representative, I think of the conventional view at that time, like you
#
pointed out that men are just so threatened.
#
I mean, you see the chasm that Rukmabai kind of prompted in Hindu society, you know, even
#
people like Anandibai who were sort of progressive, they looked upon, we don't have any evidence
#
of what Anandibai thought about Rukmabai, but her husband certainly thought that she
#
was like, you know, real, you know, absolutely out of control and should be condemned in
#
the worst possible terms.
#
So she just sort of, like I say, she set off a little grenade in the Hindu society.
#
It was like, boom, it went off and everybody was like, what do you mean?
#
Even women must have found her too much because when she went to the UK, there is a passage
#
by Cornelia Surabji who ran into Rukmabai.
#
Cornelia Surabji was the first Indian woman lawyer and she was very privileged and you
#
know, she was half white and all that.
#
And she also found Rukmabai a little too much and she's had some nasty things to say about
#
She said Rukmabai is wandering the streets with some youth from Kolhapur.
#
So this is what comes of, you know, breaking loose from proper restraint.
#
So Rukmabai clearly had a male friend there, though she doesn't mention him later.
#
So people thought of her as, oh, you know, she's a attention grabber and that kind of
#
And later Cornelia changed her mind about Rukmabai, perhaps because she saw that, you
#
know, she was working hard and all that.
#
And actually then Rukmabai also sort of started deciding to lead a very quiet life.
#
So yeah, but that early fight which she showed was mind blowing.
#
Like I just think of the current time that even in current times, nobody would do this.
#
Like, for example, for people who are against say Hindutva, right, the political correct
#
line is that Hindutva is different from Hinduism, right?
#
And you have to see them as different things and Hinduism is fine.
#
And I suspect if Rukmabai was around today, she would say, no, no, they are both bad.
#
They're both equally wrong.
#
I mean, none of us have the, many of us don't have the courage to say it because we are
#
like, well, who will land up at my doorstep tomorrow and try to kill me.
#
We could talk about her forever.
#
Let's talk about the next lady who is also so remarkable in a way, Hemabati Sen and you
#
start your chapter with a couple of striking lines, which I want to quote, where you say,
#
quote, married at nine to a 45 year old, widowed at 12, deserted by her family, denied an education,
#
left in grinding poverty.
#
Hemabati Sen's early life was not so different to that of many Indian women, stop quote.
#
And I find this very revelatory in the sense that this is a template.
#
You're married young, you're often widowed and that's it.
#
And once you're widowed, you're gone.
#
No one gives a shit about you.
#
And in her case, there were more deaths.
#
You know, her father, mother, mother-in-law, they all died at 12.
#
She was penniless and without family.
#
And from there, she goes on to become a doctor and become what she is.
#
So tell me a little bit about her journey.
#
See, I titled my chapter about Hemabati as the fighter because I honestly feel like I
#
say in this book that she would fight and she would mostly fight alone.
#
Like even Rukmabai had some support from liberals and from liberals in the UK.
#
And Hemabati just had nobody.
#
This is my entire feeling of reading her is that this sense of absolute loneliness, which
#
may be why I identify with her so much, because I have been lonely and alone in my time.
#
I have been away from my family and with no support, I just got on with it.
#
I'm not trying to exactly compare my situation to as I had lots and lots of I was never hungry
#
But she was like, you know, she did everything alone and she did not even go to a respected
#
medical school, unlike say Kadambini or, you know, some of the others.
#
And as I said earlier, I might have to repeat myself.
#
We know about her life because of her memoir in Bengali, because I'm a woman, which is
#
a long lost treasure that was only discovered and translated very recently.
#
It is a searing, candid and bitter account of the life of a woman in a man's world.
#
And she's not trying to be cheery and saying, oh, let me look at the positive.
#
She's unashamedly negative.
#
So she's like amazingly blunt about, you know, these double standards of men and women
#
She calls out her husband for domestic abuse.
#
She shames her family for abandoning her.
#
She flays Hinduism for its treatment of widows.
#
And like you said, this memoir lay in a trunk forgotten for some 80 years on after her death
#
and was discovered only in 2011.
#
So Hemabati had a privileged birth.
#
She was born in the Kayasth family.
#
And if you know anything about Bengal, that Kayasth are fairly privileged.
#
And she was born in a very wealthy family and her father was encouraging of her desire
#
But as many men were at the time, could not defy social pressure.
#
She was married off at nine to some kind of, you know, 45 year old.
#
And she writes the most, I mean, this part is very, very sad.
#
My husband read it and he's like, I can't read anymore.
#
It's making me cry and all that kind of thing.
#
So he identifies with this because he's also from rural Bengal.
#
He knows all these villages, he grew up there.
#
So she basically is married to this 45 year old widower whose children are the same age
#
And she writes this most heart trending sort of passage about during the day, she'll play
#
with dolls with her husband's daughters, okay.
#
So her stepdaughter, she would play with dolls and at night she would make these excuses
#
to avoid her husband's advances in the night.
#
And she says, I would just forget myself and I wouldn't know what was going on.
#
And then I would wake up and I would find myself without my clothes and all that kind
#
And she was completely traumatized by this.
#
And Hemapati's husband would also bring home prostitutes, okay.
#
And like there's one passage which is so depressing, she writes in her memoir and she's written
#
all this in her own words, one night the woman, her husband brought home scolded him for having
#
sex in front of his sheltered young child bride.
#
How else will she learn responded the unrepentant husband and she was nine at this age.
#
And so this was like really depressing.
#
And then her father was completely helpless.
#
She would make trips to her father's house, but eventually her father would have to send
#
She was so traumatized that she would cry and faint and collapse.
#
And her mother summoned an exorcist.
#
And her father says these words, spirit possession indeed.
#
Because of your pestering, I threw her into deep water with her hands and feet tied before
#
Now if she dies, let her, I shall not do anything about it, let her die.
#
She will suffer a lot more if she survives.
#
I think basically it's a sort of a never before recorded picture of the manner in which child
#
marriages trapped even the most progressive families like her father.
#
And I'm sure all this must be much better than the original Bangla.
#
If any listeners can read Bangla, I cannot.
#
And I mean, my husband can, but it's just too much for him to translate the whole thing
#
But just read it if you can in the original Bangla.
#
So eventually her husband dies and she is a widow, she's penniless.
#
She has her parents, her father takes her back, but she is, you know, sort of a burden
#
And she says, shame on you Hindu society.
#
A girl of 10 has to pay for the marriage of an old man of 50.
#
If I needed a single pice, I would have to beg it from others.
#
He had taken a third wife and cut a child's throat.
#
I mean, not literally, but he has metaphorically cut her throat.
#
What provision had he made?
#
So she completely lays a husband because he made no sort of provision for her.
#
She goes back to her family and, you know, eventually her father dies, her mother-in-law
#
dies, her mother dies, and she's left with no money.
#
Her brother takes away all her money.
#
Sometimes when I think about the glorification of this Indian family, I feel like, yeah,
#
well, it really wasn't like that for many people.
#
So, you know, and she has to support herself.
#
And this was just around the time that, you know, Kadambini and all were becoming lady
#
And Hemabati becomes involved with the Brahmo movement.
#
And she realizes that this, by being a Brahmo, she can get some freedom.
#
And she decides to become a doctor.
#
Before that, she decides to marry again.
#
She's in Benares for many years as a widow and she has a really tough time even there.
#
I mean, I mean, there's this passage where she does not want to ask for help from anybody.
#
She says, I would buy a pie's worth of wood and cook three handfuls of rice with salt.
#
I did not eat anything at night.
#
If anyone asked me, I would say, as a widow, I cook but once a day.
#
When people heard this, they concluded I ate nothing but rice in accordance with the requirements
#
I decided there was no point in letting people know my actual situation.
#
Why should I announce my poverty when no one would help me?
#
So she never asked for help.
#
She never announced her poverty because she knew she would not be helped as a Bengali
#
And this just shows this whole sort of fantastic Indian culture kind of thing.
#
In actual fact, widows at that time were treated so badly.
#
And people would say, oh, you know, widows don't eat any fish and they don't eat any
#
dal because they're ascetic and they're leading a Spartan life.
#
And they want to keep themselves away from carnal desires.
#
There's that whole concept in Bengali culture, right?
#
You have to, widows have to eat only vegetables and you know, you know, lead a very sort of
#
But that is the real reason sometimes I think was perhaps because they just couldn't afford
#
And they were all sitting in Benares and Varanasi and you know, sort of kind of suffering.
#
So she was alone and poor for many years.
#
And then she decides to marry again.
#
And she marries a man called Kunjabheri who pretends to be very spiritual and interested
#
in social service and that kind of thing.
#
And she gets taken in by this act and she is also feeling lonely and she feels like
#
she doesn't want to be constantly begging strangers.
#
So after they are married, he turns out to be a complete waste of space.
#
He is only interested in going for spiritual trips in the Himalayas and you know, working
#
with the Brahmo Samaj for zero pay.
#
So Hemabati is driven into becoming what is called a VLMS, vernacular licentiate in the
#
And she decides to join the Campbell Medical School, which was training women who were
#
not really doctors, women who didn't have much of an education like Hemabati, but they
#
were training them to work in rural areas to provide some kind of medical treatment.
#
And this was in partnership with the Dufferin Fund.
#
So she decided to join that simply in order to make money.
#
There seems to be no other sort of motivation for her.
#
She just decides that she's going to do this.
#
And she does well at it.
#
She wins a scholarship, she wins a gold medal and she writes that her teachers were kind
#
to her and there were other women all from very poor backgrounds, you know, including
#
Muslim women and you know, really, really poor women.
#
And she does her training, which is not that kind of training that you would get in a good
#
It's sort of like a half baked training, but she does it.
#
And like I said earlier, she wins a gold medal.
#
And I have to read that chapter because that's the most striking chapter.
#
Hemabati stood first in examination with a boy called Gopal Chandra Dutta.
#
But then hell broke loose.
#
The gold medal was to go to Hemabati, but the boys protested.
#
The gold medal prize began long before they were girl students.
#
If it is given to a girl, the boys will go on strike, they argued.
#
When Mr Gibbons, the superintendent of the college stood firm, the boys went on strike.
#
Some said, why don't we kill that girl?
#
That would be the end of the matter.
#
It's a great mistake to pamper women.
#
For the weak, the boys form pickets over thrown benches and through bricks and stones are
#
So, you know, the men were so afraid of the women and the competition.
#
So eventually Hemabati is summoned by the lieutenant governor of Bengal.
#
And he says they try to strike a bargain with her and say, suppose we go give the gold medal
#
to the boys, what will you do?
#
And she's like, I don't need a gold medal, I just want money because I have a newborn
#
She had by that time, she had already had children.
#
So it's just give me the some money and they increase her scholarship amount.
#
And they give her a silver medal.
#
They take away the gold and give it to some boy.
#
So, and she just, she's very practical.
#
She says, I don't want any gold medal, I just want money.
#
And after that, you know, she works on her own and she has more children.
#
Her husband completes, continues being a terrible person.
#
And she writes so much detail about the sexual harassment that she faced and the harassment
#
she faced and how she was paid less by the men.
#
It's an amazing memoir of a working woman's life at that point.
#
And the constant harassment she faced and her problems with juggling her children.
#
By that time she had almost five children.
#
And eventually, you know, her husband passes away and then she's sort of free.
#
And she decides to look after poor children and she takes in a number of orphan children
#
And in her estimate, she cared for an astonishing 485 children.
#
That seems like quite high.
#
She may have overestimated, but it's not all at once.
#
It was sort of like she would take five or 10 or six and then they would leave and find
#
some homes or they would grow up.
#
She would take another five and she lived for 31 years after the death of her husband.
#
But sadly, she never seems to have been very happy.
#
I don't think she had a very happy family life.
#
I don't think she was well treated by her family.
#
It is also possible that she was not a very easy person to live with.
#
So that was the end of Himabati.
#
And like I said before, she sort of became almost like a male in many ways.
#
She sort of gave up on emotion and she just got the job done.
#
Actually, that sounds very sexist.
#
I don't mean that women don't get the job done.
#
This was considered a male attribute and she kind of...
#
And she was a little detached from everything.
#
She didn't spend much time thinking about the future.
#
She just sort of kept paddling to stay afloat.
#
Okay, I've gone on for a long time.
#
That answer was a bit too long.
#
I was just trying to sum her up.
#
One of the things that you did with your answer is that a lot of the parts that you read out
#
are parts that I had myself copy pasted into my notes because I thought they are so indicative.
#
You mentioned the privilege of being a kayasth girl and all that.
#
I thought just to give some context, I love this paragraph from your book also where you
#
write quote, with most Kulin kayas brides being 30 years younger than their husbands, a new
#
child bride could expect in most cases to soon be a child widow.
#
A widow would be shunned and mistreated at best and raped or abused at worst.
#
They would have their head shorn, wear only white for the rest of their life and live
#
Many would be denied claims to their husband's properties and turn to prostitution to survive.
#
In 1853, it was estimated that Calcutta had a population of 12,718 prostitutes, many of
#
And in her battle, you've got so many great details in your chapter about her battle.
#
For example, the intimidation she went through, the windows and doors of her house would be
#
sprinkled with feces to sort of intimidate her.
#
At one point, two men slunk into her house and one of them was associated with one of
#
her enemies called Badrinath Mukherjee who wanted to kill her, which is striking.
#
And also there is something that she says is also a connection to what you said earlier.
#
When you gave advice to young people that no matter how busy you might be with looking
#
after family or whatever, make a couple of hours in the morning, make half an hour somewhere,
#
And at one point, she is writing about a friend of hers, a Christian friend who was also a
#
doctor who stopped working after marriage.
#
And you're right, quote, Himabati was furious about the waste of talent and brains and remarked
#
that even if a friend had worked two hours a day for the welfare of the people, it would
#
have done her a lot of good.
#
And now she speaks, I would be incapable of adjusting to such a life.
#
I could not forget myself, forget God, give up my work and find peace in a few ornaments
#
and fine clothes, stop quote.
#
And you quote Indrani Sen where I think she sums up beautifully why Himabati was so remarkable
#
And Sen writes, quote, first, she was a literate woman in an age where female literacy was
#
Second, she was a child widow who remarried with no family support at the age of 23.
#
Third, she went through great difficulties and even dangers in her passion for learning.
#
And lastly, she became a lady doctor and managed both the ghar and bahar, home and outside,
#
In all this, she displayed a female subjectivity, which was a driving force of her life, stop
#
And you kind of imagine how many other memoirs are unwritten and how many other written memoirs
#
are lost inside the trunk where they are put, you know, it's such a fortuitous thing.
#
It is and she was, I think, possibly the few who actually continued her memoir to the end
#
She didn't stop when she got married and, you know, she just kept writing properly because
#
it was a release from her and she would curse her husband out nicely in the pages, you know,
#
That was what she was doing.
#
And Hindu society, in fact.
#
Hindu society, her children, by the end she's cursing her children also, poor thing.
#
Sometimes I feel like she never had any sort of, you know, affection and at the other side,
#
I also feel perhaps she might have been very difficult to live with.
#
Sometimes these people who are great in the outside world are just very difficult to live
#
with, you know, inside, you know, must be that.
#
So we have two more lady doctors to go through, but I have taken up so much of your time,
#
you know, Muthulakshmi Reddy and Mary Purnan Lukkos are also such inspiring figures.
#
So I urge everyone to just buy the book.
#
It's an essential book in many ways and extremely readable.
#
So I won't ask you to elaborate on detail on them as we're kind of running out of time,
#
but I will ask you a final question.
#
And for this, I'll go back to something we started the episode with, where I quoted from
#
the article you wrote about your parents' memories of Iran, about, you know, pre-revolution.
#
There are all these women and all this fine fashion and everything seems free and post-revolution,
#
And that's interesting because suddenly you see a society going backwards, like we often
#
assume that, hey, the arc of history bends towards a better place, whether you call it
#
justice or freedom or whatever.
#
You think that the arc of history bends towards a better place, but you know, that didn't
#
It was a big shift that happened.
#
I mean, some wonderful Iranian cinema and art has emerged after that, but by and large,
#
I think the society suffered.
#
And you know, thinking of the current day where, you know, you and I both kind of agreed
#
that some of the things that Rukmabai said is not something that people would have the
#
In a sense, there is a regressive strain in our society, which is reasserting itself.
#
And it has, you know, got into our politics as well.
#
In many ways, it seems like we are becoming less liberal, you know, and being someone
#
who has some distance and objectivity from this also, because you have lived all over
#
the world, you have seen other societies, you've been in the thick of things like first
#
in Iran, you had mentioned you were in Istanbul as well in 2012 when there were those sort
#
of the uprising against Erdogan.
#
You've seen a lot of this turmoil and also you have some distance from India.
#
Is that something that worries you, that it is not necessary that we will just progress
#
in a better direction, that things can go backwards, that many of the fights these remarkable
#
women fought to win were not won, either by them perhaps for not fully won.
#
And you know, even by society, that it's still stark that many of their sort of laments still
#
hold true for so many people.
#
What are your thoughts on this?
#
So to begin with, you know, let me apologize.
#
I think the reason why we don't have time is because I've rambled on.
#
No, no, no, this was wonderful.
#
No, there is really no other reason.
#
I should have been a little more precise and looked at the time, but I just went on and
#
I'm very glad and Twitter will disagree with you on this.
#
Please, please tag Kavita and tell her what a great conversation this was.
#
I'm afraid that we can't go into Mutalakshmi and Mary with like such a lot of detail.
#
So in answer to your question, I've been really back and forth on this.
#
I'm very muddled in my thoughts on whether we are getting worse, better, worse, better.
#
And you know, when I think of how much my grandparents, which are quite recent, how
#
much they suffered, like they didn't have any education.
#
They were married at nine.
#
So I'm very interested in these things.
#
And you know, I have married outside the community.
#
So I have kind of sort of left stepped out of society.
#
She can marry whomever she wants.
#
She is educating herself in a discipline, which is not engineering and not medicine
#
and will not lead to an easy job.
#
So until a long time, I thought that my daughter had a much better life than me.
#
And I was like very smug in this sort of thing.
#
Now I'm beginning to slowly change my mind.
#
One, as you say, things just seem so communal and, and I'm really worried because I'm
#
from, you know, South Canada, Udupi and all that side.
#
And you know, I used to visit my grandmother, my aunts in that region.
#
And I'm not saying that they are so progressive or anything.
#
But what I am saying is that they had friends from all communities.
#
Yes, they may not have married a Christian because Mangalore is full of, you know, Udupi
#
is full of Christian people.
#
They may not, they wouldn't have married a Christian.
#
So yes, we cannot say that they were progressive, but they were great friends with their parents.
#
They would call them home and, you know, they would work with them, you know, and also with
#
And Dakshina Canada has always had, you know, they've had Hindus, they have had Muslims,
#
they've had Christians all working together.
#
And now I'm seeing all these reports of these, you know, people from right-wing groups beating
#
up, you know, people who dare to mix and mingle with people from opposite religions.
#
And I just find that so disturbing.
#
And my kids are in a bubble, okay.
#
Even before I moved here, when I was in Bangalore, we were leading that sort of typical software
#
Bangalore life where their schools were very sort of had people from different communities,
#
but that is their posh schools.
#
What's happening on the ground is something completely different.
#
So they're in a bubble in that way.
#
And if I say to them, oh, you know, somebody has beaten up X and Y because one was a Muslim
#
and one was a Hindu, they'll be like, what?
#
I mean, they know it happens, but they can't identify with that sort of sentiment.
#
And I'm just very worried about that.
#
I'm also very, very worried about the way that journalists are being attacked for doing
#
their job, the curves on freedom of expression, the laws that are, you know, opening up the
#
country to, you know, unbridled sort of expansion by the, you know, corporates.
#
And I'm afraid that COVID has made me a complete pessimist.
#
Before that, I was like, you know, pootling along.
#
And now I just, I just feel very, very, very sad for India because things are, you know,
#
and people may get the impression listening to me that, oh, well, what's your problem?
#
I have not because I plan to return to India because at some point, because at some point
#
I'm going to have to look after my family and with COVID, my mother and with COVID times,
#
it's going to be extremely difficult to do it.
#
I can't keep whizzing back and forth.
#
So I do plan to return to India plus as, you know, just, just very selfishly.
#
India is the cheapest place to retire in and, you know, we are all approaching retirement
#
It's the cheapest place to retire in.
#
So I do plan to return.
#
I will have the same problems as anyone else.
#
I'm not planning to live permanently in the UK.
#
It doesn't really make sense from my point of view and it's just too expensive.
#
So I have a very now after COVID and the way it's been handled and, you know, and the way,
#
you know, the poor have suffered and the rich, including me have got vaccines.
#
I'm, I'm just become very pessimistic.
#
So I don't know, I don't, I don't feel very optimistic.
#
Maybe I mean, there is a tie to these things.
#
Maybe it will come back.
#
Like, you know, we remember how depressed we felt about the U S and then suddenly Biden
#
So I hope something like that happens and we move away from this terrible sort of communism,
#
right-wing conservatism, all of these things that are, you know, Hindutva sort of thing
#
that is gripping the nation.
#
I don't talk about much of this on my social media.
#
I'm not very political in my social media.
#
It is not because I'm apolitical.
#
It's just that once you start talking about these things, you never end.
#
I mean, it's just becomes like a full-time job and I have other things to do with my
#
I mean, where do you stop?
#
But I must at this point say that why are you, how dare you speak of retirement?
#
You can retire after 40 years.
#
You just spoke about your mother learning sitar at the age of 75.
#
Something that I'm going to remember because it's so inspiring for me also.
#
I, when I say retire, I think my husband will retire from this tedious corporate slavery
#
job because he's tired, poor guy.
#
And I, I think I will continue doing some writing or I mean, to be honest, I, I'm not
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sure I want to write more books.
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I think my next venture would be something to do with people.
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I'm feeling very interested in meeting people again after being stuck inside in a pandemic.
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I think I want to do some kind of people facing thing, but I'm not sure what it will be.
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Well, you know, you've given me so much of your time and so many of your insights.
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So thank you so much for this.
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And also thank you so much for your wonderful book and Godspeed and whatever you choose
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Thank you for letting me talk about my entire journey.
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I, I, when I sort of said yes to this, I was like, I only want to talk about my book.
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I don't want to talk about myself at all, but I think I changed my mind along the way
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and possibly talk too much about myself.
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If you enjoyed listening to this episode, head on over to your nearest bookstore online
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or offline and buy Lady Doctors, the untold stories of India's first women in medicine
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You can follow Kavita on Twitter at Kavita Rao.
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You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
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You can browse past episodes of the scene and the unseen at scene unseen dot I-N.
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Thank you for listening.
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Did you enjoy this episode of the scene and the unseen?
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If so, would you like to support the production of the show?
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You can go over to scene unseen dot I-N slash support and contribute any amount you like
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to keep this podcast alive and kicking.
