Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a writer. At the centre of her work is the partnership she's enjoyed for nearly 40 years with the film director James Ivory and the producer Ismail Merchant. She's written most of the films they've made together, some based on her own novels. She was born into a Jewish family in Germany, lived in England from the age of twelve, spent the first twenty-four years of her married life in India, and now lives mainly in New York.

Presenter0:55

She won the Booker Prize in nineteen seventy five for her novel Heat and Dust. That and the names of other films she has written make her work familiar Shakespeare Waller, A Room with a View, Howard's End, and The Remains of the Day, to name just a few.

Presenter1:10

She's always lived as a foreigner, blown from country to country, culture to culture. As it happens, she says, I like it that way. She is Ruth Prava Jabhvala.

Presenter1:20

You're a very solitary person, Ruth, but you've always had a family, it seems to me, not least this film company, Merchant Ivory. You've been together, what, thirty-eight years since you made your first film. Is it like a family? Is that the relationship you have with the other two? Oh, yes, absolutely, yes. We all live in the same apartment house in New York. I mean, if when anybody's there,'cause they're always on location or somewhere or other. And'cause I'm away for three to four months also. But nevertheless, you're I think you're in the Guinness Book of Records as the film production company that's been together longest. Oh, yeah. What do you put its success down to? Why? Why has it worked?

Presenter2:00

Well, we always say because we each of us have minded our own business. I mean, Jim's directed. Isma's produced, but Ismail's also beginning to direct his own films. I mean, he's directed several.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala2:04

Yeah.

Presenter2:13

And I'd never dream of doing anything except writing. But surely, surely you get into the cutting room and you say you can't cut that out, or you must you must cut that out or that isn't right. Oh, I get into the cutting room. That's I mean, it films for me uh in two stages. One when I write the script and I'm more or less on my own. That's the nice bit.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala2:20

Yeah.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala2:23

No.

Presenter2:32

And then there comes for me the unpleasant bit when they all go out and a hundred people and film sets and actors and uh you know, lighting people and camera and sound. And I'm don't I stay away. When they go to the editing room, then I come in again and work that and that's the bit I like. And after that I don't see the film again. But do you like it? Do you like that bit? After all, aren't you looking at that point at what they've done to your baby, as it were? Oh, no, no. Film is not like a book, it's not a writer's baby at all. It's uh I mean so many people have put in their talent by that time that uh

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala2:51

And

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala2:59

Yeah.

Presenter3:09

You feel great for what they've done.

Presenter3:12

You don't feel possessive about it in any way. So you don't you? So you've just handed over a kind of blueprint for them to work on, as it were. Oh, absolutely. But nevertheless, there must come a point at which and I think your husband said you're perfectly capable of screaming at the other two you must have some screaming.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala3:17

And you have

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala3:18

Yeah.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala3:26

Oh, this is much louder.

Presenter3:29

Do they? Yeah, they were three times the size I am and there's a consumer.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala3:34

I dunno.

Speaker 43:34

I don't think that makes much difference.

Presenter3:37

But which of you, for example, says E. M. Forster would be a good writer for us to do? Oh, that's me. That's you. I read because I read more. I mean, I have over an ill spent life spent most of it reading. And so I certainly read more. And I always thought that both E. M. Forster and Henry James would be very good authors for Jim.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala3:42

Uh

Speaker 43:42

And

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala3:43

That's me.

Presenter4:00

And so it I think it's proved to be Henry James the Golden Bowl. Yes, yeah.

Presenter4:06

Tell me about your first record that you'd like to take to this desert island we're sending you to.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala4:08

Yeah.

Presenter4:10

Well the first record is um from our film Shakespeare Wala.

Presenter4:16

And we were very lucky that uh a great Indian filmmaker Satchajit Ray agreed to write the music for it. So this is his music that we are playing.

Presenter4:27

And Sheikh Revala, well it I feel quite nostalgic about Sheikh Revala'cause it was our second film.

Presenter4:34

There was uh actors that we worked with, like Sashi Kapoor and the Kendall family, on whom this story is based, because they were travelling around India doing Shakespeare. This is the family of Felicity Kendall. This was her first film. She was eighteen years old on the set.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala4:45

This is

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala4:47

Yeah.

Presenter4:52

The background of it is uh autobiographical for her because it is about uh an Indi an English family.

Presenter5:00

Travelling around India, presenting Shakespeare.

Presenter5:34

Part of the sound track of the film Shakespeare Waller, composed by Satyajit Ray. Um that was set in the sixties, but you went out there in in the early fifties having married an Indian. What were your first impressions of India?

Presenter5:49

Going there nineteen fifty one.

Presenter5:52

Before that I'd been all through the war in England and after the war and, you know, everything was pretty basic and grim and grey and suddenly you come into this

Presenter6:03

grand fairy land of sights and sounds and colors and what not. And sweets, I suppose. I mean you'd been what, Nazi Germany, wartime England, you can't eat have eaten many sweetens. No, absolutely. I would starve for for them. And

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala6:09

Yeah.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala6:12

No.

Presenter6:15

Indian sweets are the essence of all sweetness that there ever could be. I used to eat by the pound. I never thought that was so.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala6:21

Mm-hmm.

Presenter6:25

Wonderful could exist. And marrying an Indian, presumably, you therefore inherited a huge family?

Presenter6:33

Quite Jude. My husband it's not a Hindoo family, nor was it a joint family. He's a Parsi and they are some are more westernized. But I saw other big families.

Speaker 46:43

Hmm.

Presenter6:44

And I started writing I mean, the first ten years that I was there,

Presenter6:47

Um I was writing actually I'd written I wrote several novels and always from an Indian point of view, as if I were from within that Hindu society that I didn't really belong to at all. But there are only Indian characters in those books. In the books that are European. I never met any Europeans the first ten years. I really didn't know any.

Speaker 47:01

Yeah.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala7:03

Uh

Speaker 47:07

Hmm.

Presenter7:07

I suppose because I started off as a refugee anyway. And once you're a refugee, I guess you're always a refugee. I mean, you don't really ever belong to any place at all, and you take on a sort of

Presenter7:19

At least I did, a sort of chameleon quality. Like when I was in England I was extremely English. I mean, I grew up here and

Presenter7:27

And it didn't strike me that I could be anything but English. And if I'm sure if I'd stayed here, I would have written books with English characters and pretending I was English. I I've read somewhere that you said it it took people, that's to say your readers, a long time to find out that I wasn't Indian. Yeah, that did take a long time. Did you intend that to happen? I think so, yes. I didn't want to be yes, I think I did.

Presenter7:51

Because people say that about you when they meet you, don't they? They say you you you could be Indian, you could be Jewish, you could be Eastern European.

Speaker 47:58

B E s

Speaker 48:00

Yeah.

Presenter8:00

You you could be so many things. I mean, perhaps you almost are a camellia.

Presenter8:06

I never had any trouble um adapting to India. I mean, I've met girls and and they said, Oh, were they thinking of marrying an Indian? What's it like? And will they be happy? Will they fit in? These questions never occurred to me. I mean, not for a second. I just thought, no, no, it's all right. I'll go and

Presenter8:26

And I went. I didn't have any background at all. I mean, I'd read Passage to India and came

Presenter8:31

But I I went there and immediately took to it.

Presenter8:35

Tell me about your second record.

Presenter8:37

Carrying on with our conversation, I immediately took to Indian music, like Indian sweets, the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

Presenter8:45

And I love these Indian women singers, who for me were somehow an expression of everything a woman artist does. I mean, you see them sitting there and singing and plucking these superb noises and

Presenter9:01

embellishing them and uh

Presenter9:04

Just seem to me the absolute essence of being a woman artist.

Speaker 49:09

Krishna Modhari Maurika Hai Tehai Krishna Modari Madhanata Giridhari Madhanata Giradhari Gaho Modari Gumhi Bhattau Kaho Modari Gumhi Bhattau Dhari

Presenter9:10

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 49:36

And oh my god

Presenter9:40

Pavin Sultana singing Piare Moan Au, Dear Krishna, come to me.

Presenter9:45

So, um, Ruth, when did it start to pall India? When did you begin to feel, as you've put it, that India was a place you had to survive?

Presenter9:53

I think after about uh

Presenter9:56

I mean, the first ten years were wonderful and I felt Indian. I never wanted to leave. I thought everything was great. But then I started getting homesick. I think that does happen. Just for

Presenter10:06

you know, European civilization and

Presenter10:10

Euro just European background, everything.

Presenter10:14

And then India became sort of

Presenter10:17

um became alien to me.

Presenter10:20

Everything that so much delighted me before, all the strong sensual things it was just too much. And then I mean, it was just too strong. It's a very, very strong place. Like a curry is a very strong food. I mean, it's not like boiled potatoes. But I started wanting the boiled potatoes again.

Presenter10:41

'Cause then all the sort of negative aspects, uh, that other people I suppose more sensitive people than I mean, they go there and they've just uh, you know, immediately struck by the poverty and uh

Presenter10:56

But that took me ten years really to get to me.

Presenter11:01

Somebody once said to me, Oh, it's like b being in biblical times when, you know, there were beggars and lepers. Well

Presenter11:09

You don't want to be in biblical time. Is that really when you began to to withdraw? Because you did become quite famous for your social withdrawal, I think, didn't you, in Delhi? Most writers are withdrawing. You need an awful, awful lot of time to yourself, you really do. And

Presenter11:25

Uh you just don't have time to uh

Presenter11:28

take part in any kind of social scene. And Delhi was very much a social scene, as I suppose Washington is today. I mean any

Presenter11:36

Um capital that isn't at the same time a large metropolis is a very small

Presenter11:43

and specialized social circle. Well, you know, that's not the place for a writer at all.

Presenter11:49

So, yes, I I did withdraw. I did become um even more reclusive maybe than

Presenter11:56

Because there are characters who give voice to that kind of feeling in your books, whether it's the um the elderly Englishman in the autobiography of of a princess who perhaps stayed on too long, as it were, or or indeed Harry in heat and dust, who's uh living alongside the um

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala12:17

Um

Presenter12:19

really wants to go home, but somehow he can't. Somehow he's captured, but they're prisoners, you is the impression you give these people. Well, that was part of uh how I felt. Yes, it that was that part. But uh

Presenter12:34

I mean going back to heat and dust, heat and dust ends.

Presenter12:39

As um if I'd stayed in India, I hope I would have ended it. It's the uh s second heroin, the modern one.

Presenter12:48

is pregnant and she goes up further into India. She goes up to the mountains, she goes up higher and she s wants to stay. She stays. I mean, it's it's an act of complete acceptance, really. She managed it, but you you failed. I failed, yeah, I did fail.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala13:03

You failed.

Speaker 413:04

Yeah.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala13:04

Uh

Presenter13:06

But why do you think you failed? Why couldn't you stay? Um

Presenter13:13

I think it's probably something to do with but you know, if I'd been, say, a doctor or uh like my daughter is a trade union leader or somebody who was really contributing something there. Well, no, could really work in India and it you know, and be there and and

Speaker 413:26

Could do something.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala13:26

Yeah.

Presenter13:33

Have a purpose. Yeah. I I really didn't. I began to feel uh

Presenter13:39

Somehow as if uh I didn't really have a right to be there.

Presenter13:43

Tell me about record number three.

Presenter13:46

It's Vladimir Holovitz playing Scalati's sonata in E minor.

Presenter13:52

In relation to the last record, the last record, Pavin Sultana singing, that was sort of me absolutely within India and accepting it and loving it. The next record is me sl and you know, turning away again, saying, Oh, well, but

Presenter14:08

There's all that unwonderful, wonderful Western music and all that wonderful, wonderful West and

Presenter14:15

It's sort of nostalgia, homesickness, and me in my really western mood.

Presenter15:04

Vladimir Horovitz playing part of Scarlatti's sonata in E minor, L twenty two.

Presenter15:09

You are indeed European, Ruth, born in Germany in nineteen twenty seven, to a a Polish father and a German mother, and you started school as the Nazis came to power. It was the other children, wasn't it, who made you aware of what and who you are?

Presenter15:25

When we walked to school, of course there were German children shouting after us, you know, it's Jew, Jew and

Presenter15:33

throwing things at us and yeah, well, all around us more and more we could only go to Jewish shops,'cause we could only go to Jewish schools and

Presenter15:43

He couldn't go to cinemas.

Presenter15:45

So we you know, we always lived under knowledge that we couldn't stay there long. This wouldn't be. But why did it take you so long to get out of it? Were you trying during that time?

Speaker 415:50

Yeah.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala15:50

But what

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala15:52

1939 before you started.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala15:57

Um

Presenter16:00

Well, my father went to Israel in nineteen well, it was Palestine at the time, nineteen thirty four.

Presenter16:05

And uh of course in the schools we were all learning Hebrew, we were learning English, we were learning French.

Presenter16:12

Depending on whatever visa one could get to

Presenter16:16

To get out

Presenter16:18

But I I think it was my mother. She said, Oh, no, no, this is gonna get better. I mean, it shouldn't go'cause it's very difficult. She they must she must have been yeah, she she was in her thirties. My parents were in their thirties.

Presenter16:30

It's very difficult.

Presenter16:32

Suddenly to become a refugee. You keep thinking it might just work out. Yeah, it might work out. It might all go away. It might go away. But of course it just got worse and worse. And in the end, we came to England. You came out to England as refugees and your father he'd been a solicitor in Cologne, I think, hadn't he? And and started running quite a successful clothing business here. But he g committed suicide soon after the war. Yes, well, I think many uh

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala16:36

Yeah, yeah, it might work out. It might just go away.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala16:46

You came out

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala16:51

Yeah.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala16:55

Nice yeah.

Presenter17:03

Quite a few Jews did at the time. The the the uh reports from the death camps came in and uh all his family'd gone and uh

Presenter17:13

I think it was just too much to bear for anybody.

Presenter17:18

Did you understand at the time, did you Oh, yes, yeah. These were I mean, his whole family, part of my mother's family, I mean people whom he'd known who'd been

Presenter17:28

um liberal bourgeois germ they thought German Jews or Polish Jews or you know intellectual, cultured and

Presenter17:39

Lovers of Beethoven and

Presenter17:42

There you are.

Presenter17:44

And you've never used any of that as material for your writing, have you?

Speaker 417:48

In the field.

Presenter17:49

Yeah. So effectively you've you've wiped it out, you? Um, well, yeah, and you you don't can't wipe it out, but you just wish so much it hadn't happened.

Presenter18:04

Next piece of music.

Presenter18:07

This is a a piece of liturgical Jewish music.

Presenter18:12

It is called Avino Volcano.

Presenter18:15

And it's what's sung on the high holidays, that is the Jewish New Year, the Day of Atonement. And it sort of says um Our Lord, our Father, inscribe us in the Book of Life and give us a year of happiness, which is you can't ask f for more than that.

Speaker 318:38

Inuma cano she markole.

Speaker 318:47

Avinu Malkainu Khatanu Lefan.

Speaker 318:57

Akino Marqueno Komorale.

Speaker 319:07

They all are lane.

Speaker 319:11

The top hang.

Speaker 419:18

We know what we are.

Presenter19:37

Hassan Stephen C. Burke and the madrigal choir of the Munich Musik Hochschule performing Max Janowski's setting of Avinu Malkainu.

Presenter19:47

You read English, Ruth, at London University. What was the first piece of writing that earned you any money, and how much?

Presenter19:53

I can't remember how much, but I know what uh earned me some money is. I used to do research in the British Museum. I was writing a thesis on some eighteenth century thing, and I used to dig up all these eighteenth century scandal sheets.

Presenter20:10

And um I wrote them up and sent them to magazines. There was a magazine called Everybody's Magazine. Now for that I don't know what they used to pay me ten pound, twenty pound. I thought it was terrific. I mean wonderful. But it's it's the films obviously that have have made the the big money f uh for you rather than the novels, isn't it? Oh yeah. How did you come to meet James Ivory and begin that partnership?

Presenter20:35

They came to Delhi and um they bought my fourth book called The Householder.

Presenter20:42

And they made into a film. But they'd never made a film before, had they? They'd made both of them had made documentaries.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala20:44

But they'd never

Presenter20:49

But not featured films. This was their first feature film. And you hadn't written a screenplay before. No, I hadn't written a screenplay. I'd written I mean, this was my fourth novel. I must have been working on the fifth or had already published the fifth. So they'd come in search of you because of that novel? Because they liked it.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala20:49

Not featured.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala20:52

Uh

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala20:53

Screenplay.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala21:01

Yeah.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala21:03

Because they liked it.

Presenter21:05

And what did you think of them when they first knocked on the door?

Presenter21:08

Um

Presenter21:10

Well, I was glad to see that.

Presenter21:14

It's not what I read.

Presenter21:16

I read that you pretended to be your mother-in-law and your husband thought there were a couple of flybonites.

Presenter21:22

Well, no. I pretend whenever I couldn't recognize a phone that uh somebody would say, Can I speak to Mrs. Jawala? and I didn't recognize the voice, I would say, Which Mrs. Javala? And then if I didn't like what I heard, I'd say, Oh, you mean the other Mrs Jarval, my daughter-in-law.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala21:38

But

Presenter21:39

But anyway, they got past that and they came home and it's true my husband did think that there were a couple of and according to Ismail he still thinks it after they haven't flown for thirty six years. And of course you went on writing your books. You wrote Heat and Dust which won the Booker in in nineteen seventy five and does seem, as we said, to to symbolise the moment when you you had to get away. Was it also the success of Heat and Dust in a way that made you feel you could go and maybe the rewards from it that helped you gave you the money? Absolutely the money. I mean, you know, the the booker prize wasn't worth all that much at that time. That was enough to set me up in New York. But I did go. I mean, I'd be there a few months and then I'd go back to India.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala22:13

Oh yeah, it was absolutely

Presenter22:27

And my husband would be commuting. He commuted for ten years between Delhi and New York.

Presenter22:33

There was a lot to ask of her mattie.

Presenter22:36

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Presenter22:38

This is the sanctus from Bach, Mass in B minor. Now when I wasn't listening to Horowitz playing Priscalati, every Easter and every Christmas I'd play the Mass in B minor. I don't know. This was my Easter and my Christmas celebrations in in India.

Presenter23:55

PB C Chorus and the New Philharmonia Orchestra performing the opening of the Sanctus from Bach's B minor Mass conducted by Otto Klemperer.

Presenter24:03

You've won Oscar's Ruth for your screenplays for a room with a view and Howard's End and a bafta for heat and dust.

Presenter24:09

How difficult or indeed easy do you find them to do?'Cause you've talked about them as being quite mathematical, almost like like perhaps jigsaw puzzles, I thought.

Presenter24:18

Yes, more than a a a novel. I mean, the novel has to grow on you. You you can't start out with any kind of outline or at least I can't. I mean, it just has to grow.

Presenter24:30

By itself from some inner essence of its own, but the screenplay.

Presenter24:35

Well, you do build it up in in in in sections more and you can make a plan and you can sometimes stick to the plan, not always. I mean, even there things things change.

Presenter24:49

But you're thinking in pictures obviously as you do it. Uh no, I'm not. I don't. I I really have I I don't really don't uh think in pictures. I'm I'm thinking in scenes.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala24:58

So thinking

Presenter25:02

This is the overall structure of the film. I mean, it's going a certain way, there's the story, there's the plot.

Presenter25:07

And then is how you express or how you build up that plot scene by scene. And you think, now is this scene going to be interesting? Are these what these characters are doing in the scene? Is this going to be interesting? This is the way at least this is the way I I write it.

Presenter25:24

But it means that you've got to take the dialogue of, say, EM Forster and or Henry James, be pretty ruthless with it. You've got to hack away at it. I think that's so much of it. Yes, that's the first thing. I mean, uh, you have to be extremely irreverent.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala25:31

Oh, you do so much, yeah.

Presenter25:37

for people for whom you feel the highest reverence. But dialogue on the printed page and dialogue as it's spoken are two quite different things. I mean, they just don't have the same rhythm at all. And there's also so little of it, so little space for it in films today. For for dialogue itself. Yeah, well

Speaker 425:49

And there's also so little of it.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala25:50

Uh

Presenter25:57

In any case I try to trim it down as much as possible'cause uh one sentence in a film is like, you know, fifteen or twenty sentences uh uh i in a book. I mean the actor's personality, the act is all all that uh

Presenter26:18

The Single Lands. Tell me about the next record.

Presenter26:22

Yeah, well my next piece of music is from Surviving Picasso, which is among my favorite films. And the music here has been composed by our long time composer, partner, friend, companion, Richard Robbins, who's sort of the fourth member of our team. He was the music teacher of my daughter, and he started writing our music.

Presenter27:25

Valoris Carrida from the soundtrack of the film Surviving Picasso, composed by Richard Robbins.

Presenter27:31

When you finally left India, Ruth, you said you were homesick, but you you didn't go home, if you could call it home, to Europe. You went to New York. Why? New York is the most European place on earth. I know.

Presenter27:44

Without uh the uh bad connections uh that Europe's really, you know, had for my generation. Is that what it was really? Again, a a phrase of yours I I picked up reading about you, is that in Europe you were still able to smell the blood? Yeah, I th I think that's

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala27:53

Is that what it

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala28:00

Uh

Presenter28:02

Yeah, maybe so, yeah. But n not so in America. And New York is an extremely European city. I mean, it's

Presenter28:11

When I went there, I mean, I ate foods that I hadn't eaten since I left Germany and, you know, the whole art, theatre, music, ballet, everything now is New York is the place that maybe Paris may once have been.

Presenter28:28

And certainly you seem to have found the people of your youth, if if again reading your books is is anything to go by in in search of love and and beauty and in shards of memory. There are these um German Jewish émigrés complete with furniture.

Presenter28:44

Yeah, I found them. I literally found them people whom I'd gone to school with in Germany. There they were, uh, when I'd gone as a refugee to England, to London, they'd gone to, um, New York.

Presenter28:56

And if you had to choose to stay in one place now for the rest of your life, where would that place be?

Presenter29:02

Um no, there shouldn't have be there shouldn't be such a choice. No, there shouldn't be. I don't want such a choice. I mean, if I have to stay in one place it would be because I have to stay in a place because uh I wouldn't be able to travel anymore because of physical difficulties. But otherwise, as long as I can still have India and have America and have uh England, I that's and that's where my three daughters are too.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala29:16

Okay.

Presenter29:29

Record number seven.

Presenter29:31

Uh well, there we are right back in India again. And uh this is a very great singer called uh Abdul Karim Khan, who

Presenter29:41

And died, I think, in nineteen thirty seven. Anyway, this recording was made in nineteen thirty seven. I think it was almost the last the recording he made.

Presenter29:52

It's a man singing, but he's singing. My ankle bells are ringing and they're making a noise and disturbing the silence in which I wish to meet my lover.

Presenter30:04

Well, actually it's like the song of Solomon. It's the soul speaking uh, you know, to his friend, to God, and and he's singing as the soul, as a f as a not as a woman, but as the feminine soul.

Speaker 430:33

Da da da.

Presenter30:39

Abdul Karim Khan singing Janka Janakwa More. My ankle bells are jingling. The desert island will suit you, won't it, Ruth, judging by what you say?

Presenter30:50

You if you're if you're right, you shut yourself away anyway. I mean, there's no there's no other way of of doing it as far as I I'm concerned. I really still do live like that. It wasn't only India that uh

Presenter31:05

And yet you write about people because Charles Wheeler, the BBC journalist, who I think was your next door neighbor in Delhi for some time that he he he can't believe how you can be so write so perceptively and be so observant when you were

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala31:10

Journal

Speaker 431:13

Some story.

Speaker 431:14

Put

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala31:14

Yeah.

Speaker 431:15

For another team.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala31:16

Uh

Presenter31:22

Shut for days on end in this room.

Presenter31:27

Well, I suppose that's the difference between being a writer and um maybe being a journalist. If you're a journalist you have to go out and collect material and see things. If you're a writer, at least my kind of writer, certain certain kind of writer, you

Presenter31:43

Um you look inward and you open up worlds uh from within yourself. So you could sit on your desert island and write quite happily. There's enough information stored away. Good heavens, seventy years.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala31:52

Information stored away.

Presenter31:57

You don't you don't feel you'll ever run out of material? No, not now.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala31:58

You don't

Presenter32:01

Never, never.

Presenter32:03

Last piece of music.

Presenter32:04

Last week go back uh again to my great homesickness for the West that I used to feel and and then when it was really uh you know, when I really wanted to feel really European, I would play Brayton string quartets.

Presenter32:22

And uh the piece of music I have now is actually the last string quartet, which isn't all that um

Presenter32:29

Representative, I mean the others are all in his period of tremendous storm and stress, you know that what Beethoven really was. But this last piece is Beethoven having reached a plateau of acceptance and and this actually has an epigraph, um this piece of music, which is um uh must it be, yes it must, that is in sort of the final acceptance, whatever has to be, yes, that it has to be.

Speaker 433:47

Uh

Presenter33:47

Uh

Speaker 433:48

Uh

Presenter33:51

The Juilliard String Quartet playing part of the final movement of Beethoven's String Quartet No. sixteen, opus one hundred and thirty five. If you could only take one of those eight records, Ruth, I wonder which it would be.

Presenter34:02

Um I think th the um mustn't be mine.

Presenter34:06

The Bach. The Bach. What about your book?

Presenter34:10

You can take one book, there's the Bible and there's the complete works of Shakespeare there.

Presenter34:15

Any book, any book.

Presenter34:17

Oh, I'll take the brothers, Karamaza.

Presenter34:21

And what about your luxury? Oh, luxury. Uh well, I I I always like to lie on uh, you know, one of this uh chaise lawn, look out of a window at a tree against the sky. That's

Speaker 434:30

Mm.

Presenter34:35

That's it.

Presenter34:38

Ruth Prava Jopvala, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala34:50

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.