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What does it mean to be a creator? At one point in my life, I used to define this term
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narrowly as many people still do. A creator was someone who created some kind of art or
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entertainment, a book, a film, a song. As I became part of the online creator economy,
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I broadened this definition. Anyone who created any way to transfer their knowledge or insights
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to another was also a creator. So if you teach an online course, as I do, you are part of
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the creator economy. But you can think a little further and broaden the definition even more.
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We are all creative and use our creativity in different ways. Maybe we use it not to
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create art ourselves, but to create or improve an ecosystem where artists can create and
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reach audiences with greater ease. That's also a way of creating value. And in a sense,
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we are all creators of ourselves. Through our lives, we are shaped by many forces, but
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we can also take a step back, introspect and take charge of that shaping. Maybe we can,
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at least to some extent, be our own creation. Maybe we can be intentional about who we are
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and curate ourselves. Do you do that? Are you a creator like that?
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Welcome to The Scene in the Unseen. My guest today is Meeta Kapoor, who started as a journalist,
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became a writer, started organizing events. In fact, she started the Jaipur Literary Festival
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and she now heads a literary agency called CIE. She also administers the JCB Prize for Literature
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and we first interacted when she asked me to be a judge for that a year ago and I cast aside my
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laziness for once and agreed. My good friend Prem Panikkar was a fellow jury member and I went on
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to do episodes with two other jury members as well, Sarah Rai and Annapurna Garimela. We were the
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best jury ever. Anyway, back to Meeta. I find it hard to describe her simply because she wears so
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many hats and every project of hers is a labor of love. Her literary agency, the festivals she
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organizes, the prize she administers and the book she has edited and written. I particularly enjoyed
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reading The F Word, a book about food that is also a bit of a memoir. I knew I'd have an interesting
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conversation with her when we finally recorded together as she's had such a rich life but I was
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blown away by the rawness and the insights. I will cherish this episode so do listen but before that
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let's take a quick commercial break. Have you always wanted to be a writer but never quite gotten
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down to it? Well, I'd love to help you. Since April 2020, I've enjoyed teaching 27 cohorts of my online
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course, The Art of Clear Writing and an online community has now sprung up of all my past students.
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We have workshops, a newsletter to showcase the work of students and vibrant community interaction.
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In the course itself, through four webinars spread over four weekends, I share all I know about the
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craft and practice of clear writing. There are many exercises, much interaction and a lovely
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and lively community at the end of it. The course costs rupees 10,000 plus GST or about 150 dollars.
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If you're interested, head on over to register at indiaankar.com slash clear writing. That's
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indiaankar.com slash clear writing. Being a good writer doesn't require God-given talent, just a
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willingness to work hard and a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills. I can help you.
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Meeta, welcome to the scene and the unseen. I am so thrilled, Amit. Thank you. Like, I feel like
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I have known you for many, many years, right? And we're old friends and that's obviously not
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the case just to let the listeners in on to how I know Meeta. I of course knew off Meeta for a while
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but last year I was asked to be part of the jury of a prize which she administers called the JCB
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Literary Prize and I was part of the jury and all our interactions were online except for the award
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ceremony where I met her for the first time. But somehow I think not just with you but all the other
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judges. I knew Prem Panikkar from before of course but Sarah Rai and Anna Punna have since
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come on my show also and that's where I met them. And there is this sort of very interesting thing
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that happens with online friendships that some online friendships even when you never meet the
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person you just feel that you know that that your friends that you know you can just meet each other
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and you're straight away in a comfortable groove. There's no awkwardness, no first time jitters.
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That's very true that's how I felt with all five of you in fact and with you especially
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because we just met for that one evening less than 24 hours. But I think the weekly interactions
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that we had were intimate at another level like we were all speaking our minds even though we were
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talking books, sorry correction you were all speaking your minds I was listening but in that
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listening I think I just came to know all of you and your sensitivities, how you reacted as artists,
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how committed each one was. So you you come to know the person right so the comfort zone
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that you're talking about. Yeah and that was really and also the faith the faith and the
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trust that developed over those weeks. I don't think that's changing anytime. No and now that
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you mention it I haven't thought about it before but that act and what really happened again for
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the benefit of the listeners is right the five of us jury people would have to read 10 books a week
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and discuss them or x number of books a week and discuss them in our weekly zoom call and as the
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administrator of the prize you would just you'd be there you'd be silent you wouldn't voice your
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opinion at any point but you know we and just that act like how we relate to literature all of us is
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very personal right every every book evokes something within us so to see the different
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personal reactions of the five people also reveal something of them to you like when I talk about a
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book and I say why why it didn't speak to me or why it did speak to me you know that kind of sort
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of tells you a lot about the person and do you feel that there is at some level a fundamental
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difference between a reader and a non-reader? You know there there is a difference and it's
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far more nuanced and then just calling somebody a reader and a non-reader there can be various
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types of readers and various types of non-readers when I say non-reader obviously one one thought
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that comes to your mind is that oh this person doesn't read books at all and I'm not talking
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about that person I'm talking about a non-reader of maybe a particular kind of thought in a
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particular book or a non-reader of a certain genre or you know so I'm talking about those people
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so amongst us there is a reader and there is also a non-reader because obviously everybody
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can't read all sorts of books you know you have your own natural tendencies your own likes and
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dislikes but there is fundamentally a huge difference between a non-reader and a reader
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in my eyes a non-reader
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gets limited to a particular extent and being a non-reader maybe you collect your wisdom
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in many other ways so I won't disrespect a non-reader ever I'll just try and search
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more within his or her persona and see what is it that makes this character up
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it intrigues me then and I'm not dismissive that sense yeah I'm not dismissive either and
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that's an interesting nuance about how some non-readers get their knowledge of the world
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and they're sort of they're take the imaginative flights through other media I think at one time
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where there were only books I would have said that there is a huge difference because a reader is
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living the lives of others entering their minds that automatically makes you more open more
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empathetic in theory and I'm sure some terrible people have been readers as well but you know
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all of that and if you're not reading you're just living your one limited life doing your thing and
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not opening yourself up to a lot more but today I guess you can get a lot of your experience of
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the world through movies through web series through other media and there's sort of a lot to be set
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for that and like I remember our mutual friend Kartika I did an episode with her a long time
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back I think it was episode 149 or something like that 150 around that time and I remember
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there she spoke about something that various people have spoken about at various times that
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it isn't that less people read today right now the number of readers today is perhaps the same
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in percentage terms as it ever was you know and and therefore the books keep selling and so on
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and so forth and I wonder a do you agree with that and b would there be a sort of a case like
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why would that be is it that that innate curiosity and capacity to read that curiosity and capacity
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to read is something innate which a fixed percentage of people will always have or is
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it just a question of access that you and I were lucky enough to grow up in homes where there were
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books around us so we end up being readers and many people who could otherwise have been readers
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don't have that access so you know what are sort of your thoughts on so I'll answer this in two
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parts I mean the thing is I agree with Kartika that the percentage increase is there statistically
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more population obviously will equal to more readers because percentage wise you're growing
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in proportion right and my intrinsic belief is that we are as a species rooted in storytelling
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we can't survive without storytelling we have to it is one of the reasons why we've survived
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so you can't go away from stories and literature whether it's the printed word whether it's heard
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oral traditions whether it's transmitted from generation to generation from household to
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household within family setups so that way yes the percentage will not go down books will never
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stop being printed we will continue to read as a race it's not going anywhere come whatever kind
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of technology come AI whatever else you can talk about we can measure our lives and algorithms
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but we will still go back to T.S. Eliot and still read Proof Rock and still measure our lives in
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coffee cups that notion will never leave I think the other person on the road may not realize and
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may not have read Eliot but I'm just saying that metaphor kind of just goes on it's perennial
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uh the other thing is of access I agree with you access is I think one of the conducive elements
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to making us into readers you know a lot of people say oh I read I read on my phone I
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read on Instagram now that's another definition of a reader you as I said you can't be dismissive
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of that right so yeah um but I just wish I am still a purist I still want people
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I it gives me so much joy if I'm entering a flight and I see at least a few people with a
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book in their hand or with a Kindle you know who are reading I don't get to see that too much in
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India but when at least I'm traveling elsewhere I see that more often or when I see a crowd at a
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AH Wheeler at a railway station which is becoming very rare now but if I see even four people
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that faith just keeps getting renewed you know and now you're listening to podcasts you're
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listening to audio books so like my daughter doesn't have the time to read so when she's
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negotiating traffic in Bombay she's listening to audio books yeah in fact in the writing course
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I teach you know students will sometimes ask what about audio books and you know should we listen
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to them and my thing is that you can't compare audio books to printed books because the use case
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is completely different many of us in our busy lives may not have the time to sit down for an
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hour with a physical book and actually read it or with a Kindle and actually read it but when you
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are commuting when you're working out you can listen to an audio book people typically listen
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at higher speeds than they read we you know double speed and so on our brain can comprehend
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words at 500 word words a minute so you know that's fantastic and there are many other forms of
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storytelling that are around us today like A of course you're absolutely right that you know we
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make sense of the world through stories the world is deeply complex we tell ourselves stories about
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it when we know very little those stories are primitive that there is a sun because there is
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a sun god the sun goes around the earth and as we know more you know we tell better stories but
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always every story that we tell is you know conveys just a part of the truth and I you know I
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evangelize reading by talking about how we form a picture of the world by joining dots and the more
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dots we have the more high definition our picture will be and the best way to get more and more
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dots is to build a reading habit to read all the time or listening to podcast habits or whatever
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the case kind of might be and one lament of mine perhaps today in modern times and perhaps it's
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just more visible but it was always like this is that you know so many of these pictures of the
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world and the simple stories that we tell ourselves are pixelated they're incomplete
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they're simplistic they're wrong they're held by people who don't actually read books and
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that's a huge problem of our times and you know what are sort of your thoughts on it because
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the community that you would mingle with and be part of all the time would be a self-selected
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community of people like you and me who are reading all the time who are doing all of that
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you know does it bother you to kind of look around and see people who look at the world
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in a different way and some of that difference not all of that difference you know some of those
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differences might also come from you know they're being them being right about things that we are
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wrong about but some of that difference is definitely from the fact that they're not
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readers like to me this is like really important reading is sacred you know and I'm involving in
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that category of reading and immersion in any kind of deep storytelling so if you're watching
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the wire or breaking bad instead of reading a book that's perfectly fine those are complex narratives
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with you know nuanced characters but what are sort of your thoughts on this and does it then
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divide and and there are many divisions in the world that we can talk about the elites and the
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non-elites but is does readers and non-readers become another kind of and I'm sorry if I'm being
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a little incoherent because this is not a planned question at all it just came up as we speak again
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it's not a simplistic question to answer because as I said in my earlier response that I will not
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dismiss a non-reader but do I view that non-reader with a kind of a question mark in my head yes I do
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Well if I'm among my community of writers and readers I know that their sensibilities will be
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attuned to understanding complexities of a narrative or of a character and I'm talking
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about real life situations here not just bookish situations where imagination also comes into play
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but here will their imagination be chiseled enough and refined enough to catch those hidden
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points the dots that you are talking about that really clearly define a higher definition picture
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so a reader will be able to do that because that reader has been armed by so many worlds that she
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has explored within the so many books that she has read right whereas a non-reader is probably
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hardened by everyday experiences of life and that is what that is the wisdom I was talking about
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which is why I said I will not be dismissive but I also always will approach that non-reader to be
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very honest with a question mark
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how well is how well oiled is his imagination where is he going to negotiate the space of
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where there are so many complexities a human nature is itself so complex and nuanced and we
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are evolving every few minutes if I may say so how how perceptive is that person just because
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he has not been exposed to the world of books now that remains a question mark even so when
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somebody asked me oh I need to buy a birthday present and my first reaction is still
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buy that person a book oh but he doesn't read I said I don't care expose him so I am with you on
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that reading is sacred to me I am as I said I'm still a purist and I still want to see people
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reading and I just it just is so joyous when I see kids of today's time actually immersed in a book
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so you know you're probably sitting on a fence and you're trying to
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be accepting of both kinds of people because there are all kinds of people that make up our lives
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right but a reader definitely sits higher in my perception still yeah and I and I think we both
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be on the same page about about the importance of access and luck and privilege and all of this and
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another reason to not be judgmental like my good friend Ajay Shah and I were you know discussing
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something one day and I don't want to I want to do justice to his thoughts so I will let him
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elaborate upon them at some point in time one of them was that privilege goes deep in ways that
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sometimes we don't even realize and we sell a dream that you know we use a word like meritocracy
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and behave as if it is accessible to everyone when that might be a bit of a lie and what he
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precisely meant was that if you grow up in a certain kind of family in a certain kind of
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intellectual environment as a kid you have that sort of leisure time and the ability to take a
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step back and look at the world a little differently with reading being one of those things whereas if
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you're in a different kind of family even if you get those same opportunities you're the way you
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think about the world is more limited and goal-directed was a phrase he used that struck me
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so you think it's okay IIT will do this for him, IIM will do this for him,
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will become vice president in city bank will do that for him and you go through a step of things
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that are goal-directed and you achieve all of them but there's something missing and if you
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realize that there is something missing it makes you resentful of those who naturally were lucky
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enough to not have that element missing in their lives or sometimes you just don't realize it and
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this is sheer dumb luck it is sheer dumb luck and there's you know I mean it's you know and
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and to someone like that if you've made your life through the meritocracy you've cracked the IIT
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exam you've gotten to IIMA or you've done your MBA somewhere abroad you work in a big bank
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you earn a bomb you think at some level that you've made it but there is still that difference
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perhaps that ability to take a step back that tariff that has been denied to you for no fault
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of your own so again a thought that I'm kind of throwing out there and perhaps ineptly and
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one day I'll ask Ajay to elaborate upon it but because it contains just a lot of other
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thoughts about you know the role that luck plays in our lives you know or maybe this
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person who hasn't had this kind of luck will just look at us readers and say
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and I'll connect it back to what you're saying is that he doesn't know any better because he has
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not been exposed to that world of books and reading or storytelling in any form it can be
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looked at both ways you know so and there I also want to bring up the point that three generations
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back there were especially women who didn't have access to education who were denied the luck of
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having to read books but they brought up their children with such wisdom that they turned out
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to be fantastic solid generations but they were also fed on some form of storytelling
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right so it's it's not a very simple situation to gauge and answer which is why I said I'm not
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going to be dismissive of a non-reader but yeah now that you're making me think about it privilege
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access meritocracy all of these are very big words and sometimes we misuse our privilege also
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so that sense of responsibility how much of us are exercising judiciously vis-a-vis a person who
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does not read who does not believe in books in of any form we are talking mediums now
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I don't know it's it's not a very easy question to answer and my effort individually because of my
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work and because I write also and I'm dealing with books all the time is to always always
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encourage people to read I've literally just converted an 83-year-old woman who stopped
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reading for 20 years she's back into reading in a big way which is just for me it's a win
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so I'm talking about real life practical experience here if you can convert people into reading
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I think that is what we need to achieve you know even if there are many non-readers out
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there we have to constantly keep exposing them making that effort hey why don't you try it
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let's not thrust it down their throats and say oh you're a non-achiever even in spite of having
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a bank job and but you don't read let's just approach it the other way and be on a mission
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and say you know I was reading this beautiful book and this is what they said and this is what
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happened and you you instill in them that fire that I also want to read that story
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can we do that can we do that more and more and more maybe we'll get a lot of maybe even five
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non-readers in the next one we convert into reading that one book we opened up a new world
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to them and why not and one of the sort of ways in which we misuse our privilege as readers
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is when we sometimes get snobbish about books like that really irritates me where
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readers will say oh what garbage are you reading this is an airport bestseller why are you reading
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chetan bhagat or whatever the case might be and what I am always at pains to point out to my
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writing students and anyone who asks is that don't have a hierarchy of books in your head that these
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are the kind of books that I must read and these are the kind of books that at best are guilty
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pleasures no if you read anything it's great read what gives you joy read what you enjoy reading
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don't overthink it you know don't throw good money after bad like good time after bad and
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you know just because you've started a book and you're not enjoying it you force yourself to
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finish it because there are after all a really limited number of books you will read in your
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lifetime I think nilanjana had once done a calculation for her financial times column
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on how many books we will read in our life and for her of course it's a lot more than it
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would be for someone like me but uh moving on from there let's kind of go to uh biography now
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I was quite happy no no we'll we'll we'll come back we will take rambles and digressions wherever
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we feel like taking rambles and digressions talking books is something I love so I can
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keep going back to it but you know before we take that digression actually let me ask you a question
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you said that if we can even introduce five people to reading that's a tremendous achievement
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because in a sense you've changed their lives if you had to introduce someone to reading like there
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are plenty of people who say that I only read non-fiction you know it's again goal-directed
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information is there I need that information I don't read fiction people actually say it with
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a lot of pride but assuming that someone says that but is otherwise open and they're willing
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to engage what are the books that you'd recommend that they start with that you feel would not be
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too intimidating but at the same time would you know give them that joy that draws them in further
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oh well again complicated because I have to see what age what gender what is the context
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assume enthusiastic 19 year old so basically more or less the worst the worst okay no no I'm just
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kidding uh no no no in fact they're like sponges the best you consider yourself 19 don't you
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I am how much more than I am two and a half times that much but okay I'm not good at math
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so let's just leave it at that I'd like to know what their interests are but if they haven't read
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at all that's a difficult question to answer but maybe if it's a 19 year old boy who is watching
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a lot of fantasy on television or is completely hooked then I'd probably just say okay if you
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haven't read Harry Potter just go read because I know that will get them hooked
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or read the the Twilight series or something you know I'd even suggest Rick Riordan although
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I'd even suggest Rick Riordan although Rick Riordan is something we read when we were we
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are 12 or 13 or something but then as an introduction just to fascinate them into that
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world so I'd always like to get the context and know the person and then suggest but definitely
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would be like this 80 plus above woman who used to read earlier has read in the literature as a
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student I just suggested one day she was going through a bad time and I said why don't you just
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pick up a mills and boon and read what's the problem she got so chuffed and she ordered
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mills and boon all pirated copies can you imagine I was so aghast but serves you right I know but
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anyway I kind of made her understand that okay you know what this is how pirated book will look like
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don't order from here I'll get them for you blah blah blah but now the last book she was reading
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was Akshay Mukul's Aghia writer rebel soldier that's a journey so anything anything goes you
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just have to see the person and suggest so tell me about your journey and I guess if we talk about
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your journey it would have books near the very start of it as well because you've been a reader
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where were you born what was your early childhood like
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well I was born as the youngest child two elder sisters who were already confirmed readers
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we were surrounded by lots of medical books thick tomes because my mom's a doctor
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and my father always wanted to be a doctor but didn't pass the exam so
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that was funny but yeah that's how I grew up so I remember reading the proverbial Enid Blyton's
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but I started reading very very early like I was four four and a half is what I'm told when I
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picked up my first Enid Blyton's and not the naughty variety I went straight to the
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which was that St Clares St Clares and then Mallory Towers and I had probably just finished
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almost all of those by the time I was eightish or something and I was on to Nancy Drew's and
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which was that famous five and all of those things by the time I was 10 11 I was done with those
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where was this this was in Jaipur we were growing up I was studying at MGD school
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on all girls school but we had teachers who just encouraged us to read read read all the time
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and yes you went through all the fairy tales and all of that got into reading heavier stuff pretty
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quickly in life not understanding it because my sister was eight years elder so we had you know
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grown up books already there in like very accessible to me so whether it was Arthur Haley or whether
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it was Nathalie Hawthorne or whether it was Elliot or whether it was Leon Urie at that time
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who was that guy who wrote wheels Alex I'm forgetting the name now anyway those were
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the best-selling books of that time so one picked up I think and there was never a time when my
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sisters were eight and five years elder to me ever told me that you're not meant to be reading
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this book because you're not grown up enough I didn't hear that phrase in my entire childhood
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in my teenage years we were not barred from women's and boons were lying around openly in
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our house all sorts of harrell robbins chase everything none of us were my parents never told
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us that you know this has a lot of sex in it so you can't read so we just read and played a lot
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on the streets so a lot of outdoor activity was always like my mother was a workaholic you know
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and so was my dad so we were never told and we were also living in safer time so it was a very
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freewheeling happy childhood a lot of good food a lot of travel a lot of books
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so we just grew up like that were your parents different from other parents in the sense that
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with your mother being a doctor and a workaholic and your father presumably being you know a
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supportive husband but not himself a doctor like you said he failed the exam I would imagine
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therefore and and the fact that they're letting you read anything they're not asking you to come
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back before dark I'd imagine that therefore that automatically means that your upbringing
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is like an outlier upbringing it's very different from other kids your age
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you know would that be the case or is that something you kind of saw at the time
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tell me a bit about your parents what were they like what was your mom like
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mom was a hitler she's a Virgo anal perfectionist even with single pleat of her start saree won't
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be out of place when she left for the hospital she did her MD after I was born by the way
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oh after having three kids after having three kids and she switched from being a gynae to a
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pediatrician and she was a gold medalist and my father was in insurance when he couldn't pass the
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exam that is one regret that he always had but then he was very happy and very proud of his wife
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and they had a love marriage way back in 57 wow with which matter with a lot of opposition
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because my mom was a sindhi I was unheard of at that time they eloped got married
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came and told the family nobody spoke to them for a few months and they all came around
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and my mom actually gave up a lot you know of her sindhi identity because of the conservatism in the
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family and all of that which is I think she still lives with that regret but she's okay with it now
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I mean high time she's 90 now but yeah we they were very different as parents
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three daughters no son they held off that pressure of going on giving birth to more
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and more kids because my father never ever regretted not having her son I think that was
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itself in itself it was just it was never a part of our lives
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whereas we were growing up in a very conservative Jaipur where
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girls didn't wear pants forget about sleeveless and I was roaming around in bikini straps ever
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since I became a teenager I couldn't care my mother never stopped me my dad never said anything
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so that's how we grew up and we knew we were growing up differently
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we knew that we we were told to just be ourselves follow our dreams speak our minds
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and we did get a reputation because of that because you know how small towns can get
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yeah and so yeah our upbringing was very very not restricted in terms of gender
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that the social conditioning was that yes we must get married was there that much social
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conditioning I think the entire society at that time had and we also grew up with the thing
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that yes we have to get married and yeah so we went through that as well and we have to get married
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we have to have kids that is one thing I think we gave into which right now when I look back
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and say given where our lives are but yes we were as your question is that we were very very aware
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that we as three of us sisters were very privileged in terms of the kind of childhood we had because we
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saw our cousins going through a completely different story altogether and even things like
#
you have your period you can't enter the room that has the Mandir I've seen my cousins go
#
through that and I used to just look at them and say what I've never heard of this my mom's never
#
told me she said oh you're going to the Mandir but you're down I said so how does that matter
#
it's a natural phenomenon but that's what was explained to me that is absolutely scientific
#
scientific so there's nothing to be ashamed about it's not a stigma and like in the middle of the
#
night if I ran out of sanitary pads I used to wake up my dad and say papa ja ke leke rau
#
and that's how we grew up so if I see something else happening I am revolted disgusted
#
and I still see it happening
#
so I've had a I think yeah you're making me really more and more grateful as I'm speaking
#
and realizing oh my god it was a beautiful time a bunch of things I want to double click on
#
first is an observation that first struck me when I did an episode with Kavita Rao on Lady
#
Doctors her book is called Lady Doctors about women who became doctors in the 19th century
#
gives me goosebumps to think about some of those stories and one of the things
#
and one of the things I realized while reading that is that if you were a man who became a
#
doctor in the 19th century in India it was largely a question of luck and privilege and
#
right place right time and all of that it didn't mean you were anything outstanding
#
if you were a woman who became a doctor in 19th century India it doesn't matter how lucky you
#
got the bottom line is you are extraordinary just by dint of making it that far you were
#
extraordinary period and I'm connecting this to something that we were talking about before the
#
episode began and something that I've explored with various uh you know feminists who've come
#
on the show about how you know it is the the easy way out is to learn feminism by just reading
#
books and you know which are written by white authors American authors you read about what's
#
happening there you adopt those frames and all of that but that's a necessarily simplistic
#
understanding if you're in India you have to place yourself within the lived realities
#
and the constraints and circumstances of Indian women the circumstances the constraints of
#
place the constraints of time all of those constraints and then see where it takes you
#
and one phrase I don't remember which of us came up with it but one phrase that came up in an
#
episode I did with Mukulika Banerjee was lived feminism yeah she was talking about a mother who
#
sounds just like your but your mother and uh and if you just look at the bare biographical
#
details there are a lot of things which don't seem particularly spectacular you know if you
#
look at it from a 21st century point of view but in that time like you know taking a tonga and
#
going from one city to the other which I think a mother did with a couple of uh female friends
#
and stuff like that in that time you are you know broadly not you can't throw away certain
#
constraints but within that you are doing all that you can in so can you tell me a little bit
#
about this obviously in your mother's context but also other contexts through your life of the
#
different kind of lived feminisms that often go unseen yeah which is why I think the discussion
#
we had before we started recording when I was telling you that we can't just adopt feminist
#
theory just because it sounds so glorious in those pages the lived feminism is the actual real
#
day-to-day gritty realities of how we are negotiating that space within the system that
#
we've been given is the actual strength of that individual and I'm saying the word individual
#
because I mean it in that sense and not as gender defining and in my mother's case specifically
#
hers is a very interesting story she grew up in the Philippines
#
her father was a businessman very cushy life beautiful house you call the I mean whatever
#
kind of artifacts and everything luxurious and then he was involved with the Subhash Chandra Bose's
#
movement very trusted man and one fine day he didn't come back home when the Japs attacked
#
Philippines and my nanny who was all of four feet five inches or something or maybe less
#
around that time and so many children so two of my uncles and three or four of these sisters
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she made them just wear chappals and made them put on like layers of clothes you know that's what
#
my mom told me and they ran in the darkness in the fields to escape the Japs and everything
#
reached a safe space in those days without mobile phones without whatever my nanny managed to
#
contact her brother who was in Jodhpur and this was around the time when partition was happening
#
here and they managed to kind of make it to India landed up in Jodhpur mommy was always very inclined
#
towards medicine so they kind of she took admission in Jodhpur medical college and before
#
that they were studying in some other college where she met dad so that's how their love story
#
began and he was a real hero I'm told you know he was very well turned out dressed very pink
#
rose nice shirt and all of that but didn't come from a very privileged background by the way
#
even if I'm making him sound like that but that's how their love affair grew
#
and she was like a hundred percenter in all her subjects like if she got half a mark less it
#
would be a matter of like defeat and this was not instilled by any parental pressure this was just
#
herself and then she moved to Jaipur did her medicine here they got married lived separately
#
in the whole in-law space where there were three elder brothers to my three other brothers to my
#
father and their wives who were not educated in the beginning they all did their MA's after they
#
got married and had children but mommy was the only professional working woman married into
#
married into a family where my grandmother was a ruling matriarch and very conservative
#
so that kind of used to happen in that household but mommy she was excused
#
you know but again after a little bit of negotiating that space
#
so she went through all of that but then there were other restrictions
#
there was always that taunting culture you know which was rampant in those days
#
she went through all of that but the fact that she's a doctor and she saved everyone's lives
#
at some stage or the other within the family and their children's lives I think everyone in their
#
extended family still respects mommy for what she did as a person as a human being you know she was
#
always there for everyone in spite of whatever would have happened in the back so that's how
#
we grew up learning to be strong to be independent to negotiate spaces to sometimes fight
#
and throw tantrums and throw hissy fits and get what you want if you know that you are right
#
in your asking for what you're asking if you have that much faith and courage of conviction go for
#
it so we saw her in all sorts of roles and we saw our father also negotiating that space you know
#
being the head of the family with his brothers there were certain restrictions they were trying
#
to impose and all of that but I think we came out just fine but mommy stood her ground a lot
#
she really I remember one conversation I overheard we were in our rooms supposedly sleeping and they
#
were trying to figure out their taxes and she realized that papa had put a sum of her income
#
as a doctor into a fixed deposit he had this mania very typical of that generation
#
I still remember that sentence of hers
#
that has stuck in my head forever and I use it to my husband don't you ask me
#
so those are the things we learned and yeah so mom negotiating her space she was almost among
#
the first few women drivers in the city she had this imported herald hugely reckless driver would
#
drive at some speed but the roads those days allowed it also so everybody recognized her
#
and we had people turning up at all times at home saying you know touching her feet and saying
#
there are lots of doctors today who I just have to say I'm Dr. Kakar's daughter
#
there's a ma'am she's turning 90
#
so and then of course after she retired my father used to say clinic kholo paisa kamalo
#
kitna government service kiya hai karlo she went and joined the red cross did her charity work
#
went and joined the mobile service went for medical camps lived in the rural areas with no
#
facilities traveled in the same mobile buses you know those not luxurious ones with the
#
rest of her team for 10 10 days across villages doing these free camps and all of that
#
and still came back and ran her house made sure we got our meals in time
#
and all of that I mean I don't ever remember just because my mother's a working woman
#
and my father's also working late that I haven't come back to a hot lunch or hot
#
we always had hot snacks at 4 30 sharp straight from school and every day the menu would change
#
so we've also learned to juggle everything and for us it's not like a big deal we just know how to do
#
it you know when everybody says oh it's not multitasking are you your choice you want to
#
do it do it if you don't want to do it don't do it but do it with ease so yes mom did yeah she did
#
a lot the great australian all-rounder keith miller who had served in the second world war he was
#
once asked by the journalist michael parkinson about pressure in cricket that when do you feel
#
pressure in cricket and miller had of course fought in the second world war and he said pressure
#
is a messerschmitt that's a german plane pressure is a messerschmitt up your ass
#
playing cricket is not right and I got reminded of this because when I think of your mother as
#
a little girl having to run through the fields in the darkness with extra layers of clothing to get
#
away from the jabs knowing that at any moment everything could end I think when you go through
#
that of course you're strong at the end of it you know that's part of the thought that strikes me
#
that then what is there then what will life throw at you you know you've been you you've kind of
#
come through that and the other thing that also strikes me is that strength is not always just
#
about circumstance but perhaps you just imbibe it organically from what's around you like in your
#
book you write about how your elder sister nita was almost precociously adult in the sense that
#
she would take responsibility and just form up in ways that perhaps she would not ever have been
#
taught to explicitly but it's just that you take that role when the time comes yeah you stand up
#
and you you know you get the job done yeah and I guess a lot of strength must just come from
#
being in that environment what also strikes me is that your father also then must have been a
#
very interesting man because for your mom to feel that she could say to him don't touch my money
#
you know it itself says a lot about him that he you know many men of that generation would not
#
allow a woman to speak to them like that right yeah in those kind of conventional patriarchal
#
setups yeah yeah no he was he was actually incidentally he didn't become a doctor but he
#
was a gold medalist he wrote a couple of books as a zoologist yeah we don't have any idea why
#
those books are oh shit you don't know none of us had that kind of he lost the contracts and
#
everything way back so and we don't I think my sister may have a copy or something I haven't
#
seen it in a long time but he was very very committed to his job he was working for that
#
time insurance wasn't privatized he was working for the bidlers but he would treat the company
#
as his own his faithfulness his loyalty his long hours like I remember somebody telling him
#
as a child I remember somebody one of his friends telling him
#
you work in such a way that you are your own company he said yes but I like my work
#
so he would still come home at eight eight thirty every night and tour and travel and all of that
#
so we grew up just watching both of them have such a strong work ethic and as parents you know they
#
were very family oriented they never socialized to a beyond a point there was like this rampant
#
local club culture in Jaipur I don't remember mom and pop going out so much I mean we did have
#
a close group of friends they would come over we'd go over all of that and had a huge extended
#
family in any case it was a party all the time everybody's in and out of each other's houses
#
but it was like at the end of the day he definitely they both talked to us
#
so that kind of quality time spending with the family was like a part of our routine
#
with us winding down whether it's winters then mom would do hot chocolate that time with marshmallows
#
because we knew we had some ways of getting them into India so we grew up like that
#
and also we all of that but the nightly ritual was that and I still remember papa would come
#
into the mandir was in my room so he'd come in to you know kind of switch off the light and
#
so he would always come in and kind of one of his two three smart lines he had a very
#
wacky sense of humor so my middle sister was always in trouble so he would call her and he
#
was her I think she was his favorite and none of us minded it by the way that's how
#
equanimous our upbringing was that so her pet name was Guddu and he would say Guddu
#
Mati Ka Madho is basically Tum Krishan Bhagwano Mati Ke Bane Ve Koi Marega Toh
#
Koot Jauge this is all very Jodhpur lingo you know he grew up in Jodhpur and he would just say
#
or something like that and all of us would laugh he'd come and pinch my arm
#
he'd say something to my elder sister and march off it was very normal for us and we'd all giggle
#
and laugh and just go off to sleep read again reading always so papa was that way yes always
#
committed he'd make sure I still remember as a child I used to hate tying my shoelaces so I used
#
to go up to him and say papa mere jute ka lace bandhu he'd make sure achha tiff you know naasthe
#
ka tiffin hai pot a bottle rakhi hai nahi rakhi drop us to school and come or come and pick us up if
#
he had the time you know because mom never had he she was on duty but we always had cars and
#
drivers so that was it but he would always be very very particular I think and he did face a lot of
#
pressure because the other people in the family in the extended family weren't that broad-minded
#
and I still hold him responsible for a few things and since we are talking honestly
#
my elder sister wanted to become an architect
#
his elder brother persuaded him nahi, ladki hai mat allow karo, pata nahi wo kyu unhone suna
#
you know that is so there are things that I don't I also hold things against him
#
that why why did he do that because she was brilliant and still is I would say
#
kuch decisions life mein galat hote hain so kuch wo decisions unhone bhi galat liye
#
but overall I think he did a fine job no he sounds like an amazing man and
#
I know someone in this day and age an acquaintance of mine who has a couple of daughters who are
#
going to college and in that college age and one of them is in engineering and the other
#
one wants to do design and he doesn't want her to do design he's forcing her into the
#
engineering path and he's saying ki and the arguments are ludicrous but the arguments are
#
from 50 60 years ago and they were wrong even then of course but those arguments are just wrong so
#
that kind of mindset is sort of just so prevalent and makes me so angry because if somebody is
#
drawn towards something and they want to do that you are just you know affecting their life so
#
harshly by not allowing them when you speak about his work ethic that he treated his company like
#
his own company and I've gotten to thinking like I think about how my dad lived his life he was an
#
IS officer joined in the mid-60s very honest and idealistic as I think people of that age were
#
when it was a new nation also had a roaring love affair with my mother and all of that
#
you know Punjabi Bengali scene happening out there so we have something in common there and
#
both my parents had this strong ethic that do not waste any of your food I remember right till the
#
end of his life and I would take my like I took my father to the Marriott once for the
#
breakfast buffet and I swear he tried everything right it was that ethic of you get your money's
#
worth you get everything that you can and all of that that is one kind of ethic and it comes from
#
circumstance you've grown up in a time of scarcity everything is so valuable another kind of ethic
#
is that sort of loyalty that you see around you that people may not have jobs people may not have
#
whatever so when you have that opportunity you give it everything you care about it and in modern
#
times we see that those incentives have changed the circumstances have changed you know there'll
#
be young people today like one common complaint I hear about young people and I think young
#
all the young people I encounter through my writing course and all are absolutely awesome
#
but the complaint that I otherwise hear in other contexts is kiyaar work ethic nahi hai
#
every two years they're changing their job, paanch bhaje nikal ja rahe hai, sunday ko kaam
#
nahi kar rahe hai, ye nahi kar rahe hai, wo nahi kar rahe hai now without passing a value judgment
#
on that I thought I'll sort of just think aloud on this because you know in that sense you and I
#
grew up in a time where our ethic towards so many things was so different right and today it's kind
#
of changed and you don't want to say good or bad if there isn't a scarcity of many things I think
#
that is awesome when you look at these sort of changing times and your parents almost seem a
#
personification of the good aspects of that in a sense you know what are sort of your thoughts
#
yeah I do understand what you're saying Amit the work ethic that we grew up with and that we still
#
follow because that's so deeply ingrained in our nature that it comes instinctively to us
#
is fortunately or unfortunately not the work ethic that people of today's generation will follow
#
you made your point that that kind of scarcity is not there so the fire in the belly is not there
#
to that extent you know to ace it to reach higher to make sure that each day is productive
#
um but I'm also questioning that aren't we responsible for giving them that work ethic
#
as parents we've given them everything on the platter where is the fire in the belly
#
where is that need that I have to get this because
#
I am seeing it rampant these days they think it's a bane to work
#
and I'm revolted by it but I'm also saying aunt isn't the prayer and I'm not just pointing it out
#
to the parents responsibilities because right now there is a whole ecosystem that goes into the
#
bringing up of a child it's not just the family set up anymore that whole ecosystem is
#
equipping them to that sense of entitlement that they have that what you and me would say
#
for them is normal they don't know any better because they haven't been exposed to that kind
#
of life so if you've not been exposed to that kind of life how will you understand the value
#
of what you have right I'll tell you something in my house only when my girls were growing up
#
I made them wear lotto and barter shoes till they were teenagers they saw their cousins in
#
the same house wearing branded shoes but I did not buy them those branded shoes I said no
#
I will give you this but 10 years later when my son was born and we were in a better affluent
#
situation even we had moved on from that barter slot and my girls have turned around and questioned
#
me how is it that Rehan got Nike shoes when he was 13 we didn't you know so I'm talking about
#
that sense of entitlement and the prevalent ecosystem we've moved on from post to post to
#
post what are we giving our children what are we exposing them to if you haven't exposed them to
#
that kind of scarcity or that kind of balanced attitude why are you expecting them to have a
#
work ethic yet there is another spectrum to this generation which also I am seeing and it is a
#
rampant reality which disgusts me and revolts me is that you're seeing your parents work their asses
#
off even if you have every comfort in life what are you doing to contribute to the family income
#
and if that person is seeing a work ethic still and yet not contributing that person in my eyes
#
does not deserve to exist and I'm seeing it
#
but I actually turn around and then question the parents and say your fault
#
I wouldn't be so harsh on the parents this is great book that came out in the 1990s a classic
#
of social science called The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris where she looked at a lot of
#
data and came to the conclusion that the conventional wisdom about the impact parents
#
have on their kids is actually it's vastly overrated that kids mostly are influenced by
#
their peers and the culture around them and parents play a very small part no matter what
#
they might want to do so but and I agree with you entirely and I think that is why I keep saying
#
that in India whatever change will come whatever positive you know disruptions and revolutionary
#
change will happen will happen from small town kids absolutely because they are the hungriest
#
they are they have the fire in the belly and you're seeing so many many stories and they
#
are multiplying which is the great reaffirming part is that the stories are growing exponentially
#
you hear more and more of the fire in the belly and leading to success cases so that's amazing
#
I agree with you completely I want to ask you a question about work you know at one level you
#
can look at work as something instrumental we want our family to rise how do we do it we do
#
it by earning a salary we do it by working we do it by getting ahead that's why we work that's why
#
the habit is good at another level even outside of that even outside of that instrumentality
#
work is important in and of itself because it shapes who you are it builds character you know
#
if you are sitting down every day and you're showing discipline and I shouldn't be saying
#
this because I don't manage to do it myself but it's something to be admired that you're actually
#
sitting down you're putting in the hours you're getting the job done you know some people worry
#
about when you know if we ever live in a relatively post-scarcity society let's say AI makes the world
#
so productive that no one needs to work anymore everybody is getting a universal basic income
#
everybody can survive and it's a great situation to be in because no kid will go to bed hungry
#
but on the other hand what does it do to our to the people that we are because many people will
#
then not feel the need to work and will not work and I just think that work gives structure to
#
your life you know one of my guests who was on the show recently RS Neelakantan was
#
saying not in the show but offline he said something very interesting which struck me
#
where he said that my job to me is like a temple in the 17th century to someone
#
it's an anchor for your life you know you could be all over the place
#
but it anchors me because every morning I have to wake up and I have to go to work and I have
#
responsibilities so what is your sense of this because you've both been someone who's been
#
constantly working and the other thing that I noticed from my the little inside information
#
that I might have about you is that you had to be self-driven it is not that you have a job and
#
you know that gives structure and that gives routine but you've essentially been a constant
#
entrepreneur whether it is CIE and or whether it is organizing the festivals you organize or
#
all of the things you do and we'll talk about all of them in detail but
#
what is the role that work has played in your life how do you think about it what are the ways in
#
which you think it has shaped you and when you look around at others what is your observation
#
on the importance of work in all our lives okay so I'm going to establish a bit of context here
#
I was working till I got married and I got married under very different circumstances
#
so I gave up work for the first
#
more than a decade and a half of my married life no slightly less I went back to work in
#
first to help with the family business I tried that for a year because they needed me
#
and I actually walked out showed them the finger and I said two patriarchal can't do this
#
so I came back to my first love writing and I started freelancing as a journalist
#
then the festival thing happened and see how he happened for me my work is what gives me my
#
identity I do not draw my identity from being married to Rahul or being my mother to my three
#
kids or being my being a daughter to my parents or being a sibling to my sisters my identity comes
#
from me being a writer a journalist a literary agent and the work that comes from that and a
#
producer of festivals and whatever roles role playing then becomes incidental for me it is yes
#
it is what drives me every day it gives me reason to live it makes me look forward
#
I am still hungry to open each and every manuscript that comes into my inbox
#
I still have that greed that greed is there in me every day that I will chance upon that new fresh
#
voice I will nurture that particular writer's talent I will mentor the next young person who's
#
coming to work with me at siahi to become a strong individual I will do the best I can
#
for an event that I have designed conceptualized or I'm trying to produce it's that constant craving
#
to constantly do better than what I've done so that self-drive is there because I
#
don't know how else will I survive I don't know how to do it and for those few years when I was
#
just sitting at home bringing up my kids cooking whatever I always felt incomplete
#
you know there was always that restlessness there was this discontent not that I was unhappy
#
those years but there was something that was constantly niggling me that was leaving me
#
feeling I think more than restless unfinished and when this whole like siahi was also not planned
#
it was just serendipitous starting JLF was not planned again just fell into my lap
#
writing yes was a conscious effort because I was I trained at IIMC as a journalist
#
and it was just something that I wanted to do always that was definitely a planned move but all
#
of this just came so I was very fortunate that somewhere I don't know call it fate call it action
#
call it just dealing with the circumstance that one just started off and I didn't start with a
#
goal or a number in mind statistics never played an important role in my mind I wish they had
#
because now people ask me questions and I'm like I have no record of what you're asking me I don't
#
know how to measure numbers I just wanted to do it organically and I'll be very unashamedly
#
admitting to a fact that I could do all this because I knew somebody was earning money to
#
pay the bills you know so that luxury yes but that drove me further that okay we will give back
#
because CIA is a non-profit and we don't really have a running income it's not
#
a viable business in terms of revenue making or whatever but my wealth comes from
#
all the books and all the goodwill and all the love that we get from our authors I'm sounding
#
very idealistic and romantic but believe me I am in that luxurious position where I can just own
#
up to all of this and be very honest about it but yes work is something that
#
drives me constantly like I will I have my offices at home Amit but I will still
#
follow the routine of going down to my gym coming up getting ready sharp at quarter to 10 10 I am
#
on my table I do not have breakfast with my family I don't have lunch with my family in spite of
#
having office at home I work every lunch is a working lunch every breakfast is a working
#
breakfast there is no breaks to my day there's absolutely no breaks to my day there was a time
#
and see I was still young and it's a joint family that I live in there were expectations of oh you
#
know that was one thing I was just very rebellious and strong about so I'm not available
#
my working day is sacrosanct I am not available so get used to it
#
that's how in spite of everybody asked me this that you work from home isn't it distracting I said no
#
I'm just not available simple you like it you don't like it suck it up
#
up but that's how structured physically also my day is and if I'm like because you're dealing
#
with international publishers you have late night meetings or early morning meetings depending on
#
time zone differences you're doing it what you said earlier about when you said I might sound
#
too idealistic you at least to me you did not sound too idealistic because I think sometimes
#
the only tangible things are the intangible things you know when you speak of the goodwill
#
and all the books that are there and all of that I mean money comes money goes you know other more
#
visible markers of success I think to me don't really matter and I wonder if there's and I'm
#
thinking aloud and I hope I'm not stretching too far but and we'll talk much more about food and
#
cooking also in your wonderful book the effort but one of the thoughts that sort of struck me
#
that strikes me about cooking and it's something that Varun Grover in his episode with me also
#
spoke about is how everything is about the process of doing it because in the end there's
#
nothing you make the food and it's eaten and it's gone he compared it to rangoli right it's a
#
temporary thing you can spend five hours making the most beautiful rangoli and the next day it's
#
gone but the pleasure is in the doing in the pleasure is not something that remains and
#
cooking is a bit like that because you know you make something it's gone the people who've eaten
#
it may not even be mindful they may not thank you they may not even notice the taste but your
#
pleasure was in the doing right and and we'll talk much more about food and the pleasure you
#
took in that doing because some of that is pretty evocative and and am I then correct in saying that
#
it seems that that is your approach towards work as a whole that it's got to be done so I'm going
#
to do it and whatever happens happens it is actually and you're right that the pleasure is
#
in the doing whether it comes to working or cooking for me it's the same the process the whole
#
going through that motion whether I am experimenting with texture and ingredients
#
in the kitchen or I am at work for me it's equivalent joy it's the whole thing of making
#
that book come alive discussing it right from the germ of an idea and then finally maybe a
#
few years later seeing the book out I can't even explain that feeling it's like I think
#
okay let me use a very cliched terminology here I feel as if I've got tons of kids
#
you know each book is that precious and when it comes to cooking yeah I mean I am absolutely
#
thrilled when I'm beating egg whites or when I'm swirling the ganache for a chocolate icing or
#
when I'm just kind of throwing in lemongrass and lime leaves and galangal together which is what I
#
was cooking last night so it's fresh in my mind and you know and I'm standing right next to this
#
the the stove but my nose is blocked so I'm literally asking my Bahadur
#
so these are very sensuous experiences but for me they are very integral to my existence
#
the same thing is if I'm reading a manuscript and I'm saying but
#
for me it's the same so it is in the doing the process like I literally called up
#
this designer whom I've seen grow from her garage at the back of her house
#
now we're international and she's also widely expensive by the way now
#
so I called her I said have you seen the kind of fascinating journey you've made as an entrepreneur
#
so she said oh my god I never thought about it so even just planting those ideas in other
#
people's heads is also like that conversation is something I'm never going to forget
#
because I just added so much happiness to my day I said ah thank god they must
#
there might just be another book coming out there so yeah for me it's both are equivalent
#
there's in fact a lovely para from the effort which I'll read out which indicates how
#
meticulous you are where you write quote even after so many years it is a moment of triumph
#
and I rustle up a dish perfectly for a recent wedding anniversary celebration I created a
#
five layered cake with vanilla sponge profiteroles honey mousse almond praline and chocolate sauce
#
before this came a seven course meal the rule has always been that no rules are followed
#
I started with a kebab throw in a Lebanese salad Vietnamese laksa high chicken curry
#
Indianized stir fry watermelon sorbet and goan fish all served with noodles and boiled rice
#
the evening turned into a cherished memory for mom and dad stop quote we'll talk a lot more about
#
food and cooking but I thought it was apt to sort of read this out here for the sort of the
#
meticulousness and the clear joy and just you know the process you know the food is made it's on the
#
table it's eaten it's forgotten but you know that process is sort of what matters one of the themes
#
that fascinates me when I speak to my guests is the shaping of the self like how do you become who
#
you are and you know early in your arc it would seem that it's part of it is just that house you
#
know you're remarkable parents and kind of growing up like that where both organically you learn how
#
to become a strong woman but equally you're in a progressive household where you can go out and
#
play you can read anything then all those restrictions aren't there and I guess that's
#
part of what is shaping you so you know before you met your husband you know and started going out
#
with him before that you know when you're younger tell me about what is your sense of self at that
#
time if at all one can have it because I don't think I had much of a sense of self when I was
#
young but you know like what do you want to do what do you want to be what is life for you you
#
know like some women of that period most women of that period I think in India unfortunately
#
would think within the constraints of but what was it like for you what was your sense of self
#
and how was that evolving at that time I don't think I had a sense of self and I was 14-15
#
clearly I just remember two three things that shaped my thinking at that point was
#
I saw my sisters get married and I made a promise to myself
#
I won't arrange a marriage that I promised myself I saw them get married and make sacrifices
#
that I don't think they deserved they were both fucking brilliant and that was the second thing
#
I promised myself that arranged marriage or love marriage whatever it is I don't know
#
but I'm not going to fall into my family choosing that some boy will come to see me
#
that won't happen I won't let that happen and one more thing I promised myself was that I won't
#
college Jaipur I need to get out of the city I managed all I mean
#
so if you're looking for an equivalent of self sense of self these were the two three things I
#
had in mind when I was approaching like my 12th class and didn't let I didn't discuss my choice
#
of subjects because I believe this choice of subjects becomes a thing in every family
#
it was never a thing for us like my parents like just didn't say anything
#
to me at least did liberal arts everything
#
luckily for me when my 12th board results came out my parents were on a world tour
#
I was living with my aunt and uncle
#
I think both my sisters were married yeah both of them are married by then so I was pretty much
#
like so I got my I called up my dad's office called up somebody there got all the du forms
#
filled them up took my sister along did my interviews got admission in all colleges that
#
I applied in du because I topped my school I was a gold medalist so and I just by the time they
#
came back I had decided either I'm joining Stephen's or LSR I had admission in both
#
and so I don't know if that is a sense of self or not but these are the memories I have I mean I
#
never thought of I just went along and I said maybe not even a sense of self but just the
#
shaping of the self I mean if this is who you were this is yeah these were things that I promised
#
myself like I saw my sisters going through this whole
#
they were not humiliated luckily or anything like that nothing untoward happens it was all
#
okay but I was just instinctively revolted probably that was the start of my sense of self that
#
this is me as an individual I'm not taking this kind of shit from any family
#
neither from my own or somebody else who's going to come and see me so those kind of things yes
#
must have defined my way of thinking and yes my mom did once did say okay let's just go for a
#
drive and see Rajasthan University you know very subtle I said sure and we both sat in the car she
#
drove me when Rajasthan University campus is sprawling and that time was quite beautiful I
#
must say I went and looked at the eco department and the English department and I came out horrified
#
I said is khandar mein aap mereko padne ko bol rahe hoon nahi ho sata it was the end of it no discussion
#
at all so that was it but my sisters were made to study in Jaipur so I think those things kind
#
of kept shaping also there was a big generation gap my elder sister was eight years elder to me
#
and the other one was five years elder to me so by the time the third one grew up I think they were
#
old and tired you know and I've seen that it happens as you keep aging as a parent your
#
perspectives keep changing your approach keeps changing I would like to say they evolved with me
#
but I also know they're like they were just at that stage is that
#
so maybe that was the definition of the starting of selfhood or whatever that was
#
earlier you spoke about how many girls you know go towards marriage and motherhood because those
#
are the done things in those days especially if you're seeing someone yeah you get married
#
and if you get married of course you have children and one of the concepts that I've sort of
#
discovered and it's been a useful frame for me to look at the world and even to look at myself is
#
something that this philosopher Rene Girard came up with called mimetic desire
#
where Girard was a philosopher who a few decades ago was asked to teach a course in literature
#
which wasn't his subject but he needed the money and he read a whole bunch of classics while he
#
was making a reading list and his conclusion and I mean I don't know how true this conclusion is
#
but his conclusion was that everybody in those books wants something because somebody else wants
#
it and his term for this was mimetic desire like the author Luke Burgess wrote a book about this
#
called wanting and from there I picked up the frames of thick and thin desires thick desire
#
being something that is intrinsic to you which in your case would perhaps be just the process of
#
work of creating new things and all of that and thin desires are desires like a young man could
#
want a Mercedes as a status symbol because that's what you're supposed to have or a woman in
#
conservative India could want to get married and have kids not because it is something deeply
#
intrinsic but that's just what you're supposed to do what the hell you do and I am sort of
#
struck by this story you've told in your book about how you know you were dating your husband
#
and you used to you know so that no one saw you you used to drive to this place called Jal Mahal
#
you know somewhere far away and you'd have a table there and you'd be served on by this
#
waiter called Narendra Rathore who also became more and more senior and stayed loyal to Jal Mahal
#
yeah and and you speak about how as the years went by Narendra Rathore would you know he'd see you
#
come in with your husband or your then boyfriend and he would you know give you your space and
#
give you whatever you wanted and in a sense you speak about how he witnessed the arc of
#
your relationship to the point where he saw you one day in a sari and he knew that it had worked
#
out right and to me that's a very that sari is a very powerful metaphor because that sari can be
#
a trap that sari for many women in India means that they are they are finished you know not
#
for you because you're a strong person your husband was obviously a good guy you had that
#
kind of relationship but for many women even today it means you're finished because it means
#
that you are in that circumscribed role your life will forever be constrained you can't bloom and
#
blossom in a hundred different ways you have to follow the track and you know you know to a much
#
lesser extent I think is that way for the men also that they are also victims of patriarchy
#
as I explored in this long episode with Nikhil Taneja Rathaling from the show notes that they
#
are also trapped in their roles of masculinity that they have to be provider they have to behave
#
a certain way they can't show emotion they have to wear the pants as it were whereas and and the
#
women are circumscribed and it's obviously way worse for women because you're finished you know
#
for most people tell me a bit about this and tell me a bit about when you when when do you start
#
realizing this and looking at this marriage as something despite which I mean you have to carve
#
out what is your role in it what are what is the stuff you're going to do what are the non-negotiables
#
and and so on and so forth so what was how did your relationship with this concept and this
#
relationship of marriage sort of evolve because more and more when I look at India and I think of
#
marriage I think it is incredibly toxic just the institution because in most cases it imprisons
#
people into becoming a certain limited version of themselves you're actually very right I remember
#
when we were formally announced as engaged after both the families finally met one of my sisters
#
in law whom I'm very fond of called me and said Meeta how long will you continue to being the
#
person you're not and I had kind of shrugged that question off because I didn't want to think at
#
that point I was just so happy that finally all objections were over and that bunny and we were
#
going to be together it was a love marriage and obviously there were it was a complete
#
Bollywood story with all the masala all the gossip all the fighting thrown in so when I
#
walked into this marriage I literally knew I had to wipe every sense of my identity out
#
and the owners and this is social conditioning because now when I look back I'm actually just
#
telling myself you're a stupid fool you know you where what did you what were you thinking
#
but clearly I wasn't I bent over backwards to adjust to the said atmosphere in the house where
#
women were not working you're just supposed to be there doing the role you're supposed to do
#
and if you don't do it then you're a failure and I negotiated the first few years dealing with that
#
I also negotiated motherhood when I wasn't prepared to be a mother it just fitted into the plan of
#
things I'm not saying this with regret I'm just narrating this very matter-of-factly now
#
bunny and me obviously we loved each other so we kind of held on to each other in spite of
#
me coming from such a liberal background into a family that did not look at women as individuals
#
women were respected only because they were married because they gave birth to sons
#
and because you listened to your family and you abided by the rules and traditions and all of
#
that so I went through the whole picking up on the sari as a metaphor of restriction I did wear my
#
saris I did wear those two three gold chains every day and got dressed and I cooked and I
#
greeted and did all of that for many years gave birth to my children went through all of that
#
knowing because that sentence of my sisters-in-law stayed in my head you know and slowly slowly then
#
I started realizing that so first five six years I was like observing negotiating dealing with the
#
physical changes of motherhood and all of that and then I started like nope I learned to say no
#
I learned to speak up and I spoke up at every point wasn't taken too kindly like as expected
#
in all patriarchal conservative Punjabi families but I don't know then my upbringing came to my
#
rescue I think the whole thing of standing by what is right is so strong still in my being
#
being that I just stuck to my gun so I went back I shed my although by the way I love wearing saris
#
so nothing against that but I shed you know that whole thing of being young and exuberant and trying
#
new things all the time so I wore my dresses and pants and shorts with equal aplomb as I would love
#
wearing my saris so I was fine with both but I purposely gave it up for a few years because I
#
wanted to achieve that level of liberalism in my family so I went back to my slinky backless
#
dresses and shorts and whatever else like as a sign of not rebel but as a sign of not accepting
#
a said thing just because it didn't work for me started with that started with bringing up my
#
kids the way I wanted to bring them up I insisted that they will have a structured routine that they
#
will not be spoiled they will not be given extra rewards they will have to read they will be read
#
to before I you know they will have to have to stick to a certain discipline as far as their
#
own studies whatever even then they were little girls like you know there was this whole concept
#
I was of a different school I'm lying down and reading in my room this is your homework time
#
finish your homework when you're done with it please pack your bags and you're on your own
#
that was the way I brought my kids up and that also was like a big question mark in everybody's
#
head I said I'm sorry this is it
#
their problem fifth standard my eldest came back with three zeros on her report card
#
my reaction was I burst into laughter the teachers were like meet us daughter because
#
obviously they were in my school and I was a topper so there was a legacy and my sisters were also
#
all toppers I went to the parent-teacher meeting and I said guys just relax it's all right
#
fifth standard kid three geography history big shit don't worry as blaze like that so you know
#
you start picking up small battles and then you start fighting the bigger battles and I'm talking
#
with much ease right now but this itself was a every battle was a big battle at that time
#
but then you also sometimes you negotiate with love sometimes you just
#
ado and get things done I did both so the sari for me was not a restriction
#
at all in that sense I loved my saris always no literally of course not but as a metaphor yeah
#
but as for the larger picture I because again I'll draw your attention to one thing I remember going
#
for we were we used to party a lot put our kids to sleep and then out a lot of dance parties and
#
all that and I remember I used to walk out of the house wearing what I had to because I just kind of
#
couldn't care whether I got disapproving looks or taunts that fuck that shit I don't care but
#
I remember my friends at that point in time very conservative marwari's and all of that they would
#
carry their changes in the car go to a friend's house and change into their trousers just simple
#
pants man can you imagine and a top because they couldn't be seen by the in-laws like that and then
#
they would go to go back home go back to the same friend's house wear their saris and then reach
#
home whether it was three in the morning also didn't matter they had to enter in their saris
#
so that way yes I've seen the sari being a damaging piece of equipment so to say
#
and I used to just say what are you guys doing
#
so yeah but you fight some
#
you fight a lot actually you have to fight a lot of battles to hold your own and I did it wasn't
#
easy it wasn't easy at all but bunny and me kind of stuck together somehow or the other
#
we failed each other at a lot of times I'll be very honest in the process of finding yourself
#
as a married woman it strikes me that you're not only finding yourself but you're also bringing
#
up a man because men can often be so incredibly clueless about something that women internalize
#
which is the different layers of expectation and the different things that women have to be aware
#
of as they go through their lives and men are often kind of clueless about it men are often
#
comfortable and complacent in the roles that they are playing which are of course those
#
patriarchal roles and they may be perfectly good men they may be the very best men but these are
#
the sort of skins that they have just slipped into because that's the way the world is in
#
and what was that process like for you in that sense or how hard is it for women or how easy
#
is it for modern feminists to overlook that in a blasé way when they say that hey you know you've
#
got to stand up for yourself express yourself or whatever but the fact is that if you're in a
#
marriage it's one thing for you to express yourself but it's he's also you know having
#
to change and he loves you he has the best intentions but it's difficult for him also
#
what was that process like it wasn't easy it wasn't easy because bunny was the younger brother
#
younger brother who idolized his father and his brother and i couldn't understand that
#
because in my eyes they were human they were fallible they made a shit ton of mistakes
#
and why do i have to bear the brunt of it
#
that was a battle because i had to make bunny aware of the fact that his own individuality
#
his own selfhood had been pre-defined and pre-decided so he was in a sense victim of
#
the said patriarchy and for me to make him realize that took a few years
#
and it wasn't easy at all because it was so deeply ingrained and he's a very gentle simple soul
#
who will not see the hidden complexities he had a very simplistic interpretation of everything
#
for me to make him understand that this is far more nuanced and layered and you have to understand
#
it's open to a lot many more interpretations than just a simple sentence
#
and if it is disrespecting of me as a human being then it is your duty to make sure that
#
my dignity is protected similarly your dignity also needs to be protected
#
so that space of negotiation took a few years and it was a very very difficult patch
#
till he started standing up speaking up and like i literally told him that in this marriage i feel
#
alone though even i know what you're saying what you also said right now that you have best
#
intentions you love me you ferociously to the point that everybody in town thinks that bunny
#
he is still loves her to distraction that is still the reputation by the way it's funny
#
but yes it took a lot of like literally
#
the imagery that comes to my mind is is what i had to do and
#
and not denouncing the upbringing he had he was brought up as a very fine person obviously
#
that's why i loved him and married him but yes it was it is it is very difficult even for men to
#
i have to acknowledge that because they also have been socially conditioned
#
that you're not a man and for me to make him understand that being a man is someone who is
#
large-hearted and sensitive and respectful to the other person's human dignity that is genuinely
#
being a man so you know these predefined things have to be thrown out of the window especially
#
because i had two girls those were another set of battles
#
let's talk about motherhood at one point you ask your friends when you're discussing the
#
concept of motherhood you ask them quote how can you feel blissful when you are breastfeeding
#
your child or powdering her bottom and it only means more backaches headaches and sleepless nights
#
stop quote and and finally one of them confess to you that it's just a drab routine of diapers
#
and milk bottles bliss is when you see your baby gurgle from afar in someone else's arms oh yes
#
stop quote and i you know i remember i had done an episode sitting right here with uh you know
#
Mrinal Pandey a year and a half back and Mrinalji spoke about how um one day she was with a bunch of
#
friends and they were all mothers and somebody brought up this news of a mother who had killed
#
her child and the instinctive reaction was that how could any mother do this and then a little
#
while later one of them sheepishly said that you know i've had the urge and then another one said
#
i've had the urge and then they all kind of spoke about how difficult motherhood was and how they
#
often felt so angry so uh violent and all of that um and and that's something that's really not
#
acknowledged because motherhood is almost you know put on a pedestal in a manner of speaking
#
and you've also written in the book about how you had a difficult time early on where you write
#
quote i wasn't a patient mother short-tempered and easily given to flashes of anger i tolerated
#
no nonsense it took me years to accept motherhood it took me years to grow into a mother who looked
#
upon her daughter as her best pal and at another point you there's this beautiful sentence where
#
you're telling your daughter and you say i i found both of you when you were about 11 12 it was then
#
that i grew to be your friend you know so take me a bit through that journey because at that moment
#
of motherhood where you have these kids who are born right one after the other i think with a
#
years gap to them right and you were 25 and 26 when they were born if i'm getting the dates right
#
and you know you you would not have known what was happening to you right that yeah what was that
#
process like of coming to terms with what the hell this was and many years later when you you know
#
you were expecting your third child which wasn't planned you you also wrote about how you how you
#
were so horrified at the thought and you were fighting the thought till eventually you stopped
#
fighting it so tell me a bit about this because i think this is another of those mimetic desires
#
that women feel that you know in many cases of course you've got the biological clock you're
#
wired to want to have kids that's understandable but at the same time many women just go into it
#
because they're following a story that's been written for them that marriage will happen,
#
there will be children, this and that what was that process like of coming to terms with motherhood
#
so for me also it was following the story i don't think i was cut out to be a mom
#
and my kids know it so i haven't ever hidden it from them i just followed the story
#
because also it was expected of us to have kids and all of that and one just went into it very
#
unthinkingly and that is the worst thing to do because it fucks you up mentally completely
#
like you lose yourself and your sense of self and your entire fulcrum is just shaken up you know
#
and it's not just the physical debilitating experience that it is although i had all three
#
caesareans but whatever you feel the impact of it even at this age because that's how the body is
#
because i frankly did not know what hit me it was just unprepared hurtling into that hell hole
#
of giving birth the sleepless nights i hated the breastfeeding experience i found it the most
#
unforgiving thing i did not understand this moment of bliss that people talk about yes that baby
#
smell and all is fine yeah but reality is you are tired your back hurts your nipples hurt
#
and you know you're waking up every one and a half hours and it's an unending process
#
you're also human now why are you expected to be this forgiving constantly giving goddess
#
who has endless energy you're a human being you're entitled to your own rest
#
your body asking for something your your mental state what there was nothing about postpartum
#
depression we just dealt with that space ourselves we cried we became fine we suddenly we just wiped
#
our tears and said oh i have to feed the baby again or i have to change diapers again and blah
#
blah and all of that was just happening it was just routine day after day after day after day
#
and then you're looking at vaccinations just looking at school admissions you're obviously
#
not saying that i didn't love my kids i did it's a very natural thing to feel love for your child
#
and the protectiveness and to want the best for them okay all of that i did with a lot of joy
#
not denying that it's not that i mean i may come across sounding as if i don't love my kids oh my
#
god they're my jaan but those years were not easy at all and mothering that time was
#
i saw facilities that i wasn't given
#
but i had to fight for that also and say no but i also need a maid
#
why is it that the other kids have all the help in the world and i don't in the same house
#
why is this the difference there so i had to fight that as well and then i had two girls
#
why are they wearing pants why are they little things yeah they shouldn't be wearing pants
#
they should be wearing frogs as in it's winters they'll feel cold
#
it was just like one battle after the other
#
so i had to kind of deal with that as well and then the third pregnancy happened which shook me
#
to the core so i tried everything skipping jumping swimming i did i was you wanted a miscarriage
#
i actually wanted a miscarriage i didn't want to give birth again because somewhere at some stage
#
in my childhood i remember telling somebody that if i have kids at all i just want two girls that's
#
my dream and i had my girls even if i didn't want them at the time they came i just had them and i
#
loved them and this this bacha happened i was like oh my god what shit i've just and like
#
sakshi was nine when rehan was born aresham was eight you know i was just getting out of that
#
whole thing they were on their own they were studying they were responsible they were doing
#
okay i was kind of leading what i thought my life that time limited but so i was like
#
and i just can't can't can't can't can't tried everything i remember we were with on on a
#
trip with our friends and there was this water park we were at in mehsana
#
and there was this three-storied water slide which you know kind of we had to lie
#
all down our stomachs and go down and my friends knew i was expecting and they all kept saying
#
i said maybe this is it let's do it and i'm the one for thrill and adventure and speed and
#
roller coasters and everything so i was like going at it like how and all my friends were like you
#
know like really like hyperventilating meetha what are you doing i said i don't fucking care
#
then i came back and this was in my fourth month and time was running out and i was sitting with
#
this friend of mine and i was like i don't want this baby and she said you want to kill the child
#
i said sure i have to already who wants the third she said meetha what if it's a girl
#
and i was like oh fuck i can't do that
#
not knowing the sex is fine but what if i unknowingly kill a girl can i live with that
#
and then i kind of thought quietly for a week i was like very non-communicated with everyone
#
and then i said no i can't i can't i can't take that chance
#
so poor Rehan knows that i tried really hard and he says mom i think i'm damaged because of you
#
but it's it's all good he's a good kid and yeah and then Rehan happened
#
there's this great poem by Philip Larkin called this be the worst which tells people not to have
#
children and it's got these two great lines two of my favorite lines in poetry where he says
#
poetry where he says man hands on misery to man it deepens like a coastal shelf
#
right and you know everything all the baggage that you bear as parents it kind of goes down
#
and i think that when you have that self-realization of what parenthood has
#
done to you did that change your parenting in the sense that is there then an intentionality
#
in your parenting where you're not going through the motions but in a sense you're helping them
#
become more self-realized people so they don't make the mistakes you make and they don't get
#
trapped in those red jackets or whatever the case might be tell me a little bit if there was then
#
an intentionality that crept in in your parents like you said when they were 11 12 you
#
started thinking of them more more as friends than you know kids what was that like because
#
one of the sort of bits in your book that struck me was when sakshi when she she was young at one
#
point you write about her quote her favorite abuse is oh he can't help it he's only a boy
#
deeply into reading women's literature she looks down on all men as severely handicapped by their
#
own sex stop quote and this is a really evolved view this is not a view you expect a kid to have
#
you know and it of course speaks to that extra layer of perception that women have about the
#
frailties of the male sex while males may be completely clueless about it and may not
#
reciprocate it in any way you know shanta go clay was on the show and she spoke about how in the
#
case of her relationships you know she she had to take those foibles into account one husband's
#
laziness another husband sort of womanizing and whatever and she had to take it into account and
#
they had nothing to take into account it was just it was just routine but apart from that like how
#
much intentionality then goes into that parenting like at what point do you sit back and start
#
thinking about this stuff and saying okay this is what i have to do almost like the way you
#
think of cooking or the way you think of shaping a novel did you put that kind of you know thinking
#
into a parenting or did you feel that it was too complex and it would i mean what was your what
#
was your approach like there was complete intentionality on my part
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hundred percent in my parenting it came from i'll be again very honest it came from the
#
fact that i hated being a mom i just i felt restricted i felt frustrated i felt like i
#
don't own my life and i felt that this is not the way i need to be defined
#
and all of that and i have to admit i did take it out on my kids that frustration did come out on
#
them and i tell them a lot of times that if there's one regret i live with is that i want to turn the
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clock back and be a better mom be a more patient mom and they laugh at me all the time but they
#
know that i mean it the intentionality was there and i have the ecosystem that the house had to
#
thank very ironically because again it was very conservative very straight-jacketed thinking of
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how boys should be brought up how girls should be brought up what girls should be playing with what
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they should be reading how they should be dressed how they should be speaking even when they were
#
that small how they should be laughing that they should go to a finishing school and all of that
#
so all of that i just pivoted and turned it around and said buddy that ain't happening to my kids
#
so there was more than simple ambition to give the best to my kids like every mother has here
#
was something that i took on myself and said my girls are going to get everything
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that they deserve because they are human beings so that was my approach always
#
so whether they wanted to join a class didn't want to join a class didn't want to eat healthy
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food wanted to eat junk food whatever choices they kept making i would criticize them if it
#
came to health but i also made sure that they grew up with that
#
thing of making choices i was a little more i wouldn't say a little more i was a little
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i was rather strict with sakshi which is that one regret that i have because i think that
#
kind of hemmed her personality a bit as a child and she still carries some of that baggage which i
#
wish she'd let go of but all in their good time but yeah gave them the same freedom to read what
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they wanted to and such and i was reading a lot right of all kinds of books and sakshi picked it
#
up and she picked it up like a fish to water like i didn't have to tell her i didn't have to guide
#
her at all she also was extremely sensitive to the atmosphere in the house she could see the
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differences and she picked that up more than resham was a little very happy-go-lucky must
#
types and this girl was very sensitive so she picked it up and i remember when i went back
#
to work as a journalist also she sometimes would go with me when i was doing interviews with victims
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of let's not call them victims of poor things of they went through domestic abuse or rape or
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violence or any sort and she saw me do all of that so that became i think that shaped her a lot
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but yeah going back as children from till the time they became 10, 11 and i started speaking
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to them like a mother should to prepare them for their teenage years and all of that so i was one
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of those mothers who actually sat and drew diagrams and showed them how everything works
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and how they need to be very careful etc etc but no restrictions again just to make them understand
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then they kind of then i think i also started i must have matured i'm presuming
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calmer and they also found it easier to speak to me so the relationship kind of eased
#
a bit but yeah there were still cases where i had to be very strict with them even after that
#
you know when they were teenagers like they had for their safety the jaipur then became a different
#
city there was violence there was stuff happening on streets it wasn't as safe as we were growing
#
i couldn't let them do it because things it was a very different time
#
and yeah so they had embargoes they had deadlines and all of that but
#
once they crossed that 10, 12 years of age then it was like it was a complete party with them
#
i think that the most precious memories of sakshi resham in their teenage years are there
#
so much fun it was like just three of us you know doing things together i think sometimes bunny did
#
feel a little left out but then his problem we didn't care yeah but that's what motherhood was
#
like in a nutshell so it became better earlier years were shit show
#
i had once done an episode with the economist chinmay tumbey he wrote this book called india
#
moving about the history of internal migrations in india and for me the big learning from that
#
book the big insight which when i thought about it blew me away is that the most internal migration
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in india happens because of marriage women get married and they go to their husband's house
#
right and even when it doesn't literally happen that they're actually moving physically you know
#
they could be just going in the neighborhood even when that is the case it seems to me app
#
that it is a dislocation that men remain where they are and women are dislocated and everything
#
that was there before is changed and they're living a new life and it seems to me therefore
#
that when you get married you're especially if you're in a joint family as you were you know
#
your life begins to revolve around the relationships and dynamics and politics and so on of this
#
particular family then parenthood comes into the picture it consumes everything and whatever you
#
were before becomes a kind of a memory like a different place you know it's a it's a migration
#
in a sense you know and i wonder how that went in the sense that after marriage i assume after
#
marriage men will have the same friends that they had before for women it's not really the case
#
everything kind of changes so for you what was it like you know was there sort of a sisterhood
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you could count on for help did they understand you were there you know what what were those
#
friendships like which sort of predated those years and survived or that formed during those
#
years you know what is your experience of the sisterhood of women as it were
#
hmm yeah what you're saying about internal migrations is good so sisterhood i did keep in
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touch with some of my school friends and tina that you were talking about i in fact i just called her
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uh when i was headed here uh before this episode i was berating me for calling tina fat in the
#
book and i was like how can you say that about your friend in a book you're writing
#
yeah she's still she's a darling yeah so there are a few of them that are still steadfast from
#
school uh we may not talk for months but when we talk we just pick up from where we left it
#
there's no such thing there's no egos we're all cool we're the same mad bunch still when we meet
#
and we love each other's kids husbands families whatever like i told her right now i said i'm
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going to sakshi tonight and she said oh please make me speak to her when you reach and she saw
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sakshi when she was a teenager after that they haven't met but still that fondness is there
#
so yeah and yes you walk into your husband's group of friends you're also young you know you like
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meeting new people so i made a lot of new friends that's one thing i've never had a problem with
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uh while i'm i'm very snobbish about whom i'd hobnob with but i also love meeting people so
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it's a very weird situation let's not just snobbish let's say selective okay i don't want to be kind
#
to me i'm just being myself and owning what i'm what i'm like uh so yeah i made friends with
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his friends wives and they were all a terrific support system they're all nice simple people
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i've had a rich life that way lots of good friends uh all along and they saw
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they understood what was happening even without hearing or seeing and uh yeah now we've all been
#
friends for more than 30 odd years and everyone's kids have gotten married and they all have
#
grandchildren i don't have luckily i'm good right now but why luckily i'm good i'm done with three
#
kids but you won't have to bring up the anymore yeah but i don't want to be the nanny kind of
#
person i don't have the time or the inclination although i'm told that it's going to change once
#
i hold the baby so to say in my hands we'll see but as of now it's all fine um yeah i've
#
so you know but what you're saying about the internal migration yes what happens is when a
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girl leaves she leaves a part of her life behind and that chapter is almost like fading out i won't
#
say closed but it just it does fade out because you may move into a different circle your life
#
changes you do tend to lose contact for a bit but then you always can go back if you decide to so
#
that is the comfort you have to have with your friend also with the coming generations it's not
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that much of a change it was more with our kind of generations and more with our mothers where
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they completely cut themselves off because they were supposed to we lessened that gap and now
#
i'm seeing like the younger generation even in our family it's fine they are still doing their
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girls trips and they're still doing things together with their school friends and college
#
friends and also now that so-called the the migration that you're talking about and what
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it does to a core friend group or anything it's not that badly impacted i mean you do have the
#
freedom to choose to keep at it still and everybody i see around me is doing it
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so i'm a different kind of person i lost touch with a lot of them
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if i wanted to i could have but maybe they just didn't fit into my scheme of things or
#
instinctively i didn't vibe with them anymore i had changed a lot but some friends like i mean
#
we go back more than 40 years and we still meet each other in fact i'll be in new york next month
#
and i'm staying at a friend's daughter's house because you know we those kids have grown up
#
and they call me masi and that's how close we are but yes i have lost touch with a lot of them as
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well if you were also into populism you'd be a masi masi on that note let's take a quick
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commercial break and we'll come back and talk about the rest of the journey
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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 india uncut dot subtract dot 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 india uncut dot subtract dot 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 india uncut dot
#
subtract dot com thank you welcome back to the scene in the unseen i'm chatting with meeta kapoor
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on her fascinating life and work and it's been more about life so far but i would like to get
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to work so let's let's talk about writing you know in another interview somewhere else you've
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spoken about how you used to how you began perhaps with writing little bits of poetry
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when you were young and i think anyone who wrote poetry when they were young probably cringe when
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they look back at that but tell me about your journey in writing like you mentioned about how
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you were an avid reader you could read whatever you wanted to read and like was there ever a time
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you began to think of yourself as a writer or was it something that you had a facility for and
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therefore it seemed a natural thing that as one goes out in the world and does something you know
#
writing journalism these make these make sense so what how was your journey there yeah well
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proverbial poetry writing as a teenager but my poetry as far as i don't have anything no record
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of it frankly i can't even remember what i wrote about but all i can say is that it wasn't
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angst written or no no that's soppy shit but i don't know what i wrote about i and i all i
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remember one thing is i used to write and i used to paint along with my poems or sketch and give
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them away so that is why i don't have any record so if i if my friends have still kept them i have
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no idea if they have but so i used to sketch a lot with pencil and with charcoal and do a lot
#
of watercolors i loved it so my each of my pages was always accompanied with something
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that's all i remember of that period of time i did love to write because i instinctively chose
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literature even in my 11th and 12th as a subject and i chose english honors over
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economics which i got admission into because simply because i wanted to then went on to
#
journalism again because i wanted to there was no something that it was a facility or it was just
#
very thing what what my gut told me i did yet with no career large picture in mind i just
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followed my instinct and that's how and i enjoyed
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reporting and we used to make pages by hand no at that time when we worked with newspapers
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and where did you work i i was working with free press journal for some time and i used to have
#
those night shift duties also to make pages and had a very accomplished editor who used to always
#
copy edit my reports and my features he was very good yeah it was fun did marriage interrupt that
#
like in the sense it did so what was the track that you were on like assuming that you know
#
you hadn't gotten married or that you'd gotten married and continued to work and not had kids
#
you know would you still have been a journalist what was the track that it was on which sort of
#
got interrupted there so i was working as a journalist i was focusing more on feature writing
#
and at that time i was just hungry to get work so i would do anything and everything but politics
#
that was one thing that i can't wrap my head around so still can't but i was doing everything
#
else so i was reporting and i was writing features and all of that if marriage wouldn't
#
have happened i think i would have just continued into long form writing as a journalist because
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that's what i am really comfortable with i love the research part that comes with it it just
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means you deep dive and it also gives you the freedom to encapsulate as much as you can within
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that long form piece so i would still love to go back to that at some stage but yeah i continued
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working for some time and then marriage happened and the usual cliched story happens
#
which happened i went back to freelancing as a journalist so then i went back to writing for
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the hindu for the times of india for hindustan times for verb for vogue for condonas did some
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uh design uh based pieces for these architectural kind of magazines
#
so i just spread myself all over i just kept reaching out to people with story ideas kept
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trying kept trying and i kept getting work in spite of just sitting in jaipur and that was
#
a damn good time for me because i also wrote for tahil ka at that time because it was at its peak
#
and did a lot of investigation pieces for them which got me in touch with
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women's wing of what do you call that
#
department women's welfare and health department or whatever and i worked very closely with a lot
#
of activists in jaipur then followed a lot of cases where we made sure that those women who were
#
treated badly got help but we wrote stories about them and one of the stories i remember at that
#
time dna was very big in bombay people wrote into me saying can we donate money for this village
#
woman who has two young babies and was gang raped and she didn't her the nearest bank was 60 minutes
#
away from her village but we managed to get an account done for her and so lots of these kind
#
of stories happened and it was just so much learning that you worked with people from all
#
spectrum of society and awareness and insight self-realization then then honing your own craft
#
and skill as a journalist you know deepening your research and reading up more in the meantime i
#
also got an opportunity to to contribute to a couple of anthologies which i did i remember
#
doing a whole chapter on shashi tharoors the great indian novel it wasn't a very kind chapter but
#
what to do yeah so all of that kept happening and just kept like there was no plotting of a
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career in my mind i just went organically bumbling along like an idiot with no plan in sight
#
and i think still continue to do that in your current life you know or in the life you've lived
#
for many years as a literary agent you look very closely at craft and the question that therefore
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comes to my mind about all of your years as a journalist was how did your consciousness of
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craft a and b or craft itself develop over time because from what i remember of journalism back
#
in the days in the 80s and 90s is that it was really pretty mediocre by and large in terms of
#
the writing there was there was no i mean you of course did journalism school which most journalists
#
didn't most journalists kind of got into journalism because you know there was they'd failed at
#
everything else and barring some exceptions and and a there is no systematic way in which you're
#
being taught about the craft or even the ethics of journalism this is pre-internet so you don't
#
even have exposure to global journalism to get a sense of best practices and standards and read
#
about them so what you pick up is kind of by osmosis if you're lucky enough to have good guides
#
then that's great if it's not then i i guess you learn in a tortured way just by doing and doing
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and doing and that's how you kind of get uh better at what you do so just in terms of understanding
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the craft of writing first as a doer and then at a later level obviously i guess you've refined
#
your eye considerably by the fact that you have to work with so many writers and give them feedback
#
and all of that so what was that journey like because when young writers begin whether it is
#
in journalism or any anywhere else the first instinct is to indulge in your love of language
#
and to show off and to do funky things and all of that which all young writers including myself i
#
think you know go through and sometimes my early stuff can make me cringe but then over a period
#
of time you kind of um uh begin to understand better what you need to do why you need to do
#
to find your own voice and all of that so you know let's start with talking about that aspect
#
of it that how how was your journey with craft first as a writer and then perhaps as a reader
#
how do the two play into each other so i think the journalism course the diploma really helped
#
because we at that stage had a lot of absolute senior journalists coming in as guest faculty
#
just talking to us so it was what you learned from them and they were their articles that were
#
and that time what we were there was no internet but we were reading newspapers we were reading
#
long-form journalism we were reading feature writing in proper magazines like that time
#
magazines were like the thing right so we were reading and all of that was happening
#
i guess the propensity in my head was to constantly keep searching and reading
#
and meeting and talking to people which really helped the learning curve so to say so the
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consciousness was always there remember laboring over my sentences even as a journalist and there
#
were a lot of people who were helping each other even as our badge i've lost touch with my badge
#
completely and i feel really sad about it any big names in your batch i can't remember
#
so no big names obviously i don't even know frankly so the i remember that consciously
#
working on every sentence because when you are fresh out of college as an english honors graduate
#
you have the propensity to write convoluted sentences fill it with big words all of that
#
and the whole academic approach to analyzing you which i call jargon now by the way very happily
#
but that time yes i remember still laboring over my craft and what happened was that
#
when marriage happened and i took a break till my kids grew up i went back to freelancing by that
#
time i was on the internet it was there in our lives and i was part of a lot of online writers
#
communities and we were critiquing each other's writing quite a lot openly in fact then we started
#
meeting as well in different cities so that kind of interaction also helped you know because then
#
we we were in our own limited way referring each other to what the other person was reading so
#
discovery of new styles of writing new authors all of that came up so i came across chuck
#
palanouix writing capsules and that was like mind-blowing then susan santa again all of this
#
you know you go through that rigor and one went through it learned a lot from a lot of interaction
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with like-minded writers with people who are doing more narrative non-fiction
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i was critiquing a lot of fiction of other people and contemporaries who were aspiring to be writers
#
that also helped a lot and then you're reading all the time right you're reading your your and
#
that time you're reading like you're looking for books in bookstores you're not scouring amazon
#
dot in or dot com for books which i still manage to balance i'm still like in bookstores
#
physically looking you have some decent bookstores in delhi delhi you do but not in jaipur yeah yeah
#
so my book shopping happens here or when i'm like like i'm flying out tonight so i will
#
between the cities that i'm crossing the first thing i do at an airport is go to a bookstore
#
and see what's happening and i always land up carrying my four five kgs extra
#
in my carry-on but that's yeah so a lot of book hunting a lot of piles that this is to be read
#
and this is to be read and i have to plow through everything and i want to not have to i want to
#
so consciously so that kind of helps your craft receiving criticism is was very important
#
for me i still remember even in my college time i would write so many answers
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and i would keep going back to my professors give me more questions because i really want to
#
write my answers and you know that time we would write long long answers in BA or BA honors like
#
pages and pages so i remember doing that exercise very vigilantly for myself because i really wanted
#
to ace it so i think all of that must have totaled up i'm not saying that any great writing has come
#
out of me or whatever but consciousness that how it's moving what are we trying to say what is the
#
voice is is it credible is it convincing is can i see that character can i can i feel the skin
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in and can i kind of almost touch the hair of that character can i just visualize
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i want my i want that is the kind of feedback i want to give to people so and is this is the
#
story just kind of moving from point a to point b to point c because it has to or is it just
#
is naturally flowing like that is what we were talking about is the author pandering to an audience
#
is is it is it coming right from the gut has this person internalized somebody else's writing
#
style so all of these things you know are a thought process
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i think about there being various kind of conflicts that writers can face within themselves
#
and the first of those conflicts is like a conflict between the ego and the desire to improve
#
so obviously when you write something you know if you're you invest so much in it including your
#
including so much emotion that when it is criticized a reflexive act is to lash out and to
#
you know your ego gets affected at the same time you might have the simultaneous urge to actually
#
improve to make it better to keep growing and so on and so forth that's one kind of conflict
#
another kind of conflict is the conflict between wanting validation and wanting to be authentic to
#
yourself and sometimes that can also be a clash like if you second guess too much what the audience
#
wants you could lose yourself in the process and end up with something that is worthless but if at
#
the same time you don't think about how to make whatever you're writing palatable for an audience
#
or impact as much as possible then you can get lost in a different direction and all these
#
conflicts kind of exist and i'm just thinking that for you you look you've probably faced these
#
conflicts from both the inside and the outside from the inside as a writer yourself and from
#
the outside and to perhaps a much much greater degree as someone giving advice to writers shaping
#
writers bringing their works into being so tell me a little bit about all these different conflicts
#
that writers face which would not really be visible to people from the outside i mean how do
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you negotiate those how do you figure out the correct balance between sort of between any of
#
these so the conflicts that you're talking about are very very real and they're there at every step
#
and i think each and every writer let me say each and every artist negotiates this space
#
internally in their own way because every person is different for me i've had both kinds of
#
experiences and i'm not talking about myself as a writer because i've just done like two books and
#
that's hardly anything but when i've seen writers struggling with trying to tell their story
#
the ego does take over and the whole lashing out does happen because i have got a lot of people
#
writing and saying who are you to tell me what's wrong with this i have labored on this for so many
#
years and i've got it edited and for this whole obsession of getting it edited from outside the
#
country by editors who have no understanding of what's happening here although that sounds
#
very parochial and territorial on my part but i just feel that that sensitivity has to be there
#
i have come across a lot of that but there are also a lot of people who are aspiring to get out
#
there and they have been able to overcome this conflict where they're where they are like sponges
#
and they've taken the feedback and they try their best to make their voices more convincing make
#
their story more imaginative i don't want to use the word relatable because then that takes the
#
juice out of fiction and as far as non-fiction is concerned if i've reached out and said
#
where is the research you're just generalizing so what do you think you're doing where's the book
#
what are you talking about convince me give me both sides of the argument
#
give me examples give me anecdotes give me whatever depending on what the subject is
#
so yeah you have all sorts of people and that conflict is very very real and i really think
#
it's a very important part of writing a book whether fiction non-fiction any genre in fact
#
is that if you haven't faced that conflict you haven't grown you haven't battled with
#
it inside your head you haven't chosen the best possible you haven't activated and kindled your
#
imagination because unless you put yourself out of the box unless you make yourself uncomfortable
#
how are you going to grow how are you going to evolve when is that next beautiful sentence
#
coming out of you i'm not saying it's just different ways of facing it you know i'm not
#
talking about the physical act of deleting rewriting right now i'm saying i'm i'm talking
#
about the the spirit the ethos the whole feeling of tingling that comes into the oh oh yeah this
#
is going to work this is you know so that kind of conflict if you don't go through then how do
#
you come out as a writer as an artist how are you doing your best are you creating your best
#
so those kind of things are very very essential to our lives i feel and it's for the just to
#
use a very conventional way of saying it right a passage it's like growing up
#
so one feels that and i don't see the harm in going through those conflicts
#
at all you come out the better always now when it comes to my role as
#
taking feedback i'm very open
#
so in my professional life i'm very open in my personal life i think i'm a stubborn asshole
#
and everybody knows that but if somebody tells me you're not doing this right as a literary agent
#
i'm going to really sit back and change course and course correct it's very important to keep
#
communicating also interacting observing taking in so all of these things help
#
taking in so all of these things help and as an agent i think what's more important is
#
you read a lot for work but you have to read more than you can to keep up with what's happening
#
around you you know like i hadn't read japanese literature so much and i was talking to somebody
#
who'd worked with me for many for on and off project bases and she told me she said meetah
#
you read this tapini the translation of this particular book it's called the the kitchen
#
and i said oh no i haven't is it banana yoshimoto yeah yeah and
#
and i said okay and i finished it in one go and i said my god look at the translation
#
and i just kept like so then i went and bought more of her books and then i explored more so
#
you learn right this is a part of that course and then you see and then you get a sense of
#
how this translation is working and when you're reading other translations you know exactly even
#
if you don't know those languages the mother languages but you know you can make out things
#
but you know you can make out things so as an agent that's the openness we need to have so
#
you're combining your pragmatism you're combining your sense of nailing a deal with a publisher
#
and also the creative part having said that it's not necessary that every book
#
comes to me right from the first chapter or whatever some books do some books come to me
#
pre-written but we still go through the process of discussing it with the author and you know
#
doing whatever we can luckily i'm working on two three books right now where the germ of the idea
#
was discussed and the first chapter has just come and now i'm waiting for the next two and
#
and one of them is on finance but still exciting
#
so you know what you what you said earlier about the sort of the conflicting
#
use in personal and professional spaces where you said that as a writer you might be really open to
#
criticism but in your personal life you're a stubborn asshole but i would say that they're
#
almost the same thing because in both cases you're looking out for yourself you know and these are
#
different ways of doing that whereas as a writer you just want yourself to be as good as you
#
possibly can be and in your personal life i guess you're just drawing a line with you know what you
#
will do and what you want to perhaps i'm just or maybe i'm putting a good sheen on it that mention
#
of banana yoshimoto in japanese literature in general sort of brings me to my next question
#
like one thing i've often felt is that languages have inherent qualities which carry over to the
#
literature in those languages for example japanese tends to be spare and minimal and that's a kind of
#
simple writing that you get from people like yoshimoto or kawabata or you know all the greats
#
basically whereas there are other languages which are much more expressionistic like urdu or bengali
#
for example where you have stuff that if you translate it directly into english it can often
#
flowery and ornate and whatever and these are different modes that if you are in one mode
#
for somebody who is thinking in another mode to judge you on that basis is almost like making
#
a category error and i imagine that what would happen when we try to evaluate the writing of
#
others whether as editors or in your role as a literary agent is that you know initially you
#
have a set of values about writing and you do everything on the basis of that but then later on
#
do you find yourself having to take a step back and say that no so-and-so person is writing in
#
this mode or so-and-so person is writing in this voice and therefore to be authentic to that voice
#
and to the vibe is more important than a particular writing rule of you know don't have long sentences
#
or don't have adverbs or whatever the case might be absolutely you have to there are narratives
#
that demand or i won't say demand but in the natural flow convoluted sentences in that part
#
of the story work and you don't want to then go back to the rule book and say but nobody's
#
writing such verbose sentences anymore because generally that's my first reaction like don't do
#
this to me but if in that form if if you feel that the writer is creating that atmosphere that
#
world building is happening through those same convoluted sentences so be it so it's it's a very
#
creative field right you have to go book by book you while you have certain things that you fall
#
back on in terms of form technique tool literary tradition yeah but this writer has been brave
#
enough to to do something like that still which is not the trend or which is not what people are
#
used to reading in this particular genre but if the writing convinces you then go with it
#
i'm happy to respect that absolutely i don't see a problem at all
#
i did this very memorable episode with amitavakumar where we spoke a lot about the craft of writing
#
and he quoted something by a man who was a great influencer named william maxwell
#
where william maxwell said quote after 40 years what i came to care about most was not style
#
but the breadth of life stop quote and and i find it this is so lovely and then i guess
#
and then i guess what you look for is the breadth of life and then you try to craft it so that it
#
is as powerful as it can be without losing you know are there any examples of you know works that
#
you know you you played a part in enabling in a sense and i know you will never give
#
yourself credit for books that are out there so i mean but i can't think of another way to
#
put the question but just just to sort of understand what that process is
#
can't remember i mean i'm not trying to boast that i've done so many books or whatever but
#
i say off the cuff i can't think of names of books like this i've given feedback to so many
#
i'll come back let me try and remember some books like was it ever a time where
#
you were surprised by how receptive the writer was and by what the how much better the outcome was
#
i've been very happy because one thing i can say is the people who've signed up with us whom i
#
represent have really worked with me as far as feedback is concerned they're very receptive
#
very very receptive like there are authors who are about three or four books down
#
and i've completely trashed the fifth one like just last week i had this conversation with this
#
writer won't reveal names but i gave feedback to him and i said boss this is not a book
#
that was my opening feedback sentence i said
#
i said move on to the next book leave this otherwise rewrite the whole thing because
#
you have to convince me this is not you you are in a hurry to write the next book it's showing
#
so these kind of things and but again feedback is taken very very positively because they know by
#
now that i am on their side i'm not an enemy and that's how we build our relationship with our
#
authors but i yeah there are two three books like there's one author in singapore who's more of a
#
screenplay writer and this is her third book and while the first two books i hardly had to work
#
with her like they came to me fully written and just a little bit of back and forth and we sold
#
the books this one i said no you've like i gave extensive feedback and you need to work on it
#
she's still working now that i'm thinking there's another one in srilanka
#
oh there's a srilankan writer and she's working on the feedback that beautiful writing but
#
again literary fiction is hard to sell so you have to really work at it
#
even non-fiction in fact somebody's writing a biography right now and the first chapter came
#
to me and i didn't have too much to say but yes a lot of pointers so she's again like taken it like
#
a sponge and said okay i'm going to work on it a lot of it depends on how you approach
#
and how you develop your relationship with your authors and if you approach them simply
#
directly without too much pooha and you know don't put them on the defensive it's all good
#
i've not had a problem actually amit i'm not making i'm not hard selling myself
#
i'm honestly telling you i've never had a problem with any of them
#
so a two-part question one thing i think we'd both agree on and which kind of baffles me is
#
the poor quality of books that indian publishing brings out including the
#
including the top publishers like 90 percent of it is horrendous to the point of being unreadable
#
right and my two-part question is that one why is this is it that some publishers are just playing
#
the volume game where they are saying ki like a venture capitalist ki saw nikalenge usme se
#
what is the reason behind the quality problem and the second more difficult question is that
#
as a book agent what are you optimizing for because one would imagine that from a business
#
point of view you are optimizing to sell as many books as you can to publishers in which case
#
a you should not be too selective about who you work with because publishers aren't
#
and b you just want to put volume out there not you know not make an author labor forever over
#
a book but just get it out move on to the next one so that is a business incentive but what you
#
seem to be working on is a different incentive where you seem to be working on the whole idea
#
of making it as good a book as possible you know that we will not settle you know but we'll make
#
it as good a book as possible and we'll put it out there and this might also play to a long-term
#
monetary interest because after all if you become known as someone who only comes out with quality
#
books your value also goes up those authors also benefit but that's a long game so how do you look
#
at that so part one of the question is why does so much work that is horrendous get published like
#
don't publishers have editors don't they have judgment what on earth are they doing and second
#
how do you deal with this dual incentive like if an author comes to you with a book and you feel
#
the book could be much better if she rewrote the entire thing once but at the same time you know
#
that you can sell it right now to a publisher and get a decent advance
#
how does one work with that conflict okay let me get to the first point
#
I will give you a dual answer to what is happening in the industry right now and you're making sure
#
that I get professionally murdered by the way but I'm going to be honest and say yes there's a lot
#
of mediocrity that is getting published and it is selling so that's something to say about the
#
intellectual capacity of us as a collective consciousness as a society as a nation or maybe
#
there's not enough good stuff to choose from it might say something about I'm just coming to that
#
it is also not entirely true that the same publishers are not putting out terrific content
#
they are there is there are some great books coming out in fiction in non-fiction less and
#
short stories and poetry that's one grouse that I have but there are they are trying to balance
#
the thing see at the end of the year those kind of books are coming out they're selling great
#
copies they're reaching different kind of readership so be it I know what you're talking about it hurts
#
but it hurts it hurts purists and artists it it that's not the larger faculty that's reading
#
that's the masses I don't want to say the word masses also because that sounds a little
#
derogatory I don't mean it like that but the general layman reader is looking for something
#
different but you know I'm I'm I'm not even talking about those kinds of books which some
#
may consider lowbrow but would sell nevertheless I'm talking about the quality of writing and
#
editing books which don't even sell and they're just terrible and the question is why are you
#
bringing it out to begin with yeah that is a question that baffles me also because those
#
books are not being sold so what are you doing why are you publishing them I'm also asking that
#
industry say why are we being so myopic about the kind of content that's coming out
#
if though that print run is only two thousand three thousand copies
#
boss what are we doing we need to really sit up and question ourselves
#
you know and if it's not furthering your business if it's not helping the writer
#
then where are we at so as the entire body of indian publishing I would really like to pose
#
this question because it baffles me as much but yeah to the other side yes there's some great
#
books coming out so there's no denying that but you're very right about this is a palpable
#
reality with something that I don't know why we are in denial of we it seems we are in denial of
#
we are in denial of individually if you talk to each of the publishers they're all very worried
#
about it because they're all fine professionals they're all senior experienced people but this
#
answer evades me completely and I can't find reasons for it frankly even as an agent if you
#
look at me as an industry person I really don't know how to how to justify what you're asking me
#
is there a kind of volume game in the sense a big publisher says that okay I need to sell
#
1500 copies of each book to break even I'm going to just bring out a hundred books indiscriminately
#
out of them 10 books will be books I really pay attention to they are my blockbusters
#
but of the others if even one or two take off it's kind of worth it and it is the volume game
#
it is a volume game hundred percent no doubt but then your cross question then will come back to me
#
and you say but what about the independent smaller publishers why are they doing that
#
so that again that question mark will remain in our heads but yeah I mean some books will work
#
and make up for the deficit of the other books but it is still a puzzle that there are so many
#
unearned advances even if they are smaller amounts what are we doing with them why aren't we just
#
making an effort to sell those as well the question here is about marketing and distribution
#
and visibility it comes down to that now India as a topography I think is very challenging
#
and if somebody cracked that distribution game we'd all be happier and a lot of these
#
even if they're half decent books or better books will make it
#
it so there are these lacuna in our industry in terms of resources in terms of spreading
#
our distribution network in terms of selling backlist and making sure there are reorders
#
making sure that the discounts that are given are kind of balanced out that the publisher doesn't
#
have to cry about higher discounts so it's a very layered narrative right there about running the
#
business as well it's not as simple about just keep mediocrity or volume business here
#
there are parts these are all parts of the jigsaw puzzle but there are gaps in marketing
#
distribution which we are the game is not being played right and I don't know there has to be
#
some a lot more dedicated professionalism as far as sales and marketing is concerned
#
which is what we really lack we will we will we are sitting on the numbers in our country
#
we can create new readers we can convert people there are huge numbers available to us
#
we in our marketing and sales is where we are lacking
#
and if publishers put down budgets for marketing
#
and those budgets are utilized pragmatically and inventively they will earn back and much more
#
that leap has to be taken and that leap is not being taken but that and the leap is being taken
#
only for a few books that's the problem the second part of the question as an agent then
#
how do you deal with the trade-off between playing the volume game yourself and getting
#
a lot of books out there and selling them and actually just sitting with each and every book
#
and making sure it is the best book it can be even if it is so in invisible ways which
#
a publisher may not even be discerning enough to notice I don't play the volume game because
#
I've never run siahi as a business I recognized that a long time back
#
I've okay let me rephrase this I'm trying to find that balance
#
in which I manage to survive pay salaries increase salaries of my team because I really
#
love my team and I'm concerned and
#
also be true to my calling to give my best to the writers oh my god I'm sounding so so
#
what do you say stereotypical right now yeah absolutely but I'm trying to find that balance
#
frankly I when I started siahi I somebody asked me this question where do you see yourself five
#
years from now and 10 years from now I said today if you ask me how many authors are there on your
#
website I don't have a figure to give you I have never counted I know I will send emails out I have
#
about more than 160 authors or I have 170 like approximately close to 200 or we've upped 200
#
but specific numbers will never be my thing this is something that somebody on my team counts
#
we have so many on our website and that's what like if I don't know if you got that email from
#
me the year that was I send out one year that was emailer every year that this is what siahi
#
managed to do over the last one year in terms of sales and deals and blah blah blah but I'm
#
constantly trying to find that balance of putting that good book out
#
and yet selling a few books which I know could be better but I know that they are getting picked up
#
straight away still have a discussion with the publisher it needs this this this kind of edit
#
will you please see to it and I also tell the author ki apan abhi pitch kar rahe hain
#
but it needs this work and ye publishing stage pe deal ho jayega so you are constantly transparent
#
about the way you're functioning with your authors and with the publisher like publishers sometimes
#
laugh at me saying you're calling us up and trying to sell a book and saying but isko edit
#
ki zarod hai I said haan hai but I'm also trying to tell you that that book is good and has this
#
potential so take it again I'll be very honest to admit that in the last two years there are
#
three or four books that I really believed in because of their writing and the story
#
but I haven't been able to sell till now because publishers are saying market down hai,
#
iss type ki writing nahi bikhegi and I'm telling the writers hang in there just just hunker down
#
and hang in there so there are all sorts of scenarios that are playing out parallelly all
#
the time but numbers game is one thing that I don't think instinctively I can play I've always
#
rolled very organically even if I'm saying on my website that I'm looking at non-fiction more
#
because that's selling more yes I'm saying it because I have to also survive right but it's
#
not that I'm not helping debut fiction writers out or I'm not giving them feedback or I'm not
#
taking on fiction I am but the other side of the story is that today I've signed on an author
#
happily and then I leave that author anxious and waiting and hanging in there for how long
#
so I talk to them all the time and say gosh it's not happening either you want to kind of just
#
move on to the next book or you want to wait so these are very transparent conversations that
#
we have and then we decide the course for that book so what I'm trying to say is all
#
kinds of scenarios keep playing out all the time you mentioned somewhere else that you started CIE
#
the first books that you took on were poetry and short stories which seems rather foolhardy from
#
any business point of view tell me a little bit about that journey that what what what made you
#
think of you know starting a literary agency and what made you think of starting that journey
#
off with poetry and short stories so this was 2005 end just before the first edition when we
#
rolled out the Jaipur Lit Fest there was a very senior editor from Little Brown visiting Jaipur
#
and I took him out to lunch to Nero's the proverbial place where we used to take people out
#
we'll talk about Nero's also you have an interesting section on Nero's in your book
#
yeah so I took him out and then he was just asking me and okay what's the programming
#
looking like and whatever so I was answering all sorts of questions and I was talking about
#
oh I'm part of this online writers forum and this is what I'm helping my friends with
#
and it's very concerning because you know this is such good writing I really don't know if they'll
#
ever get published and I in the course of planning the festival become friends with a lot of publishers
#
by then just still newly like discovering people and all of that so it was all very exciting at
#
that time and he said you're like he just sat across the table he said you know what you're
#
doing is what a literary agent does and you're a complete idiot and I looked at him I said oh
#
I never thought of it that way but I said I'm not trained I'm not trained as an editor I don't know
#
what to do about this he said just think about it
#
he left that thought in my mind JLF came the next episode also came and then obviously I was walking
#
out of jail I was leaving the festival and I kept thinking and more and more I kept getting in
#
like a lot of writers would walk up talk I would read and say oh my god why isn't this and they
#
said no we'd submitted possibly in the slush pile it's not getting read then the consciousness
#
also came of the kind of writing that's getting done in our languages because by that time I'd met
#
Bikaner is the used to be the hub of publishing in Rajasthan right so I'd gone to Bikaner met
#
with those publishers and like they put out solid stuff in the past so it was like a journey of
#
discovering so many realities together so this was I think feb of 2007 I said okay let's do it
#
I called up Namita she said great idea then I talked to Pramod who was my partner in crime
#
for JLF he said go for it then I spoke to Bunny he said
#
spoke to a few other friends in the industry they all said of course we'll help you we'll
#
be on board a lot of them came on as honorary directors all of that happened like supreme
#
support came and we launched siahi within a month of thinking about it the website was ready and
#
and so my first two authors were Kartika Nair and Sampoorna Chatterjee
#
Kartika I was in touch with much before and Amit you won't believe I have every single
#
email of her still every single sentence she'll write she writes is art
#
and it was her poetry and I kept telling her I said no you you got to get published you got
#
to get published you can't you can't not get published and then Sampoorna's short stories
#
and there was another novel of hers so we got a two book deal with for her and then Kartika's
#
this thing also happened and within I think two or three weeks of starting siahi I sold all three
#
books and we were off but then I grew slowly I didn't I was just stumbling along
#
there was no strategy there was no
#
so that's how we just happened and it was like every milestone Amit I will not forget the first
#
time I held siahi's first printed catalog in my hand then the first time I went to Frankfurt
#
for the book fair there were so many firsts that I can't forget you know because that first catalog
#
was just like a slim four five page thing with just those many authors and blurbs
#
and now it's like a more than a hundred page thick book so yeah it's been a nice journey
#
tell me about like you mentioned Bikaner being the hub of publishing in Rajasthan
#
tell me a bit about what the local publishing scene is in the different languages because
#
from my sort of insular elite english-speaking viewpoint all that's visible to me is what is
#
happening in english publishing but give me a sense of what's happening otherwise like how
#
strong are the reading cultures in other languages and what is a portability between these languages
#
for example I had done an episode with Sagutha Srinivasaraju who pointed out that when it comes
#
to translation when it comes to literature traveling from one language to the other
#
is usually either from english to a language or from some language to english english is always
#
there at the center of it you're never going to have Kannada to Marathi or you know Punjabi to
#
Telugu or whatever it's it's all you know english's orbit around which everything rotates so what is
#
your sort of view of the language publishing world how does that work is it healthier less healthy
#
how does that play out and do you also then think of like how important are translations and
#
to what you do for your authors languages very vibrant absolutely the amount of people
#
that are reading in Gujarati in Marathi in Assamese in Bengali
#
in the south indian languages on the whole vast readership so it's it's just that it's
#
it's just that we don't see them being reported in mainstream media
#
or the english-speaking world because you and me are more exposed to that
#
but i have seen writers of their own languages being venerated even today
#
more than english writers i mean english writing writers in our country and that is still a reality
#
so the thing you asked about translations between languages so you know there was a very healthy
#
era where a lot of malayalam to tamil tamil to malayalam crossovers were happening it's reducing
#
now i'm told i was having this conversation with someone who reads and writes in both languages and
#
they were only telling me there were two of them sitting together and they were both telling me
#
that this is a concern like it's rapidly going down but their each of these languages are selling
#
very well in larger numbers than english writing selling in india Punjabi it's a little less
#
i would say hindi also some hindi is like a balanced thing you know it's a lot of it is
#
reviving now which is great because we did go through a slump in hindi and most of the
#
publishers will tell you that but they they have their they've had their gems and their moments
#
and you know the numbers have been there for them also cross translation between languages something
#
that really needs a lot of work in our country and i know that the younger generation of publishers
#
who are now working within languages are actually actively talking of coming together
#
to work cohesively and see make each other aware and see what can be done which is a great healthy
#
move you know and it's so heartening to see because they're all the younger people who are taking the
#
the initiative and saying you know at least the rumblings are there and we are hoping we'll see
#
results also coming to translations yes that was one of the things that even i started see i was
#
that we must must encourage translations and we have the readership here we have the numbers
#
it's a difficult space to be in because translators need to be paid well to be able to
#
be incentivized to better their skills to work on their translations
#
to make them as strong as they can so that yes but again there's a lot of work that's been done
#
in different pockets in the country i just wish we could all it's a very idealistic utopian thing
#
that i'm talking about because given the challenges that we face as a nation it's difficult but i wish
#
all of us could just come together and talk about our challenges and carve a way forward it's not
#
that we can't surmount them we can what is happening is one thing is i'm talking about
#
these younger breed of publishers who are within languages are talking to each other a lot more
#
now which is fantastic and i've seen it like i've been first time witness to these conversations
#
since december so it's i've just been so delighted to just say okay good step taken let's push for it
#
translations yes have grown tremendously in the last let's say over the last 15 years you're seeing
#
a steady incline which is very very heartening and we need to see more and more and more and
#
i can see that even publishers are really really opening up to taking on more and more translations
#
because the real stories are coming from our hinterlands they're beautiful
#
and if it's just unfortunately we don't know more than one language at least i'm
#
completely challenged but the moment i receive a submission of translation i actually sit up
#
and say oh wow let's read it let's like you know like there was somebody who sent me a
#
real short stories just a month or so back and i was scrolling through my manuscript folder so
#
i pushed it up i said no i need to read this quickly because it will and it did need feedback
#
so yeah translations i just wish we could do more work in
#
even having conversations about it and pushing out each other
#
to experimenting more to taking on more and it's happening it's not that i think
#
we're doing some great work there another sort of two-part question
#
if you are a storyteller today you know as opposed to 50 years ago you have many different ways to
#
tell your story you know there was a time where you know you write a book or maybe if you belong
#
to the right family in bollywood or tollywood or whatever you get a film made but essentially
#
writing a book was one of the few ways in which you can tell that story especially if you have
#
if you want to tell a story with that kind of scale and ambition today there are many many ways
#
today there are many many ways to tell a story many of them offer gratification that is more
#
immediate than books you could try writing for a web series especially with the explosion
#
that has now happened in that regard so that's one thing that if you're a person with a creative
#
storytelling urge your incentive is not necessarily to write a book which won't pay unless you're
#
really one of those top 0.01 percent but to just try other things so part one is that do you think
#
that that has affected the hunger for writing like not among readers but for people to actually
#
write books per se because earlier what would happen is among that subset of people who do read
#
there'll be a small percentage which will also want to create and then they'll want to write
#
but now among that subset of people who consume stories you know a significant chunk of the
#
creative ones will be attracted to other media so that's you know part one and part two is that then
#
as a literary agent do you look at the stories and the books that are coming in as part of
#
a bigger picture so not as a book in itself but you know can we sell the video rights of this can
#
we sell the film rights of this do those considerations come into play like sometimes
#
i'll pick up a random book at a bookstore and i'll read the first page and i'll be like
#
you know you get that you know what i'm saying so the landscape in that sense is
#
different so you know yeah there's um you know what's happened with the opening up of different
#
medium for self-expression and creative expression whether with the coming of the internet the
#
blogging the vlogging and then audiobooks and instagram and substack and various other substack
#
kind of platforms are there now for publishing digitally people are still writing books
#
and looking for different ways of getting them visible so there is no dearth of people writing
#
books in spite of the spectrum of mediums that have opened up you know and with technology it's
#
all good everybody's trying everything in fact a lot more people think that they can write
#
thing that they can write
#
maybe they can't they could do other things better
#
just saying it but yeah so there's no dearth it's just encouraged more and more people to try
#
writing books as well as expressing themselves through different things
#
this whole temptation of immediate satisfaction is there and this whole impetuousness
#
of getting published so self-publishing and then coming to us and saying now what should we do
#
because the book has not been edited yet how will you do marketing where will you store the
#
inventory print on demand is expensive these are realities it's difficult to handle in a country
#
like ours and not everybody hits a jackpot immediately somebody something goes viral
#
in a self-publishing platform and you know you've sold millions of copies on Kindle and suddenly
#
then there was some rich deal happens with the mainstream publisher those are dreams
#
and some of them have come real but it sounds more like a movie frankly
#
but there are books that are being written only for film adaptation or web series adaptation
#
or the ott world there are people who are writing consciously like that
#
and it's fine like at siahi there are times when i see a very good story but i know this is not
#
going to get published given whatever's happening in the industry depending on what the genre is
#
i've actually signed on authors only for audiobook rights only for film rights and we are pushing
#
their books in those platforms only and i've had a very frank conversation with them the contract
#
that they sign with us is then only for those rights so we are experimenting we are very open
#
and we are opening up possibilities for our writers so that you know i don't want them to feel key
#
and we don't approach it in the spirit
#
i don't use that kind of language i just tell them this is real your book is going to work really
#
well or let's say not call it a book you're writing the story is going to work really well
#
in this medium do you want to go ahead with it i'm happy to sign you on for it and we're doing that
#
why not here's another dilemma and that you know strikes me about authors in relation to the creator
#
economy one of the profound truths of the creator economy is that constant iteration leads to
#
excellence the more you do something the better you get at it in fact the youtube creator ali
#
has this great advice that initially when you start making videos make two videos a week for
#
two years without looking at the numbers without thinking about validation and which would amount
#
to you know 200 videos in that time and i think that's excellent advice and the reason i think
#
that's excellent advice is that initially when you get out there if you're searching for validation
#
you'll constantly be second guessing what people want to watch and you'll sort of lose any
#
authenticity in that process and it's more important to do something that you love and
#
do it again and again and quantity has a quality of its own the more you do something you know the
#
better you become at the craft initially whenever we try anything we suck we do it again and again
#
we get it wrong we get it wrong we get it wrong and then one day we get it right and for an author
#
that is not a mantra you can subscribe to it can take five years to write a book it can take
#
eight years to write a book you know you don't have that option that i'll keep throwing things
#
at the wall which would have a you know a dual purpose one is if you just keep churning it out
#
then you'll get better at it just because you're doing doing doing and you're trying different
#
things and the other is that something somewhere will click and that will show you a direction
#
but for an author you're sitting down you're spending five years six years you're working
#
on a book you're full of self-doubt imposter syndrome will always strike you if you're any
#
good if you're not good you will think you're the cat's whiskers but you know and then your
#
friends will tell you one thing your instinct will take you in one direction you will be defensive
#
about your work your literary agent may say no change this change that publishers want this
#
incredibly confusing and therefore for any creator who could go in two directions the
#
temptation might be that let me go in a direction where i can get better fast and where the sample
#
size of my output is so large that success is much more probable you know like in a sense i
#
remember in the late 1980s when i was a teenager thinking about the two things i most wanted to
#
do uh none of which i've done properly and one was write books and the other was make films
#
and at that point i thought ki write books hi karna barega because mai toh introvert ho
#
films depend on other people you have to the horror of horrors interact with other people
#
so book hi theek hai na apne liye but today i would say that the decision could easily go the
#
other way for a young person where they might say ki yaar paan saal book likhunga and it might be
#
crap and you know matlab what am i supposed to do if i write 10 books to improve that's 50 years
#
gone whereas you know aap youtube karo aap web series karo aap ye karo aap wo karo you know the
#
path seems kind of clearer there so from your experiences of creators that you speak to and
#
i would imagine you speak to many more creators who just want to write books
#
but what are sort of your thoughts on this fundamental and really difficult dilemma
#
yeah i agree with you what you started off with saying that if you keep repeating and you keep
#
at it you become better and that applies to a writer as well hundred percent you may have
#
the greatest imagination but there's always something that you can do to chisel it further
#
right and i'm not saying this from the point of your being a perfectionist because in art
#
there is no perfection and i don't think we should aspire for perfection perfection is the enemy of
#
production yeah so i'm not i'm not trying to be anal as far as that is concerned i'm just saying
#
what are we doing with our imagination how are we working on it that dilemma will be there
#
and i think most creative people are still going through that dilemma but yes the reality of today's
#
life and our surrounding the very air that we are breathing is about instant gratification
#
so people are and also there is pressure to be successful so people are succumbing to different
#
outlets of their creative expression so i'm writing a book but until then you know i'll
#
divide my day in such a way that i'll spend two hours writing but the rest of the time i have to
#
earn a living i will make a youtube video and try and get money through subscribers and
#
whatever advertisements and i will also then see if i can write a screenplay or
#
make a like write a jingle maybe or whatever you i mean those are hard realities you've got to put
#
bread on the table right so a lot of people are then splitting themselves into multiple
#
creative personalities and it's not that on the face of it it sounds very simple but it's not
#
it's complicated so some people will yield to that pressure and maybe not become not come out
#
of it really successful but some people are managing to do it in a very brazenly comfortable
#
manner so comfortable that i'm instantly suspicious
#
my take here is are you happy doing what you're doing do you love what you're doing
#
it will show up in your art and your craft and your expression and your
#
whatever you're writing creating are you being honest to yourself
#
so this conflict is something that each of us is constantly negotiating right you've got to survive
#
you've got to earn and you've got to be true to what you want to do but this is life amit these
#
are hard decisions and you can't i can't answer in a generalized way but people are handling it
#
and technology is giving us that is smoothening the process out for us
#
yeah no i i didn't mean this aspect of you know writing being what i want to do and everything
#
else to earn a living not something like that but in a sense that a creator might be equally
#
drawn to two or three mediums and then out of those the least attractive then would appear to
#
be writing a book because if you're playing a long game in making videos your long game is two years
#
but two years is you're really playing the short game when it comes to books because you'll barely
#
write one book leave alone publish it you know publishing takes time takes time so the whole
#
so just in terms of the choices for a creative person right at the starting stage right at the
#
inception stage you know i'm not even privileging one over the other and saying that no books are
#
better you should write books no why are books better you know some people make great tiktok
#
videos you know some people do great work on youtube so yeah but tiktok video people have
#
also been picked up to write books by the way yeah yeah because that's your publishing industry
#
playing the volume game and saying that hopefully some of their following will
#
buy their book so that's a kind of a completely different matter let's go back to biography
#
because i think you know we've been skipping back and forth and this of course is a fascinating
#
subject books writing publishing but let's talk about events like you of course started the jaipur
#
lit fest but even apart from that you've been doing a lot of other work with other festivals you
#
i just found out in the break that you organized you've organized a music festival in Bhutan for
#
10 years and so on and so forth it wasn't music it was art culture literature art culture literature
#
yeah yeah yeah we were talking with uh my musician uh buddy gaurav so uh i so tell me a little bit
#
about all of this because the you know this seems like a a heck of a lot of work in terms of
#
organizing stuff coordinating stuff event management is you know just such a scary
#
ball game for any artist just to think about so how did you kind of get into it and decide that
#
this is uh that it would be worth doing where did it start and where did you feel that yeah
#
this is something i want to keep doing so obviously two years of jlf i realized that
#
organizing and creatively playing with the programming and putting people together
#
and charting out a good event was something that i really enjoyed doing went on to to
#
say his first international conference was translating bharat where we got a lot of
#
translators and publishers together for a two-day uh brainstorming kind of conference it was hardly
#
a conference it was just like one session after the other but it was a good mix of international
#
and uh indian translators and publishers so that happened and then we did mantles of myth
#
where we looked at stories through textiles and weaving across the country again it was
#
an international level uh thing which people still remember and still walk up to us and say
#
when is mantles of myth part two happening and it's been 17 years i think since we did
#
the first one it was lovely the kind of stories we discovered through our textiles we almost
#
did get a book out on it but anyway that's another story so yeah it's about being meticulous
#
paying attention to detail being supremely organized at coordinating and also having a
#
very strong team which i was very fortunate about my team has been fantastic right from
#
we worked together right from 2006 so and none of us had any training in event management we just
#
learned on the job we just learned okay let's do this even raising sponsorships i did know how to
#
make a presentation for a sponsorship deck my god that was itself like okay let's do it so we we
#
just and everybody i think um people heard they stepped in gave me leads for sponsorships put
#
things together mountain echoes was like it was another serendipitous moment that's a Bhutan
#
festival Bhutan festival uh one fine day i got a call from Namita saying
#
festival karna hai Bhutan mein tumhare paas phone aayega kar logay aaset karlein main to
#
Pavan was the ambassador at that time in Bhutan prolific writer himself her majesty
#
was a writer herself published by penguin the need was expressed by her that i want to do
#
something for like this for my country you know people should read more here write more here
#
let's be creative and she incidentally that year was invited as a speaker to jlf
#
amit you won't believe with her security which we broke protocol because she
#
i was told to meet her met her outside one of the venues at the festival on a ramp
#
with her security people very uncomfortable because protocol was being broken
#
she spoke to me five minutes
#
and after that she just gave me a hug she said come quickly let's do it this was january 2010
#
may 2010 we put the festival up
#
and it was just hugely challenging we got a budget of five or seven lakhs
#
we pulled off a festival for three days flew people in hired sound hired taxis did all of
#
it hotels tickets everything we just had about 22 23 writers or something like i can't even
#
remember now so half Bhutanese some Indian it was just i met the first few writers from Bhutan who
#
writers from Bhutan who had got published outside kunzang
#
children was published by zuban already and somewhere in europe met her tried to develop
#
contacts with other writers it was like reaching in deep inside the woodwork to pull them out
#
because they are such shy reticent people they don't want to talk about their own work and
#
writing in the books and yeah and then we had to work with a venue which was her majesty's
#
tarayana foundation and all of that so anyway we grew bit by bit 10th year we had five or six venues
#
two cities we had managed to get book clubs opened in every school wow there were three or four
#
street library projects falana library happening it was lovely when i went to thimphu first in
#
2010 or was it end of 2009 end of 2009 there were just one bookstore after 10 years there were four
#
oh that's what we achieved there you know it was just it's the most enriching decade of my life
#
what that country gave was just i don't think i must have been completely blessed
#
so many friends so much experience so so many discoveries of great writing
#
a lot of budni's book authors got published after that in india and abroad we made books travel
#
so that was amazing and we took a lot of art we did exhibitions we took we did music
#
we did all sorts of things lots of workshops it was great fun very challenging but
#
supreme amount of fun so question now about a dichotomy that's there in cooking and i wonder
#
if is there any events and i'll start by quoting a bit from your book where you write about your
#
skills of improvisation or the importance of improvisation where you write if the coffee
#
custard on the double boiler gets overcooked into coagulated shreds don't sob over the lost souffle
#
retrieve the shreds let them cool while you garner the courage to reinvent whip up fresh
#
cream to soft glistening peaks melt dark chocolate over the double boiler mix the two ever so gently
#
add spring and foam with frothy egg whites pour a portion into a souffle dish add a layer of the
#
coffee shreds chill and set repeat friends who came to dine that night still can't forget the
#
lingering taste of that coffee toffee you put in your sinful mousse so my my question here is this
#
that the dichotomy in cooking is that there is a certain kind of cook who needs to be incredibly
#
scientific and everything is about precise proportions and bakers obviously so if you're
#
baking you've got to be incredibly precise and you know and you've done five layers seven layer
#
40 layer cakes or whatever the case might be and there is that precision and at the same time and
#
i can't do that at all but you know when i cook i'm much more a jugaru kind of thing i'm just
#
you know playing by instinct and just going by that and so on and so forth and you seem to
#
have kind of done both of those kinds in your cooking and equally i wonder if there is a similar
#
mixture of opposite skills at play when it comes to event management that on the one hand everything
#
has to be precisely planned precisely thought out precisely coordinated but at the same time
#
shit happens in real life all the time and you've constantly got to improvise and think on your feet
#
and do jugar and all of that so you know does that comparison between cooking and events work
#
what is it like and how do you possibly manage both because it's i've always imagined that if
#
you're really good at baking you're probably not the first kind of person who even likes to improvise
#
and vice versa you know so what's what's your experience of these you're very right
#
right the process when you're cooking and you're putting things together
#
sticking to recipe the scientific thing about baking and even souffle making by the way very
#
technical so you're sticking to measurement by the needle like you can't you can't let the needle go
#
beyond if it has to be 10.52 grams it has to be 10.52 grams and so you're very particular about
#
that very specific and focused and it's the same thing about putting an event together i think
#
that's why i just enjoy both the things because i work towards it instinctively i just love what
#
i'm doing so when we are putting events together that attention to detail to minutest thing which
#
which i know sometimes my team would question me arey toh kya hua agar ek gante baad lag gya
#
i used to be a stickler and said nahi if i'm saying this time it has to this particular
#
thing has to be there by this time and functioning and rolling etc they would understand that later
#
when it impacted the overall larger picture of the event so it's that attention to detail it's
#
about managing all ingredients together that's what an event requires that's what cooking requires
#
so that parallel is just that's what you need you need to be attuned like that
#
also experience helps you right the first mountain echoes i did i must have i i know
#
for sure i made a lot of mistakes or the first conference like translating bharat but you learned
#
you grew you picked up and you either think on your feet and say
#
solution you have to be solution driven and you've got to move quick think on your feet
#
be quick and show results otherwise how do you build your credibility whether it's in the kitchen
#
or it's otherwise on the workforce in the work field so yes and by the way there is crisis
#
management all the time somebody's kicked up a fuss somebody's missed a flight
#
the taxi drivers run away or an author has had to cancel for some unfortunate reason
#
you've got to turn the program around you've got to call the printer straight up printing roko
#
session change but i want the program printed by tomorrow i don't care whether you work late
#
relationship building all of this is so much of it is based on relationship building the amount
#
of crap we pulled off in spite of things happening last minute is because people believed in us
#
and they knew we were going to put out good work they knew we are slogging at it and that was
#
respected so it's also the way you approach and project yourself if you if you're just
#
just very sincere about what you're doing the world is going to come and get you they're going
#
to have your back and people had our backs i must have cried sobbed dissolved into tears like
#
physically literally multiple times and i'm not ashamed about it i did feel those moments of
#
weakness when i said oh everything's going wrong and i haven't been able to deliver what i promised
#
but you just got to suck it up and do it can you give an example of something like that and how
#
you came up every year give one example come on this is what you would tell your writer get concrete
#
right yeah oh god there are so many examples let me see this was i think the first year of
#
we had to work with the indian embassy you know because the india bhutan foundation is
#
under both the embassies the botanies and the indian embassy and we had to work with them
#
for all travel plans everything and there was one writer who was a foreign national
#
and we hadn't come to grips with the rules that we knew that indians visa on arrival here
#
so the my travel person who was handling travel for everyone she was very good with her work
#
but somewhere between the embassy communicating and her understanding they must have communicated
#
everything she didn't come to grips with the visa rules for foreign nationals so this very well
#
respected writer is standing at the droquer counter in delhi and calling us but my i don't
#
have a visa and i didn't know what hit me because next morning the sessions were starting
#
amit i died because he was a very senior scholar and him he was integral to the first day of the
#
festival the session because as it is we had like it to say writers yeah this time it wasn't
#
a four five day festival yet first edition and i was like my heart was somewhere in my feet and
#
as a team leader i had to take the brunt of it because i can't i can't say
#
i ran to the embassy i spoke to both my directors i got shit tons of grief from
#
both of my directors what kind of planning is this you don't know what you're doing you
#
don't know that you need visa and arrive you can't do visa on arrival for a foreign national and i
#
said i was just handling so much that this got left out and what do you do so anyway and pavan
#
was luckily the ambassador then he made all the calls and we got him through somehow but that was
#
a very very bad for power on our part but there are lots of other instances where
#
we had the indian ocean playing on one of the nights and the sound vendor dumped all the
#
equipment ran off to another city to do another event can you imagine my entire team figured out
#
figured out that entire concert equipment plugged it all up the indian ocean guys
#
worked through the night with them set up the whole thing
#
and they delivered the concert the next evening mind-blowing can you imagine and my entire team
#
then shifted from the clock tower venue at 6 30 to the main venue and then there were three other
#
venues where sessions when workshops were going on and they fanned out according to their duties
#
and ran the show no sleep so we've had occasions like that
#
so what do you do but you deal with it well luckily again i had two like wizards tech wizards
#
on my team and with them and the rest of the and we were a small team of just five six people
#
running the whole festival we used to clone ourselves constantly
#
and then we've also welcomed some of our writers with a proper red carpet right up to the flight
#
picked them up straight from the tarmac and driven them off
#
so we pulled off a lot of things it's been a complete joyride
#
again it's so fascinating because it's it seems like it must be so consuming but at the same time
#
on one hand you're doing events on the other hand you're doing your literary agency work and
#
one requires patience a long game which is of course literary agency and events everything
#
comes to a crescendo at one point in time and it's like everything's happening at the same time and
#
it almost seems like you need different sort of temperaments abilities to manage these but
#
you have so let's let's talk about food you know you've spoken very evocatively in your book about
#
you know how food is so intrinsically related to memories and i'm a few years younger but
#
i was a delhi resident only for a few months in the early 90s but i still you know share many
#
of these connections where at one point you write quote when we were young delhi meant janpath and
#
circus shopping for the latest in street fashion and then lounging in nirulas
#
popuri opened on the first floor of a hot shop in nirulas it was a mecca for foodstuff people
#
like us from jaipur then you mentioned the hot shop a burger and the hot chocolate fudge
#
you speak about going to gaylord for sizzlers chocolates from vengas and then just behind
#
vengas in a block that there's scavengers right and it's it's like a landscape of the past almost
#
that doesn't really exist later you you know you speak of niros which was sort of the only
#
restaurant in town in jaipur at one point in time and you speak about the typical cream of
#
tomato soup served in ceramic soup bowls with a swirl of cream fried croutons and a sprig of
#
fresh coriander and again it's like a template of a world that's sort of past and you know i
#
remember that uh you know a lot of us like any gourmet today will perhaps a certain kind of
#
gourmet today will look at indian chinese food and scoff because there's no authenticity it's
#
just you know it's a sort of a bastardized creation in a sense but a lot of people will
#
also look at it with nostalgia because they american chops we jobi hair it it has memories
#
and why sort of be judgmental tell me about the role food has played in your life because
#
your entire book is sort of filled with detailed descriptions and memories of the kind of food
#
that you had at home and the kind of cutlery you had it from and just that whole theater around
#
food and what it meant and all of that and in in that sense you're sort of writing um uh your book
#
as a combination of a memoir and a book about food makes complete sense because that is what
#
it is you know for anyone who cares about food it's a part of your memory so tell me a little
#
bit about sort of um this facet of you appreciating food and then cooking it and then you know
#
getting that extra layer of awareness and researching it and writing about it and so on
#
and so forth I think my love for creating and cooking came from what I saw
#
my elder sister doing my mom was a very matter-of-fact cook we always had great food
#
at home but mom did have the time to experiment with cuisines also ingredients weren't available
#
and she didn't have the time frankly but what she made lips packingly good simple stuff
#
my elder sister really took to cooking and trying new things uh you know and I also saw
#
her experiment because when mummy had her first angina attack nita was just in senior school
#
so she literally had to shoulder everything at home and I saw her experimenting with soups and
#
very clear subtle broths and crisp vegetables I still have that memory
#
still have the memory of her making fudge and cake in that round oven and all of that so
#
I think all this kind of settled in my subconscious
#
we were never asked to learn to cook or anything not that kind of upbringing at all
#
I just took to it very naturally and the first thing I must have learned was maybe
#
we had this thing of papa would come home from work pack us all in take us to the
#
and then we'd pick up some fresh vegetables etc from the mandi across and we'd come home and
#
mummy would have made sure that whatever other vegetables were there seasonal was
#
it's a that kind of flavor and this basically not even an injera just long nothing else
#
I think that must have been the first thing I cooked ever and of course tried to bake failed
#
miserably tried to bake again kept failing whatever then I got married into this absolutely
#
foodie family who can't think beyond food like still today also so it just kind of opened up
#
that possibility for me to keep experimenting and keep you know trying new things and so I
#
really took to that very very well all those were the years I wasn't working my creativity needed
#
an outlet and you know you're getting guinea pigs who are ready to eat I was dying to experiment so
#
it went really well together so I kept and obviously then you build up memories right
#
so if you're traveling to some other country and you're trying a new cuisine
#
or you're entering a home store or some place where there's fantastic crockery and you know
#
you just have like a budget of a hundred and fifty pounds so you pick and choose
#
next trip we'll see what we can I've literally done that and I still have those bowls and I'm
#
awfully proud of still owning them so all of these things kept adding up and that's how
#
the memoir happened and I'll be very honest when I wrote the first two three chapters
#
I let them sit for a year or two because I didn't have the time CIA was coming up etc etc
#
and then obviously my friends and bunny and they kept like they had to start issuing ultimatums
#
that you know you can't run away just it makes you happy so right I'm with I will never forget
#
the day I picked up that handwritten register I still have it somewhere it's a green long
#
can you register motive I read and I said this is bullshit I was so ashamed of my own writing I
#
was like what makes you think you can get published like this you can't
#
what nonsense and I felt like such a failure and I was so depressed for a week 10 days and
#
you know one just kind of mechanically kept working
#
and I kept thinking about it and then I had this conversation with some writer and I was giving
#
her feedback on the phone I stopped I said okay let me call you back I can't remember who it was
#
though I said I I was talking to myself I said you fucking double-faced bitch you realize what
#
you're doing you're telling your writers to step back to rewrite to not give up
#
but revise restructure read research what do you think you're doing to your own book
#
and you're going to be such a failure that you're going to give up when have you given up
#
it's okay so the rewriting started happening
#
and then when I started rewriting it was just maybe a couple of chapters and it was nothing
#
like what I had written that just I tore those pages and I shredded them and I threw them
#
they were not they were handwritten so they were not on a computer
#
I happened to meet Kartika I still remember in defense colony in Sagar
#
I spoke to her about the idea I said I'll email the thing and I told her exactly what I had gone
#
through she said don't worry just send it I love the idea let's see what we can do she read the
#
first two three to two chapters I think and she said okay let's do it you can it is doable I did
#
it but I poured my heart out not all of it but yeah you poured out a lot of it you have called
#
a friend fat you're one of your nephews you've written his chin you know you can't make out the
#
difference between his chin and the rest of the body you still come on how can you say something
#
like that shame shame so yeah no no no it's it's it's a delightful read and you were talking about
#
sort of you you're marrying into a family where they really love to eat and you've actually given
#
a graphic description of that where you speak about how you went out with bunny your husband
#
to be his brother bunty and his wife smithy and the four for the four of you the order at Nero's
#
was quote three chicken chameen three chicken chili dry three shredded lamb green and red peppers
#
two garlic chicken two chicken fried rice but we'll start with four butter naan and reshmi kabab
#
and bring four hot and sour chicken soups also stop quote and you know you ask who's going to
#
eat that and they say it's going to be you and then you talk about how you know when you three
#
girls were at home when you went out with your parents a five of you would order quote one rogan
#
josh one chicken chameen one chicken chili one fried rice two rotis for papa and that's it
#
that's the complete meal and then you'd have then you'd share two mangoes for dessert at home
#
and which is interesting but my question is about you know through your book you talk about
#
all the nuanced differences in our cuisine and how you know food is always adapting to local
#
conditions whether it is in far east Asia or across the world and you've given examples of that
#
but the most striking example of course is when you write quote one of the best examples of this
#
is a cuisine of the nizams of Hyderabad here the Mughal love for meat is blended with the
#
fiery spices of Andhra Pradesh to create what is truly one of the greatest cuisines of India
#
the Hyderabadi likes his meat in large chunks and heavily spiced unlike the delicate kebabs
#
of Lucknow for which the meat is ground so fine that a child can eat it also the subtle fragrances
#
and flavors used in our cuisine are not to be found in Hyderabad where the meats are
#
spiced with fiery chilies tempered by the sourness of raw mangoes tamarind lemon or yogurt in my
#
earlier years Indian food brought to mind drama and high emotion but one bite into an unassuming
#
kakuri kebab made me change my opinion I could now think only of subtlety gossamer silk and
#
threads of flavor that would melt like the morning dew the elegance of fine dining in a kebab named
#
after the village defying all reasons top quote and what you've conveyed so beautifully in this
#
passage and through your book are the very different ways like the multitude that our
#
cuisine contains and how they almost cater to sort of different registers of our lives so you have
#
the maximalist overwhelming sort of spiciness of Hyderabadi cuisine but at the same time
#
the real subtlety where you can sit back and close your eyes and you know experience you know
#
the nuances of a kakuri kebab is probably the first time anyone's ever used that particular
#
phrase so how did your taste in food evolve because you know when I just think back on myself
#
my you know you grow up eating limited food like my mom was born so I would eat Bengali food and
#
that was fantastic and some Punjabi food maybe because we were in Chandigarh and then when we
#
go out it's all the cliched stuff there's a Indian Chinese stuff and everything else is kind of a
#
cliche and a template and then gradually over the years it evolves and evolves and evolves
#
like I remember recently we went to this restaurant in Bombay I won't name which
#
makes sizzlers and we'd love to eat there in the 90s and I hadn't gone after that and we used to
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love it and we went there this time and it was horrible it was like incredibly bad food and I
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knew simultaneously that this tastes the same as it used to 20 years ago and it sucks right which
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means you know one has traveled a certain whatever so how did your taste evolve how do you balance
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all this different stuff because most of the time you're not even cooking for yourself you're
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cooking for others you have to keep their palates in mind and all that in mind at the same time
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your sensibilities are also developing maybe not so much as in changing taste but just an
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expansion of the different kinds of foods that you learn to enjoy I think travel really helped me
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whether it was understanding Indian cuisine I was traveling a lot even for my writing like other
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journalistic writing that I was doing so I had this tendency to walk into every hole in the wall
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and be curious and ask them questions and understand and taste and some you like some you
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don't some you understand some you don't but we just I just kept gathering that ever-growing palette
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experimenting myself in the kitchen again trying to remember that I tasted this
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now how do I make it here you know so just say if I had Thai food in some place
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and I came back to India and I said in a place like Jaipur 25 years back
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now you had to think of ways of improvising and so you grow right you grow and so it's
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about experimenting it's about being open to different flavors and understanding and
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responding to it artistically inside my head and I think more I cooked
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the better I understood the nuances of our cuisine itself and so it went hand in hand the
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traveling the exposure and the willingness to try and also having a willing family who was
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happy to eat whatever you give them and they were also very given give good and giving feedback
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so we've I had a lot of failures a lot of like things went going wrong but then one just tried
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again and but the richness of our cuisine is something that still baffles the living
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shit out of me because everywhere I am still going
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like I was in gang talk three weeks back four weeks back and we were driving up and
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there was this roadside things and so I stopped and I said
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and then we stopped for lunch at somebody had told her that that
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restaurant is the best place to eat lunch and there lo and behold they had served that same
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rice with those nice inviting warm yellow flecks of corn in the rice and that was the first time
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I was having a company it just tasted so nice on its own and
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namak haldi whatever it was the best meal I'd had in so long so that I promptly went back
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picked up a kg of that picked up a kg of that I'm still having it at home
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and I've introduced that flavor on my table also so you have to keep researching and understanding
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ki kya karna hai kaise karna hai so while I was researching even for this book I was
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traveling from one city to another it just led me to so many discoveries so Indian cuisine the kind
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of diversity the kind of mind-boggling use of seasonal ingredients preserved ingredients
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there's so much and I feel that a lot of it is getting lost it's something that I really
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feel very very passionately about is a lot of our food traditions are going out of the window
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because none of us have the time or the energy to preserve and keep and keep those traditions going
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I mean that is the flip side of modernity etc but in our cuisine it's all very very scientific
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every ingredient is there to do something apart from adding flavor
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so agar kisi cheez mein elaichi dull rahi hai ya kisi cheez mein dalchini dull rahi hai
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flavor to enhance kar rahi hai but aapko wo ek protection bhi de rahi hai kisi samasya ka wo
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ek solution bhi de rahi hai that's the beauty of our cuisine you take it from anywhere
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I went to Sikkim for the first time last month and when I tasted their local food and I understood
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in that weather why they eat what they eat
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so and it's not about just what the land is giving you it's about marrying all of this
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and our cuisine is all about that what the weather elements give us what the land gives us
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unfortunately what we are doing to both is killing some of it but our cuisine has just limitless
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riches in any part of the country you travel 60 kilometers from Jaipur and you'll taste a
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different meat you'll taste a different sabji and you taste different pickles and even their
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rotis would be different the wood that they use to light the fire and heat the tawa will lend
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a different flavor to your roti so ek ek cheez matter karti hai
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a few years back I got together with some of my friends and we rented a bus I think about 10 or 12
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of us and we just did a food trip in the Mysore area the Mysore Bangalore area and you know it's
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like within like a 20 kilometer radius you have like four different kinds of biryani completely
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different cuisines one of them was this lovely pork biryani which the fat melting into the rice
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and it was just like a kind of incredible the one thing you know like when it comes to cooking
#
Indian cuisine is my least favorite to cook because it just feels so complicated
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and it feels so complicated while other cooking like steak
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I sort of improvised a recipe created a recipe I'm really proud of which is a kind of
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stir-fry prawn in bird's eye chili and gochugaru and gin which I absolutely love it's the best
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prawn I've ever had and therefore if you ever come home I'll make it for you and I was completely
#
mind-blown the first time I made it and had it because I was just experimenting around
#
and I thought a this is the best prawn I ever had and b I fucking made it how can that be
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right it's not even a recipe I don't think anyone's ever combined bird's eye gochugaru and and gin
#
and of course with both olive oil and butter at different stages of the process
#
so here's my next question for you that in this journey of getting into food in this intentional
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journey of first becoming a better cook and appreciating food and then actually writing
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about it and researching it and all that did that make you a more mindful eater because I think
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for many of us and it certainly happened to me and I have to remind myself not to fall into the
#
trap is that my journey with food through life has been one of increasingly normalizing what
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I'm eating to the extent that I don't even notice it that I could literally you if you give me some
#
food I could be lost in my head and have zero mindfulness and finish an entire meal without
#
knowing what I ate it's it's that bad and I find that it's like that with a lot of people but the
#
moment you start thinking I have to write about this or I have to figure out how to cook this
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or I am traveling in a new place this is so interesting let me have this
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immediately your senses are alert and heightened and you're you know really so what's been that
#
process like were you like from your book it's clear that there are deep memories of what you
#
ate in childhood and all of that are those memories something that you dredged up in
#
hindsight looking back trying to remember for the purpose of the book or were you always you know
#
keenly noticing what you ate and how it tasted I was always very very alert about what I'm eating
#
one I'm a first-class snob when it comes to food so even my dal has to be the way it has to be
#
and if I'm only eating simple kheera tomato ka salad with my lunch and if the salt is a little
#
extra I get up from my office and take the plate downstairs to my kitchen myself and say
#
simple this is at home which then translates into not just what I'm eating but also what I
#
want to put on my table for my family health also is a huge thing in my alertness so I'm
#
constantly looking for things that will make things tasty without adding risk factors to
#
people's health because all of us are aging now and it's always been a concern with me even when
#
my kids were growing up when I'm traveling the search for different flavors what is local to
#
that area has always been something that's uppermost in my mind because I love
#
discovering what's there as far as food is concerned not to say that I don't love
#
discovering the city or the place I'm going to as far as its art culture I'm also a museum buff
#
I'll get into everything I want to know the music also I want to know what's happening
#
so all of that is done and my children have had to bear with all our vacations being about
#
shopping so first you have to do this and that before that I won't let you enter the shops
#
simple and luckily they've all got into it so for me it's also about and see food is a very
#
important way of understanding the culture of a place the pulse of the people there what makes
#
them what's happening you know it's a it's a very vibrant way to understand
#
how are what is the daily life of that area how are people living what are they eating what are
#
they understanding of the local produce what are the flavors they are marrying what are the stories
#
there's always a story behind every ingredient it's fascinating so to discover all of that
#
I'm constantly on a search it wasn't just for this book and as far as my childhood memories
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are concerned no those things those things are something that I've always valued
#
atteka halwa which is made just once a year but those those flavors have stayed alive in my
#
mouth and my memory so I never had to make an effort to dredge them up for the book they were
#
just there because they matter to me also because these things are going to die out if we don't keep
#
making do you remember any mind-blowing dish that you discovered while traveling that just completely
#
blew you and you said okay I have to recreate this so at least find out more about this
#
oh so many of them so many but the first time
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the first time I had a pavlova
#
must be some decades back somewhere in some european bakery some I can't remember the city
#
my god I was like this is so delicate so beautiful I had to come back and try it out
#
I had to experiment all the cakes and pastries all my baking was always something that I have
#
to come back and recreate this so I would then look up and find recipes and exact because baking
#
is about it's a very exacting process so a lot of cakes and pastries I would come back and work on
#
love Japanese but I've not tried making it myself I don't think I have the skill in my
#
hands to I still don't have that confidence to roll a sushi or to make it as tight I keep
#
watching those shows on tv just to see if I can get a grip on it have you tried a ramen ever
#
no but I made laksas but not ramen you mentioned laksas as one of your comfort
#
foods that will go and you'll make it really sour and yeah yeah yeah but ramen no I love
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going to ramen places and eating but I have not tried ramen at home I should actually but like
#
the khao sui and a lot of these Malaysian Indonesian come you know various different
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flavors I've experimented a lot and come back and recreated even even the some of the Korean
#
rice dishes and all because now everything is like available right so I'm constantly trying to
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to make things I remember although this was a long time back but we were opening a restaurant
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in Bombay and I wanted to I was working with the chefs on on the desserts and
#
so they were saying yeah yeah we'll put this pavlova on the menu etc and I said
#
so I got mogreka sharbat from Bikaner and on the pavlova I got fresh jasmine flowers
#
and I combined it with the red berries not the raspberries the other red the red currant berries
#
and we mixed the two flavors with rose and you know to
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rose and something on one pavlova and the mogreka sharbat with the berries on another pavlova
#
it was like very subtle but it just came out mind-blowing but we couldn't put it on the menu
#
because they said Bombay audience will not understand such subtleties so I'm told Bombay
#
audiences have evolved like I did an episode recently with Sameer and Yash who are the guys
#
behind Bombay Canteen and Oh Pedro and they were saying that just in the last five years
#
this evolved a lot so there's stuff like Oh Pedro in my mind is the best restaurant in Bombay and
#
I love Oh Pedro it's amazing and and and some of the stuff there would not have been accepted
#
five years ago apparently but probably yeah yeah and and I and they've also like their Bombay
#
sweet shop has come up with what I think is my favorite dessert of all time which is called
#
Bombay Barks and the original butterscotch flavor like I want everyone who is listening
#
to try this exercise get Bombay Barks from there the original butterscotch flavor I think they now
#
have more variants and then close your eyes close your eyes and put it in your mouth and take a bite
#
and imagine that you're standing on a seashore somewhere and the breeze is blowing and let the
#
of your teeth biting into that be like you're walking on gravel right and it is it it's such
#
an incredible experience like whenever I get together with friends I try this we're all
#
looking like maniacs closing our mouths and closing our eyes and imagining this but because
#
you you have that chocolate the butterscotch the sea salt kicking in the way that it does and it's
#
just these layers of flavor and it's like a magical transporting kind of experience and
#
do you feel that way I mean I mean of course you feel that way about different kinds of food but
#
like what comes to your mind as a most sort of the visceral multi-dimensional eating experience
#
where it's not just taste you know your senses are overwhelmed by something there's this restaurant
#
up in grass in france where I had the most incredible
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silk cotton wool I don't know how to describe it warm apricot souffle I mean I can't get over
#
that flavor my god it was just mind blowing in a way that I still haven't had the courage to
#
attempt it in my kitchen I'm so scared I'm so in awe of that preparation
#
I know it's technical I know it's very very like you have to have to be very specific and get it
#
right but the way it had risen out of the souffle dish and the way it just kind of shook gently like
#
it was trembling so delicately and the way the powdered sugar sat on top and the crust on top
#
was just like this thin very delicate just about protecting it you know and the way it
#
it yielded to the spoon didn't collapse held its own so it was like one of those moments when
#
I think bunny has a lot of my pictures just he kept taking because I was responding like that
#
to the dish that is something I really want to go back to I'd love to see those pictures
#
I have to dig them out because I'm sure he still has them somewhere on his iPad
#
but that is one thing that I can never forget and it was at the end of a four course full-blown meal
#
but when I'm trying food I'm like a glutton like even people at home say that she goes out and
#
eats so much and then she comes back and she cries because she's put on tons of weight
#
and then I go on this vegetable juice cleanse thing for 10 days and one go saying I lose all
#
this weight that's a struggle but I don't think I'll ever stop experimenting here's a
#
great passage from your book that I enjoyed which I'll read out again where you write quote
#
there have been evenings where bunny dragged me to a party saying it doesn't look nice if you don't
#
go or our host is an important bureaucrat or simply I hate going alone I miss you these are
#
no-win situations which can be very frustrating coming back from many such reluctantly attended
#
parties from which I have run away without eating dinner I often find myself shuffling around the
#
fridge looking for leftover rajma chawal and then there are the rare evenings where bunny turns
#
benevolent and surrenders with okay you are you look tired stay home I'll go for the party
#
this is the actual party for me there's nothing like being alone in my room with a bowl of hot
#
food and silence to have the whole bed to myself and the luxury of sharing it only with my laptop
#
stop code which brings me to the question of what is your comfort food
#
like at a premium level you just feel like this can be my last meal that this is me I this is
#
you know this this fits in
#
My go-to comfort food is still khiliri moong ki daal and chawal with nebu nichodawa on top
#
I would just eat it I can eat it every day and yeah I think that's my thing I'm very happy with
#
just that and Kartikak used to keep telling me please don't give these kind of answers you sound
#
give these kind of answers you sound very boring I said I am I'm very happy just that I'm just
#
doing that of late I've started thankfully he surrendered don't go to his parties at all
#
I've become very reclusive over time for me it's just
#
just roll an omelet very gently truffle oil warm toast with milk and meadows butter which is my
#
own dairy so we make our own hand-shorn butter and just yeah it's a bit heavy duty calorie
#
wise because butter the truffle oil and that and I actually yeah so wherever I'm traveling
#
there's a big joke that yeh toh ek suitcase mein apni sauces aur bartan bhande bharke laayegi
#
toh uske liye humko weight ka allowance rakhna hai and so yesterday only he commented on my
#
suitcase so they're full I said yaan ab usme khaana niklega abhi toh jaga hai mere pas on my way back
#
I'll manage so that's of late I've been doing a lot of that otherwise if like I really want
#
to sleep quickly and I'm feeling a little hungry peanut butter on a fresh slice of bread I'm very
#
happy and my dog she loves peanut butter toh usko smell aati toh hum thoda thoda hum share karte hain
#
that's an added joy the dog in you yeah yeah so when I wrote this book I didn't have a pet
#
otherwise the landscape would have been my first dog was waffle who was a food lover like crazy
#
waffle me my book or my laptop very happy now it's Zoe we are very happy
#
me lovely so I've taken enough of your time and we could actually go on speaking forever for
#
people who want more of this I'd just advise them to go and buy your books just wonderful
#
evocative writing I'll end by asking you the standard question I ask my guests which is
#
for me and my listeners why don't you recommend books films music any kind of art which means a
#
lot to you and you're so enthusiastic about it you'd love to share it with the world in your
#
case it could even be recipes your book is full of great recipes including I think for
#
vodka chili cheesecake which I will certainly try out but in the meantime just not one of my
#
favorites anymore like we spoke about how your tastes have evolved I mean I won't go back and
#
have a hot chocolate fudge or do a cheesecake like this anymore you have an arhat dal episode
#
not episode arhat dal recipe also in your book I noticed yeah which is quite detailed
#
what's your favorite recipe in the book very hard I won't even remember half the recipes now
#
because I've tried and experimented so much off late what I've really enjoyed doing is
#
have you read this book by Sadaf Hussain Sadaf has some great recipes in his book which I've been
#
cooking with recently very often his rampurka korma his behari kebab his nihari recipe
#
has been tremendous like these three I've just because I've been cooking frequently a lot of
#
guests coming in and stuff so and they've been a hit with everyone so I can swear by his recipes
#
I've had a lot of fun trying them out so that goes for recipes music I listen to a lot of jazz
#
when I want to relax or I'll go back to my old kishore kumar hemant kumar kind of phases what's
#
your favorite jazz this lady who's on my I'm forgetting the name I'm so bad with names
#
some it's no the lady who sang tom's diner I've heard her live in Minneapolis
#
Suzanne Vega Suzanne Vega love her music also love Rufus Vainwright
#
I have seen him live it's amazing you know in the opera house in Sydney what acoustics man
#
his number cigarettes and chocolate milk love I kind of like Harry Styles a lot off late Sam Smith
#
but I listen to a lot of instrumental flute also it's really interesting you know
#
you know many people our age fall into this groove where they don't discover new things
#
like with music certainly more or less I have my comfort zone with books I'm discovering new things
#
with food I'm discovering new things with films I am not so much with music but I think one recurring
#
theme seems to be that you're always open always discovering like you named Sam Smith and Harry
#
Styles now that's new music in terms of food so in terms of books obviously you are
#
I'm reading the book of goose by you only I don't know if I'm pronouncing the name like
#
beautiful writing my god stunning I read a book of short stories a few years ago which I was blown
#
away by so I've got to check this out yeah she's great this is fantastic I'm reading that I'm
#
carrying another book I'm forgetting the name I still have to finish the book of goose so I'm
#
reading that and yeah books also I'm happy to experiment I mean we've got to experiment
#
yeah but what do you do it's not with me it's not because I have to it's because I want to
#
I want to so have I covered music food what else did you ask me books films films I'm
#
I don't know I don't watch that much
#
I don't like watching scary stuff I don't like watching
#
tragedies I want to see happy things for me that is entertainment so I like watching a lot of
#
comedy I'll watch all kinds of sitcoms I've gone through my phases of big bang theories and all
#
all those are what's our logo is cheese go but right now I just keep scouring
#
for watched a lot of Spanish comedy of late like any in particular I can't remember names
#
I'll send them to you once I remember done Mita will I'll put them in the show notes and meet so
#
check the show notes for that and a lot of I love watching a lot of food shows I'm constantly
#
looking on Netflix and Amazon and BBC for food shows which some of them are so artistically
#
short like every frame is perfect like it's microfilming like I'm seeing the movement
#
of the ingredients and it's just mind-blowing so I watch it for that joy as well not just learning
#
or not just discovering new things but the aesthetic delight yeah yeah so I like watching
#
a lot of those food shows yeah but no reality tv for me can't I can't oh my god I abhor it
#
so great Mita thank you so much for coming and spending so many hours this was
#
I mean I found it delightful thank you so much no I think I'm completely in awe of the kind of
#
research you put in and frankly I'm just I don't know if I was every woman who comes on the show
#
has a imposter syndrome big problem with India really yeah I was saying as a writer I don't know
#
if I really have made that kind of mark that I deserve to be on the show I'm really questioning
#
it yeah are you on twitter unfortunately I do have a handle but I don't do anything
#
yeah otherwise my listeners would have tagged you and let you know the mark that you made this was
#
this was awesome fun and I really enjoyed talking to you you've given me a lot to think about as
#
well so I will re-listen to this episode and process a lot of things thanks a lot thank you
#
thank you Amit the honor has been completely mine and it's always such fun sitting with you
#
enjoy this episode of the scene and the unseen if so would you like to support the production of
#
the show you can go over to scene unseen dot in slash support and contribute any amount you like
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to keep this podcast alive and kicking thank you
