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A common delusion that many of us suffer from is that the world as we see it is the world
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We look around and everything seems clear to us, so we assume that everyone else sees
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What is obvious to us should be obvious to them as well.
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We get exasperated when it isn't so.
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And often we only look at the world through our own eyes.
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That is such a limited way to live.
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This is why I recommend reading as much as we can.
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Books allow us to enter the lives of others, to see the world in subtle new ways, to enhance
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our understanding of our own selves.
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And that's why, on the seen and the unseen, I love talking to guests about their lives,
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how they grew up, what their influences were, the texture of their days.
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People as old as me or older lived in a world that had so little of what we take for granted
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All the books and music and cinema of the world were not at our fingertips.
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We did not have the internet at our disposal.
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When we had free time, we didn't have smartphones we could look into.
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And India back then was so different.
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Look, I'm glad we have progressed as much as we have.
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But I sometimes feel sad that there are worlds that we left behind that live only in our
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I like to revisit those worlds sometimes.
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Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioural
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen.
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My guest today is Minal Pandey, an author and journalist who is older than our republic.
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She has written many fine books, been a legend in the world of journalism, and is as sharp
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and energetic in her seventies as she describes herself as having been in her twenties.
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I have gained so much insight from reading her over the years, and I was honoured that
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Minalji agreed to be my guest on this show.
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We recorded this episode in December, and I feel so fortunate that she trusted me enough
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to open up about her life, growing up as a daughter of the famous Shivani, and gradually
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making her mark in the literary world and in media.
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There were so many subjects I wanted to talk to her about – our society, our languages,
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gender, politics, our media – and the three Rs went by in a flash.
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I was so inspired by this conversation, and I know that you'll also like it.
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But let's take a quick commercial break before we begin.
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Do you want to read more?
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I've put in a lot of work in recent years in building a reading habit.
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This means that I read more books, but I also read more long-form articles and essays.
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There's a world of knowledge available through the internet.
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But the problem we all face is, how do we navigate this knowledge?
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How do we know what to read?
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How do we put the right incentives in place?
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Well, I discovered one way.
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A couple of friends of mine run this awesome company called CTQ Compounds at CTQCompounds.com,
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which aims to help people up-level themselves by reading more.
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A few months ago, I signed up for one of their programs called The Daily Reader.
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Every day for six months, they sent me a long-form article to read.
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The subjects covered went from machine learning to mythology to mental models and marmalade.
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This helped me build a habit of reading.
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At the end of every day, I understood the world a little better than I did before.
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So if you want to build your reading habit, head on over to CTQCompounds and check out
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New batches start every month.
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They also have a great program called Future Stack, which helps you stay up-to-date with
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ideas, skills, and mental models that will help you stay relevant in the future.
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Future Stack batches start every Saturday.
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What's more, you get a discount of a whopping 2,500 rupees, 2,500 if you use the discount
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So head on over to CTQCompounds at CTQCompounds.com and use the code Unseen.
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Reenalji, welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
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It's such a pleasure to be chatting with you.
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So you know, before we start, there are many subjects I want to talk to you about today.
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But before we start, I'm really curious to know about your childhood.
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Because one of the things I've been realizing as I speak to guests of different ages and
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different origins in terms of where they come from, what language they speak, one of the
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things I've realized is that I am myself learning a lot about our country and about our culture
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by looking at these snapshots from different places and times and languages.
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And I find that such a rich experience.
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So I'd love you to, you know, start by talking about, you know, where were you born?
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What were your early years like?
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My birth and early upbringing are as strange as my writing.
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I was born in Tikamgarh in Orchard Palace.
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My mamu, my mother's older brother, with whom my nani also lived, was the home minister
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in the, this was 1946, a year before independence.
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And my mother came home for the birth of her first born, which was me.
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So I was born in Tikamgarh and then soon we moved to the hills.
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In between, my first memory is, it has to be somewhere around 1947 because we were visiting
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my father's older brother, our uncle, who used to live in Delhi at that time, and his
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house was a two-story building with a long corridor with iron railings on both sides.
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And I remember my cousin and my older sister and myself.
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My older sister was my step-sister.
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The three of us, we used to stand in that and watch the crowds go down below on the
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And my first memory is that a lot of people, filled with dust, were carrying stuff on their
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backs and passing through the bags.
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I had never seen the world, so children accept things as they are.
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And my source of information and authority was my older sister.
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So I asked her, Binu, what is this?
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She said, this is a refugee.
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So then all three of us jumped up and down and said, refugee, they were refugees.
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They were coming in after the partition.
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These were the famous refugees who thronged to Delhi and crowded up Delhi streets.
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After before that and after that, I remember nothing.
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Then I woke up in Nani Tal, where my father was a chemistry teacher in a school, in a
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And we lived in a very beautiful cottage on top of a hill where the school, it was a residential
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One of my father's students was the then President Rajan Prasad's grandson, who had sent his
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grandson to the school because he believed in Indian kind of education and not the kind
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of Jesuit education which was generally available in Nani Tal.
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So this boy was not at all noticed in school.
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His parents, my mother said, never visited.
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Grandfather once came as a guest, a guest to visit Nani Tal, but there was absolutely
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no interference, no fuss surrounding this little child.
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He went through school.
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My father taught him chemistry.
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And my father once said when he was being naughty in class, he pulled his ear to punish
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My mother said, you pulled the ear of the President's grandson?
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So my father said, if anyone's grandson is naughty, I will pull his ear.
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And my mother mumbled something about not being good, not being good, but nothing happened
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And so we spent some years in Nani Tal in between.
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My mother's family used to come to nearby Almora for summers and we used to have a heavy
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treat that we were going to Nani's house.
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So I remember taking a bus with my mother and older sister, father of course stayed
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back and going on the winding roads to Almora, which was not too far, but seemed like another
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And once our aunt was getting married and I was running a slight temperature and had
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a cold and my father said, don't take her.
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And my mother said, my sister's getting married, I have to go.
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And so my father gave me a red plastic purse when we were leaving and it had throat lozenges
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and he said, if your throat hurts, keep eating it.
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And I reached the wedding house and the next morning I woke up and it was discovered that
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But isolation in those days in Indian families meant that you just had a room to yourself
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and you lay in bed and you heard and then every five minutes, my sister and brood of
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cousins would come to the door and tell me that now the palanquin is being decorated.
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And I was not allowed to get out of my room, but they smuggled all kinds of foods and sweets
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for me into my sick bed.
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So that was the measles thing.
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And so I spent the, I think almost the entire wedding part isolated and I was let out very
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briefly when my aunty was being sent off, so I was put up in the upper window and told
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to look, aunty is leaving.
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And I couldn't understand.
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I said, if everyone is so happy, then why is everyone crying?
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That was my puzzling thing, which was answered many, many years later.
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And then we came back and we were in Nainital, then our grandfather who used to stay with
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us, he was very attached to my father.
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Actually my father lost his mother very young and his father didn't remarry because he wanted
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to bring up his boys himself.
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So he brought up my father and my tauji and the two brothers were very close.
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And my grandfather was very happy that after my father lost his first wife, a girl like
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my mother accepted him as a husband and undertook to bring up the little child who was motherless.
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And then Binu and I were inseparable, we were like twins and my mother brought us up together
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and one of the fairest stepmothers, I mean for years we didn't even know we were not
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born of the same mother.
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Anyway, so my grandmother, grandfather used to love my mother very much and he always
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said, I still remember the Pahadi sentence, he used to say, you have fed my little calf
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and brought it to life.
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So he contracted, we were told some liver ailment and he passed away.
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The day for us, at that age, life and death were matters we didn't notice.
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So the day he was breathing his last, we had a family retainer called Kushalya and we were
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sent with Kushalya to the forest.
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We were living very close to a forest called Sher ka Danda.
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And so Kushalya was a very good babysitter and Kushalya was given a hamper with food
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for us and said ki inko shaam ko hi laana, tap tak yahan sab ho jayega.
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So we went there and I asked Binu, what is happening at home?
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So she said, tumko pata nahi, dada ji toh margaya.
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So I said, marna kya hota hai?
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So Kushalya said ki dekho abhi tumko samjhata hu.
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So he looked around, he found a dead bird near a bush.
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So he picked it up by one leg, I remember.
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It was a little sparrow, frozen.
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And he brought it to us and said, dekho ye chidiya jo hai, ye margai hai.
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She can't sing, she can't fly, she can't do anything.
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So I said, what will happen to her?
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So he said, we have to bury it.
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So I said, will you bury, will they bury dada ji also?
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He said, nahi unko toh jala denge.
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So I started crying because it was such a horrific thought.
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So I said, unko chidiya ki tarahe kyuni bury kar sakta hai.
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So he said ki, nahi humari aise hi hota hai.
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So that was another thing about grown up world which I couldn't make out.
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Anyway, very ceremoniously, Binu and I wrapped the bird up in patas and Kushalya dug a little
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grave for it and then he closed it.
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And then he said ki, jab Angreys log marta hain, toh usme cross laga dete hain.
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So he made a cross out of twigs and he put it on the grave and very solemnly had our
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By the time we came home, we had forgotten all about it.
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And we came home and we found that the house had some people there, but the houses in those
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days were always full of relatives and people.
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So that was my first introduction to death and the rituals.
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Then at some point, my father was transferred to Almora and we lived in a beautiful airy
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house in a place called Rani Diyar, which must have been some queen's gardens or something.
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It had a big pine tree forest next to it where the British soldiers killed in an effort to
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win the hill estate had been buried and that dated back to 1825.
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And there were graves and by then my sister and I had learnt the numbers.
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So we used to join the alphabets and the numbers and find out whose grave it was and which
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And then my mother would point out, see, he was so young and we'd say, but he was 24,
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that's old, 26 saal ka tha, toh bahut budda tha, for us it was like that.
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Then my sister was admitted to school and I used to throw tantrums all the time.
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So my mother sent me to school and the school took me in on sufferance because I was just
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In those days, the minimum age was five.
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So I was taken in at three, but then the principal met my mother next time and she told her that
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I was too bright for my class.
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So she was putting me in class one.
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So I entered class one when I was only three and I found that I was very cocky, I found
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that I knew much more than all the students in the class and I used to boss over them.
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And when they didn't do their homework, then they used to come to me and I used to help
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them with their homework and so on.
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But our principal was I think an American woman called Miss West and it was run by some
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American diocese and Miss West used to wear her hair in long pigtails tied around her
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head like the Lamas women used to, the Bhutia women who came to sell spices and corals and
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things in winters, they used to wear their hair like that.
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So I told my mother that Miss West is Lamyani.
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So she said no, she is not Lamyani, she is English.
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So I said what is English?
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So my mother said that they are whiter than us.
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So that was my criteria and Miss West was very fond of me and she told my mother I think
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your daughter needs a really good set of teachers to teach her.
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And then we changed houses, my father got a promotion but we changed houses to the other
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side of the town and it was a big jump for my father so it was a very nice bungalow but
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it was too far from the school that I was going to.
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So my older sister continued going there but I was put in an Arikanya Patshala because
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it was within walking distance.
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This was a school run for orphans and they were threadbare, they had nothing.
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I remember our classrooms had nothing.
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So I used to carry a little cushion from home and go and sit there and learn whatever they
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Crumbling staircases, the teachers had themselves grown up in the orphanage and were now teaching
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School was so poor that it didn't even have a clock, clock and wristwatches in those days
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So the school used to sit on the steps and keep an ear cocked for the nearby government
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girls school where my older sister studied and when their bell rang then he would quickly
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come and ring our bell.
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So we used to call him Ghanta Master.
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So I studied there for about a year and then my father was transferred out to a place called
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Shahjaanpur and that's where I really came into my own.
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There was another Christian missionary school which took both of us in and by then I think
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I was in class three and I made many friends.
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My best friend was the son of a dhaba owner called Abdullah.
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He used to take me to his father's dhaba because it was on the way to our house and showed
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me how Tandoor's work and he had a stepmother who was a terrible woman he said and we both
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used to pray that she dies soon and Abdullah's father was a very sweet man and for some reason
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I remember him always chopping coriander and so we were there for about two, three years
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and then it was an office cum residence.
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It was a huge house made of old lakhori bricks, thin bricks which were very ancient and my
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parents had a lot of friends among the local old thekanedars and riyasat people because
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my mother had grown up in that and they were very good friends and most of them were Muslims
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and they had chosen to stay back because it had never occurred to anyone that a day would
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come when Muslims would feel themselves squashed in any way and they were all you know I mean
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we never felt that it was a Hindu house or a Muslim house and of course there's no question
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of untouchability or anything and we had a home peon called Sharfi Lal who was a kind
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His wife was Muslim, he himself was a Hindu but they were very strange in their mannerisms
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but Sharfi Lal was a very affectionate fellow and he used to show us around the town and
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so we were there for about two, three years and I remember my parents buying a Shahjahanpuri
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carpet in those days they used to win, make very beautiful red and black and beige carpets
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in Shahjahanpur they were called Shahjahanpuri carpets and so my parents bought a carpet
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and I remember my sister and I spread it and then rolled on it from side to side I remember
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the touch of wool because in the hills every house has home you know inexpensive but wool
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carpets because it's so cold so it reminded us both of Almora and in the evenings we used
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to sit outside and there were Mehendi kyaaris next to they kind of bordered the whole house
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and there was a Bijti who used to come morning and evening with a mashak most people don't
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know what a mashak is it's a big carcass of a buffalo which has been it's a skin of an
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entire buffalo which has been dried and made into a huge water bag and there's a strap
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attached to it which the Bijti puts on the he used to put on his shoulder and he used
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to hold the neck very delicately the neck had a kind of a spout like thing and he used
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to sprinkle the borders the henna borders with that and the smell I can't forget that
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smell you know it was the smell of the first rain of wet leaves of henna of all good things
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and we were very happy there so whenever I smell henna you know in the first rains I
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think of Shahjaanpur then we my father was transferred he was for some reason always
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transferred when we were in mid school term so by the time we reached the next town no
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textbooks were available so we had to buy second hand textbooks in which many pages
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were missing so we had to keep consulting our classmates about the missing pages there
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was no you know facts or no way to type so we used to take it down meticulously by hand
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and then glue it to our books I remember that and from Shahjaanpur we went to I think Lucknow
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and Lucknow we had to live in a flat in a multi-storied building which we didn't like
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at all because it was very small and pokey and too much noise and too many neighbors
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my mother didn't like that flat either because we had we were lived in a semi-rural area
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so far with big houses area houses with nothing too much to our name but lots of space and
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you know our own places with Lucknow was different but the school was very good it was run by
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a very very intelligent woman called Rani Saroop Kumari Bakshi she was the wife of some
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she belonged to a Zamindar family and Lucknow still has a place called Bakshi Ka Talab after
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the ancestors she was an educationist to the core and she really took me in hand and she
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told my mother your girl has a natural ear for music and rhythm so I'll get her to join
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our dance classes my mother was quite delighted she was always keen that we should learn so
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my older sister started learning music and I started learning Bharatanatyam and we had
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I remember we had an Assamia teacher you know in those days India was so vibrant and so
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mobile and so full of interconnections and interconnectivity and my mother who had grown
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up in Shantiniket and had been educated found herself an aberration in the hill society
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but she came into her own space culturally when we came to Lucknow which was such a sophisticated
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city we had very nice neighbors and they were from Kerala there are three working women
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from Kerala two were called Shoshama and one was Leela Leela was from the north and these
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two were from the south and very interesting extremely well-educated single women and then
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the other flat had a doctor's family who was also a Pakhawaj player brilliant Pakhawaj
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player so I remember my mother discussing music with him and his mother and his family
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because they were music aficionados and I still remember him when he cleaned his cycle
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he always sang alaiya belaval kavan batariya gayi lo mai so you know and then sometimes
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when he was in a good mood he would say aav aaj tumko pakhawaj se khata hoon then he
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would go da kit ta tik ta kit ta tik so you know it was the house was very small very
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dingy and you know of course very claustrophobic but the neighbors made it worth a while and
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the school was the you know cherry on top so we both enjoyed it very much and I did
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exceedingly well for some strange reason in school but when I was in class seven we suddenly
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got transferred again in midterm this time we went to Nainital and I remember getting
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to Nainital in those days you travelled by train and your luggage was sent by truck and
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my mother who was so overwhelmed with four children and luggage and everything she locked
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up the keys in one of the trunks which went by truck and we just carried some portlies
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and some small attachee cases of stuff for the journey and when we reached the house
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home in Nainital again a very nice huge area double-storied house the office was on the
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ground floor and we had the whole the entire first floor to ourselves my mother confessed
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she had locked the keys and my father was speechless with rage he was just speechless he just stared
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at her with such anger in his eyes and my mother kept saying in Pahdi me ke karu me
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ke karu me ke karu me ke karu so we thought it was very funny so we set up a chant and
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started dancing around her me ke karu me ke karu me ke karu and finally my father burst
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out laughing so my sisters and I had by then learnt that if you are poor and you run into
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trouble the best way to get out of trouble is to be witty and is to be able to sing and
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dance and charm your way out of problems and so our parents whenever they squabbled we
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would always start miming something or you know distract them a piece by doing something
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and so Nainital was then a big change because we then stayed on there for almost 10 years
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I finished school my older sister finished school and my younger sibling started school
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by which time the government schools were not very good so they were put in the Jesuit
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convents to my grandmother's horror and she told my mother yeh sab Kiranti bana ke chhodenge
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isko and my mother said ki ab zamana badal gaya hi ja ab kuch nahi hota hai ab bhejne
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do mujhe inko and I who had always been to a Hindi medium school was expected to be both
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mother and coach to these two kids so you know I had to spruce up my act I just couldn't
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I was too proud to confess that I didn't know English so I learnt English almost overnight
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and started teaching these kids putting them through their strange math jargon and their
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schools you know sing sing sing sing mother sing Pat sing to mother mother sing to Pat
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nice to tell my mother yeh kaisi kitab hain isme humare jaise toh koi bache nahi yeh sab
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sunare baal wale angreson ke bache hain so she said ki nahi yeh in logon ki text book
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hain so I said par inko kaisa lagta hai so my sister said humko toh bahut acha lagta
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hum toh sushte hum bhi angres hain so I just looked at them and kept quiet because I felt
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that was not the way that you know I felt but anyway so I did class part of class 7,
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8, 9, 10, 11, 12 in Nainital and again I did well to my utter surprise the nicest thing
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that Nainital did was to set my mother free to write all of a sudden she began to you
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know write prolifically and I became kind of her secretary because I was quite as good
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at Hindi plus I was also I think exceedingly cocky which was very foolish of me but my
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mother had total faith in me so she used to give me her she used to hand write her manuscripts
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and she used to give it to me ki isme koi kaltiyan ho toh sudhar dena I mean imagine
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a class 7, 8 brat you know I was and but I used to very cockily correct everything and
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correct it then my mother would say ki isko Dhanvir Bharti ko bhej toh Dhanvir Bharti
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being the editor of Dharmiyug which was one of the best selling magazines she took it
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that she was so good that what she wrote would be published and it was published she was
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very sure that Dhanvir Bharti would write to her and ask her for more and he did she
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was very sure that she would be paid fairly well which he did to the extent it was possible
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and they became very good friends all through their communication over mails and the manuscripts
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exchange she used to write on fullscape paper I used to correct it then I used to put it
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in a registered envelope the post office was on our way to school and I used to mail it
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to Dhanvir Bharti to his address in Times of India building and he used to acknowledge
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it by a post card saying Shivani ji aapka mil gaya patra aur bo and much later when
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I joined Times of India I asked Dhanvir Bharti I said ki aapko ajiib nahi lagta tha ki aisi
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luti piti see manuscript aare hain aapke paas aur bikul ghaseet mein likha hua ye bo
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he said nahi shabd toh heere the shabd toh heere the hum toh Johri log hain humko toh
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aata hai parakh na shabd toh heere the so later my mother and Bharti ji also exchanged
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many tales one of them was when my mother was writing one of her novels which was serialized
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and it was exactly like they describe Dickens's work being serialized because he said that
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there were queues of people waiting to buy Dharmug when Shivani's novels were being
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serialized and my mother used to write them for one issue send it on and then start working
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on the next so all her novels were actually serials they could be made into serials quite
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easily because they stopped where you know she had a knack for leaving the people gasping
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for more and that in itself became a big point of prestige with her and Dhanvir Bharti ki
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Shivani ka novel aara hai later on I worked with both Times of India and Hindustan Times
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group my mother used to write for Dhanvir Bharti both groups because Dhanvir Bharti was in
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Times of India and another great writer Manohar Shyam Joshi was editor of Sapta Haik Hindustan
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so even before I became their colleague I knew them very well by their handwriting and
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by their general effusiveness about my mother's writings so Diddi likhti thi bahut bichari
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kab likhti thi log puchte hain when did your mother write what kind of paper poor thing
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she hardly had resources she barely had time to sit down and collect her thoughts so she
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was probably thinking all along through the day when she was making mails for us when
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she was putting us through our lessons whatever and then late at night she used to sit and
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write on the dining table with whatever pen she could lay her hands on the first drafts
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were inevitably made on old you know scarred school books copies that we had left behind
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and you know we were always short of funds in our house because both my parents were
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very bad money managers and there were four of us plus any number of cousins who used
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to be sent to Nainital because the schools were good and they stayed and went to school
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with us and food was very simple dal, sabzi and roti chawal which used to be cooked early
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in the morning in a cooker one of those long cookers I don't know what they are called
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it was made in Britain it's a brass thing with a little sigdi at the bottom and three
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huge pots on top one on top of the other and the sigdi was lit and it was closed and then
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when it was opened and the dal was ready rice was ready vegetables were steamed and then
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they were quickly chakot and at nine o'clock we had our lunch and then we were given paratha
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and sabzi for all this used to be assembled by nine o'clock because we had to run to
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catch our school bus at nine thirty and we ran downhill and caught our bus and I remember
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it was a good three kilometer three four kilometer walk for us each way but it didn't feel like
#
that we used to do it three four times a day even and then my mother had to you know clean
#
up and get everything done she had helpers of course but my father was very squeamish
#
about his meals in the manner of meals of those days you know who were very demanding
#
and my mother loved to pander to his taste because he loved good food and one wha from
#
him meant a lot to her I thought that was very foolish and we had frequent fights over
#
that and she used to mumble ke tum log to ye kha lete ho aur dekho so and so doesn't
#
like it usko ye pasand nahi usko so I said why do you have to pander to everybody why
#
don't you just cook and be done with it they should be thankful they're getting a cooked
#
meal at the end of the day she said to apna moob bandh rakha kar ladki mujhe toh se bahut
#
lagti hai so I said kyu dar lagti hai she said nahi mujhe toh se dar nahi lagti hai tere
#
liye dar lagti hai kyunki teri bhi kisi din shaadi hogi tera bhi mia hoga aur jab hu
#
toh se kahega aur tu nahi karegi tu dekhna tere kishamat aati hai so anyway so that was
#
just mother daughter conversation and I was quite rebellious and primarily because I felt
#
that my mother was doing too much without being thanked for it you know and then there
#
were all those family members and aunts and grand aunts who used to drop by and say you
#
know your daughter is very bright how come you know Bino is not so doing so well in school
#
you must be teaching her specially which was a big fat lie my mother spent four times more
#
time on Bino than on me but you know it kind of created a rift in the minds of the children
#
that you know there's something which was denied Bino which we all had and we all grew
#
a fill now I talk to my siblings they say yes we felt very guilty because we were fairer
#
in color because we were good looking and we all did all three of us did exceedingly
#
well in school without any coaching without any tutorials without any help from anyone
#
except each other you know my mother occasionally would go to Lucknow to broadcast all India
#
radio her short stories in all India radio which was very prestigious in those days and
#
she took my little brother with her because he wouldn't stay without her and I had to
#
say to it that my sister woke up early in the morning and got her ready put on her shoes
#
and socks saw to it that her uniforms were ready and ironed and everything and Bino saw
#
to the kitchen that meals were cooked on time so that between the two of us we had our act
#
together and so it was a period in which I began to feel that the world was not so fair
#
that things were not equally divided and that people were mean for no reason except that
#
they felt envious of people who were doing well and my mother had countless cousins of
#
course they belonged to the hill so she had countless cousins and I always felt that they
#
were very envious of my mother's past in Shantiniketan her special upbringing in the Riyasats during
#
vacations the fact that Tagore came and stayed in Almora and Nandlal Bose came and stayed
#
in the house you know so they were always making snide comments about ki haa par parathe
#
toh ache nahi bana hai kya kiya tu ne Shantiniketan me rege Gora parathe banane tuje nahi aaye
#
tumhari maa ko achar banane nahi aata hai bas usse toh Bengali Kavita par bahes kar
#
alo you know and I used to feel very angry Bino sir chhodo tumko kya padta hai farak
#
I said no but you know something is not right and I was I could not articulate it it was
#
much later that I found the language to justify or unjustify things and to articulate my rage
#
but I remember being full of an unvoiced rage ki kahin kuch gada bad hai kuch cheez hai
#
jo theek nahi hai aur rishtedaariyon me iska root hai so to that extent I was always a
#
detached observer of you know family comings and goings and everyone said ki ye toh bahut
#
kam bolti hai they said ki ye usko toh hiya humko toh pata hi nahi tha ki panchi ke chaar
#
bache hai ye toh kabhi iski toh aawaz hi nahi sunte hai because I chose to keep my thoughts
#
to myself because once or twice when I did I got into big trouble and so I became introverted
#
but then I had by then I had discovered the world of books both English and Hindi so I
#
was reading all the time we had an apple tree I remember that was my favourite perch I used
#
to sit there was a kind of a place in the among the branches which made a perfect seat
#
and I had a cushion which I put there and I sat and read through the day on holidays
#
otherwise we had a huge lawn where you know it was quite sunny so we used to sit there
#
and I used to read and do my homework and everything Nainital was a wonderful place
#
we had a beautiful house with horse chestnut trees and oak trees and apple trees and my
#
brother and sister were very happy in their school you know those were very good schools
#
in those days my older sister began to develop some you know sort of anxieties and also some
#
kind of anger which she wouldn't voice but I could sense it because I was very close
#
to her and some kind of competitiveness which I didn't think was called for at all I was
#
all open and willing to share and share alike but you know there are things you cannot share
#
you can't chop off your brain and you know serve it to someone on a platter so anyway
#
then my sister finished school two years before me and she went to Allahabad University and
#
it meant a big dent in my parents savings but my mother insisted my children must go
#
to a university and local universities are not good so my older sister was sent to Allahabad
#
and I remember when the paper page the admission forms came she turned to my mother and said
#
tu mujhe university bhej rahi hai main toh parhne mein achchi nahi hu so my mother hugged
#
her and said ki main tujhe achcha bana ke manungi tu ne kya samjhaya hai aise teri barbi
#
ke baad shaadi ho jaayegi?
#
meri koi ladki hai ma ki ye bina shaadi nahi kar sakte so anyway my sister pulled a face
#
but she went to the university enjoyed herself hugely and two years when she was away I came
#
into my own for the first time you know I felt that I was not guilty all the time I
#
was not hunched up I walked with confidence I walked with my made my own friends I did
#
what I wanted to do and I found more time to talk to my mother and to help her out with
#
her writing because somehow the other by then I had gauged that you know her writing was
#
extremely precious and that she was deliberately playing it down to keep everybody happy and
#
to keep her cousin's mouth shut but I felt that that was something irreplaceable the
#
kind of letter she used to get from editors you know Kamleshwar, Dharmvir, Bharti you
#
know Manohar Shyam Joshi then every summer writers who came to Nainital would come and
#
visit her Mahadevi Verma came once I remember and she and my mother became very good friends
#
later when my father died in Lucknow my mother was in mourning and Mahadevi Verma and all
#
these writers came to her help and sort of helped her sort herself out and Amritlal Nagar
#
and Mahadevi Verma were her closest friends and they both told her that you have to write
#
to survive you know not just survive financially but also survive emotionally and be a whole
#
person so my mother said that I got married at such a young age I can't even write
#
without anyone I can't even think so I said to Mahadevi Verma Shivani I am telling you
#
that we can live without a man she said when I was a child I used to say that I want to
#
become a Sanyasi and I went to an ashram my father took me to an ashram on my insistence
#
the Swamiji he put a fan of tar in front of his mouth so I asked Baba why did he do
#
that he said he doesn't see women so I said why should I become a disciple of a man who
#
can't even see a woman and I came I didn't take Sanyas why are you thinking of Sanyas
#
so that really impacted my mother a great deal and Amritlal Nagar told my mother he
#
said ki khaali padi lekhne to nagin ki tarah hoti hai usko roz khuraag chahiye tum agar
#
nahi likhugi to ek din o palat ke tumko das legi aur tum depression ki shikar ho jao
#
ge isli likho likho Shivani likho my mother has also written Memo when he died she said
#
he is the one who told me likho Shivani tum likho Shivani likho that's the title of the
#
piece so one gathers wisdom over the years without realizing that you are gathering wisdom
#
and you gather languages without realizing you are gathering languages but it was a very
#
rich childhood my mother loved to get us books and I remember there was a man called Dana
#
Mian he was one of those old remnants of Rohel Khand vare surme wali aankhen thi honki aur
#
fur ki topi laga ki aate the he loved my mother because she loved books and she knew
#
what books were about so he used to come and then he used to sit and say ki madame chai
#
pila ye badhiya wali so my mother would get him good tea made and then they would sit
#
and say he said ki ye to sab jitni bhi ye mehm sahab hai na ye priory cottage wali aur udhar
#
wali share coat house wali ye sab mills and boon wali hain sab mills and boon wali hain
#
acchi literary cheez hain to bus main aapke le laata hu kuch to unki ho bhi thi bejni
#
ki tarqib bhi thi and whatever he sold you next month he would come and buy it at half
#
price from you it worked for him and it helped us you know because we were quite poor frankly
#
so we could ill afford so that was one big thing for our mental horizons opening up and
#
then you know my mother used to help us with our school work and things I never put any
#
strain on her primarily because I knew that she was strained enough but she loved to read
#
my books she loved to read my essays and she had done Hindi in Shantiniketan but not of
#
the level that was being taught to us in class 11 and 12 so whatever new came my way I would
#
rush to her and tell her then her older sister who was also with her in Shantiniketan was
#
one of the loveliest women I know her husband was a doctor and they lived nearby in Mukteshwar
#
Dr. Pushpesh Pant the great foodie and international scientist is her son and we grew up together
#
and she used to you know send books to my mother she used to send my mother homemade
#
Bengali sweets which she knew my mother craved and when my mother had had too much she would
#
just go and crash out at Mukteshwar and I loved going there because the house was full
#
of books and bound copies of all the magazines Bhairav Prasad Gupt's Kahani in volumes Dharmiyog
#
in volumes and you used to just sit and read through the vacations so Nainital was good
#
then I also joined the Allahabad University and I went to the hostel for some reason I
#
had got some kind of a scholarship a merit scholarship so Binu first thing Binu told
#
me was ke tumko scholarship mil rahi hai so the money that you get you must give it
#
to me because I need more money than you do I am you are a fresher you won't need much
#
money but I must have more money so I used to quietly hand over when the money orders
#
din aata tha when the money order came I handed it all to Binu and told her ke mujhe itna
#
itna de na hai just lived like that I didn't crave to go to go shopping or go anywhere
#
really see movies or to restaurants and things and Binu had a whole band of friends she was
#
a very friendly creature and she had a whole band of friends for some reason she had given
#
them to understand that I was my mother's favorite so they teased me a lot about being
#
my mother's sweetie and they used to call me sweetie sweetie and things like that and
#
I quietly sort of kept my head down and hoped that they wouldn't but for some strange reason
#
again I did very well though I opted for the English medium in university I was for my
#
honors class I accepted English literature and Sanskrit literature and ancient Indian
#
history as my side subject so I did well enough to be inducted into the famous Friday club
#
of Allahabad University I won the Chancellor's Medal as an undergraduate which was quite
#
rare in those days and then my father was transferred to Allahabad so we went home and
#
started staying there and my older sister was not very happy about the arrangement because
#
then again it started you know the relatives and friends coming and saying hey Shivani
#
ji ye wo and then arey Minu tumne to bada badhiya tumhara result aaya hai so and so said
#
ki she's a you know she's got the Chancellor's Medal and all that and I could see my sister
#
curling up and I used to curl up with embarrassment and I used to hide myself and my mother always
#
said ki tumh chip kyun jaati ho and I couldn't tell her that I hide because I carry this
#
huge guilt on my head about overshadowing my sister and anyway so I did pretty well
#
in MA and immediately I was offered a permanent lecturership at the University so I in 66
#
I graduated in 66 July and the winter of 66 I joined as a lecturer at the Allahabad University
#
most of my undergraduate class was just a year or two younger than me so and they knew
#
me and they all ribbed me and kind of tried to misbehave though they were very nice so
#
it was a fun year and then my father said that he wanted me to get married and that
#
you know there was somebody who wanted to meet me and he thought that he was intelligent
#
and well educated and so on so forth so then that's how I met my husband and we decided
#
to get married my husband said if you want to get married then why not get married now
#
so in 67 we were married and I resigned the University job which everybody took for granted
#
you know today I think nobody would think of quitting a permanent job like that but
#
everybody said kyun toh karna hi tha itna aachche var mil gaya tha aur kya chahi hai kisi
#
ladki ko and I didn't like that at all you know that was not the reason for getting married
#
anyway fortunately when we got married we went to the backwaters of Madhya Pradesh places
#
like Nimach and Panna and Jabalpur and so on so I was lost to this particular crowd
#
and then I started writing in I wrote my first short story soon after I got married we were
#
in Nimach and I sent it to Dharmavir Bharti and Dharmavir Bharti sent me a very nice postcard
#
which I still have saying ki you say that this is your first short story and I see great
#
hopes for you and please send me whatever you write hence I was delighted anyway the
#
short story got published I told my mother and she you know was very pleased neither
#
of us ever mentioned to Dharmavir Bharti that for your mother and daughter years later when
#
my mother was visiting Bombay it came up and she said aur kaun kaun achcha likh raha hai
#
she said ek young ladki hai Madhya Pradesh mein kahin Mrinal Pandey bahut achcha likh
#
rahi hai so my mother burst out laughing she said rey bhai wo to meri ladki hai he said
#
don't be joking but when I met him as a colleague and colleague come trainee under him he said
#
that he was very pleased that neither of us had you know promoted the other aur I mean
#
main toh kya promote karte hai but he said ki Shivani ji agar kehti toh main fir mana
#
kar hi nahi sakta tha lekin unke bina kahe maine chhapa toh isli meri dil mein chayn
#
hai so those were the days when editors had a personal relationship with the people they
#
published publishers had a personal relationship my mother's publishers her first collection
#
of short stories was published by Varanasi Prakashan by a man called Purushottam Das
#
Modi very learned man very good man he was a great mentor to my mother explained to her
#
you know the mechanics of the publishing world then he also told her ki dekho Shivani tum
#
itna achcha likh rahi ho tumhara bhaat aage future jata hai Varanasi bhaat achchi jage
#
hai lekin publishing ke liye ab Delhi sab shift kar gaya hai toh tum Delhi ka publisher
#
khojo so then my mother contacted then he introduced her to Dinanath Malhotra who was
#
then running the Hind Prakashan and he published my mother till as long as he lived when he
#
gave up and his son inherited he was more interested in other esoteric areas so we shifted
#
to her present publisher Raj Kamal Radhakrishan Prakashan but Dinanath Malhotra and his wife
#
became like you know sort of surrogate parents to us because our father had died quite young
#
and when my mother when my brother was getting married he was getting married to a girl in
#
England and my mother said she was very this particular she said ki maine teen ladkiyon
#
ki shaadi mein apni haddian galayi hain mai kisi bhi ladkiyon ke maaba par boj nahi karna
#
chahti ho tumh log koi nahi aogi jam hiya aenge to give a reception you can dance and sing
#
to your delight and you can all come and participate but only Miki and I will go for the baraat
#
I don't want to England main waisey parishani hoti sabko so my mother and my brother flew
#
away and I remember Dinanath ji and his wife came to the airport and gave her a coconut
#
in a shawl he said apni behan ko hum le bete ki baraat le ke vida kar rahe hain in a shawl
#
and everything and he really made her feel that you know it was a happy occasion of course
#
the family didn't care when my mother came back and then gave a reception then of course
#
everybody came crawling out of the woodworks but till then nobody was there to help her
#
so you know I somehow felt that I had a parallel world to occupy you know I could detach myself
#
from the family just carry out my duties to everybody never cheat on that but at the same
#
time my real family my real world was that of words and writing so when we were in Panna
#
my husband was actually my husband had studied economics he was a graduate from Cambridge
#
he had done his masters in Cambridge and done quite well then he joined the IAS but he was
#
handpicked to go to the World Bank as special assistant to the then Indian director so in
#
1971 I had one little girl and I was expecting the next baby and we arrived from Panna to
#
My daughter spoke nothing except Bundelkhandi and she said, Amma, Humkat aayi gaye, so I
#
She said she just clung to me because you know she had been disjointed and taken out
#
then we spent some days in a hotel and she saw a black maid in her dress for the first
#
time she said, yeh kya cheez hai, so I said yeh maid hai, she said mendak hai, yeh itta
#
vada mendak hota hai, so I said ne iska naam kuchh aur hai lekin isko maid kaita hai.
#
So like me she was also learning a whole new language and you know so we had a very happy
#
time in Washington actually for four years and my husband said you have to do something
#
with yourself you cannot just be a mother to two so we will get help and you can do
#
So I had always wanted to study the history of art and architecture and I joined the Korkuran
#
school of art and I did three semesters there and we travelled a lot with two small children
#
and it was a very enriching period for both of us because we travelled the world and we
#
saw you know various kinds of living, various kinds of customs and surroundings and so we
#
came back just on the eve you know of just on the beginning of the emergency and I distinctly
#
recall the emergency period because a lot of our friends writers were holed up, there
#
was an old writer called Gurudat who was as old as I am now, he was holed up at midnight
#
and sent to jail, a lot of people that we knew and Dharmir Bharti, Kamleshwar, my mother
#
was very worried about all of them because they were all in the print media and the print
#
media was being, so anyway fortunately soon it was over, I mean now it seems soon then
#
it seemed endless, then it was over and we were having dinner with our friends, the night
#
they lifted the emergency and declared the elections and we were with friends who had
#
a small black and white television set and we saw Mrs Gandhi come on the television and
#
announce this and his wife said don't go home, there might be tanks rolling out on the streets,
#
so I said but my children are at home and the person I have asked to babysit for them
#
would want to go home, so we have to go home and they came to the door and said please
#
don't go, something might happen and we will never forgive ourselves, I said something
#
happens to my children, I will never forgive myself, so we kind of went home then I called
#
her up when we reached home, it was not a bird on the streets, it was silence, silence
#
of the grave, then of course this whole Janata government thing and we went to Bhopal, soon
#
after that we were transferred back to Bhopal, my children went back to a Hindi medium school,
#
learnt Hindi like me, overnight except that it was a reverse, I learnt Hindi first and
#
English later, they learnt English first and Hindi later but they were very bright, so
#
I didn't have to you know do much to promote them but then I realised that we were comparatively
#
so solvent and my mother had so little, I was bringing up just two children, she brought
#
up four plus many others, plus then she had all kinds of worries and stress points in
#
her life and yet she was able to do so much.
#
Then I decided to start learning music, classical music and I got a very good guru, then I continued
#
for almost quarter of a century, learnt from really good gurus and when my last guru passed
#
So from Bhopal we came back to Delhi and I was teaching for some time in College of Jesus
#
and Mary, the university gave me a permanent job, again I decided to resign because by
#
then teaching English had become meaningless to me, you know I had seen the emergency and
#
I had seen the state of Hindi writers and how poor they were and I also remembered my
#
mother's plight as a young struggling young Hindi writer in a middle class environment
#
where everybody said that Shantini Ketanwala has studied but instead of English she writes
#
So that kind of social snobbery I felt I wouldn't like to teach English.
#
So I talked to my friend the poet Srikant Verma who was an MP, he said look there is
#
a little agency, news agency Samachar Bharti, you could join as cultural correspondent I
#
will talk to them you have sufficient exposure.
#
So I joined it and then a year later Times of India offered me a slot and I joined them
#
then I became an editor, so a whole new world opened, so that's it.
#
This is so fantastic, I really enjoyed listening to this, so many questions I want to ask taking
#
off from this but the first of my questions is this like one of the things I noticed while
#
I was listening to you is all these beautiful vivid details, you know concrete little snapshots
#
of your experiences like you speak of that red plastic purse with the lozenges, you spoke
#
about lifting the sparrow from the leg and showing you that this is what that is, you
#
speak of Miss Welch's pigtails for example and just a bunch of these, you know the long
#
pressure cooker and the apple trees and the chestnut trees and all of that and couple
#
of questions here and one is sort of about the nature of memory, like one thing that
#
I saw happening with my father in fact before he died and which happens with people through
#
age and in some senses I see it even in myself that they say that the edges of your memory
#
remain sharp and vibrant but the middle kind of fades and recently you know I've had occasion
#
to remember things from childhood and some of them are so clear, some of them are so
#
vivid like they're in front of me but everything in between like what happened in my thirties
#
are completely blurred, I have no idea of that and I saw my father like that towards
#
the end of his life, of course he was also suffering from memory issues and Parkinson's
#
and all that but I remember he once asked me about you know he said I have no memory
#
of you growing up so tell me what that was like so that's completely blank but I thought
#
before his memory fades completely I should sit down and capture some of them so I sat
#
down with him with a tape recorder and just recorded a bunch of his memories and they
#
were so sharp and they were so vivid.
#
Now one what do you feel about the nature of memory like I had a writer called Sarah
#
Rai on the show, she's also a Hindi novelist you might have read her, she was Munshi Premchand's
#
I was great friends with her older cousin and her brothers, Sarah's brothers, they
#
were Premchand's grandchildren and Premchand's son Amrit and Sripad were my mother's contemporaries
#
and they used to come to our house in Allahabad, not Sripadji so much but Amrit Rai was a frequent
#
visitor and his son Alok Rai was with me in college, we were together in BA and MA in
#
great competition between the two of us who comes first who comes second but he's still
#
And both Amrit Rai and Alok Rai of course wrote wonderful books on the language Hindi
#
and the politics around it I'll come to that later as well but one of the interesting things
#
about Sarah was that she also sort of showed this deep sense of observation where she had
#
all these really vivid details and I asked her that how do you remember things so vividly
#
and she said oh it was those were dull times we were bored we had nothing to do but look
#
at things closely and I don't entirely buy that so I want to kind of ask you that you
#
know with your mother being a writer and you're looking at her writing and you're looking
#
at how she describes the world and how she sees the world does that change in some way
#
the way you see the world around you because you know you put an apple in front of five
#
people they will see it differently but perhaps as a writer do you look at it differently
#
than others is your gaze somewhat different and does that gaze then begin to change when
#
you begin to write yourself like you said you were 20-21 when you started writing seriously
#
your short stories and all that so do you have to train yourself in some way to see
#
a little better do your memories and take on additional tinges because of the act of
#
your remembering them is this something you've kind of thought about I mean so far as memories
#
concern I feel that memory has a lot of lot also to do with the context in which a particular
#
memory comes to you like I was rereading my mother's Amadir Shantiniketan which my sister
#
has very beautifully translated it into English so when I was going through the manuscript
#
and I reread the original many times they are such a happy child's memories you know
#
a child who was growing up in you know palaces and who came to Shantiniketan Tagore taught
#
her the Bengali alphabet she stayed there for 10 years and moved around with the you
#
know intellectual elite of the country at actually global elite and then all of a sudden
#
she goes home and she's married off to this man she had never met who already has lost
#
a wife brooding and you know he's a kind of a very quiet withdrawn man with a little
#
girl who she has to bring up gets pregnant all of a sudden and yet she could write you
#
know fairly bubbly stories but now when I reread her I see a kind of a shadow coming
#
up and then you know disappearing like clouds too in the hills so she was a naturally sunny
#
and positive woman and she kind of absorbed it all but didn't let her natural joy of
#
life get clouded by that and she used to occasionally tell me she said you think a lot don't think
#
too much so I said I cannot postpone thinking I have to think and she said
#
she said you know that was the word that everybody is born with a certain kind of temperament
#
which encompasses them so whatever they do or say is tempered with that and that is how
#
the world has been that is how it always will be we writers think we can change things we
#
cannot at best we can show them for what they are and we can show them a better world but
#
if whether they will like it or not we cannot say so I think I was born in an aura of a
#
period in my mother's life when she was herself very lost you know I was born a year after
#
she got married that must have been a hard year for her because she came from a very
#
different background and a very affluent family into this family which didn't have much money
#
which was surrounded by grief of a young wife lost and a little girl who cried all the
#
time for her mother and then they were cutter vegetarians Shaka Hari Vaishnav my mother
#
had grown up in Bengal without manksha maash she couldn't conceive of a table without that
#
and my grandfather wouldn't even eat onions and garlic and he was a svayampaki brahmin
#
till he could manage it he used to cook his all the meals himself and he told my mother
#
ki tum bachon ki dekhbhal karo khana main manaunga and my mother said he was a horrible
#
cook you know and she said ki jab tu hone wali thi mujhe itni craving hui ek din ki
#
I wanted to eat meat and I wanted to eat a bird so my grandmother had sent a cook with
#
her with her so that he could occasionally cook her something that she craved and she
#
told him ki mujhe bahut meat khaane ka man kar raha hai so she said ki be waited till
#
your grandfather had gone to the market place to meet his friends then we locked the house
#
from inside he caught hold of a pigeon and he killed it and then he you know sort of
#
cleaned it and quickly roasted it and cooked it with some gravy and I gorged on it and
#
she said ki tu tabhi itni tu alak kisam ki nikliye so I said ki agar tu mujhe dhania
#
wali sabji khilati toh shahid mein lekak nahi banti so I think children absorb the period
#
of their mother's life into which they are born my younger sister for example Ira was
#
born by the time my parents had come together and you know accepted each other my father
#
had learnt to smile and laugh again you know my grandmother used to always say ki meri
#
ladki ne tujko hasna sikhya diya he had thought that he would he used to say that he told
#
his father after his first wife died ki mere bhagya mein shaadi ka sukh nahi hai main sanyasi
#
ho jata hu so he said ki nahi iss bachhi ka kya hoga main toh kabhi bhi chala jaunga
#
iss bachhi ka kaun dekhega aur tumko rehna iske liye tumko dusri shaadi karne padegi
#
and when I heard the story then I really felt terrible that you know my mother was married
#
only because you know a woman was required to bring up a child not because she was so
#
good my mother was a very beautiful woman you know so I said not because she was beautiful
#
not because she was educated in shantiniketan not because she came from such a brilliant
#
family of bibliophiles her grandfather was one of the co-founders of kashi vidyavit but
#
to bring up a sickly child and she just took it on and she brought my father out of the
#
shadows so to speak and you know so Eda my younger sister who was born when we were in
#
shajanpur was a beautiful bubbly happy child I never know Eru to have cried as a child
#
she was a very cute little round little child with the auburn hair like my mother's and
#
chinky eyes and everybody loved her because she was so ready to climb in their laps and
#
in contrast I was scrawny and I was always quiet and broody and you know curled up in
#
a corner with a book avoiding everybody and everything so I think children do absorb the
#
vibe and my brother was of course born when my parents were completely at peace with each
#
other my father was doing very well my mother had become a household name so he's one of
#
the noblest gentlest and at the same time most relaxed people that I have come across
#
he's had a lot of tough struggle in his life because my father died when he was still at
#
IIT but it hasn't scratched his soul at all he's still you know one of the gentlest and
#
lovable people in the family so I think I do believe very strongly that when the mother
#
is expecting a baby the aura that she has the baby is born with that and so I have a
#
happy side to me I crack jokes of course having been born in the Panth family who doesn't
#
crack jokes I crack jokes and I you know have fun on Twitter with one-liners and so on but
#
there is a part of me which notices little things which can't help it you know I wish
#
I could help it but I do and injustice is at the heart of my preoccupations any kind
#
of gender injustice or even injustice within homes outside homes in politics this is something
#
that even if I want to stop myself I cannot I have to you know one of my mother-in-law's
#
brothers was an astrologer and when he saw my horoscope he told my mother-in-law ki ye
#
to kisi purush ki horoscope hai this cannot be a woman's horoscope she thinks too much
#
and she acts too much and too hard and she'll go very far but your son has to be very very
#
of her because she'll be a very very much a woman her own master.
#
So I don't know I suppose you come inscribed with certain DNA chains within you which makes
#
you the way you are and I am also you know struck by that phrase that you mentioned that
#
you were the noticing kind you know there was a noticer there and you know I've noticed
#
that when we kind of grow up and come into our own in my own life I look back and I can
#
see that there are many layers that stop you from seeing things around you and gradually
#
as you grow up you lose these layers you know you could grow up in a very privileged family
#
and you don't realize you know all the inequities around you and so on and there is a time when
#
you suddenly see that and that layer goes or you could be a man and you may not be aware
#
of what women go through for example the fact that a man can you know I can go out for a
#
walk at night I can enter a lift with five men and not think about it but women always
#
have this extra layer and there is this moment when as a man you become aware of that reality
#
and there's another layer and it strikes me that you know one of the things that surprised
#
me while you were talking about it was how when your mother said that you know she needs
#
the food to be good and your dad was so demanding and you fought with her and you said no no
#
why are you so stressed about this and that's pretty impressive because elsewhere you have
#
written about how a lot of women in India even today you know decades after you fought
#
with your mother take their place you know in the scheme of things for granted that layer
#
never falls they just assume this is how things are meant to be and my chapatis have to be
#
round and my food has to be tasty and this is what I do and all of that you know the
#
fact that they're almost instrumental for something in the way that you described you
#
know your shock when you realized that your mother was instrumental that child has to
#
be brought up but you saw that you saw that you were fighting with your mother you were
#
saying and at different parts of your story you talk about that seeing one I'm surprised
#
by that seeing because although I have you know grown up a few decades of three decades
#
after you perhaps I didn't see this kind of seeing much around me when I grew up even
#
today most women may not you know necessarily notice this so was it because you were you
#
know reading a lot and you were exposed to different kinds of realities through the books
#
you read and you realized that it doesn't have to be like this there's something else
#
and also what interests me is that you know where do you get the frameworks to look at
#
the world for example you know today you might have a really evolved feminist framework because
#
you've read a lot about feminism and you know you can apply that lens to everything but
#
when you are a young teenager growing up and you are telling your mother that hey you know
#
you don't have to stress out so much about the food what framework are you applying are
#
you then curious that what framework do I apply to this to my anger now you know tell
#
me about these processes frankly I don't logic it out too much you know it is what it is
#
I always grew up thinking of questions which remained unasked I grew up thinking of letters
#
I wanted to write to people which never got written so a lot of it I locked up inside
#
me until I found a language and also a framework to describe it and now that you say a couple
#
of things you know like for example when I went to Hindi medium school in Shah Janpur
#
in Inner Moola especially the Arikanya Parchala I just plunged into a level of society where
#
people really lived like animals you know where children had parents who beat them black
#
and blue they didn't have slippers classrooms didn't have anything children dropped out
#
of school very frequently teachers had grown up as orphans and they told us you are so
#
lucky you have two parents you know taking care of you and schools which didn't even
#
have clocks to time their lessons with and I somehow never forgot that somehow the other
#
to my child's mind this was what the world was also about and then I went to the university
#
and then again I found that there were circles and people hung with like-minded and everybody
#
was puzzled why I had opted for Sanskrit and English to my mind it was a very natural combination
#
because languages always drew me and I wanted to you know always take them apart like a
#
child takes apart a toy a favorite toy and try and put it together and then match pieces
#
and then see what happens so that was one the other was you write books affected me
#
a lot because I read a great deal.
#
It's very funny when we were going from once we were traveling from Jabalpur to Nimaj then
#
on the station on the way in Indore station I remember there was a Wheeler bookstore and
#
I thought I must buy an armload of books because I'm going to Nimaj which is back of beyond
#
it's a little town and it was a subdivision actually in those days near Chittorgarh.
#
So I bought a couple of books among them the second sex by Simo De Boa imagine finding
#
it in Indore edge Wheeler stall and then I started reading it in the train and it was
#
like you know they say music mein kaiti hai uski law lag gay you know the phrase comes
#
from when you put a lamp next to another lamp the flames of the lamp attract each other
#
and they become one beautiful so sadhak bhi kaiti nahi ki jaisi usne sadhana ki meditation
#
kiya aur law lag gay means you become one with the subject and when I read the six sins
#
in an English translation I don't even know if it was a good translation it was as though
#
you know all the dots had become connected in my mind and I could see you know and the
#
next trip to Indore through Indore I picked up something else I think it was early 20th
#
century novel by Bhejan Sharma Ugr it was called Bijli it was about a widow and the
#
ambivalence of a widow's mind who's attracted to sex and who is denied sex at the same time
#
experiences sex within the family and the kind of tension that goes with it and then
#
you know a whole new I had grown up very protected and I never had bad sexual encounters or you
#
know the kind of things that are happening today but it was also a very kind of a compartmentalized
#
upbringing slowly the world that I had seen very briefly but couldn't make sense out
#
of and the injustices that had rankled in my mind not as injustices but something which
#
didn't fit they all began to come together and start making sense so it happened from
#
there and then soon after panna when we went to the USA that was the wonderful period when
#
feminism had just come of age that was the famous year of the boardwalk here when women
#
are said to have burnt their bras they actually didn't burn their bras the New York Times
#
reporter gave some money to some boardwalkers just to burn some bras so that he could take
#
photographs and say that women are protesting against being objectified and burn their bras
#
and so on and then the Miss Magazine came out and for some reason I was put on the mailing
#
list and I got a first copy and of course I subscribed to it and it was wonderful because
#
each article each issue of Miss Magazine again took me back to my own experiences and years
#
and slowly things which had rattled me things which had enraged me without finding a reason
#
why I was angry began to make sense you know because if you don't even know what freedom
#
is how do you ask for it you know you are born and by that time you will get married
#
it's a given so how do you protest in my generation in 1966 how do you protest against the idea
#
of marriage which is such a basic idea in a traditional Indian household Hindu, Muslim,
#
Christian, Parsi, Sikh, Isai everybody you know ki ladki badi ho gayi hai uski shaadi
#
kar do then Arvind just happened to walk into my life at that point so people say ki isko
#
toh ghar baithe var mil gaya and things like that but still you know there's something
#
about marriage as it is structured traditionally which left me rattled for example for a long
#
time when people called me Mrs. Pandey I looked around to see who they were addressing because
#
I was Panth I had been Mrinal Panth for 20 years of my life and all of a sudden you know
#
I had exchanged my surname but it was a given before I knew my cheque book was issued in
#
that name and you know my passport was made as Mrinal Pandey and so it was in fact Kamleshwar
#
wrote me a letter he said ki Mrinal tum tum nee not Kamleshwar it was another poet friend
#
of mine Kamlesh the Samajwadi socialist leader he said ki tumhari na Mrinal Panth rizmik
#
tha tum ne isko Pandey kyun kar diya sir Pandey se shaadi hone se koi Panth suna thodi chhod
#
deta hai so that also stuck to my mind but it was too late for that and so little things
#
like that then everybody taking it for granted ki university ki naukri ye chhodegi wo apna
#
karier nahi chhodegari aayis mein hai bhai main bhi Allahabad university umdino acche
#
khasi university hua karte thi I have a permanent job at the age of 21 how can you accept the
#
fact of my resigning overnight but I did no questions asked no regrets no tears shed and
#
there's something not right with this kind of a why was I making it you know even now
#
I have this terrible habit if my husband says something to me I immediately get up to do
#
it and then I give him a big jar also I said tum mujhe chen se baitha dekh nee sakte ho
#
and he says ki bhaiya maine sir suggest kiya tha ye thodi kaha tha ki tum uth ke khadi
#
ho jao and then I get very angry at myself ki why do I jump to my feet every time he
#
you know tells me to do something if I am coming here and he says ki dekho jab baitho
#
ki karma ussi wak google map chalu kar dena and I get very angry at him tum apne ko samajte
#
kya ho ki sab tumhi google deteriorate ho sab tumhi ko aata hai digital I run a whole
#
paper on digital main yeh nahi keh raha hu main sir yeh keh raha hu phone le jaan ho
#
mat bol na tum kahiwaar ghar main chhod jaati ho so you know a lot of anger comes out in
#
wrong places still because I have been programmed in a way meri hard wiring jo hai wo badi gadwad
#
hai lekin mera software farak hiye problem hai tu you know I want to read out this beautiful
#
bit from your book the other country and kind of then elaborate on that with a bit of a
#
question where at one point you write quote that is the reason most women find it so hard
#
to create because they are so used to their lives being shared and end up feeling guilty
#
about not sharing a part of their inside but you have to be so if you are driven by the
#
creative bug you have to come to the space and only when you have completely dissociated
#
yourself from everything else then you have the basic rock under your feet on which you
#
can stand and start creating something I have seen it with my mother when she was writing
#
she may sit on the dining table with all of us running and shouting around but we all
#
knew that at that point she was not available to us some resented it but I loved it because
#
I knew it was the only thing she was doing for herself and I hate the Indian notion of
#
self-sacrifice stop quote and such a beautiful quote and sentiment and so I am wondering
#
about how through this time your image of yourself was developing like did you want
#
to did you know you were going to be a writer and a storyteller from very early and after
#
you got married even though you know you left the job and so on and you went with your husband
#
were you even then aware that I am not just somebody's wife or I am not just somebody's
#
daughter that this is what I want to do how does one's notion of oneself develop at that
#
period of time and did you change over a period of time like when you look back to the 21
#
year old Mrinal for example does she seem like you or does she seem like another person
#
sometimes she is partially me but a she is too angry I am much more mellow now I am much
#
more mellow because I have expressed a lot of my anger logically and purged some of
#
it through various other things that I have done learning music for example and so she
#
was a lot angrier a lot thinner of course but she I think I have evolved as a human
#
being I would not like to go back to that very often people say I would like to be once
#
again those good old days no I think I am a better person and to me for me the world
#
is now a better place for one thing because I got married young we had children young
#
they flew the nest pretty young and they were both brilliant students so they got fellowships
#
you know so they went abroad so I have been an empty nester ever since I was in my 40s
#
and then I could take on full fledged editor ships and also continue to write and travel
#
I find that the great thing denied women is mobility without mobility you cannot write
#
stories must run within you as you move about and collect you know you gather sorrows you
#
gather whatever but you have to be mobile and mobility is denied to women and I felt
#
terribly constrained when I got married because all of a sudden I was SDM sahab's wife I was
#
the collector sahab's wife and it was my deem duty to you know serve big lunches and community
#
dinners and pack picnics and you know and talk to foolish women you know and foolish
#
equally foolish pompous men I have never really been one for suffering fools gladly when I
#
was unmarried and living on my own I could just dismiss them out of my life and curl
#
up with a book but as you know as an official's wife you have certain duties which you need
#
to pursue fortunately you know we travelled so much and then we lived abroad for you know
#
couple of years so that part bore out but still it irritated me to have things expected
#
of me my husband came from a long line of bureaucrats and my mother-in-law was an ideal
#
wife in that sense she was a very very nice person a really good woman but terribly unsure
#
of herself very insecure and totally totally devoted wife and mother and her entire personality
#
her entire sense of self was you know contained in this and I thought I was a wife and a mother
#
you know almost by accident but there was a core me which was left dry and I probably
#
unwanted not wanting to do that I hurt her and couple of other relatives whom I loved
#
and admired a lot by just throwing caution to Vince and plunging headlong into what I
#
wanted to do for example after the emergency during the emergency I was interacting with
#
all the writers I mean Arun Shwari was a very good friend we had met and met made friends
#
with them in Washington and Kamlesh the poet and host of Samajwadi party people and so
#
I helped them put together an anthology of protest poetry Hindi section I translated
#
and then I when they created the manifesto Arun came to me and he said Nalish ko Hindi
#
me translate kardu ki shapat wo Rajghat par Hindi me lege so I am very proud to say ki
#
Rajghat par Janta party ne shapat li thi wo Hindi me maine likhi thi so anyway so jokes
#
apart but you know I was beginning to enjoy myself I was involved in something above kitchen
#
and children and this thing but it took a toll in the sense that my daughters were made
#
to feel again by relatives that their mother was not there for them 24 7 and you know when
#
we were in Bhopal one day my children came home my mother-in-law was also there and my
#
older daughter said I said I hate knitting because as a child I remember everybody knitting
#
and I thought it was such mindless activity she said today the teacher asked us whose
#
school sweaters have been knitted by their mothers everybody's hand went up except mine
#
so my mother-in-law immediately said so I said that's not the point mommy she said
#
nahi main toh isko boon ki jaungi and she was so sweet she knitted immediately she knit
#
very fast and she immediately produced before she left for the hills two beautiful sweaters
#
for my daughters but I said why should they want to be counted with those children didn't
#
they know that their mother was different anyway as usual I never said anything on this
#
score and maybe yelled at Arvind Sam but then we came to Delhi and they went to the modern
#
school and then again then I was appearing in television I was doing a program called
#
Chuck review and you know participating did another program for another TV serial and
#
these were all discussion based programs then I was also frequently appearing in panel discussions
#
and I had definite political opinions which were always you know sort of somewhat sharp
#
and my older daughter used to get very angry and she said school toko pata hai agliye
#
din sab bache kehte kal tumhari amma ne yeh kaha kal tumhari amma ne yeh kaha why do
#
you have to go public so I said I have to go public because I am what I am I am not
#
just your mother she said but you have to recall that you are our mother and we have
#
to listen to all that crap from our classmates so I said please tell your classmates I was
#
not born to be only your mother I was also born as a human being and I spent 21 years
#
being what I myself so my relationship with my older daughter remained strained the young
#
one was of course like Eera you know happy go lucky child because you know she said haan
#
haan tum jo karte ho karo but when we are home then I just like to have you around that's
#
all and so that was that but they were very conscious of the fact in fact when they came
#
home for vacations if they wanted I said ki bache beta tumko shopping ke liye jaana hai
#
come I will drive you they said nahi hum tumhari saath nahi jayenge because everybody then
#
comes to ki aap na naal ji hai na aapne tv me wo wala show kiya tha na aap kal humne
#
dekha tha na she said that's very irritating so I stopped going out my daughter who was
#
a doctor the older one she had her convocation and I told her ki tumne mujhe kabhi nahi aane
#
diye not even for your admission let me come this once for your convocation she said achha
#
theek hai aana so Arvind and I were sitting at the back row hoping that nobody would notice
#
us and then the director of the Malan Azad college noticed me and he walked to me and
#
he said ki you are Mrinal Pandey how come you are here so I said my daughter is getting
#
the degree today she said which one I said Radhika Pandey he said she never told me she
#
was my student for five years she never told me that you were her mother I said I am glad
#
that I said nahi children don't like he said I would have invited you for a function and
#
you could have talked to our children about literature and journalism but that's exactly
#
what my children did not want so that was one big lesson I learnt that I probably got
#
a lot out of those years but it did take its toll on my children who were mercilessly ribbed
#
by their classmates and maybe called names and maybe got singled out you know so hota
#
head I think people have paid for my independence and I have also probably ruffled many feathers
#
which I didn't want to because I really loved especially Arvind's family one of the gentlest
#
and really affectionate people but unknowingly because I was like a you know wild bird and
#
I wanted to fly and nothing could hold me back and it's to I think Arvind's great credit
#
that he never turned a hair he's the only person in my life other than my mother who
#
just accepted me as I was even now he laughs at it but he has never once you know said
#
ki tum ye kyun kar rahi ho so I once told him I said ki tumko pata hai ki jab Ganga
#
ne Shantanu se shaadi ki thi toh Shantanu se usne kaha ki me tumse shaadi sirf is condition
#
par karungi ki main jo bhi karungi toh you will never ask me kyun me ye kyun kar rahi
#
ho the moment you ask me I will go back and she drowned seven of her children when she
#
was drowning the eighth child he said ek bacha toh nahi drowned karti toh usne usko
#
diya ho kaha ki iska durbhagi tum apni aak se dekhna hai then she flew away and that child
#
was Bhishma Pitamah so you know I said ki main jo bhi kar rahi hoon bhale ke le kar
#
rahi hoon kabhi tumse cheat nahi karungi kabhi family se disloyal nahi hongi but I have to
#
do it it's like you know Audubon's duck he Audubon the famous ornithologist had clipped
#
the wings of a duck to see if a duck deprived of her feathers would still try and fly when
#
the call came and he noticed that with bleeding sides the duck was walking in the direction
#
in which other ducks were gathering to fly away to their migratory land so I said I am
#
like Audubon's duck I have to walk and you have to put up with it so I think it's a kind
#
of a wild call and you can't stop it now of course you know just the two of us and I just
#
sit in my reading room everybody in the house knows you know the jhadu poche wali knows
#
ki wo likh rahi hai editorial likh rahi hongi she says kamra chod deti hai and the cook
#
knows better than to talk to me when I am there everybody has accepted the fact but
#
I still sometimes feel very sorry for my children you know they did probably miss out on what
#
a lot of other children had in their time you know the proximity to mother a mother
#
who hugged and kissed tears away but I was always too blunt and too fair also they grew
#
up in a house where everybody was a bureaucrat and it was all you know basically a one party
#
loyalty and you know when I was on TV then I would criticize quite frankly whatever was
#
happening and my children felt I was being disloyal to the family which I was not you
#
can be fond of the family you can respect the family but your views are your own you
#
know authors views are her own kind so I but I do feel guilty about that that guilt I carry
#
on me and though my younger daughter tells me ki tum bahut zyada you grew up with a guilt
#
and you want a guilt because without a guilt you feel light yeh bhi ho sakta hai but I
#
do think I was not a mother like other mothers my sisters are good mothers they are very
#
good husbands they very house proud women they come to my house and first thing they
#
do is to run their finger on my furniture and say dekho dust tohari ghar mein har jaghe
#
dust aise chhodo yaar mujhko toh nahi dikhai deti so there is a template in which we were
#
programmed I was also programmed I am still hardwired for that but I broke the template
#
and I changed from analog to digital and you know so that technicality took away a lot
#
I also think we judge ourselves too harshly sometimes as you might be doing you know you
#
mentioned being a mother and what that was like and I want to read out this wonderful
#
paragraph I spotted in your book which I really liked about the quiet rage of women where
#
you write quote some 20 years ago I remember sitting with colleagues in the staff room
#
of a women's college in Delhi the newspapers had reported the story of a Delhi woman who
#
had murdered her baby a third or fourth daughter in the hospital where she gave birth and tried
#
to pass it off as death caused by unknown factors I remember clearly we all sided instinctively
#
with the harried woman then we began to swap our own memories that the episode had unleashed
#
memories of suddenly venting our frustrations on our uncomprehending young ones because
#
they alone were close by at a time when we were feeling totally low and marginalized
#
and abandoned we were bitter witty funny by turns as we recited our pieces but one
#
after another we all confessed to having nursed a gut churning rage at one time or another
#
for having become just another faceless taken for granted and perennially exhausted custodian
#
of young children stop quote and I thought I'll read it out vis-a-vis nothing for my
#
listeners because it's such a lovely paragraph let's take a quick commercial break and we'll
#
talk some more when we come back 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 it is free 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 thank you
#
welcome back to the scene in the unseen I have the great honor of chatting with Minal
#
Pandey on my show today in your book the other India you had quoted this beautiful poem from
#
by Sujata Bhatt and I'll just quote a bit of that and then go on to my next question
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and the poem goes you asked me what I mean by saying I have lost my tongue I ask you
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what would you do if you had two tongues in your mouth and lost the first one the mother
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tongue and could not really know the other the foreign tongue stop quote and I found
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this very moving because I think this is a situation with a lot of us Indians who despite
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having the great privilege to be born in a place where we are surrounded by this multiplicity
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of tongues even within a small area you'll have so many dialects so many flavors but
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then we kind of get used to one and also in your book you you wrote and again I'll quote
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quote the known Indian culture has always harbored within itself numerous unknown but
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clearly and irreducibly identifiable cultures each drawing its unique strength from its
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vernacular and dialects the populace Hindi speaking belt in the north is a good example
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of how each culture will absorb the outside culture localizes form and ideas and create
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unique hybrid the Hindi speaking area comprises no less than 11 states of India and its richly
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layered culture has thrived on multiple variations of Hindi that constantly borrows words and
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phrases from its neighbor and then you sort of give many examples of that I find this
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fascinating in a number of different ways one I think as you know someone who's lived
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in cities all his life who's been part of an English speaking elite I think there is
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a wealth that is just lost to me out there because you know I haven't really been exposed
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to it so much the other thing I realized when I did my recent episode with Sarah Rai is
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that when we spoke of her literary influences every time she named an English book I had
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read it every time she named a Hindi book I hadn't read it and part of the time I hadn't
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even heard about it which is a matter of great shame for me also so one how was it for you
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to kind of soak in all these different languages and make the choices that you made about what
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do I write in like a friend of mine who wants to write in Kannada but he wants to write
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in a dialect of Kannada that is not the mainstream Kannada so he was asking me the other day
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that what should I do should I write in that dialect which very few people may read or
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should I write in the mainstream and I don't have an answer to give him because one part
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of me wants to say be authentic to yourself but the other part of me also says what's
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the point if no one's going to read you so are these questions that you have thought
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about I mean arising from this I have other questions also based on language and language
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diversity and all of that but first at a personal level is this something that you've thought
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about how have you navigated these yes this is something that you have to come to terms
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when you start writing full time and when you take to writing then you also have to
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realize if you are attracted to other art forms you must also delve in them to see if
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they balance out your craving for writing but you then find out what your true vocation
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is whether you want to be a singer whether you want to be a dancer whether you want to
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be a writer or whether you want to be a painter I have delved in all the four areas and each
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time I came to the point and realized that the one media that chose me and that I would
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choose again and again for expressing myself is writing having done that then the question
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of language was an easy one for me to tackle because Hindi was a language that I grew up
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speaking and I am so comfortable in it I can toss it up I can play with it I can like kitten
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plays with a ball of wool I can swim in it I can dive in it I can you know do whatever
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I like and it will still be my Hindi.
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A mistake a lot of people make about Hindi is I don't know about Kannada because I don't
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speak Kannada but in Hindi there are myriad kinds of Hindi because of the 11 states which
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list Hindi as their mother tongue the common Hindi is the Hindi we learn in school but
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the Hindi we speak to our people at home is flecked with the dialects in the area for
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example in Bihar the Hindi is also closely aligned with the Bengali confusion over gender
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so aunga jaunga aungi jaungi you know male female genderization is often missing at the
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same time they have certain facility for appropriating words from English for example just a vocal
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to be vocal about local they have coined a beautiful word called bhaukaal jo se haldaa
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macha do aah chalo yaar bhaukaal karte hai you know and so I think there are various
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kinds of Hindi's and it depends on what you are trying to express and where your story
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is located one of my novels Patrangpur Puran it's a microcosm of the macrocosm that the
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country is but the base is a very small town in the hills in Uttarakhand close to the area
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that I grew up in and we grew up speaking Hindi in school there but even the school
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Hindi was flecked with the local usage of the Kumawani which we spoke with our grandmother
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and our cousins so you can easily link that to for example people use just a asa to hoga
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hi Hindi me hum kahenge but in Kumawani Hindi we will say aisa to hone hi wala hua you know
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see that tonality is different and you know there's this friend of mine who was reciting
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ghalib chand tasveer-e-buta chand hasinon ke khudut baad marne ke mere ghar se yahi
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sama nikla so he said chand tasveer-e-buta chand hasinon ke khudut mere marne ke baad
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mere ghar se yahi nikla thera so ghalib ki aapne tang tod di lekin aapne usko ek
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nahi tere ki boli mein apne taraf se salaam kar diya to ye cheez mujhe baad rejhati hai
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aise hi jo bridge se list Hindi hai aatiya jaatiya jo saanse hai unke bina sab gal ki
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paanse hai you know Bharati Hindu Harishchand's Hindi he says ki there are 12, this is 1873
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ke aasbaaz ki unhaan likhaya ki kamse kam 12 tere ki Hindia main jaanta hu aur unhaan
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list kiya usme ek railway wali Hindi hai, railway, railway wali Hindi hai jo Anglo Indian
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guard babu log bolte hai usme angrezi shabdo ki bharmar rehti hai.
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So people have for the past 70 years played with Hindi because Hindi as we know it and
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it is taught in the nagari script was actually created for the British for helping them bring
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out their papers for the natives in the local vernacular language acceptable all across
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and they found that among the Muslims Urdu script the rehti and in Hindi the nagari script
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So they got four Bhakha Munshis Lallu Lal and Mir Muhammad you know the four clerics
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that they selected who then borrowed the kind of a infrastructure of the language from west
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because they all came from Agra side and then they created the script for it in nagari borrowing
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from Sanskrit and then they brought out a new version which they called Hindi.
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By then the British had realized that if you can segregate Hindus and Muslims by language
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then your game is done because then Hindus will realize they are numerically so much
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Muslims will realize that Hindus pose a challenge with their now new textbooks and more schools
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for Hindus because they were numerically large will be perceived by the Muslims as posing
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a threat to the Madrasas.
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So they got this whole thing in order and this is precisely what is being done today
#
on a different scale, you are talking about caste enumeration so that the OBCs come to
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see Netish Kumar and the OBC group are keen on an enumeration by caste primarily because
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they know and all of us know that OBCs are the largest group but once that happens then
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there will be a polarization of the non-OBC castes and then the non-OBC castes will then
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tell the Dalits and the scheduled tribes that they are going to get a bigger piece of the
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pie and cut down on your privileges that the original constitution gave you and this is
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again a vote bank creation and then it was of course divide and rule.
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So this is something unnatural because language is being driven not by the compulsions of
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writing but by political compulsions and it leads to chimeras and hybrids which nobody
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really can do creative work in and so unfortunately what we have seen happen after Hindi and Urdu
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were forcibly separated.
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I mean Hindi is a phonetic language so I have grown up reading the Kalams of all the greats
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in Urdu in Nagri because it can with the use of Nuqta, it can beautifully represent exactly
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what was written and this has been diluted a great deal to the extent that Hindi has
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moved to Sanskrit, one of the first things that was done when the governments changed
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was there was a purification movement to peel off all Urdu and Arabic words from Hindi and
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make it pure and take it closer to Sanskrit which is impossible because Hindi and Urdu
#
have both been fed much more by dialects than by either Sanskrit or by English or by Persian.
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Persian was the language of the courts but the people around Lalkhila and Agra and Mathura
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and all spoke a variety of Hindi flecked with Brij or Avadhi or whatever even Punjabi because
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a lot of Big Maths in the Haram were Punjabi speaking.
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So the languages are public property, I mean the great grammarian Panini says that the
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only Praman, the only Kasoti, the only measure for language is the people because it is created
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by people over a period of many years you cannot ask a poet even a good poet to create
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a new word just as you can ask a potter to create a new pot but potter can create a new
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pot for you but the writer cannot create a new word for you, the word has to come from
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the common pool of the languages.
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So I think what is happening is unfortunately in case of Hindi because most of India's prime
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ministers and power ministers and a large part of the parliament has come from the Hindi
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belt it has become quite dominantly north-centric and there is a point in the southern states
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feeling that although they are far more progressive they are always out voted and outnumbered
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by the north and also for Bengalis to feel that although their literacy levels are high
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they are very creative and brilliant in so many fields, Bengali doesn't get its due as
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much as Hindi does because it also has political patronage.
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So I feel that this whole debate about Rajbhasha, Rashtrabhasha is senseless because after all
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you are not creating, a government order cannot create a language overnight, I mean Lallu Lal's
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Fort William Hindi was knocked down by people overnight and they made fun of it in old Banaras
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there were hosts of writers who wrote against it and who made fun of it and said that these
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words are like the stones of the river, for centuries the water of the river flows and
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it makes a circle and a su-dol, you want to make it overnight and then, so language is a free-floating, free-flowing entity and if you try to trifle with it and this
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is also caught Hindi in a kind of a peculiar situation where a lot of very mediocre to third
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rate writers who write on politically correct subjects are getting hyped up way beyond their
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measure and really good writing in Hindi is being discussed the least in the Hindi belt
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and of course nationally also.
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And also I find that the Hindi belt because it was subject to so many political pulls and
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pressures, at some point around the 80s chose to de-link itself from Hindi, ki baba isse jaan
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came from the poorer lower middle classes or really poor part of the society but 50% children came
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from the poorer upper middle classes.
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do for Hindi homework and for learning Hindi of course we will pay for it.
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I told him I am sorry I am not in this game at all.
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It was such a jolt to me and I said that what is written in Hindi night and night is immediately in your eyes
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and the same houses which bring out an English paper and a Hindi paper up until the 21st
#
century treated their Hindi papers like rags, they were there just for tax purposes, they
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were heavily cross subsidized, the marketing forces did not go out into the market and
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sell space aggressively even though they were selling in multiples of the English newspapers
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that they were bringing out.
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That they were very apologetic about having a Hindi what they called product.
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So very often I would bring my grief and my anger home and Arvind would say, ki tumko
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kyu achraj hota hai, tum jaanti ho iss tarah ki logon mein hum log milte rehte hain, do
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you think they are sensitive to these things, they are not and the whole managerial class
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comes from that, same gene pool and they all have school tie connects.
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So the editor comes from the same class, the marketing manager and his cadres come from
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the same class and the ad agency people come from the same class and so there is a kind
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of an unsaid understanding, you talk to them they will be very logical and very nice, oh
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how nice you write in Hindi, it's like somebody said a woman writing is like a dog walking
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So it's like that, you are so and so and you write in Hindi, how nice, how very nice, it's
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like slapping their face.
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And they pat themselves on the back for saying how nice also.
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And then at some day they will suddenly call up and say ki, suno bhai tum kisi ko jaanti
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ho, I had written some novels about Mufassils when I was nearing retirement, usko translate
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So I say, earlier I used to bang the phone down, now I say ki haan main jaanti toh hoon
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lekin aap kya rate denge unko.
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So they say ki hai, Hindi mein kya rate hai, so I said ki a rupee a word, yeh toh bhaun
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zyada hai, so I said take it or leave it, okay theek hai main sochta hu, naam mujhe
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bhej do, telephone number mujhe bhej do, so you know it's like that.
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So even my staff I noticed they were being paid wages which were almost equivalent to
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the wages being paid to the lowest people in the English newspapers.
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So I fought and I fought and I fought and I got all the salaries hiked, I got the paper
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redesigned with the result our revenues went up, our circulation went up several fold.
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When I took up, the Delhi edition was selling 48,000 copies a day, when I left it was selling
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upwards of a million and a total circulation we had 17 editions, they were selling upwards
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So I was telling it to another friend of ours who is a big name in the corporate circles
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and he said, Munal tum jaanti hoon ek million kitna hota hai, I said nahi ji, main toh padhi
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likhi nahi hu, aap bata hiye ek million kitna hota hai and he failed to get the job, he
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said 10 lakh, you mean to say ki Hindi ka akhbar 5 karod bikta hai, main kaha huzoor
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5 karod nahi 10 karod bhi bik sakta hai.
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So he said, nahi nahi you got the numbers wrong, he just wouldn't believe me.
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So now I see him sitting on television panels and waxing eloquent about how the government
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is doing good to Indian bhashas and you know he wrote a play, he had the gall to call me
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up 5 years ago and say I have written a beautiful play on Meera, can you translate it into Hindi,
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I can't give it to an unknown person.
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So I said I am sorry, I don't do that kind of shitty job.
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So you know the crassness of our power class enrages me but then do I fall in the lap of
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the other class which is promoting Hindi so vociferously and you know I can't, I can't
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bring myself to do either you know.
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So I just curl up inside and I write and I don't think about the audience as I am writing
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for I am sure it will get its audiences if not today, another day, some later date but
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it will, it's like putting a note in a bottle and just throwing it in the sea, some day
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somebody will read it and some day somebody will realize this was happening.
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So I want to read out another bit from one of your pieces where you speak about language
#
based racism where you write quote, contrary to his usual manifestations in racist countries,
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language based racism in India has a benign but no less lethal form.
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It is not violent, does not lead to housing or job discrimination but it quietly ensures
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that while discussing the hiring or training of personnel or the promotion and observance
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of ethics in the public space, only those who are proficient in English may call the
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shots, dictate terms and set priorities.
#
I have known a lot of academicians and journalists who seriously believe that because they are
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eminent intellectuals they cannot be racist as if being the one automatically rules out
#
In seminars and workshops most of the time worthy speakers will denounce sexism, communalism,
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casteism and regionalism and empathize the need to retain our cultural roots.
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When the question and answer session begins I hear them use socialism and feminism as
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a disclaimer against charges of social segregation and I know the questioner is being sold a
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It is much easier listening to the religious fundamentalists who claim they have found
#
the right path but they at least acknowledge to have earlier been on the wrong one, stop
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And what you said earlier about you know like one of the things I love about languages is
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that they cannot be designed by central committee like you said, they are delightful khicharis
#
and even Sanskrit like one of the books I really enjoyed reading this year was Wanderer's
#
King's Merchants by Peggy Mohan where she talks about.
#
Yes, it's wonderful in fact during the two Covid years Peggy wrote and asked me I said
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I'd be delighted so we had a long conversation about this book and it was such a delight
#
to read this book, I've long admired Peggy's book and I was telling her I had been doing
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similar things because when you are by yourself you read a lot of stuff you'd been meaning
#
to read but had not had time to really delve into.
#
And I had gone back to earlier story forms and I discovered that Buddhists, Jainists
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and even the Panchatantra, Vishnu Sharma, teachers of tales, they were wonderful writers
#
and they had a very different style of very different frame and a very different infrastructure
#
for stories which move in a kind of a circle and then each circle has a tail at the end
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to which you hook another circle.
#
So in the end you get a chain of stories which you can read singly or you can read as a long
#
chain and the whole thing is life itself.
#
So the stories are they cancel out each other, they support each other, sometimes they call
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out for each other but the whole cycle you read it and then Panchatantra for example,
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it's all based on animals talking to each other but the lessons which blink behind like
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curses can be taken forward.
#
So I then started rereading fables and children's folk tales, the first port of call was of
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Ramanujam's wonderful folk tales.
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Then I came across, I had many compilations of Kumauni folk tales of course, curtsy my
#
mother but then I came across a very interesting compilation of folk tales from Kumauni by
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a Russian who was travelling through India in the 18th century spying on the British
#
but he happened to visit villages in Uttarakhand which people seldom visited even the British
#
and he slept and lived with the outcasts, the Dalits which were numerically very small.
#
They had very different folk tales and very different gods.
#
So these folk tales are so different from them and a cousin of mine who's a linguist
#
had translated them into flawless Hindi from the original Russian.
#
So then I discovered a whole new form and then I have this equally crazy friend who
#
runs a blog called Janki Pul, it's a site actually and he publishes stories and so on.
#
So I wrote my first story in this new format and I sent to him and I said, Prabhaji main
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bhej sakte hu, aap dekh lije, atpati toh hai, maybe you might like.
#
He was very happy, he said look, it looks like a folk tale, it speaks to you like a
#
child but when you actually analyse it, it really destroys you and a lot of things inside
#
you because it is so full and it is also so contemporary.
#
So I wrote 26 or 27 such stories, they're coming out, they're bringing out an anthology
#
of those and it's titled Maya Ne Ghumayo, it's one of the folk songs that one of the
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lovers in one story sings.
#
It says ki we were like logs of wood thrown into a hill river and we started somewhere
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and have ended somewhere else, it's Maya which has taken us here all along.
#
So this is what I realised at the last decade of my life that it's a grand spectacle that
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you see unfurl before you and it is timeless.
#
The characters may change, then I started thinking about Ramayan, I started thinking
#
about Mahabharat, then I started rereading Odysseus and the beautiful recounting of Odysseus
#
by this Nobel winner, Caribbean writer, what's his name, I…
#
Walcott, Derek Walcott's Odysseus and it follows a perennial pattern, there is a hero,
#
he is either given away or is parentless or nobody knows where he came from and then all
#
of a sudden he is catapulted against a monstrous force which he takes on, then follows a very
#
colourful, very lovely battle in which forces of good and forces of evil come together and
#
there is a headlong fight.
#
He manages to defeat, then he begins to rule, but then the story begins to peter out and
#
in the end either he dies, unknown commits suicide or just vanishes right into the dusky
#
west, the same thing happens with Krishna, it starts as Krishna then becomes, goes to
#
Mathura, challenges, comes, then he becomes the king of Dwarika, gets involved in getting
#
the republics together, then comes the Mahabharat battle in which he like a writer gets the
#
ringside seat driving the chariot of the one who he wants to be victorious and then after
#
the battle he takes, the Pandavas go back to the mountains in Penance and kisi aurko
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third fourth cousin ko, bakal one of my family cousins, it's a family idiot who always inherits
#
all in these epics, so kisi family idiot ko janmeja ko pakda ke, then they all go to Himalaya,
#
Krishna comes back quite spent to Dwarika and then goes and rests in the forest and
#
some Vyad comes and kills him thinking that he is a deer and so Mahabharat ends.
#
In Ramayana also again Ram is born and then the exile and the Ravan, Ram, Ravan, Yuddha
#
and everything, eventually he comes back, he loses Sita, then he towards the end of
#
his days, he is very popular but he is also a very lonely man, he tells when he is seeing
#
some old paintings he says those days are over and then in the end they say that he
#
goes into a cave to pray, Lakshman stands outside and death comes for him, Lakshman
#
says take me instead, so he loses Lakshman and when Ram hears that Lakshman is no more
#
he drowns himself, so that's the end of another hero.
#
So you go to any big major epic, you find this is the cycle that happens.
#
So these folk tales are also like that, they are giving children the messages and one story
#
that in one of the stories that I have done is about this daughter-in-law who has a very
#
cruel mother-in-law as always in folk tales and she loves bitter gourd and the mother-in-law
#
cooks bitter gourd but wouldn't give her share.
#
She goes out somewhere and tells her to fetch some water, so this girl very cleverly steals
#
a lot of rice and bitter gourd vegetable, takes it in her ghadha and goes and sits in
#
the temple and gobbles it up quickly and then washes the ghadha and brings water and comes
#
The goddess is so bewildered that instead of her abhay mudra she puts her hand on her
#
nose signaling utter amazement and then in the evening the priest raises a big ghadha
#
and says the goddess is angry, she has changed her posture.
#
So everybody starts crying and this thing, so the daughter-in-law says you all go home,
#
let me leave me with the goddess and I'll propitiate her.
#
So they all leave her alone knowing that it is full of tigers and things, they say bahu
#
toh hai, she can cope for herself.
#
So she locks herself in and then she goes to the goddess and she says look, you are
#
a woman, I am a woman, you know hunger and I know hunger and we both know deprivation,
#
so don't you dare put your nose, hand on your nose to signal anger or amazement, you
#
know very well what I am about.
#
So the goddess's hand comes back and so she goes home and goes to sleep and in the morning
#
when the priest goes everything is fine, everybody is very happy.
#
But it's an amazing story and I found the outlines of this in some old folktale.
#
So there were lots of such things happening, so I was delighted when I read Peggy's book
#
and I told her you just caught me at the right time.
#
Peggy was on my show also, we did a long episode together and just continuing on the thread
#
about languages being a khichri, one of the things I discovered from her book and everyone
#
should really read it is that Sanskrit is also such a khichri that it's not some pure
#
thing which came down when the Aryans came but you know like the retroflex sounds, the
#
dur and the tur of dat, you know is a local influence.
#
I am writing a small column for our English and Hindi papers on food and the history of
#
I mean a lot of food which is served to the gods in the Vedic and the Sanatani rituals
#
has come from dravid or come from outside.
#
The word for banana in Sanskrit has come from other Caribbean islands, you know not Caribbean
#
but the southeastern islands and likewise so many rituals have come from other.
#
So Sanskrit is again a hybrid, Sanskrit is a hybridized and then let's not forget that
#
after Sanskrit was petering out then Abrinch and Prakrit took its place.
#
So the Hindi and the dialects that we have in the north today are all children of Prakrit
#
and Abrinch not Sanskrit.
#
So Sanskrit is a hybrid, it has been distilled twice and then come to us and it has enriched
#
So you know how can you purify Hindi?
#
How can you say shuddhi karan karen?
#
So my final question about language before we move on to so many other things I want
#
to discuss, my final question about language comes from food like you made that digression
#
to food so I'll take you up on that.
#
There was an episode I did with the food writer Vikram doctor called the Indianness of Indian
#
food where the argument was most of our food has come from outside and there's hardly anything
#
which is here but there he spoke about the Cavendish banana and the story of the Cavendish
#
banana is this that there was a banana that was made here and it got exported in the sense
#
you know it went all over the world and then it was mass produced in the US and South America
#
and all of that and then it came back to India and it happens to be a banana which in terms
#
of economics it works out really well, in terms of preservation it doesn't rot so easily
#
it's great and now what is happening here is that the Cavendish banana is gradually
#
killing off all the local forms of bananas because this homogenization is happening because
#
Now my question about related question about languages that is that a danger because number
#
one and I'll give both points of view and I'll see where you kind of stand on that when
#
number one some would argue that everyone's trying to learn English in our small towns
#
because there is this hierarchy of languages and just in a functional sense it makes rational
#
sense for parents to send their kids to an English medium school and all of that and
#
that becomes a worry that are you going to lose your local languages but at the same
#
time what is also happening is that in our culture through other ways whether it is TikTok
#
before TikTok was banned or whether it is in the new kind of lingo which keeps coming
#
up you know the language is evolving to assimilate everything and the diversity remains like
#
you gave a great example of the you know the little ditty which is such a creative use
#
and you know to take that forward I coined one for you in your honor Hindi ka khana English
#
ka paani Mrinal ji aap yaha aaye bahut meharbani but you get my drift so my senses I'm actually
#
more optimistic because I think language is the ultimate expression of liberalism it takes
#
in influences from everywhere and they all coexist together but there is a homogenization
#
danger that language based racism is still very real that people are you know still flocking
#
to learn English and even within languages like my friends worry about Kannada that my
#
dialect will get wiped out the mainstream will remain those kind of worries are there
#
so what is your sense of all this?
#
I find languages evolve all the time the Hindi that I'm speaking is not the Hindi which my
#
grandmother spoke for example you know the Hindi I was reading old Hindi books Chandrakanta
#
Santati and Kajar ki Kotri by Devaki Nandan Khatri written in the 19th century the Hindi
#
there is very different from the Hindi that we use and still it was a Kashi person who
#
Kashi was the big seat of learning so that was the Hindi that they spoke then.
#
So I think people the problem of hierarchies does not arise from language, language is
#
only a mirror which reflects the hierarchies the hierarchies derive from elsewhere and
#
I think the root cause of this is colonization you know because colonization entered a country
#
and people actually saw whole villages and whole societies being erased whole cultural
#
icons and establishment being burnt overnight and new things raised in their place the fear
#
of the colonizer made them very a very introverted to also liars you know you would not open
#
up easily so as a nation for hundreds of years we have put a great cess on being quiet you
#
know he's a man he's quiet and his still waters run deep you know women don't know anything
#
and therefore women you know women can't speak their mind when we were compiling a report
#
on women in the unorganized sector for the government in the late 1980s we held some
#
300 meetings with women workers you know they were field workers, farmyard workers, spinners,
#
people who worked in the spinning and weaving industry, women who worked as household mates
#
and all of these people had their own stories about how they had been colonized to the extent
#
that they had no sense of self they could not ask for better salaries they could not
#
ask for salaries on par with men this included girls from Kerala who were specially called
#
to Kolkata for shelling prawns but the dockyard workers said if they are paid on par with
#
men we will walk out we will not unload your ships so their you know wages were reduced
#
so hierarchies are made by colonization same thing happened with tea gardens you know you
#
brought labor from outside but you paid women less and paid men more that way the men stayed
#
the women still continued because the men usually drank up most of their salary anyhow
#
but the reasoning you gave was that women take time off to feed their breast feed their
#
children they have been their peak working years are also the peak reproductive years
#
and therefore women are not good in Sanskrit there is a very good word for this in the
#
Nyaya which is different learnings in Nyaya there is a word in Nyaya Chakriya Nyaya means
#
a way of thinking which locks you in a circle it is a self-fulfilling prophecy because you
#
have convinced yourself that women are mindless users of language and because women cannot
#
know what they are thinking therefore it is no use talking to them of sense and sensible
#
things and that locks them in a space which after centuries they have come to accept and
#
marad will always be there lurking in the background so we chase them out then they
#
opened up and then we talked to them about many things and so lot of things came.
#
So I think the whole society suffers from this Chakriya Nyaya in a colonized country
#
I have been to Bangladesh I have been to Sri Lanka I have been to Pakistan I have been
#
to all the neighboring countries Nepal and I find everywhere all these ex-colonized countries
#
have the same attitudes the same linguistic hierarchies.
#
In Pakistan they told me, yes ma'am in our country Urdu writers sell a lot and buy a
#
lot but they are poor because they do not get advertising and we are able to give money
#
to Urdu writers because we do not have money and then I asked them about the agencies I
#
said what about your wire agencies they said that English wire agencies are for the Sahab
#
people so they get money from the newspapers.
#
We have to sell the pathan and get our money.
#
So that is the way it happens there was a conclave in Sri Lanka there also they said
#
that Tamil and Sri Lankan native languages have a far bigger circulation but they are
#
paid much less they are much less supported by the state and English is the dominant language
#
at discourse and then what also happens is then Chakri Nyai again operates across the
#
seas so when journalists come visiting or are posted in India the only journalists that
#
they make friends with and hang around with are the English language journalists because
#
they do not have to learn any Indian language.
#
You will rarely come across a foreign journalist who would pick up a local language most of
#
them just run on the surface and report on what is happening in Delhi or the state capitals
#
but rarely do they penetrate so they are locked in their own colonial Chakri Nyai that these
#
are developing countries these are the tier 3 countries which are coming up very hard
#
and we must be very good to them we must support them oh how lovely you also have English newspapers
#
but they find us terribly provincial our papers terribly provincial but do read some Hindi
#
papers do read the Bengali papers and they have such sparkling wit and such sparkling
#
information sedimented put crudely not really well edited but it is all there so I think
#
this breaking of this vicious circle is the only thing which will give a chance for a
#
co-mingling of languages you know I think the Mughals were very prudent they allowed
#
languages to mingle they never interfered in this Arabic and Arabic was always the language
#
of the conquerors Persian was the language of the courtiers courtiers but the language
#
with the common folk spoke was Urdu Hindustani and it is called you know it was not a Shurfa
#
people's language it was not the language of the Shurfa people only it was the Urdu
#
people's language it was the language of the Urdu people Mir says that he can understand
#
my poetry which sits on the steps of Jama Masjid so a common language which everybody
#
understands and appreciates that is something which gets created on its own because the
#
push from the earth is so strong that it does not get noticed is the Chakri Nyai of the
#
colonization before I go on to talking about women in India and I have so many questions
#
about that I want to pick up on that phrase colonial Chakri which is such a lovely phrase
#
and I have spoken with different historians on my show about how when the British first
#
came to India their interlocutors were just the upper caste Brahmins that they encountered
#
so they were sold a version of the country as they tried to figure out what is this India
#
what is this society they were sold a version of the country which was that very caste based
#
Brahminical version. Shall I tell you something here at the risk of stopping you the reason
#
why Bengali is a pejorative in northern belt you know it is common currency in villages
#
in the north it is primarily because the first clerks that the British picked up who were
#
reasonably bilingual were in their conclave in Kolkata and then they invariably accompanied
#
the British revenue officials to get the Lagaan and also to measure the lands and they would
#
always make money on that and so Bengali doctor all the Jhola doctors dubious doctors are
#
called Bengali doctor why not Punjabi doctor and Punjabis have a trick or two of this also.
#
I have to tell you that I am half Bengali half Punjabi so I hope nobody calls me a Bengali
#
podcaster. No but I think these are all sedimented you know atavistic memories of having been
#
once upon a time the word for Bengalis is babu. Babu is literally in Persian means ba
#
means bad, bu means smell. Bengalis to the you know Muslim nobility smelt foul because
#
they ate fish and because they put mustard oil in their hair and therefore when the British
#
asked who is this they said this is babu so babu then became a generic term for clerks
#
and from that it became you know big babu small babu. Fascinating just seeing how language
#
kind of evolves so to continue with my question the interlocutors are these Bengali babus
#
and they are sold this particular Brahmanical version of you know what India is like and
#
the irony is that then this narrative this half-baked narrative then becomes a dominant
#
narrative and we come to believe it ourselves in a sense. No but it becomes a dominant narrative
#
primarily because the colonizers need a narrative which justifies dominance and hierarchies
#
and so by telling them the Brahmanical version and describing the lower castes untouchables
#
as bad they were in a way opening up a chink through which they could justify their dominance
#
that we carry the white man's burden and we have to now you know semitize these people
#
we have to teach them manners we have to teach them to rise above untouchability and so on
#
but the main you know the elephant in the room goes uncommented and unlooked at. But
#
the question I was coming at was that you've also written about how so much of India is
#
interpreted by people outside that they will you know come from. Yeah it comes from second
#
hand. Right and do you think that that is there a danger do you think that for example
#
when people fulminate among elite against elites for example would you say that there
#
is something to that as well that the true diversity and the range of views of this country
#
are kind of a little bit suppressed by what dominant narratives. There is a paradox there
#
Amit because what happens is when people fulminate against the elites it's a 50-50 thing 50%
#
fulminate because they would like to have themselves that little bungalow in Lutyens
#
zone that little membership of an elite club you know golf club country club whatever and
#
they fulminate for that that they are all from Lutyens zone they are all hand market
#
gang they are all this. 50% is justified but half justified because if it was so insufferable
#
why didn't you break out of it. You know when it became insufferable for me to teach English
#
I broke out of it and joined a third rate Hindi language news agency which gave me my
#
breath back you know so when people say ki I can't stand it then my question or suggestion
#
to them is then why don't you just step out why must you look for you know something which
#
is you know in your bones is not going to be available there this is not a panacea for
#
your problems now you live in your Lutyens zone yourself so wo jumla bhi purana ho gaya
#
Lutyens zone wale kahoge to me aapko saare nam fairies gina dungi ki Lutyens zone mein
#
aaj kal kaun rehta hai so wo jumla kaam nahi karega. So I find that you know fulminating
#
people leave me now unimpressed because I find most of it comes out of you know feeling
#
of jealousy some of it comes out of a feeling of you know the inequalities which are irremovable
#
only two or three percent of it like Peggy Mohans comes out of a genuine understanding
#
of the layered reality and the grey areas and I respect those people when they talk
#
about these things then I respect them but then again the pity is that all these good
#
reasoned and well thought out cogent writings come to us in English they are not available
#
to my readers in Hindi you know then you again another chakri nyay ki Hindi walon ko kuch
#
nahi aata hai Hindi ki akhbaron mein economic analysis nahi aati hai. Do you know in the
#
late 19th century the Hindi papers were the first to start writing about Borses and in
#
1946 when Hindustan was launched Daily Hindustan of Hindustan Times was launched it used to
#
list London share markets on cotton, indigo everything in India because the Marwadi pedhi
#
walas and the Banaras Sates all read Hindi papers they did not read English papers so
#
these were these were the selling points for their newspapers so I find that you know as
#
I said language has a way of erupting like a volcano you know if you are not prepared
#
for it it will burn you but the fact is you have to wait for it to cool and it brings
#
fertile alluvial soil new patterns reshapes the continent and wait for that if you cannot
#
wait then I am very sorry. In fact the point you made about people fulminating because
#
they themselves want to be the elites you have got a lovely sentence in one of your
#
pieces which expresses this where you write quote suddenly I understood the real meaning
#
of the much doubted social justice revolution of India it has not changed the ruling norms
#
only created autocrats from other castes stop quote in another context also. Now earlier
#
we were talking about you know when we were speaking about language we were speaking about
#
women as well and sort of their status and this is something a point that you have constantly
#
made is that in any crisis in India there is a secondary crisis beneath that which is
#
that of the women like when I was editor of Pragati you had very kindly written a piece
#
on agriculture where you said that you talk of farmers but women farmers are even worse
#
off you use this lovely phrase where you were writing about Aishwarya Rai's wedding and
#
you used a phrase from Adrian Rich where you spoke about the kingdom of the father how
#
everything was dominated and said by the men and all of that and there is another piece
#
you wrote about men and women at social reunions how they behave so differently and I found
#
that evocative so I will just read those little bits out where you speak these thoughts crossed
#
my mind when I recently attended a school reunion where three generations of Indian
#
men were present with their wives as I watched uniformly wealthy men pumped hands and thumbed
#
shoulders and talked endlessly about money their women however eyed each other hesitantly
#
for some time before sitting down in a semi-circle like a bunch of smooth bananas things have
#
not changed much in post-independence India girls continue to marry men who hold professions
#
they have eyed enviously and are convinced they themselves can't have or can't manage
#
on their own at the reunion some erstwhile stars from radical groups on campus who had
#
married other ambitious young radicals now looked and talked like all other matronly
#
wives while their husbands had realized their early promise and had gone on to become major
#
political leaders media barons star journalists the wives had gone back to being wallflowers
#
none of them had demonstrated the courage to challenge the female deficient empires
#
their husbands had created and led stop quote and my question here is this that to anyone
#
who takes some time to think about it is pretty obvious that this is a massive waste in India
#
where you treat half your population as second-class citizens they are not empowered to reach their
#
full potential etc etc etc etc but one thought that often strikes me is that why aren't more
#
women for example standing up and making that kind of noise you know is it the pervasive
#
fear they might feel of immediate disapproval from the circles around them is it that this
#
is a slow process and it is actually happening like when you look back through the arc of
#
all your decades in public life your decades observing all of this do you feel more hopeful
#
or do you feel that these problems are too deep what is your sense of all this?
#
I am hopeful generally I find that we have come a long way from my grandmother's generation
#
to my mother's generation to mine and beyond me my daughters who are even more free in
#
the real sense than I am because as I told you I am hardwired into certain habits and
#
certain you know sudden reactions but I think we have things have been evolving what is
#
happening is because of media these ideas are being disseminated in a way they earlier
#
were not and so it is creating a lot of dissatisfied people but without really telling them frankly
#
the price freedom comes with I mean even let us face it even men have won their freedom
#
at a great price in the sense that almost always they are cut off from their progeny.
#
Women's have a special access to children they have a certain command over their children
#
and if the mother dies and the father is old and lonely then even if he stays with children
#
and they are kind to him it is a very lonely life for him you know my husband once said
#
when we go abroad you immediately get absorbed in the children's house and you start pottering
#
about I do not know what to do with myself so I said go polish their silver and he said
#
kaha se shuru karu so I taught him how to he said you mean you have been doing it all
#
these years I said no because I did not use any silver the first chance I first did it
#
on them I said you take the family silver because I cannot be bothered about polishing
#
it so I mean these are little you know frivolous things but I think there are multiple reasons
#
for this a women as I said are locked up in that chakri space that round space which locks
#
them out of reason and rational thinking b the family structure is so based on exploiting
#
women's labour and their child rearing capacities that people feel very threatened you must
#
have read about the recent question which Sonia Gandhi raised in parliament about a
#
CBSE book saying that children have to be disciplined by mothers who will obey their
#
husbands as their masters and the modern feminist women with feminist ideas are not obeying
#
their husbands thereby setting a bad example and then they cannot expect disciplined attitudes
#
from their children so that is the other circuit they have to break third is the very real
#
reason that there are simply no jobs for women once they have taken a back seat for say ten
#
years because that is the period from giving birth to bringing up a child to regular school
#
going age if you have two children ten years are enough.
#
So you give birth to children at the age of 20 and they die at the age of 30 most of the
#
good jobs have been taken up by men who were in your class and they have progressed from
#
here to there but for you you start again A for Apple you know so a lot of women then
#
compromise and take the easiest jobs to handle they become school teachers they have handled
#
children they are reasonably well educated they are intelligent so they become teachers
#
but very few women have the courage left by them or the sense of self-worth to really
#
retrain themselves to redo you know their education A because a lot of them do not have
#
the means B because the husband and the families will not provide extra money for the wife
#
educating herself and C by the time she finishes her education she will be 15 years behind
#
So you know it is something very very difficult for more and women are very pragmatic creatures
#
they know the way the world functions they know so most of them say you know they want
#
to choose the easy way out a lot of women who are abused I have talked to a lot of women
#
and I say and they say I didn't want to create a you know ruffle and I didn't want to hurt
#
my parents and I didn't want to do this I didn't want to do that but I said you know
#
when he hit you first didn't you feel humiliated they said I was so ashamed that I couldn't
#
even bring myself to say it to anyone and then of course he apologized you would be
#
amazed at the kind of abuse domestic abuse and when we were children we were told ki
#
tumhara ghar sabse surakshit jage hai now you are seeing evidence that home is one of the
#
unsafest places for young girls and for women thanks to the media it has come out but again
#
the media is working very fast and it guzzles news and it just churns it out without really
#
putting it in a context because most of the people in the media themselves are very young
#
you know so it's like a 14-year-old singing a thumri full of longing of an adult court
#
courtesan what does she knows about you know when she sings that what did she know of you
#
know an aged Gopika longing for a Krishna who's now gone to Dwarika so it is like that
#
the media is unable to really it reports but it is unable to contextualize the grief the
#
rage and the actual reasons and in the judiciary where all these cases go you are well aware
#
the kind of load that exists and the kind of hearing that women get so they when they
#
feel that they are not going to get the root is lack of justice you know laws are made
#
by men laws are discussed by men laws are exercised and applied by men laws are used
#
to you know gauge or discuss a case in court and pronouncements are made by judges all
#
of whom are uniformly almost uniformly male.
#
So women also have this feeling ki jab sunbhai nahi hogi to kehke kya faida you know so you
#
have to there has to be multi the first women who started reporting were upper caste upper
#
class women who were well educated who could who had a voice in their natal homes and who
#
could not put up with this kind of unjust.
#
The first report about Indian divorces shows that the highest rate of divorce was among
#
Brahman Maharashtrian women who also had a very high literacy rate.
#
So I think we have to be patient we have to let things like language evolve but things
#
are changing they will change and if they change for better or worse will depend very
#
much on so many other factors which are not within our control but they are changing they
#
will change but eventually it's the same cycle you know if they become you know if they become
#
heroes will they behave any differently.
#
There's a beautiful story by Vijay Dandetha about it's again based on a folk tale about
#
two women who are in love with each other and one of them is granted a boon and is able
#
to change her sex and become a male and she starts behaving like a husband so this other
#
woman then curses her and says keep become a female again.
#
So I think you don't know life is so full of paradoxes you know you very often become
#
that which you hate the most so you know in the process of hating to my that's why I find
#
hatred is a very strong emotion and one should be very very wary of it.
#
One of the last two things I'll finish this with my mother's advice to me she told me
#
that you have all the qualities but you still have a lot of anger she said don't be so angry
#
all the time everybody is tied again the chakri circle of their given temperament so they
#
are not really largely to be blamed there are circumstances in which people behave in
#
The other thing she said never be a collector of things give away all you can by the time
#
your end comes and she said you will feel so free never accumulate just give away whatever
#
you can keep the least minimum with you and you'll feel very light and that I can do easily
#
that that is easy but conquering anger since then has been a long battle with myself and
#
I think I'm a shade better than I was.
#
Very wise words by your mother and also when you said that don't become what you hate I
#
thought of how you know the current dispensation in charge people like Modi and Jaitley were
#
you know opposing the emergency running from it and you think the lesson they learn from
#
it is that autocracy is bad oppression is bad but look what happened they became what
#
I've seen this repeat so many times I mean even the Janata Party when it came to power
#
I was one of the people who sang hosannas and you know I was young in my 30s and I thought
#
you know revolution will come but then revolution also again the chakri you know the pattern
#
of civilizations you know JP rose like a colossus like a hero helped win the battle started
#
the Navnir Maan movement helped come overcome the battle and then gave the you know Raj
#
Mukut to unsuitable people and we were saddled with a chain of prime ministers who just couldn't
#
cope and so that particular thing petered out and eventually V.B. Singh retired into
#
the Vanvas, Lalu Yadav is sick and went to jail you know all the big promising names
#
and leaders who came out of that movement Chandra Shekhar died a much vilified man though
#
he was a brilliant man.
#
So history you know makes you a hero for a while and once you've done your job then history
#
As Lord Acton said power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely and you know you
#
mentioned divorce rates I remember many years back a decade and a half back I got trolled
#
a lot when I wrote this piece arguing that one of the best signs of India social progress
#
was rising divorce rates and my argument was there a damn good thing because if divorce
#
rates rise that means women are getting empowered I know we are short of time you promised me
#
two hours to begin with and we've gone well over and I'm very grateful but some final
#
questions on the media because in troubled times when politics goes in these kind of
#
directions we look at the media as a savior in a sense you know that old cliche goes about
#
how the job of a journalist is to you know speak truth to power to comfort the afflicted
#
and afflict the comfortable as it were.
#
Now I'm very curious and I would actually have to spend a few hours discussing this
#
but in vernacular media like I think all of us make sense of the world by joining dots
#
we have different dots we join them we have a picture of the world and I feel that people
#
who read in English are hobbled in the sense that they have a limited number of dots if
#
they're trying to paint a picture of India and people who read in vernacular languages
#
will have a completely separate set of dots which are not necessarily better they're just
#
different in your experience of vernacular media in what ways was it different from the
#
English media and when you went in I mean you were an editor for so long of Hindustan
#
and so on what sort of journalistic vision and ethic did you craft for yourself or take
#
into the project when you kind of went in.
#
I have always been an exception I have never unfortunately become the rule when I became
#
an editor I was in my early 40s and I became an editor of a women's magazine in Hindi the
#
expectation was that it would be a counterpart of feminine and I told them I said I'm sorry
#
I'm not kitted out to cope with beauty pageants and so on I've lived in America I know how
#
frivolous they are and therefore it will be a vicharshil mahilaon ki vishisht patre ka
#
so they said this is too thick in Hindi so I said do you read any Hindi they said no
#
so I said then who are you to judge Hindi anyway so it got going because I had good
#
backing and they trusted me to great that to their great credit and ran for four years
#
but then I realized that the marketing staff was not convinced and a lot of them had very
#
severe allergic reactions to the kind of ideas that this magazine was coming out with in
#
fact one of them told me ki har mehne jabhi vama aati hai humare ghar par to mera apni
#
bibi se jagda ho jata hai us din wo bahut excited rehti hai ki vama mein yeh lekha hai so hi
#
sir aap ghar ghar mein jagde kar rahe hain similarly there was a program at this almost
#
at the same time that I was doing for Manju and Jyot Singh and it was called it was based
#
on laws and actual cases where women had fought back and then in the end I came on and explained
#
the law that had helped women and laid down some warnings for women about using things
#
just so so I had gone to a wedding and a lot of people said ki bahut achha hai se hum goa
#
seekhne ko mil raha hai then one woman came to me she said ki aap unse kahiye ki isko
#
thodi ya to late night karein ya dopahar mein karein jab marat log ghar par nahi hota hai
#
she said theekh khaane ke waqt aata hai aur humko aamesha deri ho jati khaane lagane me
#
aur phir yeh log naraz hota hai ki tum wo adhikaar uska naam tha adhikaar ki tum phir
#
wo adhikaar dekhne baith gayi ho and this is a 40 minute ka show hai phir khaane lagane
#
me deri ho jati hai to tum unse kaho then I realized suddenly you know ki aurtaon ke
#
paas ye bhi samay nahi hai ussame and this is 80s tab se to abtak 30 saal guzar gaye
#
hain but you know they were not this and the show itself was quite successful and but you
#
know people had strong misgivings about it.
#
So Vama I left after 4 years and then I joined Star TV for a while I was with NDTV I helped
#
them set up their Hindi channel but I realized that print media was not very welcoming of
#
They had certain set images for Hindi editorial and Hindi writing and they were happy if
#
it fulfilled those but if somebody tried to bring in new ideas they were very suspicious
#
Hindi mein ye nahi chalega and this came from people who hardly ever read anything let alone
#
a newspaper hardly ever read anything but they had been convinced and then you talk
#
to advertisers and ad makers when I used to go to Bombay to shoot adhikaar I met a lot
#
of ad agency people a lot of them are family friends and they all said ki yeh luk Hindi
#
mein pull nahi hai to ab agar bata ho humi kaaron ki vighya pan nahi de sakte hain tumari
#
ussme Hindi walas don't buy cars Hindi walas don't buy expensive watches Hindi walas don't
#
buy expensive things so all you get is you know underwear banyan and you know children's
#
washing powder and detergents and stuff like that.
#
So this was the dominant discourse in all wings that really funded the media.
#
So that affected the morale of the Hindi papers when I took over Hindustan it was called Lottery
#
Its big selling point was ki ussme roos Lottery ke poori vighya pan chhapthe the aur sari
#
lotteryon ki results chhapthe the.
#
So Lottery ke jo passionate juwadi lok the wo isko zarur kharitthe the.
#
Isse tarah Santhi Times tha uska big selling point was ki it was very popular among three
#
So three wheelers shaam ki waqt unko thoda time hota tha before the office hour chaar
#
bhaji unko mil jata tha chaar se paanch ki beech me unko sheher ki khabar mil jati thi.
#
So I felt that these papers were being brought out for the wrong reasons the audience was
#
changing and I told them that you will lose your audience to English papers very soon
#
and they said we would be very happy.
#
So I said no but the fact is that 90% of the children who are being educated in government
#
schools are being educated in their mother tongue which is Hindi in the Hindi belt.
#
So the first generation literates and the second generation literates have to have access
#
to Hindi to be able to understand what is going on because government's influence on
#
their lives is far deeper than its influence on you.
#
Aap to jo angrizi ka akhbar kharit ho apki company account se 90% log ka jata hai unko
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pata bhi nahi kis ka cover price kya hai.
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Hindi wala ek ek paisa jama karke zyada tha stall buying hoti Hindi akhbaron ki because
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they want to compare and see kis mein kitni news hai, kis mein kitni humare ilake ki kitni
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So I said they are very watchful buyers so you have to give them all.
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So gradually over a period of 20 years I pushed and I pushed and I pushed and finally when
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it came there was no stopping.
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Of course other houses which had only Hindi newspapers did much better Bhaskar for example
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or Dhanik Jagran they only had Hindi newspapers but then in the process what has been also
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happening is they have all started digital portals which have far more readership and
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much more advertising available to them now and so the editorial bureaus have been paired
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Now bureaus were where the seasoned journalists sat who had been holding certain beats for
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years and years, who had right contacts, who understood the matter, who had seen governments
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come and go and you could sit and discuss with them, clarify your own thoughts.
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Bureau sab khatam ho gaye ek ek karke, bureau wale bichare sab bureaus gayaar ho gaye aur
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yeh jo naye ladke aaye un logon ke liye phir yeh excitement hai ki har cheez mein isme
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This is not sexy news, yeh nahi cheez mein sunne lagi phir 90s mein, this news has to
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So jo attitude badla usme media walaon ne jo un par pressure tha usko swikhar kar liya.
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To mujhe laga ki Hindi mein yeh kamzori hai because it has been colonized by various hordes
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for so long, it has lost its own power of discrimination and a respect for the language
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And unless that comes, there was a period when we had Hindi editors who were also well
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known writers, poets and also thinkers, people like Dharmir Bharti, people like Kamaleshwar,
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people like Agye, people like Raghuveer Sahay, people like Srikanth Verma.
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They were all highly educated, extremely well versed, Prabhas Joshi, Rajendra Mathur, these
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are people who were they were polyglots and they read so much and they knew so many languages
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and they were very discriminating assessors of political situations.
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But after TV caught on, the younger people started moving from journalism schools to
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And TV mein bhi first they moved to English, then very grudgingly they were asked to do
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two roles ki bhai Hindi mein bhi kuch kar de na.
#
That was when I was doing NDTV.
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And then after that when then big virekthu for Hindi came with Atal Bihari Vajpayee government,
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then there was a big bhagdar for Hindi.
#
But then they discovered that schools of journalism was throwing out journalists who were proficient
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So then schools of journalism like the Makhanlal Chaturvedi Patrakarita Sansthan came up.
#
But they were soon peopled by government appointed nominees with certain ideological biases.
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So you knew ki waha se jo bhi nikalenge wo sawahat ke nikalenge.
#
So Hindi has had that as I said even earlier, the unfortunate thing is that it is politically
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an extremely powerful language.
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And that has inhibited it from really developing as a language and as a thinking man's language.
#
So whatever you think sooner or later your chakri political vintage locks it in.
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And then if you are so and so then you lean right, if you are so and so you lean left.
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And that becomes itself fulfilling destiny which is sad.
#
So Hindi is immensely powerful but the power can be misused.
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I do not feel very happy at the power Hindi has got because now it has become a clone
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of what it used to whine and complain about.
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You see Hindi editors the way they go groveling and they, jaan toh Switzerland ja rahe hain
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apni bibi aur bachon ko le karke, jaayi sahab jaayi, bahut achi baat hai.
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So you know this is not what journalism should be about.
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This is what not life is about.
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But this is happening and this is life and this happens as my mother said ki subhav
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me bachta hai so you accept it as it is.
#
So two final questions and we will end it there.
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And this question is taking off from what you just said that this is not what journalism
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Aur mujhe lagta hai ki journalism mein on the one hand there is that idealism and the sense
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of what journalism can be that you know we are the first draft of history, we speak truth
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to power and all that, wo apni jaga hai.
#
But on the other hand when you look at the reality you also see that journalism is a
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business, there is a profit and loss statement to look at that a lot of journalism across
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the country actually runs on government advertising.
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Government advertising goes, aap khatam ho gaye and even where it doesn't there is still
#
a lot of pressure that can be put by the people in power because there will be houses which
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will have a big media publication but they will also have a chemical factory, wahan pe
#
income tax raid ho sakta hai, toh all of these pressures are there.
#
So what do you feel about this?
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Do you feel that media will eventually succumb to this or do you feel as I am beginning to
#
feel a little bit that there is hope in the sense that technology empowers individuals
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and even small outfits, people like scroll and news laundry and so on.
#
I agree with you because this particular kind of journalism has reached its nether, it
#
cannot go down any further and it began happening when in the 1990s late 1990s English mein
#
time, the editors began buying equity or being given equity in the papers or taking the paper
#
as owners and ussi waqt maine kaha tha ki yeh theek nahi hai, my father used to say
#
ghoda ghas dosti karega toh khayega kya, you know.
#
So if you become editor and owner together, your primary loyalty towards your readership
#
or your listeners gets diluted because then you think of the bottom line and the shareholders
#
who have invested in your company and this is not good, there were strong editors, they
#
were taking care of the papers or the channels which was true.
#
But then comes a point where you have to, if you want to, once you enter that particular
#
race, you know, it is necessary to have a firewall around the editorial, no matter
#
who the owner is and the owner should never be the editor and the editor should never
#
dream of becoming the owner because the two things just do not mesh.
#
So if you are a really good editor, you promise the owner, I will give you a first rate newspaper,
#
I will deliver so many copies and I will give you this, this, this but in turn, do not you
#
ever interfere in my domain and do not you ever question my, you know, the same thing
#
that Ganga told Shantanu, that what I am doing, I am doing for Kalyan but if you raise
#
a question, I will leave it and go.
#
And this is what, you know, the editors do not do, they just cling on and on and on,
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there are editors in Hindi, hey brother, you are still there, Mrinal ji, you left very
#
early, I did not leave, brother, I worked there for 30 years, no, no, you should not
#
leave, the days of Hindi have gone by, what is happening in Hindi, I am actually seeing
#
what is happening, you know, and I am sad about it and I am really ashamed about it.
#
I do not write for any Hindi paper except the one that I am advising but I do not write
#
for Hindi papers because the highest selling Hindi papers are now, you know, making me
#
feel very embarrassed looking at them, I buy them as a matter of course.
#
But it makes me very embarrassed about, you know, the kind of drivel that goes into them.
#
So I think the new technology may once again empower individuals.
#
But then I again feel that portals, individual porters will find it hard to sustain themselves
#
because the biggest chunk of revenues is still going to the major international portals,
#
they are the ones who are picking up, they are the ones who are giving you the anti-aircraft
#
So long as that particular thing is available with them, it is difficult for portals to
#
Individuals, yes, but then I think the way technology is going, maybe it will become
#
possible like self-publishing, who have a completely self-sustaining thing.
#
But then in that case, you have to be legally very savvy because no government likes, you
#
And so therefore, every successive government, not just this one, every government will bring
#
in laws to make it difficult to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.
#
So I think let's see how this pans out.
#
So my final question is based on an observation, Jonathan Haidt had pointed out recently that
#
even though today's generation has the whole world of knowledge at its disposal, like
#
humare time me jo bhi kitabe mil jate the we were glad to read it, but today, all of
#
history is open to you, all of literature is open to you, but most people are consuming
#
what was produced in the last three days, most content that is consumed was produced
#
in the last three days.
#
And there is thus a danger here that people today, young people today are not getting
#
enough of that broad perspective, which can help them get a little bit of that sense of
#
how to navigate the world.
#
So as someone who's older than India, you know, what advice would you give to the young
#
listeners of the show to young people today who are listening to this?
#
What advice would you give them on how to live their lives?
#
I would say that, A, they must learn as many languages as they can.
#
They open the portals to so many wonderful worlds and B, the attention span, they have
#
to like they do yoga to stay fit.
#
They have to do some mental yoga to increase their attention span.
#
Just as yogic breathing increases your breath, you can increase your attention span.
#
When that happens, you can still watch your digital news, but you can also then begin
#
reading in the true sense, read digitally, there is no harm you read on Kindle, whether
#
you read it in books, whatever you are comfortable with.
#
But do read and then pause to think, I am a great Facebook opponent, I have never been
#
on Facebook despite many pressures, because I find that Facebook for heaven's sake was
#
invented by Howard Sophomore, you know, who wanted all the attention and who wanted data
#
and who wanted, you know, to again create another chakra area in which people were locked
#
and their own walls then became their worlds.
#
And we have to knock that down, we have to detox ourselves and we have to stop thinking
#
so narrowly in the constricted manner in which we have to make human friends, you know, not
#
Facebook friends, those friendships are not really friendships, you just want cliques
#
of likes and dislikes, you have to rise above that, you have to think I am not going to
#
bother about being liked or not liked, I mean, when my generation rebelled against so many
#
institutions, at one point you said, yaar, koi farakh nahi padta hai, jute maane toh
#
maane toh, hum toh karenge, you know, so you have come to a point where you have to do
#
that, ki Facebook ke friends root jaaye toh root jaaye, ek million ki following chali
#
jaaye toh chali jaaye, lekin hum toh gyan badhahenge, apna gyan badhahenge, so that
#
is really real growth, this is stunting your growth, this is making you into intellectual
#
bonsais, the nerds are intellectual bonsais, cut off from fresh air, cut off from everything
#
and unfortunately COVID has exacerbated that, I think we have to make a conscious effort
#
even if it kills us to break out of this, to detox ourselves and let these intoxicating
#
portals carry on without us, we are not essential to them, they are just using us for our data,
#
you are better than your data, you are not what your data is, that data which the companies
#
use is kind of excreta, you are better than your data, you have to be better than your
#
data and you have to let that part of you grow which is not data.
#
There is such a beautiful line, you are better than your data, sirf ek cheez ma'am ma'am
#
point out karunga, ki aap kere the short attention span, we are saying this in the third hour,
#
we have reached the third hour of the show, so anyone who is listening to this clearly
#
doesn't quite have that problem but it's great advice and thank you so much for coming on
#
my show, it's a great honour for me, it's a great talking to you, thank you, thank you
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hop on over to your nearest book store online
#
or offline and pick up everything you can get by Mrinal Pandey, such an insightful writer,
#
you can follow Mrinal ji on twitter at Mrinal Pandey 1 and you can follow me at Amit Verma,
#
A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A, you can browse past episodes of the Seen and the Unseen at www.seenunseen.in,
#
thank you for listening.
#
Did you enjoy this episode of the Seen and the Unseen?
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You can go over to www.seenunseen.in slash support and contribute any amount you like
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