Vikram Seth

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:33

My castaway this week is the writer Vikram Seid. Born in Calcutta, he was a child prodigy, he says an insufferable child. His early years were divided between Britain and India, and he studied at Oxford and Stanford. He spent eleven years not getting a PhD, but he did learn Chinese, a bit of Welsh, the Indian flute, and the cello. He also mastered calligraphy and sculpture, sang German leader, and wrote librettos.

Presenter0:59

In 1993, he brought out an epic tale about Indian family life in the 1950s, A Suitable Boy.

Presenter1:07

It had been eight years in the writing, amounted to one thousand three hundred and forty nine pages, and established him as a literary name to be reckoned with, bringing him legions of fans and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Presenter1:19

A sequel to his biggest literary hit is reportedly now in the pipeline.

Presenter1:24

The fame for someone as unprolific as me, he says, is a cyclical fame. I produce a book every five to six years, have my moment of celebrity, and then I can disappear into a grateful non-entity. I imagine, Vickram's sake, that millions of people are absolutely delighted that they will be seeing uh the sequel to A Suitable Boy. It is of course called A Suitable Girl.

Vikram Seth1:44

A suitable girl. Yes, what else? I suppose it could have been called an unsuitable boy. It could. Maybe that's the one after. That's right, part of a quartet. Basically, when A Suitable Boy came out and did well, I didn't want to write a sequel. Many years later, I realized that the way I could interest myself in writing a sequel, and then I became very enthusiastic about it, was not to make it a standard sequel, but to jump to the present. A sixty-year jump. I see. Latha, whom I left, the heroine of the book, was twenty years old and she'd now be eighty. So it would be

Vikram Seth2:17

A very different view on the world, and it would also carry India from its first general election to what would it now be sixteenth, seventeenth by the time the book is written.

Presenter2:26

And so it's twenty years since you wrote A Suitable Boy. A Suitable Girl is due to be uh pub

Vikram Seth2:28

That's correct.

Vikram Seth2:31

Published in twenty thirteen, is that right? I'm due to deliver it in twenty thirteen. But of course the sound of deadlines pushing past is one of those sounds that authors are most familiar with.

Presenter2:35

R

Presenter2:40

Yeah.

Vikram Seth2:40

Yeah, so am I allowed to ask you how

Presenter2:42

How it's going.

Vikram Seth2:43

Yes, uh m but if you don't tell the publishers, uh you may as well tell them that it's it's it's very much in the gestational period.

Presenter2:50

Yes, that covers a multitude of sins, I'm sure. Um I mentioned uh some of your skills in the introduction. What happens when you're not able to write? Is it because you're distracted by something else?

Vikram Seth3:01

Yes, quite often. I mean the fact is I am not a particularly determined person and not a particularly industrious person. So something has to grip me before I really get into it. The impulse to write has to be very strong. Now if, for example, I'm impelled instead to do something at which I'm no particular good, like sculpture, but that impulsion is stronger, then I'm afraid

Vikram Seth3:26

Writing will take a back seat.

Presenter3:27

Grips you, you must then not be sure how long it's going to grip you for. Do you just have to go with it, do you? I'm afraid so.

Vikram Seth3:34

It it's not a satisfactory way. I what I what I would really like is a muse waking me up in the morning and saying, Okay, right, sit down, write so many words on this subject, and close my mind to all these other distracting thoughts that come flooding in.

Presenter3:48

Um music is dearer to me than speech, you have said. Oh dear, w what a task we've given you then, narrowing it down to just eight. Let's now hear our first uh piece of music. What are we going to hear?

Vikram Seth3:58

What we have is the Beach Boys and fun, fun, fun. I love I love the Beach Boys. I think this is great. Except for one thing, which is that for a long time I wasn't sure what a tea bird was. And then I realized that it was the underbird. And a friend of mine was confused. He said that for a long time he thought it was till Daddy takes your teapot away.

Speaker 34:20

Well, she got her daddy's car and she cruised through the hamburger stand now.

Speaker 34:26

See she forgot all about the library like she told her old man now.

Speaker 34:32

And with the radio blast and go cruising just as fast as she can now.

Speaker 34:38

And she'll have fun, fun, fun, do that it takes a tea but away Fun, fun, fun Till that it takes a T well when you stand up cushy walks Look surprised like a new one

Vikram Seth4:48

He was like

Presenter4:51

That was the Beach Boys and fun, fun, fun. You've said, Vikram Sate, that I'm the sort who works very hard on something for years, and then there are years where I do nothing, just a bit of wool gathering or whatever. I like doing nothing if I can avoid doing something. Now, you see, a lot a lot of a lot of people sort of carefully plan out their goals, especially people who are successful.

Vikram Seth5:11

Cool.

Presenter5:11

It seems quite unusual that you are not a planner.

Presenter5:15

Yeah.

Vikram Seth5:15

Um funnily enough, I am a planner, but it's more sort of castles in the air, another kind of construction, I suppose wool gathering. But then something comes in from left field and uh destroys my plans with something quite different. I I have to do something that impels me.

Presenter5:31

We just heard the Beach Boys. You you spent quite a lot of time in California. We'll maybe talk about that later. Also London and Oxford, Calcutta and Delhi. You lived in China for a couple of years. Are you somebody who always wants to be travelling? Do you have a a fairly nomadic impulse?

Vikram Seth5:46

I would have said perhaps earlier, but I I with the years I've I've grown, I think, more uh more sedentary. But here again it's something uh sin s since you touched upon California. I was supposed to be writing my dissertation. It was carefully planned out, and then I wandered into bookstore and read Pushkin's wonderful novel and verse, Eugene Onyegin, and out went my dissertation, on which I'd spent a number of years, and in came the idea to write The Golden Gate. So I am distracted by places and by things and so on, but uh different strokes for different folks in the literary world as well as anything else.

Presenter5:58

And

Speaker 45:58

Yeah.

Presenter6:21

And when you're travelling, I wonder with with the breadth and depth of the things that you write, do you almost travel in order to to to fuel the writing?

Vikram Seth6:30

I wouldn't say so. I like travelling kind of freely and unburdened by any future use, so to speak. Do you? But sometimes I think that really what I do when I'm travelling is not so much to gather fodder for future books, but to gather fodder for future nostalgias. Explain that to me. Well, you miss places that you've been to and that you're no longer at.

Presenter6:53

So you're a very romantic person then.

Vikram Seth6:56

I guess. I'm also very cynical, so I suppose they have to sit together.

Presenter6:59

What an interesting mix. Let's have a

Vikram Seth7:01

Have some more music then, Vikram. What are we going to hear next? Ah, Lathamangeshkar. We've got a a song now from the movie Avara. And Lathamangeshkar has been singing now for God knows how many decades. And this is an actress called Nargis. She's waiting for her lover and missing him. And the night is fading into dawn and he hasn't arrived.

Speaker 47:26

Ajautadakuma Hajautaka Haburaut Guzarene Wali Headguzarene Wali He Meruyah Tunuchuku Waho Haburaat Guzarene Wali Hei Habur

Presenter7:58

Lata Mangeshkar and The Night Will Soon Fade Into Dawn from the film Awar. So you were born Vikram Sef in nineteen fifty two in Calcutta. What are your earliest memories?

Vikram Seth8:08

I don't know how much.

Vikram Seth8:11

What of this is actually a real memory and what of it is sort of family lore. But one memory is my mother singing to me, singing lullabies, but I I tell her to not sing anymore because my mother can't hold a tune. I told her to to not sing, my aunt would come and she could sing me to sleep. Yeah.

Presenter8:31

Ha

Vikram Seth8:31

Yeah.

Presenter8:31

I think this is this is

Vikram Seth8:31

I think this is this is one of the many inseparabilities.

Presenter8:34

So you were partly brought up by your parents in London, but also by your maternal grandmother in Calcutta. In Calcutta. Was it clear? You say you you asked your mother to stop singing'cause she was slightly out of tune. Was it clear from me?

Vikram Seth8:38

In in in calculation

Vikram Seth8:46

Very charitably.

Presenter8:47

I don't know your mother huge

Vikram Seth8:48

Huge qualities, but keeping in pitch isn't one of them, right?

Presenter8:53

I mean, was it clear from the very early days that he was a bright young

Vikram Seth8:56

Song Sing.

Vikram Seth8:57

Well, I don't know about Bright. I mean, I think I knew my mind pretty clearly. But yes, that, you know, lively and with interests, let's say. How old were you when you were sent to boarding school, then? Six. Oh, right. And part of the reason for that was because I was getting terribly spoiled. I just thought at the age of six that I could sort of strut around and, you know, boss people about. And and my parents quite rightly thought, let's send this this chap to boarding school. Is it indeed the case that the J

Presenter9:23

Anything

Vikram Seth9:23

Yeah.

Presenter9:23

Took two days to get to your boarding school?

Vikram Seth9:26

Yes, certainly a day and a half. I remember this was by train, I remember by train. I was carried on to the train.

Presenter9:28

This was by train, I imagine.

Vikram Seth9:32

At midnight, sometimes sleeping, so I'd wake up with the jolt of the train and find my parents weren't there.

Presenter9:38

But did did you have an adult looking after you on the train?

Vikram Seth9:38

But do

Vikram Seth9:40

This was a kind of school party which picked people up as as the train went along. And there were senior boys in charge, and a master in charge as well, in some vague way. But even then it was pretty horrible for me to to wake up at about three in the morning with not not in the care of my parents, but in the care of of strangers.

Presenter10:00

And you have said of those times, not particularly of being on the train, but just of school in general, sometimes at lights out, I wished I would never wake up. You sounds like you were desperately unhappy.

Vikram Seth10:10

In those days, I'm not sure I would have been particularly happy anywhere. I mean, slowly, as the years pass, I've become increasingly happy if such a thing.

Vikram Seth10:19

It can be said. But in those days I th I can't really blame it on on anything particular. I think it was loneliness, really. I was into books and reading and stuff, and school is very much of a sort of sporty place. But I don't think I enjoyed people's company very much, and I think until my mid thirties or I was so terribly shy that I really, even in a one-to-one conversation, couldn't really look people in the eye.

Vikram Seth10:44

Let alone talk before audiences and so on.

Presenter10:46

But that's not an effort for you now, is it? Do or do you still

Vikram Seth10:48

Do you still think that's not really. But I'll tell you part of the secret of it was a friend of mine she was in her seventies when she told me this she said, Well, I think until I was about forty I was very concerned about what people thought of me, and after that I became much more concerned about what I thought of them.

Presenter11:04

Very good advice for us all. Let's now hear a little bit more of your choices today. We're on the third choice, Vikram. Tell us what we're going to hear now.

Vikram Seth11:14

This is a strange choice.

Vikram Seth11:16

A few years ago I got a a C D which had different tracks of nightingales singing. It chose a track of a nightingale with a very different kind of bird, a songless bird really, a bomber or in fact not a bomber, but a whole lot of bombers flying over the southern countryside of England on their way to a bombing raid in Germany. It's kind of heartbreaking in its uh

Vikram Seth11:44

Counterpoint. So those are the two voices.

Presenter12:44

NIGHINGALES AND LANCASTER BOMBERS RECERCED IN A SURRY WOOD IN MAY NINE FORTY TWO BE THE BBC. Um I described you in the introduction, Vikram said, as being a child prodigy. Is it right that when you were just three years old you could multiply three digit numbers in your head?

Vikram Seth13:02

Um

Vikram Seth13:04

Well, I quite shortly thereafter lost any such skill. I I You look uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable because I don't like the idea of being of being thought of as a prodigy. I just uh

Vikram Seth13:15

I mean, I think it must have been quite difficult to be my parents. I remember guests coming to the house and my insisting on their

Vikram Seth13:22

giving me sums. Now they came to talk to my parents. Who is this little brat who sort of stands at the door and insists on being given things to multiply? And to what end? Why would one want to multiply three digit numbers by three digit numbers?

Presenter13:34

Yes, but I think we can forgive you given that you're only three. Yes, it's what children do. Children want attention generally.

Vikram Seth13:37

Yes, it's what children do.

Vikram Seth13:41

I think you're right, and I think perhaps I'm being a bit intolerant towards my younger self.

Presenter13:45

Um your family wasn't entirely conventional. Your father ran this uh big shoe factory and and and obviously was a successful man. Your your mother started studying law. Wh she did that when she was quite young and and still the mother of young children.

Vikram Seth13:59

Well, the the mother of a young child she was in England. By then I had joined them. My mother couldn't leave the house because I was there. Law was the only thing where in those days you didn't have to attend any classes at all.

Vikram Seth14:12

And then she passed the exam after my little brother was born. He was only three months old when she sat her exams. Despite that, she came first in the bar exam, and that was the start of really a wonderful career. Very much encouraged by my father. Uh now in Indian terms, that that says a lot.

Presenter14:30

Indeed, she she became the first female High Court judge in Delhi, is that right?

Vikram Seth14:33

That's correct. And then later the first woman Chief Justice of a of a state high court.

Presenter14:38

And so you were sent to uh England to sort of complete your education, or at least your early education. You would have been in your teens then, and you went to stay with an aunt, um, an uncle, and anybody who's enjoyed your book Two Lives will know a lot of detail about them, because you go into the domestic detail in satisfying chunks within that book. But what did you make of the place when you first arrived?

Vikram Seth14:59

It was rather grey. Since I was immediately ensconced in this Indian come German household of my she was German, my great aunt. It formed a little cocoon at first. Um when I discovered, for example, that I had to have a European language in order to go to university, my aunt took me under her wing and decided that I would have to learn German. And she wouldn't let me eat unless I asked for it in German. She would sing Schubert Lieder. We had a very companionable relationship.

Presenter15:05

She was going to

Speaker 415:06

He was jamming.

Presenter15:07

Yeah. My great hour

Presenter15:27

In the end you became very, very close together and...

Presenter15:31

Two lives, you you wrote incredibly movingly about making that journey for because she she she died before your uncle and she died relatively young and she had a very

Vikram Seth15:38

Yeah.

Vikram Seth15:39

She had

Presenter15:41

A very painful and protracted end, and y y y you wrote amazingly about sitting sitting with her in those final days.

Vikram Seth15:47

Yes, I I um

Vikram Seth15:50

I was in two minds, you know, as to whether to write about those things and such.

Vikram Seth15:55

sort of intimate detail, but then after all what uh what's the point of writing otherwise?

Vikram Seth16:01

But I mean these are people I I loved and love.

Vikram Seth16:03

So I think they should be seen.

Vikram Seth16:06

Not exactly warts yes, warts and all, but in the in the round, in the round, because it's something like that's going to happen to all of us.

Presenter16:12

Let's take a break for some music. Vicram. What are we going to hear now? We're on our fourth piece of the day.

Vikram Seth16:17

Well, this is Ian Bostridge singing Schubert's Eerste Ferlust, or First Loss, and accompanied by the pianist Julius Drake.

Speaker 416:30

Oh we bring to the shore.

Speaker 416:37

In Together.

Speaker 416:42

In a talk

Speaker 416:55

For I dish on there.

Speaker 417:02

The hoarding time.

Speaker 417:11

Fines on the Shine.

Speaker 417:20

Und mitzer noitel.

Presenter17:29

That was Iain Bostridge singing Schubert's Erste Verlust First Lost, accompanied by Julius Drake. Let's just be clear. I said in the introduction, I mean it's it's quite an amusing idea, this idea that for eleven years you studied and never well, you you didn't ever get it, did you? Did you get your PhD?

Vikram Seth17:45

Trade note

Presenter17:45

What?

Vikram Seth17:45

No. What had happened was that I'd done all my research in China, I'd done all my coursework at at Stanford, I'd returned and fed most of the data into a computer and I was working out what it was I should do with this data about demography and economics in the post-reform Chinese countryside sort of thing. But a sort of googly was thrown into the works by Pushkin's Eugene Onygen. And out went my dissertation, on which I'd spent a number of years, and in came the idea to write The Golden Gate. I then got the inspiration to go back home and write a novel set in India, which turned out to be the fat book that you referred to a long time ago. If I told the Muse to go away and come back later, she or he might have gone away forever and not returned, and I could not afford

Vikram Seth18:32

For my heart as much as for my head, to lose my enthusiasm for this novel about India that I plan to write.

Presenter18:40

So you went home, you were seized by the muse and you ended up producing this great doorstop of a book. What what what happened? Did you you were living in your parents' house?

Vikram Seth18:49

Well, I had no money, so I I had to sponge off my parents. I was in my thirties. How did they feel about that? Well, I think, funnily enough, my mother, who's the more literary person, was against it. She said, Let the boy stand on his own feet. Why doesn't he just get a get a job, say, in the World Bank, and after five years he'll have a sort of pension and then he can indulge his hobby? My father said, Look, you know, he's got a number of scholarships. He hasn't been a charge on us.

Vikram Seth19:13

Surely we can h help him out. And I mean, basically, as I wrote about this world, it became more and more obsessive. It just um chewed up a decade of my

Presenter19:22

And when you'd finished the book, you went to your then publisher's Faber and handed it over, and and were they full of praise and money?

Vikram Seth19:29

Yeah.

Vikram Seth19:30

Um Faber did publish The Golden Gate, which is a pretty, pretty bold step for a publisher to do. But with regard to A Suitable Boy, I don't think they were that enthusiastic. I did offer it to them, among other publishers. Had they only offered me a bit more, of course I would have uh stayed with them, they're a wonderful publishing house, but it took me by surprise what happened with the book.

Presenter19:33

Yeah.

Presenter19:50

Okay, so just to give people a clear idea of what happened, you were initially offered, I think it was twenty five thousand, and the book eventually went for a quarter of a million. Is that those figures about right?

Vikram Seth19:59

Um vaguely, vaguely right. I mean, for that it was an unimaginable amount of money for me at that time. I you know, even after that I kept thinking, can I take a taxi to go from here to there? My habit habits were were set in that of a person who watches every penny.

Presenter20:14

For the people at Fabre it's not quite like turning down the Beatles, but given that it had six reprints in its first year, and given that you've just said that they only had to offer you a little bit more money, they must have been kicking themselves.

Vikram Seth20:26

I I don't really know. I I I think it's it's so difficult to judge.

Vikram Seth20:32

I don't want to be seen as this terribly tolerant chap because I'm not, but I can see it from their point of view.

Presenter20:38

And you were looking to make enough money to keep your father in a little bit of whisky for the rest of his life, is that right?

Vikram Seth20:43

Absolutely. I mean, my father doesn't like getting pickled, but I mean a a glass or two in the evening, after all they had taken such a huge leap of faith with me, um, I was able to buy my mother books for the rest of her life. Uh and I also bought myself a lifetime subscription to the London Library, as well as my father uh whiskey for life, so to speak.

Presenter20:44

I mean

Presenter20:45

I mean I know.

Presenter21:02

I think you deserved it. Let's have some more music then, Vikram's sake. Let what are we going to hear now?

Vikram Seth21:07

We are going to hear something that uh that comes from the work of Western music that I just consider really the supreme work. Every minute of it moves me and and at the same time speaks of genius and beauty. And it's uh from Bach's Matthew Passion. It's not from an aria, but from a recitative. And it's called Am Arbund die Escule Wach at evening hour of calm and peace.

Speaker 421:39

Feed up unto God in the moon.

Speaker 421:47

Oh shit.

Speaker 421:57

Oops.

Speaker 422:02

We're free the truth is to meet what germ

Vikram Seth22:09

It's cool.

Speaker 422:12

It was a time quite hard.

Speaker 422:22

I am Yaishnam Khan Swore.

Presenter22:30

Cornelius Hauptmann singing Am Abden Dais Culivar at Evening Hour of Calm and Peace from Bach's Saint Matthew Passion with the English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Elliot Gardner. It was after A Suitable Boy was published. You were interviewed by your sister for a T V documentary and she asked you about your your sexuality. Pr presumably you talked about it beforehand, had you it wasn't it didn't come as a complete surprise that you were going to talk about that on on screen.

Vikram Seth22:56

No. Um what happened was well, I'd written poems, some of which were uh addressed to to men, some of which were addressed to women. I'd never made any any bones about it. I suppose my parents, uh as fond parents do, tend to think that anything that's written in poetry can be treated

Vikram Seth23:13

as fictional. And also uh it being India where you don't want to talk about sex at all, let alone whether gay or straight. Um my sister, however, felt, and I think rightly felt, that in a rounded picture of someone

Presenter23:20

Let's look. Uh

Speaker 423:21

Uh

Presenter23:21

But

Vikram Seth23:27

Especially since I had never made any bones about it, she wanted to ask me a few questions about it, and I and I answered them.

Presenter23:33

You have said it took me a long time to come to terms with myself. Those were painful years, painful then, and painful to look back on now.

Vikram Seth23:41

Uh

Presenter23:41

Uh

Vikram Seth23:41

Yeah.

Presenter23:41

Yeah. Uh

Vikram Seth23:41

Yeah.

Presenter23:41

Yeah.

Presenter23:42

Where was the pain located? What was the pain about?

Vikram Seth23:46

uncertainty uh about myself, uncertainty about acceptance by society, uncertainty about ever finding love, uh all sorts of things of that nature.

Vikram Seth23:59

But it also perhaps went with my feeling of uh a as a child being lonely. So I think all those things fed into each other in in a kind of strange vortex, really. We do all of

Presenter24:12

us end up imbibing parts of our upbringing, you know, belief systems that actually we find we don't quite believe in. W was there a little bit of that, do you think, that you thought there was part of you that thought this is not the way it should be, even though that wasn't um a rational and intellectual part of you, it was maybe a a belief deep down inside at your core?

Speaker 424:17

Absolutely.

Presenter24:31

Yes. Right.

Presenter24:33

Has the shyness gone then? Do you think n now do you feel as though you can

Vikram Seth24:38

Uh Not in that regard. I mean, I do get.

Presenter24:38

Petra god

Vikram Seth24:40

And I'm sure this is true of lots of people, uh, with shyness when it comes to expressing yourself in

Vikram Seth24:48

In matters of love, intimate matters.

Vikram Seth24:51

Of course, one has to take the view that it's it's the one acceptance that matters more than the the five rejections. But I

Vikram Seth25:00

I wish I were more courageous in that regard. If I had to put my finger on a real shortcoming with regard to my personal life as opposed to my life in the world and what I've done for other people, it would be that.

Presenter25:07

But

Presenter25:11

Let's have some more music, Vikram said. What are we going to hear? We're on um your sixth piece of the day.

Vikram Seth25:17

Well, Bach is is getting two uh helpings. This is uh a dear friend of mine, Philippe Honoré, playing the prelude from Bach's Partita for Solo Violin. And it's a wonderful sort of dance-like uh uh energetic prelude where it really seems as if there's more than one instrument playing because they're different tunes intertwining with each other.

Speaker 426:20

Good good

Presenter26:39

That was Philippe Honoray playing the prelude from Bach's Partito for Solo Violin No. Three in E major. Um in fact, you dedicated your book An Equal Music to Philippe Honoray. You were in a a long term relationship with him. I do you do you have someone in your life now? Are you happily settled in that department?

Vikram Seth26:57

Yeah.

Presenter26:58

No.

Vikram Seth26:58

Uh

Presenter26:59

Do you have loneliness now, or are you past that?

Vikram Seth27:02

Yes, I do have it. But it doesn't do any good to dwell on it. Someone isn't going to swim into your life through a lonely heart's sort of feeling. In fact, it's not particularly attractive as a feeling to find someone moping around. And I have interests, lots of different interests. And I have a very loving family: my parents, my brother, my sister, nieces, and such like, and a wonderful circle of friends. So that.

Presenter27:09

No.

Vikram Seth27:26

These are all huge blessings, and obviously I I do long for someone to, you know, complete my life, so to speak. But it's not something I think I can easily go out and and and search. I do think it's easy, though, for people who are well known to to to start sort of advertising about.

Presenter27:44

Looking back, and indeed looking forward, you you talked about the the character of Lutta from A Suitable Boy and We've Got a Suitable Girl coming out in the next few years, we hope, if you meet that deadline. She will be looking back, I suppose, inevitably, over the span of her own history and India's history. You're about your next birthday, you'll be sixty, isn't it? What do you feel looking back? What do you feel about how you've spent your time so far?

Vikram Seth28:03

Yeah

Vikram Seth28:08

It's gone very fast. I don't know how I spent my time, and there are plenty of things I want to do.

Vikram Seth28:15

But who knows if I'm going to be given another few decades or not.

Presenter28:18

And are those ambitions mainly literary, or is it a bit more of the wool gathering and the learning to be a potter and a little bit of Welsh?

Vikram Seth28:26

Well, I'm just going to be happy to be buffeted by whatever comes along, and then seize some things and try to work on them. But we we live for such a ridiculously short time in this life, even those of us who are fortunate to have health and you know all that sort of stuff that I think to

Vikram Seth28:43

To or not add being with people that one loves and spending time with them you know, my parents are now in their eighties to spend some time with them and with with my nieces and with my friends, with myself and and I hope with someone whom whom whom I can make a life with this is as important to me as a literary inspiration or or Welsh or pottery.

Presenter29:05

Some more music, then, I think. We are on our seventh disc of the morning. What are we going to hear?

Vikram Seth29:11

Over the last few years, I was involved in a project to bring out a a libretto each year, which would be set to music by Alec Roth, where there would always be voice or voices, and also where Philippe Honoré would be playing the violin. What you're going to hear now is from the first year. That is, a libretto set in China, translations of a poet called Du Fu from the Tang Dynasty. He's an eighth century poet. And the poems that he wrote here were written, for the most part, in time of war. This is called Thoughts While Travelling at Night, when he's reflecting about his life while floating down the great river, the Yangtze.

Speaker 429:55

Light break.

Speaker 429:58

On the fine grass.

Speaker 430:05

I stand alone at the most Starslee on the vast wild plain.

Speaker 430:23

In the great river Spain.

Speaker 430:33

Letters have brought no fame.

Speaker 430:39

Office

Speaker 430:41

Too old to obtain

Speaker 430:47

Three.

Presenter30:56

That was Mark Padmore singing Thoughts While Travelling at Night from Songs in Time of War, composed by Alec Roth and translated from the Chinese by My Castaway. So, Vikram, your mother and father are both still alive. They celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary and she described

Vikram Seth31:08

They celebrated

Vikram Seth31:09

Absolutely.

Presenter31:12

Way back when you decided to come home and write the big fat book, she described that as something of an indulgence. How does she look upon it now? She's delighted.

Vikram Seth31:20

I I think she told my younger brother, Look, you know, when we're gone, you've got to take care of your sort of absent minded elder brother when sh she found that you know I could stand on my feet, she was very happy, and of course she was even happier

Vikram Seth31:36

the fact that I've been able to follow my my mind and uh and heart and uh I suppose um at least in India and to some extent elsewhere be recognized

Presenter31:46

Great.

Presenter31:47

And what about, as an uncle, then, to these nieces? Are you very indulgent?

Vikram Seth31:51

I don't know about very very indulgent. I just I I l I love them enormously and then they me, I can say that pretty confidently. And uh the last uh project we had together was uh my teaching them bridge. Now one of them is is is seven and the other ten and they're

Vikram Seth32:07

Killer players already. I mean, they're very, very good. They love all the intricacies of the game. Uh I think with kids if if it's a game then they can learn all sorts of stuff. Also of course it it's taken a pressure off my sister and off me uh because my parents uh now have grandchildren. They had to wait for fifty years and four days from their wedding day because my brother was quite dilatory in his own way.

Presenter32:32

Not that they were counting. And how oft you say obviously your family is very important to you. Obviously you are very close to them. But how much time do you actually spend with them, given that you live where you you live and they live in India?

Vikram Seth32:43

It varies a lot. It's very difficult for me to predict how much time I'll spend in a particular place. I went to Venice for three days and stayed there for six months. I tend not to want to move when I'm in a particular place. I don't have a nomad's lust. I I really am quite sedentary. You might quite like this desert island, then?

Presenter33:01

Got it.

Vikram Seth33:01

Yeah. I might well. I might well.

Presenter33:03

Yes. Let's then go to our final piece of music. It's your eighth disc of the day, of course, Vikram. What is it?

Vikram Seth33:11

When I was writing A Suitable Boy, I found that there were a number of Indian musicians in the book. I'd sink back into the world of the Thanpura and Rags and North Indian classical music.

Vikram Seth33:25

Amir Kha is one of the greatest singers of the last century of Indian classical music. The piece that uh we'll be listening to now is him singing an evening rag, Rag Marwa, which is a very contemplative rag. I can almost listen to anything that Amir Kha sings. At every minute I feel that I am in the presence of a musician who is singing for himself as if the world were no more than the world of sound.

Speaker 434:44

Ta dea saga

Presenter34:52

Uh

Speaker 434:52

Yeah.

Presenter34:54

That was Amir Khan and part of the Ragua Marwa. So we come to the point now, Vikram, where I'm going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you may take one other book along to this island. What are you going to take?

Vikram Seth35:07

Well, I I assume I'll be allowed to take uh free the Bhagavad Gita. You can do that sort of thing. That's fine. And uh since the Bhagavad Gita is like a small pamphlet embedded in the vastness of the Mahabharata, I'm going to take that around. And if you stop me, I'll I'll have you up for

Presenter35:11

You can do that sort of thing.

Vikram Seth35:24

Religious discrimination, but you won't. I wouldn't dare stop you. So now let's see how far I can stretch this. Well, I'll take a book that sounds a bit strange, but I think would give me a lot of sustenance. And that's um a collection, an anthology of uh of poems. It's called Thang Shra San Bai Shao, and it's got a whole lot of different poets, including Dufu, whose thoughts while travelling at night we've heard.

Presenter35:48

You will have that book then. And the luxury too, of course, we allow you. What would you like to take as a luxury?

Vikram Seth35:54

After having read a few poems of the Tang dynasty poetry, what I will do is take my calligraphy materials along. I'll take the brushes and I'll take the uh the paper, a sufficient quantity, and then the the seal, the red seal. And uh what I should also take along is what's called a shoot hung, which is a young lad to stretch the paper to the f I can see you're not going to allow me that. That's not even bother. So basically the materials for calligraphy. That's my luxury.

Presenter36:23

That's not even

Presenter36:24

Fine.

Presenter36:28

You may have the materials for calligraphy, and if I were to ask you to pick just one of the eight discs, which one disc would you save?

Vikram Seth36:37

I think it'll be the Nightingales and the Lancaster Palmer.

Vikram Seth36:42

It'll remind me of the very fraught and painful as well as lively world that I've been exiled from and if I am to do my singing and calligraphing and wool gathering, it would be nice to have a happy bird who sings of pain to be there.

Presenter37:01

It's yours. We can say thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you, Khaji.

Presenter37:41

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.