0:05

There are a couple of things I want to talk about

0:08

before we begin this episode today. One

0:10

is friendships, especially male friendships. When it

0:12

comes to women, you sense that a

0:14

friendship between two women can be deep

0:16

and intimate. Female friends find

0:18

it easy to share everything with each other

0:20

and are not scared of making themselves vulnerable.

0:23

In a sense, the best thing about the

0:25

friendship is that you can be vulnerable, that

0:27

the constant effort of maintaining a filter doesn't

0:29

wear you down. Men, however, keep

0:31

it more on the surface. We are supposed

0:33

to be strong, we are supposed to be

0:36

stoic, we will not wear our emotions on

0:38

our sleeve, and especially not our emotions for

0:40

each other, God forbid. We will find it

0:42

hard to be vulnerable and our friends may

0:44

go through a lifetime of knowing us without

0:46

knowing what makes us cry at night, what

0:48

makes us feel weak and helpless. My

0:51

point is not that a friendship is only about

0:53

sharing vulnerability. There is in fact no evidence that

0:55

the friendship at the heart of today's episode did

0:57

too much of that. But it's

0:59

about getting past the filters we maintain

1:01

for the outside world at large, and

1:04

this can sometimes be a problem with

1:06

male friendships. My second theme

1:08

of this brief intro is about personal

1:10

writing. Too often when we write, we

1:12

are wary of using the word I.

1:15

Now, in some genres, that's not an appropriate

1:17

word. If you are writing history or economic

1:19

analysis or doing the potage from the field,

1:21

the I should mostly be avoided. But

1:24

when you allow yourself to do personal writing,

1:26

whether in a personal essay or when you

1:28

interweave yourself into some other narrative that benefits

1:30

from it, I think the result can be

1:32

beautiful. My favourite moments in the

1:34

371 episodes of this podcast so

1:36

far are when people are

1:39

talking about themselves. It's always

1:41

a personal, because a personal is always

1:43

universal. I love that kind of conversation,

1:45

and I love that kind of book.

1:52

Welcome to The Scene and the

1:54

Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics,

1:56

politics and behavioural science. Please

1:58

welcome your host, Ami- Welcome

2:05

to the Sainenian Sain. My guest today

2:07

is Ramachandra Gova making his sixth appearance

2:09

on the show. Ram's latest book is

2:11

called the cooking of books which is

2:14

structured as a memoir of his friendship

2:16

with the publisher and editor Rukun Advani

2:18

who was known to be famously reclusive

2:20

and who must have viewed with much

2:22

bemusement and perhaps alarm the strange occurrence

2:24

of an enthusiastic fan writing a whole

2:26

memoir about him. I love Ram's

2:28

book not just for the touching account of this

2:30

friendship but also because it is a portrait of

2:32

a time that is now behind us and the

2:35

act of looking back can also help

2:37

us make sense of these present times.

2:39

Ram had just a couple of hours

2:41

to give me for this recording and

2:43

his listeners would know he is the

2:45

only person I make this exception for

2:47

everyone else. Ctr has found 14 hours.

2:49

Anyway before you begin listening let's take

2:51

a quick commercial break. Hey

2:56

the music started and this sounds like

2:58

a commercial but it isn't. It's a

3:00

plea from me to check out my

3:02

latest labor of love a YouTube show

3:04

I am co-hosting with my good friend

3:06

the brilliant Ajay Shah. We've called it

3:08

everything is everything. Every week we'll speak

3:10

for about an hour on things we

3:13

care about from the profound to the

3:15

profane from the exalted to the everyday.

3:17

We range widely across subjects and we

3:19

bring multiple frames with which we try

3:21

to understand the world. Please join us

3:23

on our journey and please support us

3:25

by subscribing to our YouTube channel at

3:27

youtube.com/Amitwama A M I T V A

3:29

R M A. The show is called

3:31

everything is everything. Please don't check it

3:33

out. Ram

3:39

welcome again to the scene and the unseen.

3:41

Thanks Amit. I had you know so much

3:43

fun reading this book and over time what

3:45

has happened as you might have noticed is

3:47

that we've done five episodes so far and

3:49

I really like the trajectory of those episodes

3:52

because initially we began by talking about your

3:54

books and being kind of formal and all

3:56

of that but it got more and more

3:58

personal and the personal glow. that

4:00

I have got really charmed me and that's that's

4:02

sort of what I look for and

4:04

this book was completely personal in that

4:06

sense and I had a broader question

4:08

to start with which is that

4:11

typically I would imagine what happens when

4:13

you're writing history is that

4:15

you're editing out a lot of the truth

4:17

you know every book of history chooses one

4:19

narrative one set of things to focus on

4:22

and nothing can capture the complexity of

4:24

the world which is the way it is that is

4:26

what it is we do the best we can

4:29

and in the act of sort of

4:31

writing it down we almost

4:33

solidify the narrative that we have and that

4:35

becomes part of the discourse on whatever we

4:37

are writing about and

4:39

I wonder if that also happens in the

4:42

personal realm in the sense that what you've

4:44

done in the cooking of books is you've

4:46

written about a personal friendship and until one

4:48

sits and thinks about it a friendship is

4:51

this vast amorphous thing where you have a

4:53

bunch of memories some are good some are

4:55

bad but you never actually sit down and

4:57

try to define it for what

4:59

it is and etc etc there's nothing

5:02

particularly in focus and I

5:04

wonder if the act of writing forces you

5:06

to you know give a narrative to it

5:08

to sort of define it in a particular

5:10

way as it were and

5:12

also maybe helps you understand it better or you

5:14

know look at some things in a new light

5:16

tell me a little bit about that I

5:19

will but before I do that I just like to

5:21

take issue with one of your phrases which you begin

5:23

with that one when he's writing a

5:25

work of history one is not

5:28

editing out the truth one is being selecting

5:30

from multiple facts to

5:33

see which are more salient I didn't mean

5:35

it in that pejorative way that oh

5:37

you know yeah I then shaped the

5:40

narrative in a particular way

5:42

both that it's compelling convincing and manageable in

5:45

terms of length so my books have turned

5:47

out to be rather long I mean this one the cookie

5:49

books is at once my

5:52

most personal and more or less my shortest

5:54

book right but even there there is a

5:56

lot of shaping reshaping editing

5:58

chopping changing sometimes

6:01

in the interest of readability,

6:03

literary artifice, sometimes

6:05

in the interest of not

6:07

wanting to give offense, this book will give offense to

6:10

many people but you would have seen that

6:12

some names have been redacted, some have not and

6:14

there are different reasons why that is so those

6:16

of the public domain their names have not been

6:19

redacted. There were sections that

6:21

I found in the earlier drafts that were

6:23

too self-indulgent. Though this is

6:25

a particularly short book by my standards

6:27

it's gone through more drafts than any other book

6:29

I've written. I mean there are 14

6:32

people thanked in the acknowledgments and I

6:34

took their comments sequentially

6:36

not all at once and I revised

6:39

each time based on the comments I got from

6:41

one of those 14 readers but

6:44

I'm happy with how it's turned out. I mean

6:47

I think I also got there

6:49

was stuff in the penultimate draft that

6:52

was self-indulgent. There's a long section on

6:54

an article I've written on

6:56

St. Stephen's College which Tukun had rewritten for me

6:58

and I felt that there was enough on St.

7:00

Stephen's College already and there will be too much

7:03

for some readers but yes

7:05

I mean even a memoir you

7:07

see I this is

7:09

a memoir not an autobiography. Now

7:12

it so happens that I have thought

7:14

a lot about what an

7:16

autobiography represents not

7:18

so much about a memoir because I've

7:21

written two biographies of it. The

7:24

first was a very relevant and

7:26

the second was a Mahatma Gandhi and

7:29

both my subjects left autobiographies.

7:32

Gandhi is of course one of the most celebrated

7:34

works of Indian literature ever written the

7:36

story of my experimental truth but

7:39

Elvins is not an insignificant work either.

7:42

The tribal world of Elvin won

7:44

the Sahitya Academy Award which is very rarely given

7:46

to a work of nonfiction. This is a

7:50

beautiful compelling read describes the arc

7:52

of his life and you know

7:54

the controversies and shifts

7:57

in a career that he undertook

7:59

and so on. And when I

8:01

was working on Elvin, people

8:03

asked me, what is there that I don't find

8:05

in this autobiography? And

8:08

I stumbled upon the

8:10

line that an autobiography

8:13

is a preemptive strike against a future

8:15

biographer, which I quote in my book.

8:17

And likewise, it's Gandhi. So I remember

8:19

the same extent. You know,

8:21

what it leaves out may be as

8:24

interesting or as significant as what it

8:26

includes. Let's look at an autobiography, because

8:28

this is not an autobiography. This is a memoir of

8:30

a friendship, a personal and

8:32

professional friendship. But it

8:35

did go through many more drafts than

8:37

more or less anything I've written.

8:39

I usually write quickly, clearly,

8:41

excessively. You know, even India after Gandhi

8:43

went through two drafts at most, even

8:45

though it's a thousand pages. This

8:48

one has been really reshaped and rewritten very

8:51

many times based on the

8:53

comments of people I respect and

8:55

based on my old rethinking about

8:57

what should go in and what should be left out. You

9:00

know, I'll take issue with your phrase self-indulgent because we

9:03

say it almost as if it is a bad thing.

9:05

And once upon a time, I would have thought like

9:07

that. But I also think, and particularly when it comes

9:09

to a memoir, that, you know, I would

9:11

think of self-indulgent as being the same as indulging the reader.

9:14

The reader wants to know more about you. And

9:16

there's no harm in kind of sinking into that.

9:18

By the way, I must say that the book

9:20

read so well that I was surprised. I'm surprised

9:23

when you tell me it had so many drafts

9:25

because it just reads like, you know, you just

9:27

sat and you wrote it and everything just flows

9:29

so kind of beautifully. And I'll

9:32

dive in a little bit into that self-indulgence

9:34

point because I remember even in the book,

9:36

you've got all these places where Rookan Advani

9:39

and of course, we'll talk about the friendship

9:41

and about him soon. But you've got all

9:43

these places where he's giving you

9:45

comments on your books. And one

9:47

of the things that stands out is that

9:49

there are times where he is like that

9:51

third book about cricket that you said you

9:53

were doing, where you're expanding to the globe.

9:55

Right. And I think the crux of his

9:57

criticism there was that it is too personal

10:00

and you've got to have that

10:02

broader social significance and etc. built

10:04

into it. He had his own thesis about Pakistan

10:07

and so on, which you've quoted at length. And

10:10

I thought that, oh my God, no, why

10:12

didn't you write that? That was fine. It's

10:14

fine to be personal because, you know, I

10:16

just especially in the way that this vodcast

10:18

has evolved, I find so much value in

10:20

beauty in that. No, but he

10:23

was right about that particular cricket book. You

10:25

know, it's a, you see, I

10:27

also don't use self-indulgent. This is

10:29

certainly in the pejorative way. It's a

10:32

writer who is now 65, who

10:34

has practiced his profession for more

10:36

than four decades, who's

10:39

reasonably in the public eye, wants

10:41

to say something about his story, but

10:44

not about his achievements or about

10:46

his marriage or his family

10:48

life, but about one particular

10:51

friendship that meant so much to him

10:53

professionally and personally, particularly professionally. And

10:55

so it's revelatory. You're right. Some

10:58

readers would want that. Others would be pissed off. I mean, I think

11:01

I say in the office

11:05

that this book will be read in various

11:07

ways as a partisan

11:10

account of publishing, as a

11:12

self-indulgent celebration of

11:14

elite male privilege. And that, I

11:17

think that criticism will come and there may

11:19

be an element of truth in that because

11:21

these are two men relatively

11:23

privileged, educated in the best colleges

11:25

in the best universities talking about

11:27

themselves. Right. So, but

11:30

in so far as it is,

11:34

the exercise is novel, rare

11:37

and possibly unique. A

11:39

writer writing at such length about his

11:41

editor. You know, if I may just,

11:43

and I feel vindicated in doing this

11:46

by recent experiences in literary

11:48

festivals. I've been in two

11:51

literary festivals recently in both

11:53

of which there was a

11:55

writer more celebrated than me, more famous

11:58

than me in conversation. with

12:00

his editor and the editor was talking

12:02

up the writer, you know

12:04

about what a privilege was to publish

12:06

him, what the great books he had written, how much

12:08

they had sold, what kind of

12:10

fan mails were coming to the writer and

12:13

the editor was a sort of deferential,

12:16

you can say not such as

12:18

hard but almost a supplicant and

12:20

this happened at two literary festivals and

12:23

the next day I was talking up by absent

12:25

editor who was his educator who was his first.

12:28

So, usually it is

12:31

editors talking up writers, you know sometimes

12:34

the recollections are tinged

12:36

with bitterness like Diana Ethel when

12:38

she writes about B.S. and I. Paul in

12:40

her book, Death, but it's clear

12:43

who is writing about whom. So, in

12:45

that sense since this was a book about a

12:47

remarkable editor whose imprint

12:50

is never visible in the book she has written,

12:52

often his name is not even in the acknowledgments,

12:54

you know of course she will never appear on

12:56

stage, has never appeared on stage and

12:59

who has played such a special role, an

13:01

editor who has played such a special role not

13:05

merely in my life, in nurturing

13:09

dozens of high quality

13:11

works by other historians,

13:13

sociologists, economists and

13:15

I have named some of the people who have worked with him in

13:18

my book and in that

13:20

sense he has been a credit

13:22

to Indian publishing who

13:24

is not as well known

13:27

as inferior editors who

13:29

you know write columns, write

13:32

about them, write about authors, go

13:34

to literary festivals and

13:36

certainly not as well known as absolutely

13:38

obscure compared to the writers whom

13:40

he has made visible and successful

13:43

and popular. So, I

13:45

am gratified by the

13:48

reception so far that I think I

13:50

have it's been I don't

13:52

know I mean kind

13:55

of paying tribute

13:58

comes naturally to me you know. Of course,

14:01

you would know I do it to cricket writers

14:03

of the past and not just

14:05

Karnataka cricketers. I should say for the

14:07

record, but I cricket as to other states and other

14:09

countries too. But I often find that

14:12

when someone dies, I am

14:14

the person writing a tribute. You know, when Girish

14:16

Karnataka dies, even though I am not an expert

14:18

on Karnataka literature, knowing him

14:20

has, you know, had an impact on me and I

14:22

want to write about him. Mahasweta Devi dies and

14:25

I don't read Bangla, but

14:27

I had two or three meetings with her which is such

14:29

a visible imprint on me that I had to write about her. So

14:32

in a sense, celebration of extraordinarily

14:35

remarkable people, often

14:39

dead but sometimes living, has been part of

14:41

what I have been doing for a very

14:43

long time in my writing, both in my

14:45

newspaper writing, in my books, in my essays.

14:48

And I thought that this person

14:52

who has been such a fundamental role in

14:54

my life, as I say, is next only

14:56

to my wife Sridhartha. And

14:58

yet, it is so unknown and this is the

15:00

time to write about him. I

15:02

found it very moving and very different from, you know,

15:04

all the other sort of profiles we've written of people

15:06

or the memories we've shared of them because this is,

15:09

you know, a personal friendship. It's not a hero of

15:11

yours that you're writing about or someone you knew at

15:13

a distance. I found it very moving. I

15:15

was also wondering about the nature of memory because one thing

15:17

I have realized when I sit with my friends and talk

15:19

or people I've known for a long time is

15:22

that we remember the same things very differently. Right.

15:25

It's like, you know, like what the hell is going on?

15:27

We are just both characters in each other's interior lives and

15:30

this, they don't really match up. And even

15:32

in this book, you know, you've got a bunch

15:34

of places where Rookun's memory of something which you

15:36

just related is at odds with yours. And

15:39

I kind of wonder about that and

15:41

then does having access to the way that

15:43

they looked at you also

15:45

changed the way you look at yourself in

15:48

some way. Like, for example, there's a delightful

15:50

letter you've quoted when you were going to

15:52

go to Afghanistan for something and Rookun wrote

15:54

to Sujata and said, stop him, stop him,

15:56

he must not go. And Sujata

15:58

replied to him, quote, I need hardly tell

16:00

you that your friend has never listened to anybody

16:02

in his life and certainly seems unlikely to start

16:05

doing so now. While I agree with everything in

16:07

your mail, I think you overestimate the children's and

16:09

my influence on him. He's decided he wants to

16:11

go and that's it. And I wonder how you

16:13

feel reading this because at the

16:15

time you would not perhaps have thought that

16:18

you were so at stubborn or you know.

16:20

Absolutely, you're absolutely right. Unfortunately, the

16:22

letter that Rukun wrote to Srirata has been

16:24

lost because she migrated to

16:26

another email address and you couldn't save

16:28

it. That would have been you know,

16:30

in his catch, forceful blunt, direct

16:33

style. But yes, absolutely. I

16:35

mean that, I just thought I'm going to Kabul and

16:37

that's it. I mean what's the risk coming? I mean

16:40

it happened a week after I went back to the house

16:42

to attack because the foreign secretary

16:44

was staying there but I left by that time.

16:47

So yeah, I will show. But

16:49

you know going through these letters gave

16:52

me a sense that there may be a book in it because

16:54

it was not composed simply of memories.

16:57

You know there was a kind of a documentary

17:01

depth to my

17:03

recounting of this friendship based on letters

17:05

which began in 1986. So

17:09

almost 40 years and there were

17:11

memories of meetings and memories of conversations. But

17:14

I think had I not had this personal archive

17:16

of our correspondence, I couldn't have written

17:18

this book. I

17:20

also want to ask about this correspondence because it

17:22

seems to me that there are two aspects that

17:24

this you know in which these long letters we

17:26

used to write to each other plays out and

17:29

one of them you mentioned in your book. The

17:32

first one is that writing a long letter back

17:34

in the day where you're taking the trouble to

17:36

actually get paper on an inlet letter or whatever

17:38

and you're sitting down at a desk and there

17:40

is a physical act of writing is

17:43

really different. Like at one level you are

17:45

sort of communicating by the very act of

17:47

writing that you matter to me. That

17:49

is why I am making all of this effort

17:51

in writing to you and at another level because

17:54

of that those letters tend to be much longer.

17:56

There is thought that goes into it. There is

17:58

some terror. We are not necessarily. keeping

18:00

them somewhere with the backspace available to you. So, you

18:02

are thinking about what you are going to write, perhaps

18:04

you have been thinking about it for a couple of

18:06

days before you send it, there

18:08

is a certain that marination of ideas happens

18:10

and changes you as a result. And in

18:12

modern times a lot of the communication

18:15

happens through almost transactional emails like cold and

18:17

yeah okay I will be there at 7,

18:19

you know that is a typical kind of

18:21

email length that you will find, whereas it

18:24

used to be different. And

18:26

I am wondering, so part one of my question

18:28

is that you know part two of course

18:30

is that how this makes life

18:32

harder for the historian that we no longer

18:34

have all of those letters available you have

18:36

spoken about that in your book. I am

18:39

equally interested in you know what effect it

18:41

has on the person like I am guessing

18:43

from whatever excerpts that you have shared that

18:45

you continued writing long letters to each other

18:47

even though the format changed. But

18:49

that is because you were letter writers of that type

18:51

and that is how you would communicate, so what are

18:53

your thoughts? Let me still do, so this

18:56

morning well I can share this because it is

18:58

part of the book. Now the

19:00

book ends with a great

19:03

kumauni historian called Shekhar Patar who

19:05

is an old dear friend of mine and whom

19:08

Rukun has befriended recently because Rukun lives

19:10

in Radiket and Shekhar Patak is in

19:12

Nadi Thar and Shekhar Rukun has recently

19:14

published his book. And

19:17

Shekhar wrote me a beautiful, both of us

19:19

a beautiful letter about this book with

19:21

exchanges from the mountains saying you know your

19:24

exchanges are like the mountains and

19:27

their moods, sunny in

19:29

summer and temperamental in the monsoon. You

19:31

know it is a lovely letter right

19:33

and Rukun wrote like a long letter

19:35

saying that you know what Shekhar's friendship

19:37

has meant to him. And now similarly

19:40

here I continue corresponding Rukun and I

19:42

about all kinds of things that sometimes in

19:44

a day there will

19:47

be four letters on each side of

19:49

five or six paragraphs each. You

19:52

know so there was an exchange about a writer

19:55

which greatly admire, you know whom I have

19:57

not named except to say he is an Indian writer whom we both

19:59

gave. and we admire

20:01

different aspects of his work. So

20:04

this exchange was going on now and

20:06

because not

20:08

only have we corresponded this way for

20:10

so long, more importantly

20:12

that's the only way Rukul likes

20:15

to keep the friendship going. If

20:18

I go to see him and Randy Kate which I did

20:20

once, he will have lines with me. If

20:22

I WhatsApp him, he won't

20:25

usually return my message. If I call

20:27

him, the line will go cold. This

20:29

is what he likes. So one day

20:31

I will

20:35

present the full archive of our

20:37

correspondence to

20:40

some place because there is so many.

20:42

As I said, an exchange about the

20:44

mountains, an exchange about Indian writer, an exchange

20:46

about music which

20:48

he is passionate about and he listens.

20:50

Of course he is deeply knowledgeable of Western

20:52

classical music but my intersome of Hindustani and

20:56

he talks about

20:59

other friendships which

21:01

sometimes means as intimate and

21:04

as close, not professionally as

21:06

formative in my career. But

21:09

say a friendship, shall

21:11

we say, one of my closest friends was

21:15

the remarkable civil servant and music

21:17

scholar Keisha Desiraju. I

21:19

think of him almost every day. He died two years ago

21:22

shortly after completing his fine book

21:24

on MS-Subalakshmi and after spending a career

21:26

in really reshaping health delivery

21:28

in modern India. Now I'd be a very

21:31

close intimate friend. So unlike Rukul and I,

21:33

we would talk two or three times a

21:35

day. But

21:37

I often think of him, but could I write a

21:39

book on our friendship? It

21:42

would be diffused, unstructured,

21:45

inchoate, all over the place. It would

21:47

have some nice touches but it wouldn't

21:49

have this, you could say, depth, that

21:52

these letters provide. And

21:54

Rukul writes to a few other people

21:56

in the same way, At

21:58

similar length. And

22:01

it gets better than. You.

22:04

Know earlier you spoke about how you've written

22:06

at one point in your book about you

22:08

know to of the ways in which it

22:10

can be seen, a partisan, a going to

22:12

publishing in India and a self indulgent celebration

22:14

of a display privilege and none of those

22:17

actually true but the other possibilities your layout

22:19

and about ago about it in your book

22:21

us as a member, lot of friendships and

22:23

as an elite you do a nose food

22:25

and to me it was beautiful. Eats on

22:27

bulldoze regards and I want to double click

22:29

on friendship in general. You know like good

22:31

as this concept of done both numbered at

22:33

recon. Actually the you know remember

22:35

the names of more than one hundred and

22:38

fifty people, that's a total number of people

22:40

a week or brains are wired stained of

22:42

the you know, adapt to and and and

22:44

from that to for the numbers that emerges

22:46

that you generally have it unsafe, people that

22:49

are really close to you and in outer

22:51

circle of people who have friends and so

22:53

on and so forth and it seems that

22:55

even dead and annoyances because I'm pretty certain

22:58

that in terms of how much he ship

23:00

domain space rock and would be in that

23:02

five but in terms of actually physically. Spending

23:04

time together hanging out shillings he'd probably be

23:06

in the fifteen effect on what is your

23:09

sense of friendships over the years and how

23:11

do you like i you intention and about

23:13

keeping friendships going? And how has your view

23:16

towards friendship changed especially in the course of

23:18

writing the book we actually writing about one.

23:21

Little still have a despise his

23:23

teens. And bloody applies to me

23:25

except as the outer circle of maybe five.

23:27

And. He. Said that's because of a

23:30

second dozens of my life. So my life has.

23:33

Festivals doesn't mean. For. extended

23:35

periods a different person with death you

23:37

know and addresses bleed liberalizes led leads

23:39

in the on the move to use

23:41

that in my dumbass says evidence grew

23:44

up in their own said he didn't

23:46

that he did abused encountered i now

23:48

live in the south opt out of

23:50

the differences and awesome i worked i

23:52

live abroad for extended periods laps americans

23:55

and spanish friends but a sense said

23:57

friends and i wasn't necessary to get

23:59

so I'd say, yet,

24:04

there would still be eight or ten people

24:06

with whom I have this kind of

24:10

long lasting friendship. I mean, I had mentioned

24:12

one case of Desiraju, I can mention another

24:14

who you should talk to

24:17

if you haven't already, who is

24:19

the educationist Rukmini Banishthi Apasam, who

24:22

again is a college friend and in fact I spoke to

24:24

her just now before coming here. And

24:26

a few others, you know, there's a Spanish

24:28

historian, a British biographer who

24:31

I count in that. But I say

24:34

that part of the great Rukmini historian but

24:36

I think friendships, I always worry when a

24:39

friend goes cold on me. I'm the person

24:41

who establishes contact. You know, I write and say,

24:43

what happened? I haven't heard from you and

24:45

even if the friend is behaving badly, I'll be

24:47

doing the making up. So I

24:49

think friendships have mattered a great deal to me and of

24:52

course there's an ebb and flow, sometimes you lose

24:54

touch. Sometimes you regain touch.

24:58

But yes, I mean obviously

25:01

that Dunbar's number which

25:03

is the first time I've heard of that, which

25:05

you quoted is roughly right. I don't think one can have

25:07

more than 15 fairly close friends

25:10

in one's life. And how

25:12

do you think of friendships across age? Like a moving

25:14

bit and I wish there was more of it actually

25:16

in the book is about your friendship with Dharmakumar, who

25:19

was your cousin, the Rukun at one point referred to her as

25:21

your aunt. But who was your cousin and

25:23

there were 30 years between you? And it

25:25

seems that that was also a beautiful nurturing

25:27

friendship and someone, one of

25:29

my guests on a recent episode, I'd

25:31

better forgotten who because I'm growing old

25:33

myself and my memory isn't great, lamented

25:35

that, you know, what he observes among

25:37

younger people today is that there aren't

25:39

so many friendships that go across age.

25:42

And his point was that we should have friends who are

25:44

20 years older than us. We should have friends who are

25:46

20 years younger than us. And

25:48

I myself find, you know, great value in

25:50

this because, you know, you could be picking

25:52

up different things from people in different generations.

25:54

So what are your thoughts on that? Do

25:56

you have much younger friends? No, that's a

25:58

very rich insight. And

26:00

it's possible that now you

26:02

mention it that friendships

26:05

across generations have declined in

26:08

recent years and one reason for that

26:10

could be the internet and the smartphone

26:12

because you're on your machine rather than

26:14

meeting people. I

26:18

actually have always had

26:21

close friends older than me, less

26:23

so younger than me. I mean I've had younger

26:25

writers whom I like and who male me and

26:28

whom I male who you know if

26:30

I like something of theirs I write to them but

26:33

it may be a deficiency in me. Dhamma

26:36

Kumar was extraordinarily generous towards young people and that

26:39

some of that comes from being a teacher you

26:41

know unfortunately I've only

26:43

episodically taught in the university and

26:45

I think teachers may have a

26:48

particular interest and aptitude for reaching out

26:50

to young people. You're also extremely I

26:52

mean many many people would say you're

26:54

also generous for young people. Yeah no

26:57

I'm not disputing that but in a

26:59

different way like if someone sends me

27:01

a manuscript I'll comment on it and

27:03

help them you know improve it and possibly

27:05

file a publisher but

27:07

actually now

27:10

that you ask this question and you know you

27:12

have encouraged me to be personal. If I

27:15

also think of younger people

27:17

younger than me, significantly younger

27:19

than me with whom I've

27:22

got really close friendships obviously

27:24

my two children will have to be excluded from this. I'd

27:28

be hard put to name more than four

27:31

or five and all of them would

27:33

be a decade or so younger than me so I'm not 65

27:35

and I'd be happy

27:37

to name these people because I love them dearly and you

27:39

know some of them or know if you

27:42

don't know them you know of them know of them so

27:45

I think nourishment and this would be one and then

27:47

the sooner the anthropologist would be another they're

27:49

both about 10-12 years younger

27:51

than me the great family historian A.R. Venkatesh

27:53

Lalapati would be a third but

27:56

not many more the others are young

27:58

writers I've you know been interacted with,

28:00

maybe giving feedback on their work

28:02

and out of

28:04

admiration for their work. But there

28:06

has been no long letters,

28:08

no arguments, no confessions,

28:10

no sentimentality. Dharish

28:13

and Dandari are very close to

28:15

them and I admire them and

28:17

I am fond of them. Dharish

28:20

of course is impossible to fight with. But

28:23

my friendship with Dandari, though she

28:25

is only 10 years younger than me and Dharma was 30 years older

28:27

than me. There is a kind of replication of that. It

28:29

is a younger, older

28:32

person who is quarrelling and there

28:34

is tension but there is also

28:36

great affection. But

28:38

I can't think of someone

28:40

in their 30s. And

28:44

that could be many reasons for that.

28:46

It could be that the older

28:48

I have become more solid

28:51

in my attitude. It could be intimidating

28:53

for people to reach out to an

28:55

older and reasonably well-known writer. So,

28:58

yeah, there are many young writers I admire

29:00

and as I said, I have worked

29:02

with them and I love engaging

29:04

with them. They are

29:06

usually historians or non-fiction writers and

29:10

not always Indian. I mean, there

29:12

are some people, for

29:14

example, the historian Niko Slate who is American who

29:16

has written a wonderful biography of Kamala Devi Chaturpandar

29:18

whom I have known for many years. She

29:21

was a PhD student of Dinar Patel. Hari Dhamodra,

29:24

Shonnish Tato Padia, who is a lovely book on runners and I have been

29:35

in conversation with her. But

29:37

I thought maybe the fault is in me.

29:43

It could be, it is a very interesting

29:45

question you raise. I have never thought about it before.

29:48

Why is it that when I was young, I befriended people

29:50

who were 20 or 30 years old and became very close

29:53

to them. And I have

29:55

not been able to successfully reproduce that in the same

29:57

way. It could be, I think,

29:59

a very interesting question. maybe kind of defeating on my

30:01

but. That. Ah, the old

30:03

could be that. or and maybe

30:05

get the feeling. I

30:08

also good as absolute offseason

30:10

with ones look. You.

30:12

Know where I don't dislike doors and hanging

30:14

around with people because I want to focus

30:17

on my lunch bills at that comes at

30:19

a cost to begin new friends. So yes,

30:21

I'm. Looking to voice

30:23

will come up with an alternative explanation.

30:25

I mean openness and universities and thing

30:27

that you know many have commented a

30:29

boner no experience when says but my

30:31

alternative explanation also in that lead to

30:34

my next question is perhaps addicted of

30:36

a modernized version? You're on the in

30:38

the middle of reading the news that

30:40

opposed to move the dubbed version of

30:42

Into This Guy Do are trapped inside

30:44

the infinite scrolling but the texture of

30:46

a Modern lives involves said. We don't

30:48

engage deeply with reality but own risk

30:50

and include your schooling, schooling, sweeping, sweeping,

30:52

clicking, Clicking everything is happening in bite sized

30:54

chunks. Even though we have all the noted

30:56

in the world of be to us and

30:58

we you know or on of those it

31:00

is meant as you know. When you and

31:02

I were growing up there was such a

31:04

scarcity of books and knowledge around us, but

31:07

engagement was depot you said done with a

31:09

book, there was any, nothing much to do.

31:11

you would sit with it for two or

31:13

three years and I feel that there for

31:15

the texture of your life the texture of

31:17

you're thinking changes completely. Also associates are also

31:19

conversations. Cylinder was no smartphone. Eat

31:21

you tell us that to adjust to someone

31:24

you know southern testing them of a deal

31:26

with them, you'll see it. You have one

31:28

of the out of the of therefore rights

31:31

so it's much more deep than intense and

31:33

against the conversations use two weeks when it's

31:35

absolutely a your focus on one another. It

31:37

was right. And yeah, that could potentially why

31:40

do a test. Isn't. A

31:42

counterfactual world in which you and dragoon are

31:44

young teenagers In this world of social media,

31:46

where do you go? Because Brooklyn that ago

31:48

recluse could find put read to be social

31:51

with so much ocean over you don't actually

31:53

have been beat people but you can interact

31:55

with Demps and you on the other hand

31:57

would be probably going out. Lesbian cricket list.

32:00

Shudder. The. Just glad

32:02

I grew up for the advantages

32:04

of famers, smartphone and nice giveaway

32:06

information inducing people and is an

32:08

emergency and so on. I'm Dana.

32:11

Grew up at a time when

32:13

there was no television in my

32:15

hometown. Do they do and regular

32:17

provides a very been defeated the

32:20

way because review it's still. It's

32:22

as if I see imagination, enemies,

32:24

interested televisions and you tube does

32:26

not to see a setting ass

32:29

is. Moot. mama

32:31

as he had tried to send tips bits

32:33

of other guy and which as. Probably.

32:37

Don't exist because he was no radio

32:39

all they do i them of resembles

32:41

growing up again as on an ad

32:43

for five hence the are all in

32:45

different colleges don't come home. Before

32:48

the holidays so I would come from Delhi

32:50

one with them to put any one will

32:52

come from gun for as we were neighbors

32:54

and and you'll have a lot Sunday evenings

32:56

and a little one. And would

32:58

said what many seats are you using

33:00

things to the dust of was and

33:02

those was. Evenings.

33:05

When. This is nineteen seventy

33:07

sites. Okay, it

33:10

was a Wimbledon final. Odds

33:12

are as was bleeding Jimmy Connors.

33:15

And we. On

33:18

of. Grass piece of glass.

33:20

He drowned in their attitude looking out

33:22

the wanting for the last. Listening to

33:24

this Meds for Sort office. And

33:27

set up there was epic match because corners

33:29

had made some. Maybe. Not

33:31

racist but pejorative grub and toward as an

33:33

extra never to predict a do that and

33:35

of course the first black man to emergence.

33:38

As. What that experience would have done? To.

33:41

Offensive to the support of my

33:43

less who read minutes see a

33:45

said that kind of things you

33:47

would have that watching the television

33:49

set to an hour later don't

33:51

see, I have an hour isn't

33:53

really probably the load of. The

33:56

smartphone and the internet. Has

33:59

made deep. engaged friendship is more

34:01

difficult not impossible but

34:03

you know in that sense this book is an

34:05

energy to a world in which

34:07

friendship was conducted differently it's also an LED to a

34:10

world in which publishing operated

34:12

on different principles yeah

34:15

you know your anecdote gives me a nice little

34:17

segue into your friendship because one charming part of

34:19

your book is where you wrote something about a

34:21

match in which Richards and Lloyd had a partnership

34:23

in the mid 70s and

34:25

I'll read out Rookun's reply because it's just so delightful

34:27

and as it happened he was also

34:30

at that match and you know 30 years later

34:32

for people thinking I did this and I did

34:34

that then I think to find these common elements

34:36

will be really hard but he was also at

34:38

that match and he wrote quote I like your

34:40

descriptions of Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards I too

34:43

was at the court law watching Viv hit all

34:45

those sixes against Beatty and co during his 190 or so

34:47

exhilarating experience I thought the central difference

34:49

really between Lloyd and Richards was that

34:52

Richards stylish savagery was communicated by his

34:54

face and body language everything about him

34:56

spoke when he was being lethal but

34:58

with Lloyd on the other hand there

35:00

was a hugely attractive gorilla like Langer

35:03

a cordial and impassive ease

35:05

about that brutal batting he was dishing

35:07

out as of hitting a four was

35:09

a form of politeness like sipping tea

35:11

he seemed so inoffensive and so casually

35:13

benign even as he whiplashed all

35:15

those balls flack to the ropes to

35:17

me he communicated a philosophical rectitude on

35:19

a job well done something impersonal he

35:21

was impartially executing rather than anything personal

35:23

against any particular bowler routine that made

35:26

him seem different and even more exalted

35:28

than Viv Richards in a way partly

35:30

because most of the power batsman example

35:32

Tendulkar are more in the Richards and

35:34

the Lloyd mold in the sense that

35:36

they are so personally involved in their

35:38

art and communicate that involvement through face

35:40

and body Lloyd seemed the

35:42

kind of lama among batsman

35:45

stop quote and he goes on and it's wonderful yeah it's

35:47

a wonderful we

35:50

talked earlier about this book I wanted to

35:52

write on foreign figures and

35:54

this letter was in response to that

35:56

book and I'm glad I

35:58

did not publish that But I am

36:00

glad I have written this letter because it

36:03

is so vivid and so beautifully crafted. The

36:05

Lama among Batsford as well. No

36:07

it was. Yeah it is. And there is

36:09

a beautiful line at the end about what

36:12

else is cricket watching except emotions recollected as

36:14

hype. Which is such a lovely

36:16

way to put it and kind of tragic that

36:18

you know writing such as this should just

36:20

be in a personal letter and not available for

36:22

the world. And when I read this and this

36:24

comes pretty late in your book. So when

36:26

I read this I thought to myself that everything

36:29

that you have written about Rookun would made it

36:31

seem that he was like a Lloyd and

36:34

you were like a Richards. You know in

36:36

terms of kind of being reclusive not really

36:38

out there and you gotta do what you

36:40

gotta do and you know and yet just

36:43

imperious and so good. That

36:45

is a nice analogy. I think Rookun would appreciate

36:47

it. Tell me about how

36:49

you met him. Tell me about college. So there

36:51

is something I don't talk about in this book because

36:54

it was a spoiled narrative. I first saw him

36:56

on a badminton court. So

36:59

this is 1974. I

37:02

had finished in those days when you finished school.

37:07

You had six months holidays before you joined

37:09

college. So I wanted

37:11

to join St. Stephen's. I finished school in

37:13

December of 1973 and in January

37:16

I visited St. Stephen's to see my friend Akhideesh

37:18

Kala who makes a cameo appearance in this book.

37:21

And he was showing around the college and Sveeta

37:24

swatted to the gym and Rookun was playing badminton. And

37:27

he was playing badminton. This is a sign of the who

37:29

we were playing with of the time we then lived in.

37:33

Which is why this book is also an LED for

37:35

shall we say the pre-Hindu era

37:38

of you know Indian intellectual and

37:40

cultural life. He was playing badminton against a

37:42

man called Rajan Habib

37:44

Khwaja, a Hindu and a Muslim

37:47

name. And you know

37:49

and who the son of Gandhi and

37:51

Nashtas associated who his father was a

37:53

professor and at one state also a

37:55

congress MP. And I just

37:57

remember them playing badminton and Kala walked in. Kala

38:00

was a showman, he liked walking on his hands, so he started

38:02

walking on his hands and Rukun and Kwaja

38:04

put down that jacket and started clapping. That was

38:06

the first time I saw Rukun which I don't

38:08

mention in this book. And

38:10

then six months later I joined St. Stephen's where

38:13

you know my first sight of

38:15

him was as a badminton player and

38:17

by that within a week of my joining the college

38:19

in six months later in July 1974 he

38:22

was one of those aura

38:24

about him because he was one of the two

38:26

most billion people in the final year the other

38:28

being Shashi Tharoor and they were

38:30

both brilliant both formatively well read, both

38:33

very erudite, both wrote elegant prose and

38:35

yet they were so spectacularly dissimilar in

38:37

their personalities and he was a different

38:39

kind of hero. Shashi was debating, wanted

38:41

president of the college and clearly

38:44

was testing for great things and Rukun was

38:46

in his room listening to Bethoven

38:48

and a kind of elusive enigmatic fellow

38:50

who barely befriended anyone.

38:53

So that was the first real memory I

38:55

have of Rukun was the

38:57

reputation he had in college as a brilliant,

38:59

exclusive, arrogant and

39:02

basically altogether anti-social and

39:04

unfriendly man. Rajiv

39:06

quoted these lovely lines by Amitav Ghosh

39:09

on him where Rungosh

39:11

writes, The year I joined college 1973 the

39:13

word among us freshers was that the most

39:15

terrifying ragger in college lived in Rudra Court

39:18

in L5, terrifying because he wasn't the usual

39:20

kind of bullying, bellowing senior. No, he was

39:22

to them as a pantherist to the elephant,

39:24

the shmeter to the war club, the rapier

39:27

to the broadsword. He was bearded, they said,

39:29

and soft-spoken, so stealthy that you never sensed

39:31

his presence until he had you square in

39:34

a side stock court. And you know the

39:36

bullying bellowing senior sounds just like with Richards

39:38

again, Lloyd and

39:41

of course apparently Amitav and him got along really

39:43

well because he took Amitav to his room as

39:45

you describe and played him some music, identified that

39:48

and he was able to identify most things which

39:50

I would not have been able to. And 99%

39:52

of students college would not have been

39:54

able to. So

39:56

Amitav was the charm circle of five who

39:58

could, who had not. knowledge of music or

40:01

of poetry and hence was be sent in

40:03

Paragon. And you know from the

40:05

outside a person like this would also seem arrogant

40:07

like you describe one time where you were kind

40:09

of perhaps you mentioned might be the only time

40:11

you spoke to him that you were coming from

40:13

somewhere and he was driving off on a scooter

40:15

and you said hello and he just glared at

40:17

you and drove off. And

40:20

you know so you would think like who is this arrogant guy who

40:22

the hell does he think he is you know etc etc. So

40:25

tell me about you know how you actually thought

40:27

of him because what also happens is that when

40:29

you look back your recollection of the time

40:31

can be colored by everything that you know

40:34

subsequently of the person which of course is

40:36

a great relationship that you have. But

40:39

at the time what was it like and

40:41

at the time from what you have come

40:43

to know of him subsequently what was he

40:45

really like deep inside was he arrogant or

40:47

was he just you know matter of fact

40:50

I just want to be with who am

40:52

I really brilliant and unapproachable I think that

40:54

would be the way to describe him then

40:57

and possibly even now you know and

40:59

of course so it's

41:01

occasionally vicious turn of phrase I mean

41:04

sometimes very arrogant very beautifully

41:06

put but sometimes vicious and that kind of

41:08

remains. He's

41:10

become slightly why put

41:12

it till he was

41:14

in his forties he

41:16

would occasionally like to meet people one

41:20

on one or in groups of two and three he

41:22

will never like parties and

41:24

but now I think he's absolutely

41:27

withdrawn except for his

41:29

wife whoever visits him in Rani Khet

41:31

and his dogs and

41:33

he's still you know he's very close to some old

41:35

friends but I don't except

41:37

for Shekhar Pata I suspect he hasn't met

41:39

a single new friend in the

41:41

last twenty years. How much

41:44

of a part did his background have in shaping

41:46

him because I'm fascinated by how his dad Ramadwani

41:48

had that legendary bookstore in Lucknow and

41:50

would go out of his way to help young

41:52

people to shape their lives as it were you

41:54

mentioned how someone finished an MA and he gave

41:56

him a book specifically because he was so happy

41:58

this young man had and wanted him

42:00

to have that book. And it seems to

42:02

me that when you later describe, he might

42:05

not be like his father in the sense

42:07

that he's out there in the public square

42:09

and constantly meeting all of these people who

42:11

come to him and etc. But otherwise he

42:13

seems exactly like that in the sense that

42:15

he's interested in people doing well, he's immersed

42:17

in the world of ideas and he wants

42:19

people to get ahead in that sense. I

42:22

think he was very proud of his father

42:24

and what the father represented. I quote I Koteera Pandey

42:28

in all Ramadwali and Oasis

42:30

of civility and ever changing in a

42:32

kind of city becoming rapidly barbaric. She

42:34

puts it much better. And he was

42:36

proud of his father, also

42:39

of his mother and his aunt. His aunt

42:41

was a very respected teacher in Dachnao. And

42:43

I saw a letter he wrote to his

42:45

cousin when his aunt died which is

42:48

deeply moving and showed how much

42:50

he cared for his parents and

42:52

his aunt who gave him an

42:54

understanding of the teacher of music,

42:56

of the word

42:58

that we would always associate with a place

43:00

like Lucknow Tummies, which can't really

43:03

be translated as civility or courtesy

43:05

but something more and

43:07

refinement of that kind. In fact,

43:12

when his father died, he went

43:14

to close up the store and he

43:16

found, since he knows I like

43:18

biographies and he knows

43:20

my son Keshavar likes poetry, unlike me, he

43:23

found the first edition of a biography of Byron

43:25

which he posted to

43:28

us with an inscription which said to

43:32

Ram and Keshavar from the

43:34

ghost of Ramadwani. He showed that he

43:36

admired his father

43:40

and what the father represented and

43:42

as you say in his own way was carrying

43:45

it on how to differentiate. So,

43:48

books, ideas, arguments, knowledge,

43:51

a certain kind

43:53

of integrity along with the attitude,

43:55

I think that's what probably defines it. I

43:57

sort of wonder about the self-image in the interior, I

43:59

think. of people who are in a particular

44:01

place where they

44:04

see themselves as just as

44:06

thinkers and you know just in

44:08

terms of how refined they are just sort of

44:10

a cut above the rest and there are dangers

44:12

that this could make you a little arrogant or

44:15

you could simply end up being more aloof but

44:17

then there is that question that how do you

44:19

then see yourself because there is a tragedy in

44:21

that that you could see yourself as not fitting

44:23

into this world and that could take you into

44:26

a particular direction or there

44:28

is that sort of uneasy negotiation

44:30

where you find your place in the world

44:32

and it tell me a little

44:34

bit about what would the sense that you get of

44:36

him having known him. At the letter so I think

44:39

he was a brilliant student he got

44:42

a gold medal first class first BA first

44:44

class for MA and in those

44:46

days if you did that well your old college

44:48

offered you a job straight away as a lecturer

44:51

and he was always probably conscientious in

44:53

class but not that

44:55

excited about meeting all these undergraduates and then

44:57

he went off to Cambridge in P.A.C came

45:00

into the beautiful place he liked it he wrote his

45:03

doctoral thesis and then he offered

45:05

a job by Ravi Deyal to

45:07

join the OUP and I think Ravi

45:10

Deyal matched a great deal to him. There

45:12

was a I spoke about

45:15

the book in Bangalore last week

45:18

and someone who knew Ravi Deyal asked me she

45:21

said from your talk it doesn't appear as if there

45:23

is as much about Ravi Deyal and

45:26

I said there is some but if

45:29

Ravi Deyal wants to write his memoir it

45:31

would be he would write about Ravi Deyal the way

45:33

I have written about Ravi Deyal

45:35

and one or two of his teachers in college because

45:38

Ravi Deyal was unlike Ravi

45:40

Deyal more gregarious attorney charming man

45:43

but like Ravi Deyal devoted

45:46

to producing high quality work of scholarship

45:48

you know and he made

45:50

OUP the force it was and Rukun took

45:52

it to the next level but

45:55

because Ravi recruited Rukun, Rukun

45:57

found the calling that he wanted to receive.

46:00

He was a teacher, he was a writer

46:03

and then he became a publisher which is what

46:05

he was best at and which suited his temperament

46:07

and Ravi gave him the space to grow in

46:09

the OUP and then of

46:11

course the OUP changed

46:13

and after 20 years Ravi had

46:15

a wonderful successor called Santosh Mukherjee

46:18

who was equally understanding of Rukun's

46:20

gifts. He knew that Rukun would

46:23

never wind and dine the authors, Rukun would

46:25

never be promoting them but

46:27

he was absolutely indispensable

46:29

to maintaining the OUP's

46:31

intellectual standards. So

46:33

Ravi and his successor recognised that little

46:36

later the people who came

46:38

after that were much more interested in the bottom line

46:40

and Rukun was an author to them and then he

46:42

left and started his own publishing house but by then

46:44

he was established enough, had up worked

46:47

enough authors who so respected

46:49

him that they migrated from the OUP to

46:51

the black but probably he found

46:55

his calling as

46:57

a way to fulfil

47:00

his career as a publisher in

47:02

a way that did not damage his personality

47:04

that was in keeping with his

47:06

exclusive in word style because of the

47:08

space the OUP and particularly Ravi Ravi Dayal gave him

47:10

in those odd years. So

47:13

I mean my

47:15

book is about Rukun so I could not say

47:17

there are some paragraphs of

47:19

what Ravi Dayal meant but if

47:21

Rukun was to ever write his memoir I suspect

47:25

that there would be two teachers, his

47:27

undergraduate teacher Bizal Singh and

47:30

his postgraduate teacher A.N. Cole and

47:32

Ravi Dayal who would sincerely figure his book. Ashmi

47:35

Ravi Dayal you have written you

47:37

know I perhaps remember it as

47:39

more substantive than you now say

47:41

because it painted such a vivid

47:43

picture of him in my mind particularly how when

47:45

he had an office he would not have an

47:48

air conditioner in a scabin because he felt that

47:50

everyone should work in the same circumstances. That is

47:52

what Rukun but there you go. So

47:56

I digress and ask a larger question here you know

47:58

in the past. a different context of

48:00

a broader history. We spoke of the great man

48:03

Thirukund and so on and so forth. And

48:05

here again, I wonder if it sort

48:07

of applies in the sense that

48:09

you just spoke about the centrality of Ravi

48:11

Deyal to Rukund. That Rukund might have been

48:14

someone different, somewhere different, if not for Ravi

48:16

Deyal. And you have certainly spoken

48:18

not just in the book, but elsewhere about the

48:20

centrality of Rukund to your own life. How he

48:22

shaped you, all your books came out of him.

48:24

I mean, there is a counterfactual in which if

48:26

there is no Rukun Advani, we

48:28

might not be sitting together. Absolutely. Absolutely.

48:31

You know, it's completely. So that's number one,

48:34

that these individuals were so important and without

48:36

them the course of life changes. And

48:38

number two, it seems to me that these

48:40

individuals are outliers, in the sense that later

48:43

on, of course, you talk about the decay

48:45

of publishing and all the things that happened.

48:47

But it seems, it seems regardless of that,

48:49

that in this narrative that these are extraordinary

48:51

people and everyone they, you know, nurtured or

48:53

came in touch with were really lucky that

48:55

they existed. But they were outliers. They were

48:57

not a type. They were not inevitable from

49:00

the world around them. Like I think of this

49:02

often in the context of the community

49:04

of economic reformers, in a sense that 91

49:06

was shaped by a community of economic reformers

49:08

that worked together from the late 70s. Montaic

49:11

was brought here by Manmohan, a whole bunch

49:13

of other people and that carried on for

49:15

about 20-25 years and then completely died out.

49:18

And I did an eight hour episode with

49:20

KP Krishna and perhaps the last of them

49:22

recently. And I, and my

49:24

point to him was you guys were outliers. It was

49:26

not inevitable that he would emerge from the system. We

49:28

are very lucky that you did. But

49:30

now the system is what the system is,

49:32

people responding to incentives. But to,

49:35

you know, to go back to that

49:37

publishing thing and, you know, the whole

49:39

sort of the happenstances that have this

49:41

particular individual exist in a particular place.

49:44

And Because of Ravi Deyal, he finds that perfect

49:46

calling as a publisher where he can, you know,

49:49

he doesn't have to meet people all the time,

49:51

but can immerse himself in the world of ideas

49:53

and shape their work, which just seems like such

49:55

a good thing. A.

50:00

Subject about who does somebody doesn't by no

50:02

means an expert. But is.

50:05

He acting stupid presence as into stupid

50:07

and says it declares east. And

50:10

did you add some gurus school

50:12

seal for I suppose I'll idea

50:14

from school and from whom game

50:16

will degrade. Vocalist: light and fanatic

50:19

only sense vocalist Melissa Joan and

50:21

kissed by and eventually security and

50:23

even down to as unity British

50:25

Mandate allows you can without whom

50:27

one what I'm right had to

50:30

be some good idea but above

50:32

all but also allows goes to

50:34

the a protestant possibly solar says

50:36

on stilts smooth as don't associate

50:38

biomes or loggins.earth. And modeled

50:41

as a new so I than that

50:43

of from bay that the room and

50:45

then Abdulkarim candidates were beams and and

50:47

google a so. I

50:50

think. And.

50:52

Deal of. Into the will

50:55

not associated to be another me,

50:57

a pigeon I stand but the

50:59

seal for Gurus all operating in

51:01

the thirties and forties. I

51:04

just I would have been sealed was declining.

51:06

And. The video was coming out to

51:08

coming up to dig the music of

51:11

their disciples to a wider why didn't

51:13

someone could probably have to write a

51:15

he see of it interesting music and

51:17

owns this. Film.

51:20

Wonderfully beneficent. The

51:23

coincidence of the Sea of One was that

51:25

Ceylon you shudder to that. not the i

51:27

don't really know what. I'm just putting out

51:29

the idea of an ice have a sense

51:31

of society A D C and to do

51:33

somebody an idea but I don't have them

51:36

by movies. Glad remotely the musical to think

51:38

of expertise right? it's to yes of this

51:40

into business. There was one important role not

51:42

as good individuals wouldn't want to beat individual

51:44

of it's what he sees us that's very

51:46

capable publisher that sit here in and at

51:48

one point you know when Brooklyn is involved

51:50

in a campaign, know where to sort of

51:53

C. b to he's the most coil some

51:55

liberties you need or it's about he's dead

51:57

it was not be do it is injured

51:59

motivated me to quite the opposite of foster

52:01

influence view of life in which the

52:03

individual's fate is more important in the

52:05

nations and even more important. When the

52:07

individual is a decent underdog, he is

52:09

a low-key scholar writing high-quality history for

52:11

the love of it, sucking up to

52:13

no one, never trying to thrust himself

52:16

into the limelight for all the fine

52:18

stuff he is writing quietly in the

52:20

backwaters. And this sentence, low-key scholar writing

52:22

high-quality history, seems to me in spirit

52:24

to describe him himself, that

52:26

he liked to be low-key, he didn't want to be in

52:28

the limelight, he didn't want to write himself, but

52:30

he just loved engaging with

52:32

ideas and he didn't care

52:35

if it resulted in work

52:37

for someone else. And

52:39

would in your life you have come

52:41

across many people I am sure who

52:43

are either shapers or creators themselves. And

52:46

he seems like a quintessential shaper who was

52:48

simply happy that way. And you in a

52:50

sense played both roles. So

52:52

allow these gurus I have talked about would be them. I

52:55

mean they hardly did recordings of Aladeya Khan, there

52:57

is the odd recording of Alauddin Khan but barely.

53:00

So they would have played the kind of nurturer, shaper

53:02

role. And so many

53:04

teachers across generations

53:07

not just in music but in

53:09

other professions. Since

53:12

I am talking about my life and

53:14

my work, I think I

53:16

should put it on record. That Rukun,

53:19

I have written a whole book about Rukun because

53:22

he is better important in my life and because

53:24

I have these 40 years of correspondence. But

53:28

there are at least three other people who

53:30

possibly have played equal roles in shaping music.

53:33

And then I will answer your question. And I will briefly mention

53:35

them. One is my wife

53:37

Sridhata, that's a personal thing. So I

53:40

mean if you are a spouse

53:42

can mean to you if it's a

53:45

sustaining and happy relationship is something

53:47

one would not want to trivialize by

53:49

talking about it. It's a very

53:51

deeply personal. But there are two other people.

53:54

One is My first teacher who is

53:57

briefly mentioning this book who is a man called

53:59

Anjan Ghosh. And. I'm

54:01

it's I am privileged and

54:04

zombies because I would be

54:06

devices English speaking. But

54:08

I'm not the reason others in that.

54:11

By the standards of Indian scholarships, I

54:14

have an even look at all the

54:16

you didn't Indian historians and political science

54:18

distances are just the other studies abroad

54:20

or studies. A genial or that gives

54:22

you twisty. I did abilities

54:24

were sold in the most or unlikely

54:26

places and pseudo management bit at a small.

54:29

Unglamorous, Not medical society departments

54:31

who there was on the one young

54:34

brilliance holiday or and in ghosts who

54:36

took me step by step. By

54:39

step. To the classics of Sociology

54:41

mods member Durkheim's addresses of Landsbanki it's

54:43

starting to craft a research and says

54:45

you need to be indivisible, need to

54:47

be assaulted to learn from his see

54:49

and from decisions. As to who

54:51

interviewed. And without him I could

54:53

not have written a single book. Or

54:56

no. I don't have that archival

54:58

first one is very devoted. Another

55:00

person who played it equally important role in my

55:02

life was the lead at it of the be

55:04

doubly descendants. Of. Others my first

55:07

as his of and I was like an

55:09

unknown not visitors. This is an important role

55:11

in the India's enemies. You know I could

55:13

ever see the last is asking me who was I doing

55:15

The forward to your books in you have a pittance. And

55:18

is. Ah, also as it's

55:20

because. D C O for

55:22

people. To. Start odds

55:24

are the idea of a bit. I'll do

55:26

my first he saw and ghost recon and

55:28

their. Support I got from

55:30

my family would have my father noticed

55:32

my life as it allowed me to

55:35

or comes a barrier over. Indifferent.

55:37

Academic records to become up a be swallowed.

55:39

Any similar what I've done since in Love

55:41

You know what he was younger people he's

55:44

this emerging how lucky I have been in

55:46

at it's Zenith. Other at I

55:48

look at my Bs. You know that on

55:50

these studies with grades loss, aversion since June

55:53

and all that he started in Cambridge Evidence

55:55

or just didn't mention it doesn't Other day

55:57

I was eating. a of

56:00

someone younger than me and that

56:02

person mentions who they did their PhD

56:04

with. 30

56:07

years later you want to say I did my

56:09

PhD with some superstar. I had none

56:11

of that. As I said I was privileged in other

56:13

ways. I was middle class, I was a Brahmin, I

56:15

was male, I spoke English. But

56:17

Anjan Ghosh, Ruhun and Krishna Raj made me

56:19

a public scholar. The

56:22

data was so colossal and

56:25

irredeemable that at least I could

56:27

do a little bit by any

56:31

young writer or scholar

56:33

who has a book idea which I think

56:36

I can provide some modest assistance with.

56:38

I think it's more obligation. Tell

56:41

me a little bit about Anjan Ghosh because I write about him

56:43

in the book and I thought I must ask Ram to elaborate

56:45

because I was curious. Tell me a

56:47

little bit about him. Yeah, so

56:49

he, it's like this. I

56:51

don't know how much of this would

56:53

interest your listeners. It might be

56:56

very very self-indulgent. But

56:58

when you think of chance and accident, Anjan

57:01

Ghosh who grew up in

57:04

Karkala did a first degree in

57:06

literature. Then went

57:08

to JNU where it was just established

57:10

to do an MA in sociology. He

57:13

was regarded as one of the two

57:15

most brilliant sociologists, young sociologists of his

57:18

generation. The other being a

57:20

person whom you surely know of who is Shiv

57:22

Vishwanar. So Anjan was

57:24

in JNU, Shiv was in Delhi University.

57:26

They were contemporaries doing their PhDs together

57:28

regardless of the rising stars of Indian

57:30

sociology. And

57:32

then Anjan's father died and

57:34

he was an undi child. So he had

57:37

to go back to me with his mother, undi son, go

57:39

back with his mother in Karkala and take the first job

57:41

he got which was in a management

57:43

institute which was totally uncontinued compared

57:45

to Delhi where he was flourishing. And

57:48

actually it was when I got interested in sociology, it

57:50

was Shiv Vishwanathan who told me that

57:53

the Delhi school will not give you admission because

57:55

your grades are bad but my friend Anjan is

57:57

in Karkala, try there. stuck

58:01

in Kolkata, the

58:04

backwater of sociology in a management

58:06

institute where what was valued

58:08

was marketing and finance and computer science

58:11

and in a city where sociology

58:13

was regarded as a bourgeois science.

58:16

The Marxist actually had officially classified

58:18

sociology as a bourgeois science and

58:21

for the reason that Marx talked

58:23

about political economy

58:25

and historical materialism which

58:28

meant history, politics and economics were kosher

58:30

but sociology was a bourgeois science and

58:32

he was officially classified as a socialist.

58:34

So it was a completely inhospitable intellectual

58:36

environment for him and then

58:39

I turned up at his doorstep the

58:41

only student in the department and he

58:44

just falls out all his energy

58:46

and enthusiasm at me. He was

58:48

at his summer to nurture whereas in Delhi he would

58:50

have had hundreds of colleagues and peers and teachers and

58:52

students. So four years

58:55

we talked almost everyday for what

58:57

I was reading, what he was reading, what he

58:59

was writing, he got my

59:01

first articles published and

59:04

then of course some years later he

59:06

died of cancer. He died in his fifties,

59:08

not that young but before he could fulfill

59:10

his own intellectual potential. So

59:14

without him as I said I would not have written

59:16

a single book. He really made me a scholar. Rukhund

59:18

published the books and

59:20

made them even better through his editing but

59:23

the transition from an

59:26

indifferent economist to a keen

59:28

and energetic sociologist was really

59:31

overseen by Anjan Kors. Something

59:34

that I got a deeper sense of while

59:36

reading the book and this is another digression

59:38

between come back to Rukhund but you know

59:40

since you mentioned Anjan being in Calcutta in

59:42

this relatively obscure sort of institute. Seeing

59:45

that I got a deeper sense of during this book was

59:47

really how much

59:49

of an outsider people like you and

59:51

Rukhund were in the sense that the Marxist

59:53

historians nominated everything. You've got

59:55

this fantastic passage where Ranajith Guha you

59:58

know lectures through a whole of

1:00:00

Marxist historian, somebody asks a question and he kind

1:00:02

of comes back at them. But

1:00:04

at this time you are despite being

1:00:06

a student in what is a serious

1:00:08

subject, the subject of sociology, you are

1:00:10

outside the mainstream of Academy or no

1:00:13

one really takes you seriously at all.

1:00:15

Everybody has their prisms of looking at the

1:00:17

world, you have to fit into the theories

1:00:19

of class warfare and conflict and etc, etc.

1:00:23

And how was that? How was it navigating

1:00:25

that? Because on the one hand you are having

1:00:27

to navigate as someone who used to play cricket

1:00:29

and has now come into Academy, you must have

1:00:32

had so many self doubts and you must have

1:00:34

questioned yourself so much that am I cut out

1:00:36

for this and etc, etc. And

1:00:38

at the same time, even if you were cut out

1:00:41

for that, given the discipline that you have chosen, you

1:00:43

are still an outsider within the system. Give

1:00:46

me a sense of what that was like

1:00:49

for both you and in a certain

1:00:51

sense Rokun as well because he also did

1:00:53

not regard himself as

1:00:55

part of that set. He completely… I

1:00:58

cannot pick for Rokun. But

1:01:00

I think maybe

1:01:03

there was, I think it

1:01:06

was the discovery of the Shippko movement

1:01:08

and environmentalism that made me realise

1:01:10

that just as Marxism had dismissed sociology

1:01:13

as a bourgeois science, it dismissed environmentalism

1:01:15

as a bourgeois deviation from the crash

1:01:17

cycle. And

1:01:20

my travels to

1:01:22

the Himalaya and the recognition that

1:01:24

contrary to what was believed, both

1:01:27

among the Marxist left and the free market

1:01:29

right, that environmentalism was a

1:01:31

luxury a poor country could not afford,

1:01:33

actually it was even more vital to

1:01:36

the… I mean sustainable

1:01:39

careful management of natural resources like

1:01:41

air and water and forests and

1:01:43

pasture were absolutely vital to

1:01:45

the livelihood of hundreds of millions of Indians. So

1:01:48

I think that was a kind of

1:01:50

epiphany and gave me a purpose that I will

1:01:52

be a historian of the environment. That was my

1:01:55

first field of research and

1:01:57

then I moved on to other things. And then

1:01:59

I acquired the self-confidence. and particularly after Krishna Raj

1:02:01

published my papers in EPW and they got some attention

1:02:03

because no one had worked on this before. I think

1:02:05

that I was, and maybe I

1:02:08

always had, I don't know how that came. I

1:02:11

think it came from the confidence of having

1:02:13

discovered my calling that I would do what

1:02:15

I wanted to do. There are these beautiful

1:02:17

lines from Rookun where he talks about the

1:02:20

intelligentsia and they are so powerful that

1:02:22

which he brought in a letter to you. So I'll

1:02:24

actually quote it because he put it in your book.

1:02:26

So I'll quote it. Why not?

1:02:28

The trouble with the narrow-minded, blinker, bureaucratized,

1:02:30

malicious and petty semi-intelligentsia of this fucked

1:02:33

up country is that the moment someone

1:02:35

writes well in an informal, freewheeling manner

1:02:37

on un-academic subjects as you do, and

1:02:40

he's talking to you, obviously, he'll add

1:02:42

it to you. His virtuoso, writerly

1:02:44

virtues are used to cast doubt on

1:02:46

his equal and separate credibility as a

1:02:49

first-class academic. These chuthias talk

1:02:51

about the desirability of blurring distinctions and

1:02:53

categories, but when someone blurs distinctions between

1:02:55

the academic and the unstuffily popular, they

1:02:58

feel hugely uneasy and threatened and uncomfortable,

1:03:00

which is because these bastards can't blurt

1:03:02

at distinctions themselves and subconsciously, no, they

1:03:05

can't. In short, if an academic casts

1:03:07

doubt on your caliber as an academic

1:03:09

on the grounds that you have written

1:03:12

well on cricket, they do the

1:03:14

same with Mukul Ke Suvan on the

1:03:16

grounds that he can write wonderfully on

1:03:18

Hindi movies, take it as a compliment

1:03:20

and tell them to stuff their stuffed

1:03:22

shirt comments of their arses stop code.

1:03:24

This passage literally stands out because dear

1:03:26

listener, Gurnadwadi does not write like this

1:03:28

from what I can make out from

1:03:30

the rest of the book or his

1:03:32

other writing that I've read, but this

1:03:34

is such a delightfully candid explosion, Minsing

1:03:37

Novat. So, I mean, you know, several readers

1:03:39

have said that they're glad they have quoted

1:03:41

so extensively from Rukun, because

1:03:43

it gives them a sense of what a wonderful

1:03:45

stylist he is and also gives them a sense

1:03:47

of sadness that there's not more of him in

1:03:49

the public domain because he used to write for

1:03:51

newspapers and he completely stopped 20 years ago. But

1:03:55

I'd say reflecting on that passage and

1:03:57

also on the questions you asked before.

1:04:00

I think the people I admired

1:04:03

as a young man, as a young scholar,

1:04:06

worked on the margins of the academy. Elvin,

1:04:10

it was reading various Elvin which inspired me

1:04:12

to move from economics

1:04:14

to sociology. And

1:04:17

Elvin wrote many books, had a honorary

1:04:19

dean from Oxford but never had a

1:04:21

university job. And was

1:04:23

partly scorned by academics because he wrote

1:04:25

so well. And

1:04:27

later on when I moved to history my first

1:04:29

hero and relatively long lasting hero

1:04:31

was the great historian E.P. Thomson who

1:04:34

also only episodically had a university

1:04:36

job. And then

1:04:38

when I got interested in the Social

1:04:41

History cricket I stumbled upon C.L.R. James

1:04:44

who wrote major works of historical scholarship

1:04:46

without a PhD and without a university

1:04:48

job. So I think it so

1:04:50

happened that many

1:04:52

of the people I admired,

1:04:54

I mean to that list of Elvin,

1:04:58

Thomson and James I

1:05:00

should add two more who played an

1:05:02

important role in my intellectual evolution. One

1:05:04

was the American environmental scholar

1:05:06

and urban theorist Louis Mumford and

1:05:09

the last was the

1:05:11

Indian nationalist M.Krishnan who I grew up reading. And

1:05:14

all wrote major works of non-fiction, slope

1:05:16

scholarship without in most cases

1:05:18

without having a PhD. In

1:05:20

fact in all cases without having a PhD and certainly

1:05:23

without though I had a PhD without

1:05:26

holding university job. And

1:05:28

I think choosing the example

1:05:30

like that made me shall

1:05:33

we say more defined, less

1:05:35

caring about academic convention and

1:05:37

academic procedure, academic language. I

1:05:42

reflect on this pantheon

1:05:44

of five heroes because

1:05:46

the one lesson I took from

1:05:48

them, cautionary lesson, is that

1:05:50

all five of them were principally

1:05:53

historians, cultural critics, broadly non-fiction writers

1:05:55

and scholars but all five of them

1:05:57

at some state in the country.

1:06:00

career wrote a novel and

1:06:03

the novel is all bombed and I think that's among the

1:06:05

reasons I will never venture into fiction as

1:06:07

I describe in this book. You know you describe in the book

1:06:09

about how you almost wrote a novel and then yeah I think

1:06:11

you write something by Mukul and you said oh you

1:06:14

know I can't write as well as that. You know

1:06:16

the conversation was Mukul. You were telling me you were

1:06:18

describing something and I said I could never do this.

1:06:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think that's a terrible reason

1:06:22

you should you know. I don't know whether it would

1:06:24

have been good or bad but I wish you'd done

1:06:27

it because why don't you sort of stretch yourself. You

1:06:29

know on a related note I remember I accidentally stumbled

1:06:31

into a job in a wisdom which later became cricket

1:06:33

4 back in the Ortiz and

1:06:35

I remember that somebody asked me that why

1:06:37

didn't you you know become a full-time cricket

1:06:39

writer and just focus on that and my

1:06:41

answer was because I read Rahul Bhattacharya because

1:06:44

Rahul Bhattacharya was just so remarkable and I thought

1:06:46

that oh my god I can never do that.

1:06:48

Yeah. And the reasoning is kind

1:06:50

of silly because everything has its own place I recognize

1:06:52

right now but it was a glib line that yeah.

1:06:55

So this sort of reminded me of that.

1:06:58

I want to continue down the line of

1:07:00

what we were talking about and ask about

1:07:03

India's intellectual life like where does an

1:07:05

intellectual ecosystem come from like I do

1:07:07

the show on YouTube now called Everything

1:07:09

is Everything with my friend Ajay Shah

1:07:11

and we had an episode called Fixing

1:07:13

the Knowledge Society and Ajay's

1:07:15

central thesis was that there was a

1:07:17

time where universities were the center of

1:07:19

the world of knowledge that is where

1:07:22

knowledge was produced that is where knowledge

1:07:24

was sought for that is where knowledge

1:07:26

was disseminated and that public purpose and

1:07:28

the function that it performed in society

1:07:30

is completely lost or universities across the

1:07:32

world have degenerated completely have become

1:07:34

prey to fads and fashions and

1:07:37

so on and so forth and

1:07:39

exactly like everything that Rukhund

1:07:42

described in that passage I quoted

1:07:44

out applies so vividly for me

1:07:46

today and I can see that

1:07:48

fine you know through these

1:07:50

strokes of Rukh, someone like you emerges

1:07:52

and you know you speak about how

1:07:54

for permanent black you edited the Indian

1:07:56

century writers like you know Sinatra Gavan,

1:07:59

Nejak Upaljal. their books came out in

1:08:01

that, so there is a generation of people doing

1:08:03

really good work. But at the

1:08:05

same time, I feel our intellectual ecosystem is

1:08:07

so incredibly lacking in depth and quality. Like

1:08:09

you had once written an essay for caravan

1:08:11

where you had spoken about how the right-wing

1:08:14

ecosystem, there were no thinkers at all. Of

1:08:16

course, I kinda agree. But it

1:08:19

seems that even overall, that kinda holds,

1:08:21

how many intellectuals of a quality are

1:08:23

there and where does an intellectual ecosystem

1:08:26

then evolve from if

1:08:28

the universities have failed us. So, you

1:08:30

know, I mean, universities became

1:08:32

inward looking, self-absorbed,

1:08:35

jargonized, chasing fashion

1:08:37

rather than true in-depth scholarship. I

1:08:40

mean, I am talking about the humanities and social science, all that is

1:08:42

true. But now the

1:08:44

danger comes from elsewhere. It

1:08:47

comes from the political

1:08:49

class and the regime that rules us

1:08:52

that is profoundly hostile to

1:08:54

ideas and debate and

1:08:56

reflection and critical thinking. Even

1:09:00

the small centers of reasonable work that were

1:09:02

going on in Delhi and other

1:09:04

places have been basically destroyed by

1:09:06

this regime. So I think that's

1:09:09

one aspect of it. The other

1:09:11

is, of course, with WhatsApp and social media,

1:09:13

everyone is their own economist, their own sociologist,

1:09:15

their own historian. And clearly

1:09:17

you need to democratize knowledge, but you

1:09:20

need to decertify deep research, critical

1:09:23

thinking, original sources in the way

1:09:25

that's happened now. So

1:09:27

at least humanities and social

1:09:29

sciences, the world overrides that

1:09:31

crisis for multiple

1:09:34

reasons. And university professors

1:09:36

are only party to blame. They

1:09:38

are also larger political, technological, cultural

1:09:40

forces at work that are

1:09:43

undermining the quality of scholarship. Yeah.

1:09:46

And what you said about, you know, how

1:09:48

a particular regime may make lambda down, you

1:09:50

know, earlier we discussed how it just happens,

1:09:52

that you have individuals like Ravi Dayal and

1:09:54

this thing. And equally it

1:09:56

is happenstance that there's a great institution like CPR. So

1:09:59

when you. at that institution. The damage

1:10:01

it does is huge, it is enormous.

1:10:03

There is work that would not exist

1:10:06

today without them and there is

1:10:08

future work that will not come into being.

1:10:12

And the Delhi School of Economics, now

1:10:14

many of the appointments are basically on political

1:10:17

considerations, things are right. Absolutely,

1:10:19

absolutely. And also, not entirely

1:10:22

German into

1:10:24

this conversation. One of

1:10:26

the less known aspects of this regime's

1:10:28

attack on intellectual work is

1:10:30

the undermining of our best scientific institutions

1:10:33

by putting pro-Sungi directors. I

1:10:35

mean, the government now more or less

1:10:37

vetoes who can become an IIT director

1:10:39

based on the political,

1:10:42

slow cultural, slow religious views. So

1:10:44

that's deeply worrying. That's

1:10:46

deeply worrying. Let's take a quick break and on the other side of the

1:10:48

break, let's go. I

1:10:54

always wanted to be a writer but never got into

1:10:56

it. But I'd love to help you. Since April

1:10:58

2020, I've enjoyed teaching 27

1:11:00

cohorts of my online course, The Art

1:11:03

of Clearwriting. And an online community has

1:11:05

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1:11:07

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1:11:09

showcase the work of students and vibrant

1:11:11

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1:11:13

four webinars made over four weekends, I

1:11:16

share all I know about the craft

1:11:18

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1:11:20

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1:11:22

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The course cost rupees 1000 plus GSD, all

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1:11:32

That's indiancar.com/clearwriting. Being a good writer

1:11:34

doesn't require God given talent, just

1:11:37

a willingness to work hard in

1:11:39

a clear idea of what you

1:11:41

need to do to refine your

1:11:44

skills. I can help you. Welcome

1:11:50

back to the scene and the unseen I'm

1:11:52

chatting with Ramguhar about his wonderful book The

1:11:54

Cooking of Books, which is not about accounting

1:11:56

and how you you know, do financial frauds

1:11:58

but instead about a digital. deep personal

1:12:00

friendship and you know going back to Rook

1:12:02

firstly I am delighted that you quoted so

1:12:05

much from his letters to you because he

1:12:07

gave us a sense both of how intensely

1:12:09

he shaped your work and

1:12:11

also what a fine thinker he was

1:12:13

and it struck me that in a

1:12:15

lot of that writing there

1:12:17

is obviously no self-consciousness at all because

1:12:19

he is writing to a friend and

1:12:22

that makes a writing even better in the sense

1:12:24

that wherever you quoted from things that have appeared

1:12:26

in the public and all of that it

1:12:29

feels like here someone making an effort

1:12:31

to be witty or to be smart because

1:12:33

you know people are going to read them

1:12:35

and just have self-consciousness but some

1:12:38

of these letters are just magnificent they

1:12:40

are so eloquent that you know so

1:12:42

perfect at points that they cannot possibly

1:12:45

be edited and it's just

1:12:47

a remarkable intellect at work and yet in

1:12:50

you know so how do you think that plays

1:12:52

out because I was kind of teasing these thoughts

1:12:54

in ahead that was there then an anxiety of

1:12:56

you know when he's around other people and does

1:12:59

writing in public sort of reproduce that kind of

1:13:01

anxiety in a sense that he thinks he has

1:13:03

to be impressive etc etc because

1:13:05

the writing otherwise. So I mean

1:13:07

I can't answer on his behalf but

1:13:10

there is a performative aspect

1:13:13

to writing you want to impress you want

1:13:15

to shock you want to startle

1:13:17

you want to amuse and because

1:13:20

this for a large audience. I'll

1:13:23

tell you just yourself expressing

1:13:26

your thoughts to someone you love

1:13:28

and like and it's not supposed to

1:13:30

be by anyone else and both

1:13:36

the good and the bad in

1:13:39

the writing of the

1:13:42

public writing of shall

1:13:45

we say if I may list

1:13:47

a few names both the

1:13:49

good and the bad in the public

1:13:51

writing of Shashi

1:13:54

Tharoor, Ruku Narvani,

1:13:56

Mukul Keshavan, Ubumandu

1:13:59

Chatterjee, Rama Chandra

1:14:01

Guha, Shwapanta Ashgupta, a

1:14:04

wide variety of males, and I am

1:14:06

deliberately mentioning only males. A

1:14:08

lot of this can be attributed to the college

1:14:10

in which they studied, which was about wit, argument,

1:14:14

contestation in public. Abhayata

1:14:17

Ghosh's writing is an exception. Alan

1:14:19

Seeley's writing is an exception. There are two Stephenian

1:14:22

writers who are maybe from the beginning,

1:14:24

they only accidentally went to

1:14:26

St. Stephen's. Their writing was not their style

1:14:28

of argument and the polemics and their

1:14:31

wordplay. So that's part of it.

1:14:34

There are aspects of the Stephenian prose

1:14:37

style that are charming and evocative

1:14:39

and the aspects that are

1:14:41

just dreadful, I mean, there's long

1:14:43

alliterations, PJs, bad jokes.

1:14:46

So I think maybe that's what it is

1:14:48

because you're writing to impress a

1:14:50

fellow Stephenian rather than writing what

1:14:53

you think. And I think that's how I

1:14:55

would express it. And

1:14:57

it also seems in his editorial notes to Yoda, not

1:14:59

only is he adding a great deal and making

1:15:02

suggestions about where you could take a particular

1:15:04

narrative or what you could look at, what

1:15:06

he is also doing is that he's actually

1:15:08

cutting down a lot of the BS. Like

1:15:10

I don't remember the particular example, but there

1:15:12

is this particular example where you

1:15:15

had like a clause, you had half a sentence

1:15:18

about, you know, where you were being witty. I

1:15:20

think, yeah, I think it is about very irrelevant

1:15:22

being called baribai by the tribals. Not big brother

1:15:24

in the oral How

1:15:47

your writing evolved, how your work evolved

1:15:50

as a consequence of knowing him,

1:15:52

because one of the things that I seem to see

1:15:54

is, and I think you mentioned it from there, that

1:15:56

you were so in awe of him or you respected

1:15:58

him so much that he would definitely. to him

1:16:00

always, if he would say cut this out, you would

1:16:02

cut it out. And obviously from all the chunks that

1:16:04

you reproduce, he is giving you great reasons and all

1:16:06

of it makes sense. But at

1:16:08

the same time, he is shaping you.

1:16:11

And there is a lot of good in that

1:16:14

shaping, that it is expanding your worldview and showing

1:16:16

you things about your own writing that you may

1:16:18

not have seen. But there are

1:16:20

also dangers in it, because I think sometimes you

1:16:22

have to let young people play their shots as

1:16:24

it were, make their mistakes, find their own paths.

1:16:27

There is a part dependence to encouraging

1:16:30

them to think in a particular way also.

1:16:32

So when you look back at the trajectory

1:16:35

of your intellectual development and your development as

1:16:37

a writer with him, how do you feel?

1:16:41

So I think, I

1:16:43

mean, Rukun was not micromanaging my prose.

1:16:46

He was expanding the range of my

1:16:48

interests and maybe shaping

1:16:51

the way an essay

1:16:53

or a book was structured, cutting out the fluff. But

1:16:56

the prose style was mine. And

1:16:59

so that's it. My

1:17:01

PhD thesis was written under the superejna manjan koshan,

1:17:03

my co-host Suva is a Kamini Adikari, and Rukun

1:17:05

and I think do it. But he read it

1:17:08

and he said, there should be more on women.

1:17:11

The stuff and the bravery of hill soldiers and

1:17:13

the footnote put it up front, you

1:17:15

know, give lots of larger context about the landscape. So

1:17:18

he was working with what he saw, appreciating

1:17:21

its virtues, not trying

1:17:23

to homogenize it and make it sort of

1:17:25

uniform in a Time magazine or India Today

1:17:27

kind of style, you know, but

1:17:29

pushing you in new

1:17:31

directions. So he was, but

1:17:34

other writers he may have rewritten much more

1:17:36

because there would be other writers who

1:17:39

maybe for whom writing was not so comfortable or

1:17:41

easy. I think what, where

1:17:44

he particularly helped me was in my

1:17:46

Elvin biography because a biography

1:17:49

is the most difficult of literary

1:17:51

genres, at least when it comes

1:17:53

to nonfiction. It's far easier

1:17:56

writing a book of social history, political history,

1:17:58

travel, even autobiography. Because

1:18:00

to get a person's life in the round,

1:18:03

you know, both their private

1:18:05

life and their public life, to

1:18:07

properly sketch out the other characters,

1:18:10

you know, in their journey, their

1:18:12

parents, their siblings, their friends, their

1:18:15

rivals, their lovers, their own children,

1:18:17

you know, and to do so

1:18:19

in both

1:18:21

a scrupulously honest way,

1:18:24

but also while recognizing that

1:18:26

a life is different in context than other

1:18:28

lives. So the relationships come out. Too many

1:18:30

biographers just write about their main characters. People

1:18:32

write on Gandhi purely on

1:18:35

the basis of Gandhi's collected work. So

1:18:38

it's only Gandhi's point of view. And I

1:18:40

think that's where he really helped me. But,

1:18:42

and also giving me ideas. I mean, one

1:18:44

of the letters, when I read at this

1:18:46

book, I mean, after it was published, one

1:18:50

of the letters that really stood out, written by Rookun to

1:18:52

me, was in 1987. I

1:18:55

was in Bangalore. I

1:18:58

come back from Yale. I was working here. And

1:19:00

I write to him saying, I've

1:19:03

started resuming playing cricket with a club here. And

1:19:05

you think you might think the sociologist has egress

1:19:07

to becoming the cricketer you knew in college. And

1:19:09

he writes back saying, not at all. Why don't

1:19:11

you write as a sociology of cricket? And this

1:19:14

is what it should be about. You know, look

1:19:16

at how the game is changed. Who's

1:19:18

watching it? Who's playing it? How cricketers

1:19:21

are coming from different backgrounds? How

1:19:24

the game is being funded? How the fan

1:19:26

base is changing? And nobody has written

1:19:28

about all of this. Why don't you write about

1:19:30

it? And effectively, that's what I did many years

1:19:32

later. Ollenfield,

1:19:38

was planted by Rookun. But

1:19:40

he saw someone who

1:19:43

was passionate about cricket as

1:19:46

a young college student, who

1:19:48

had later become a sociologist, and

1:19:50

who could now marry his professional

1:19:52

training and his personal

1:19:55

passion into a socialistic cricket. So

1:19:57

he saw it back long ago. a

1:20:00

great editor does. A great editor is, I don't

1:20:04

know, a kind of

1:20:06

entrepreneur too. I won't say

1:20:08

venture capitalist, but maybe put a

1:20:10

person in an idea together and say, why

1:20:13

don't you just go for it? That's what Peter Strauss did later

1:20:16

on for me with India after Gandhi. I had no

1:20:18

idea I would ever write that book. And he comes

1:20:20

to me and says, why do you write a history

1:20:22

of independent India? But in

1:20:25

terms of my writing style, large

1:20:28

or my prose style, I

1:20:31

think it was already there before Metricoon.

1:20:33

Obviously, it was further refined, further shaped.

1:20:36

But he wasn't rewriting what

1:20:38

I wrote. He was encouraging me to

1:20:40

go in new directions, to probe deeper,

1:20:43

and to take on new and more

1:20:45

challenging subjects. Begin

1:20:48

your book with this wonderful quote by

1:20:50

Norman Podhoritz about editors, where he

1:20:52

says, good editors, really good

1:20:54

editors are very rare. In fact, even rarer

1:20:57

than good writers, it is a special kind

1:20:59

of talent because it takes two qualities that

1:21:01

rarely go together in the same person. On

1:21:04

the one hand, great arrogance. And on the

1:21:06

other hand, great selflessness. The arrogance lies in

1:21:08

the fact that you, the editor, thinks he

1:21:10

knows better than the author, who is usually

1:21:12

a specialist on how to say what it

1:21:14

is he wants to say. The humility or

1:21:16

selflessness, which is very important, is that

1:21:18

you are willing to lend your

1:21:20

talents to someone else's work without

1:21:23

getting any credit for it. Stop

1:21:25

quote. And it therefore

1:21:27

seems to me that this almost, is

1:21:29

there a particular kind of person who

1:21:31

is really like this? Because to my

1:21:33

mind, if

1:21:35

you're incredibly smart, if you're incredibly, like you said,

1:21:37

he was not an expert just in language, we

1:21:40

didn't thought he had a PhD from Cambridge, or

1:21:42

someone like that. And to look at relatively less

1:21:44

sort of, you know, colleagues who were probably not

1:21:46

at the same level, like Shashi Tharoor going out

1:21:48

there and writing all these novels and making a

1:21:51

name for themselves. And it would

1:21:53

have been, you know, irresistible to kind

1:21:55

of write for yourself And join that

1:21:57

sort of league of people. But He never did

1:21:59

that. And it seems both a little

1:22:01

bustling A to me and at the same

1:22:03

time I completely get it. And so what

1:22:06

is sort of your sense of dad like?

1:22:08

what would his self image have been like?

1:22:10

How did he see him says did? Was

1:22:12

he never tempted by the I mean did

1:22:14

did a bit when among goes and so

1:22:16

on foot. You know what is A He

1:22:18

was tempted. And so often of

1:22:20

islam and thousand number setting to him. And

1:22:23

he said he wants to write a novel.

1:22:26

A month female point of view with a

1:22:28

female characters the main protagonist. And

1:22:30

that he had thought of it would get he never

1:22:32

noticed. He. Was also very faint.

1:22:34

Assist A you know, do that. I still

1:22:36

remember. Thirty as data. As

1:22:39

he views you don't the laundry busy road. Over

1:22:42

other getting those by the feals. The.

1:22:44

Mathematician thousand. And that

1:22:47

he was started by saying. India.

1:22:49

Or whatever. nineteen tend? To.

1:22:53

Have the greatest scholars and giblets. Independently

1:22:56

without. Knowing of the other.

1:22:59

Got. Letters: some unknown people.

1:23:03

Russell, the fetus colossal his style got

1:23:06

a letter from Lost In which he

1:23:08

looked at and said it's a guy,

1:23:10

a blanket easy Adidas and a few

1:23:12

months later a few months before I

1:23:14

forget to the grocery bill has grown

1:23:16

to write matter what isn't the greatest

1:23:18

Up his wife Heidi, the greatest splittist

1:23:21

mathematician of his time got a letter

1:23:23

from an unknown Indian and he looked

1:23:25

at it and said is this guy

1:23:27

a genius Oh easier Threads of the

1:23:29

Big decided to results as I wasn't

1:23:31

ready to have you any both cases.

1:23:34

The Great. Game. These professors decided

1:23:36

to give this person the benefit of

1:23:38

the doubt and to want to take

1:23:41

a chance and invite them and in

1:23:43

his guests to put his it's outstripped

1:23:45

the teacher or them and does not

1:23:47

wouldn't have done discovers because of his

1:23:49

scholarship and so that since it must

1:23:52

be written, deputy study, stop writing for

1:23:54

public consumption equals a student know these

1:23:56

that as equal as to saved all

1:23:58

these books sense. After all these young

1:24:01

writers who seek to do so do. Like

1:24:03

for whatever reason he decided that he would

1:24:06

stop it and I don't. dirty. I have

1:24:08

some speculations but they're not. When phone did

1:24:10

such not share them as to why he

1:24:12

simply stop reading for the purpose. At.

1:24:15

One point where you'd ever do your dog

1:24:17

food and he's a speedier dude I'd good

1:24:19

was reconstructed as he says was an example

1:24:21

of because you're from above. Mine was an

1:24:24

illustration of history from below they'd and and

1:24:26

that seemed to me to be very striking

1:24:28

especially because what history since you know indicates

1:24:30

these that you have to put in a

1:24:32

heck of a lot of whoop to actually

1:24:34

get this. You can't really sit down and

1:24:36

you might have rate a lot and you

1:24:38

might not over is trying to to hardy

1:24:40

influence on the horse. Oh and since but

1:24:42

today the kind of books heard you went

1:24:44

on to right it's really. A question of

1:24:46

you know sitting your but undeterred and putting

1:24:48

and all of this work and that might

1:24:50

on begins union. For someone who just wants

1:24:52

to live in a world of ideas that

1:24:54

would not necessarily do the dirty work have

1:24:56

been done you have to is that a

1:24:58

historian you have to. On

1:25:01

an anthropologist have to love the resets

1:25:03

suit is as a modest means living

1:25:05

in a lot in testimony, deal in

1:25:07

a bill, or even if you're. Now.

1:25:10

You you will have another facility fumbling

1:25:12

Sullivan's area with people in new talking

1:25:14

to them and observing them. Started with

1:25:16

both the archives it means things. example

1:25:18

that lifeless book on dozens and for

1:25:20

his name either it meant not a

1:25:23

little kid, government records and published but

1:25:25

also. Runs of the

1:25:27

newspapers film a week after week to

1:25:29

look at them on microfilm and see

1:25:31

what they're saying about the longer very

1:25:33

presence in the thirties and forties and

1:25:36

fifties said that because he notes so

1:25:38

without that indices hard labor in the

1:25:40

archives of in the field so you

1:25:42

can't Etti. Beginning. To the

1:25:44

Sept and Aditya or tell us stories that

1:25:46

as see so little call a despicable to

1:25:49

the library annual pass it to analyze it

1:25:51

and plus it didn't Yes. Then.

1:25:53

We also about then I'm. A

1:25:55

whole you gamer to work at A because

1:25:57

the you know it in your book you

1:25:59

have did the deed section about how for

1:26:02

the oven book he wrote photo five govts

1:26:04

practically from scratch and which involves not just

1:26:06

a notice a hard work with him. I

1:26:08

will know that you've just put your bum

1:26:10

and a chair every time a new that

1:26:12

a job don't but also the humility of

1:26:14

being open. That's something I have looked on

1:26:17

for so long. He is not working and

1:26:19

I should have the brutality to take it

1:26:21

up and did it again and start again.

1:26:23

So tell me about how you kind of

1:26:25

on that. Are you read that because for

1:26:28

a lot of a lesser people, listen. Minds

1:26:30

people to accomplish much less of people like

1:26:32

me. It's very tempting to do rights and

1:26:34

thing. And you think that although this is

1:26:36

so great and it makes it hard to

1:26:38

that it would be you know you somehow

1:26:40

didn't have managed to. Dude, I did. did

1:26:42

he look like had averaged? Those of us

1:26:44

I think. I seats it

1:26:46

has something to do. With. My.

1:26:49

Having minutes to get us. And

1:26:51

only a moderately equal status.

1:26:55

So boring see as in the next. Time

1:26:58

to that allowed to the of about with a do

1:27:00

the two people lose. The weight my table

1:27:02

played for endeavours making them to the other very

1:27:05

good bets when to it's it's it's I say

1:27:07

very hard. And are. Also,

1:27:11

our lives when I I've. I've

1:27:14

enjoyed. My work Is not density by go

1:27:17

to not that's. A good night. I'd.

1:27:19

Take a break and one. At a good I

1:27:22

think I guess it was a d and then I. Am.

1:27:24

Legend: the archive close If I did, he notes.

1:27:27

Of from a science and I don't like

1:27:29

taking photos of photograph souls or photocopy does

1:27:31

estate is he not so that that assimilate

1:27:33

must possess? And when I'm back in my

1:27:35

study in been road I met my desk

1:27:37

know to hold it. But one nine thirty

1:27:39

two and the dude I did smoke. That

1:27:42

he may have come from having scientists have

1:27:44

in order to get it as is very

1:27:46

different what he started as but having. Said.

1:27:49

Eight or. Nine. Years of my youth.

1:27:52

Absolutely devoted. To

1:27:55

trying to become proficient at a sport

1:27:57

in which I would never really position.

1:28:00

I'm unable to ordinary equally see that.

1:28:02

That's it. I know that it's graduated

1:28:04

to anything's better than that, but I

1:28:06

give an easy. To wanted

1:28:08

to get a gift and wanted to

1:28:10

plates to the best deniability six and

1:28:12

it is. That is the mean with

1:28:14

me. So I think I know other

1:28:17

examples of people who play the sport

1:28:19

of and of a young and then

1:28:21

migrated to someone the profession and then

1:28:23

adding also had this ethics as he

1:28:25

plays a team sport is pretty busy

1:28:27

vegetables because it's not about yourself. you

1:28:30

know you feel but your team wins.

1:28:32

Lived up the writing and rewriting. I

1:28:36

think even my columns.

1:28:38

I do like Anna always been dealt

1:28:40

would at eight. Either

1:28:43

this is I'll for dead young people

1:28:45

that don't think if you don't sleep.

1:28:48

For the eight a bit on the

1:28:50

screen that you need a physical copy

1:28:52

to see how the narrative rules. Where

1:28:55

it's it's stumbles way may be repetitive,

1:28:57

may be confusing and yes sir he

1:28:59

was Mike of average love for medical

1:29:02

i'm phone twenty five years and to

1:29:04

series because of is now for sadly

1:29:06

enough always realize Antidote. And

1:29:09

acts I usually do ready to see disney

1:29:11

ones who does the benefit of to his

1:29:13

innocence and in this seemed importance said city.

1:29:16

And the last the now I can tell

1:29:18

young people in the ass meets his never

1:29:20

have your mobile phone with you when you're

1:29:22

ready or eating. The

1:29:24

one difference that strikes me between cricket and

1:29:27

rating is dead. In Cricket you heard that

1:29:29

immediate feedback loop. You can hide. You know

1:29:31

how good you are, you know you go

1:29:33

out there and a few new have agreed.

1:29:35

Bhutto putting a do you, there's no place

1:29:37

to hide, been and would go to Twenty

1:29:39

Company as opposed to saying goes and in

1:29:41

writing it often isn't like that. Sometimes you

1:29:43

have no idea, sometimes you're too harsh or

1:29:45

new says. Sometimes. you

1:29:47

are not close enough when you are served as

1:29:49

it and it as he added complexity like i

1:29:51

often done my writing students read if you write

1:29:53

something that you do not like it is a

1:29:55

reason to continue to store because all it means

1:29:57

is that your judgment is more rewards than you

1:30:00

It is just endless iteration

1:30:02

that eventually makes your ability

1:30:04

catch up with your judgment. But

1:30:07

as regards to judgment, it

1:30:09

says, how was it for you because you were

1:30:11

an outsider in a field

1:30:13

that itself was an outsider among

1:30:15

other fields and how would

1:30:18

you possibly kind of know like

1:30:20

at one point I think in the mid-90s

1:30:22

you quote from this letter that you write

1:30:24

to Rukhun where you say, I am increasingly

1:30:27

coming round to the opinion that the only

1:30:29

thing I can do well as distinct from

1:30:31

competently is write about cricket. My depression these

1:30:33

past weeks has been terrific. Stop

1:30:35

quote. And I felt heartbroken when

1:30:38

I read that. And thank God

1:30:40

that Rukhun replied, you

1:30:42

do tend to oscillate in a somewhat extreme manner

1:30:44

for something and despair over the same thing. So

1:30:47

I am reading that the spondence over Elvin has

1:30:49

a pendulum swing which will soon go in the

1:30:51

right direction and indeed it did. So thank God

1:30:53

for that. But how would you sort of deal

1:30:56

with this because I think what a lot of

1:30:58

young writers, young scholars often face is

1:31:00

this extreme self doubt, the imposter

1:31:03

syndrome and frankly women feel it

1:31:05

far more than men. And

1:31:08

then how do you even evaluate yourself in

1:31:10

what is a sea of content and a

1:31:12

sea of judgment floating all around you? So

1:31:15

I will try to answer that question but that letter

1:31:17

you read out where I say 1995 is

1:31:20

the only thing I feel I can write competently

1:31:22

about cricket. 30 years later, I think

1:31:25

that's the only thing I cannot write competently about. People

1:31:28

often ask me why we stop writing or create. And

1:31:31

that's because I started writing

1:31:33

about cricket as we, you know, in

1:31:35

an era as you discussed earlier in this conversation but

1:31:37

there was no television. And

1:31:40

where you had to recreate an image of how G.R.

1:31:42

Vishwanath played the square cut or Sunil Kavaskar played the

1:31:44

state driver Prasanna Bould, the state I want. Now

1:31:47

that's all there. You can see it and

1:31:50

my style of writing is as extinct and

1:31:52

as irrelevant as the doro, right? So

1:31:55

I can't write about cricket anymore. People often ask me

1:31:57

and the reason is, you know, if Vishwanath is very

1:31:59

direct, I'll short tribute because I admired

1:32:01

him but even that wouldn't have the

1:32:03

I still believe that

1:32:06

it wouldn't have the kind of flavor

1:32:08

and energy and youthful exuberance of my early

1:32:10

writings on cricket so I cannot write completely

1:32:12

about cricket but I think I can write

1:32:14

completely about history and politics

1:32:16

and biography and so on and a lot of

1:32:18

that is to be experienced you know the older

1:32:20

you get the more you practice your craft and

1:32:23

historians fortunately can

1:32:26

go on to a much older age themselves we

1:32:28

say mathematicians who kind of pick at 23 or 25

1:32:30

I mean how is almost

1:32:33

I think great works in history into his 80s and

1:32:35

so that's but I also do

1:32:37

have a feedback loop I think you're

1:32:40

right that as a cricketer you know immediately when somebody

1:32:42

hits you for a six that that was a bad

1:32:44

ball it may be a lucky shot but more likely

1:32:46

to a bad ball and you have colleagues to tell

1:32:48

you you know to how to change your approach to

1:32:50

that particular batsman now of course you have a whole

1:32:52

support staff and computer analysts and video analysts but

1:32:55

I also do have a feedback loop so and

1:32:58

it depends on the book I'm writing so I've just finished

1:33:01

a book which will be out was the end of the

1:33:03

year which is a return to

1:33:05

my first field of research it's a history

1:33:07

of Indian environmental thought starting with

1:33:10

Tagore and ending with a writer

1:33:12

in the 1970s so kind of pre-chip co-history

1:33:14

of thinking about the environment in India

1:33:17

and there were half a dozen environmental scholars

1:33:19

of whom the bulk were actually not Indians

1:33:21

whom I got to read it and who

1:33:25

provide me immensely valuable feedback for

1:33:27

my journalism if I'm confused

1:33:29

or not sure

1:33:31

about my argument now it

1:33:33

is generally my wife or my children who will have

1:33:35

a look at it and always improve it so

1:33:38

I think you know with experience

1:33:42

whom to trust for what particular piece of

1:33:44

writing and you must not be

1:33:46

afraid to share it with them with

1:33:49

two caveats how the first

1:33:51

is you should never show it to too many people

1:33:55

and this book went to 13 drafts because Indian

1:33:57

but my other books will go

1:33:59

to three or four people I think test. If

1:34:01

it's a biography, the British historian David Gilmour would

1:34:04

always be my first cedar because he's a magnificent

1:34:06

biographer, one or two other people depending on what

1:34:08

the topic is about. And

1:34:11

you must finally trust, the second caveat is

1:34:13

you must finally trust your own judgment based

1:34:16

on what you get. But it's

1:34:18

very different from novel because I think

1:34:20

novelists have a much more

1:34:24

difficult life because it's much easier

1:34:26

being a historian than a novelist

1:34:29

because you're in command of your

1:34:31

data, your research, your sources, your

1:34:33

argument, you know what's there, you know who is

1:34:36

written on Gandhi, so what can you add to what

1:34:38

they've written on Gandhi. Whereas

1:34:40

if you're a novelist, you know you can't

1:34:42

say I'm writing against all stories or dickens, you

1:34:44

have no basis for comparison or for judging how

1:34:46

good your work is. So yeah,

1:34:49

but there are a few people I

1:34:51

would always, any important piece of writing,

1:34:53

it used to be Rukun, now I

1:34:55

don't burden Rukun too much because the

1:34:57

other things on his plate.

1:34:59

Occasionally I still run something by him and

1:35:02

of course there are also some good editors

1:35:04

around the place. I mean I find that magazine

1:35:07

editors in India are not generally very

1:35:09

good but overseas whenever I

1:35:11

write for the Financial Times which is very rarely

1:35:13

about once a year, I get

1:35:16

fantastic feedback and they always improve my articles.

1:35:18

Tell me about the evolution of the publishing ecosystem

1:35:21

in all of these years because it

1:35:23

appears from the descriptions that you know in

1:35:25

the 70s it's a little bit of a

1:35:27

cottage industry, there are these committed individuals like

1:35:29

Ravi Deyal who are building something around themselves

1:35:31

and you know that is one strain of

1:35:34

what is going on but then the 90s

1:35:36

India opens up, penguin comes here and things

1:35:38

get corporatized and things go in a sort

1:35:40

of a different direction. Like even the definition

1:35:42

of editor as you point out it was

1:35:44

Rukun who commissioned you and Rukun who went

1:35:46

through all your texts and shepherded your books

1:35:48

to where they went and even shaped your books in

1:35:50

a sense. Like earlier you know when you said that

1:35:53

they are a little bit like venture capitalists, actually I

1:35:55

completely agree that that's what a good editor is that

1:35:57

you are planting 100 ideas and

1:35:59

then out of that. one will take shape and become

1:36:01

something great. So, it is exactly the same kind

1:36:03

of thinking. But tell me a little bit about

1:36:05

how that ecosystem changed. I mean, luckily by the

1:36:08

time it changed, you were already a grandi of

1:36:10

sorts. So, it would not have affected you personally.

1:36:12

But you saw the change

1:36:14

and many of the changes were unedifying like

1:36:17

your descriptions of what happened in OUP which

1:36:19

forced Rokun to leave which was just petty

1:36:21

politics playing out and other pretails. I think

1:36:24

clearly I say I have a criticism of

1:36:26

calling a footnote where I say what

1:36:29

I want to be in black, world class

1:36:31

in editing but not in marketing and publicity.

1:36:33

So, tell me the books have been sold.

1:36:35

Rokun has a majesty with this regard for

1:36:39

making his books more visible, more known and some

1:36:41

of his authors have rightly complained about that. On

1:36:44

the other hand, you have people who simply treat

1:36:46

books as FMCG,

1:36:48

fast moving and don't think of

1:36:50

quality or how long a

1:36:52

book endures. OUP was important because

1:36:55

it kept books in print. Now, for example, the

1:36:57

death of OUP, what that has meant is if

1:37:00

somebody today writes, shall

1:37:02

we say, since we

1:37:05

are in Karnataka, a

1:37:07

biography of a great

1:37:11

Karnataka, Shivaram Karnataka, Ramgistna Hegidi or

1:37:13

Devarajars, two of our most important

1:37:16

Chief Ministers. So, to take other states, somebody

1:37:19

writes an EMS Namboothi Path who ran

1:37:22

the first democratically elected Communist government in

1:37:24

the world and had a very transformative

1:37:26

impact on a state which is 30-40

1:37:28

million people. Now, Penguin

1:37:31

or Hopper would publish that book. They

1:37:34

won't give it the same attention that

1:37:36

the OUP editors would have done. It will

1:37:39

sell 3000 copies in the first

1:37:41

year and three years data you can't find it. Whereas

1:37:45

OUP would keep that book alive, it would not sell

1:37:47

3000 copies in the first year, it would only sell

1:37:49

750 but 15 years

1:37:52

later if you wanted to know more about the

1:37:54

history of communism in Kerala, that book would be

1:37:56

available. And that's the job of a quality publisher

1:37:59

too. both improve the quality of

1:38:01

the writing and the research and the presentation and

1:38:03

to keep it alive. The job of

1:38:05

a commercial publisher is to sell many copies

1:38:08

quickly and they are complementary. Some

1:38:10

books can serve both purposes but

1:38:12

not all. I mean, Harry Hobbes Wamp's books

1:38:14

still sell and they are first class works

1:38:16

of scholarship. Abartha Sen would be another

1:38:19

person who is going to bridge that gap. But

1:38:22

broadly you need both

1:38:25

kinds of publishers and

1:38:28

I am glad that you have Penguin and Harper

1:38:30

and Westland and Allef and all

1:38:32

of them, commercial young writers.

1:38:35

But I think sometimes it

1:38:38

does quality writing and

1:38:40

quality publishing. I think there is

1:38:42

an acute deficiency in India today

1:38:44