Arundhati Roy

Presenter0:00

This is the BBC.

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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.

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

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My castaway this week is the writer Arundhati Roy. A Booker Prize-winning author, she is a confounding literary presence, issuing categorisation to take her job description at its word. A novel here, a polemic essay there, always writing, yes, but defying the traditions and expectations of both the publishing world and her readership. There's been a twenty-year gap between her much-loved and lauded debut novel, The God of Small Things, and her latest fictional offering. In the decades between, she has published provoking work on poverty, globalization, and oppression, making plenty cultural waves in her homeland of India, and a good few enemies along the way, too. She says of her most recent writing, I think there's something.

Presenter1:26

Beautiful, strong, direct and clear-sighted about pamphleteering when it's well done. It throws down the gauntlet and infuriates the comfortable classes. Apart from everything else, it's great fun to watch them lose their cool. So welcome. After publishing that debut novel two decades ago, it sold six million copies. The encouragement for you to keep on doing the same thing and to sell more and more novels must have been huge. How did you resist?

Arundhati Roy1:57

Well, I don't know whether that's a myth, you know, that after all, people can only put pressure on you if you accept that pressure, you know. But I wasn't ever the person who wanted to become a assembly line writer, you know. Also, things changed very dramatically in India around that time. When I won the Booker Prize and I was on the cover of every magazine, not that I had a say in it, but I was sort of being marketed as this new product of the global India. And then suddenly, the government did these nuclear tests. And for me, I realized that because I was at that point embraced by the establishment, not saying something was as political as saying something. And I wrote this essay condemning the tests. And at that point, the fairy princess was kicked off her pedestal in a minute, you know. But I write things because

Arundhati Roy3:00

Sometimes I just can't not write them.

Presenter3:03

What about that? Given the diverse nature of your writing, what's the starting point for you? I was going to say put pen to paper, I'm sure it's not that, I'm sure it's a keyboard, but what's the starting point nonetheless?

Arundhati Roy3:11

It's a mixture. But, you know, there's a big difference in the way my body feels when I'm writing fiction and when I'm writing political stuff. You know, the fiction, it's it's less a book than a city or a sedimentary rock. You know, it has layers and layers and layers. It's mysterious and esoteric, and you know that you have to wait for it. It's a dance. I'm never in a hurry. And I'm very secretive about it while I'm writing. Sometimes I don't even know if I'm writing or just concentrating and the folks in the book are coming out there, you know. But when I have done non-fiction

Arundhati Roy3:55

The thing is, I never set out to do it, you know, and each time I l I write an essay I get into so much trouble, I promise that I won't do it again. And then even though I'm trying to tell myself to shut up, it becomes much easier to write it than not write it. And so, in a way, I have twenty years of essays I never meant to write.

Presenter4:17

You say wh when you write something you have to spend a few days filtering out the fury uh and that you don't do things to be deliberately provocative. So how do you filter out your fury?

Arundhati Roy4:27

Well, first I write it in, and then it's like this cliff of anger, and I put in the pegs like a mountaineer would, and I climb up, and then I take the pegs out.

Arundhati Roy4:41

But I still don't manage to filter out enough of it for most people, but why should I? Uh you have to use all your skills. In my non fiction I do use the arsenal of a fiction writer. I mean, I believe fiction is truth, you know, so fiction is not made up.

Presenter4:58

This is a very multilayered list that you've given us today, and let's turn to it now. Aaron Dutty Broy, tell me about your first track. What are we going to hear, and why has this been a choice?

Arundhati Roy5:00

You've given up

Arundhati Roy5:07

It's been a choice because you made me choose, but otherwise I think I might have had every single Beatles song. They play in my head all the time and the Beatles have meant everything to me, you know. I mean short of throwing my panties at them, I've done everything, yeah, sure. I love their music.

Speaker 25:24

Please

Speaker 45:29

I chill See the love of that sleeping

Speaker 45:37

What like a dog?

Speaker 45:40

Gently

Speaker 45:44

I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping.

Speaker 45:54

Still my guitar

Presenter5:59

The Beatles while my guitar gently weeps. Tell me, Arundati Roy, Delhi Delhi's your home?

Arundhati Roy6:05

Yes.

Presenter6:05

And you know, we know the gap between the rich and poor in India is enormous. You yourself have described it as an obscenity. What what is the starkest representation of it that you see within your city?

Arundhati Roy6:19

Well, I I studied architecture and from then to now I've spoken about how there's a city and a non-city and the city has institutions, it has housing, it has markets, it has transport, and then the non-citizens live in the cracks between these institutions. They have no foothold in the city, they have no homes, they have nothing. I mean, as I said rather crudely, they even shit on top of the sewage system. Even the sewage system isn't theirs, you know. So that's how it is. And of course, outside the city, you know, the devastation, as you know, two hundred and fifty thousand farmers have killed themselves'cause they're in debt. So for me as a writer, it's impossible to just pursue a glittering career as a fiction writer and just ignore all this, you know. But for me, the fiction too must be informed by this. By caste. I mean, which country in the world has more than a million people who who make a living carrying other people's shit on their heads? This is what the caste system is in India is.

Presenter7:28

Let's have some more music. Aaron Dutty Roy, tell me about your second. What are we going to hear now?

Arundhati Roy7:32

Oh, I think we're going to hear a song which breaks my heart. It's a song called Hailili Hilo. It's I think the first song that I remember uh my mother singing and uh I grew up in this little village in Kerala called Aymanim which is the village in which the God of Small Things is set.

Arundhati Roy7:57

And my mother had of course committed the great apostasy by marrying outside this very traditional community called the Syrian Christians that she belonged to and she had married a Bengali Hindu and then divorced him and come back to this village where she was not wanted with her two children who were even less wanted. And she was obviously very headstrong but very beautiful woman and I think when I was even three years old I might have been a writer then because it was hard to be that young and to understand why an adult who was harsh with you was being harsh because her own heart was broken. You know, children shouldn't understand those things but writer children probably do. And she used to sing the song and I'd listen to it and think this woman's she's beautiful and she's young and and it's over in terms of love and even today it it it harms me when I think about it. But we we don't walk away from harm.

Speaker 49:07

A song of love.

Speaker 49:12

It's a sad song.

Speaker 49:18

I believe

Speaker 49:23

Hallelujah

Speaker 49:32

The Song of Love.

Speaker 49:37

Is a song of woe.

Speaker 49:44

Don't ask me how I know

Speaker 49:56

The Song of Love.

Speaker 410:02

Is a sad song.

Presenter10:07

Hi Lily, Hi Lo, performed there by Martin Taylor's Spirit of Django and chosen for memories of your mother when you were just a very little girl, Aaron Datya Roy. Um you impart dedicated your novel The God of Small Things to your mother, Mary, and in truth I think we might be able to spend an entire programme talking simply about her, because whatever I read of her only makes her sound more fascinating. Just tell me what she was like as a mother when you were very young.

Arundhati Roy10:33

Well

Arundhati Roy10:35

You know, she was raging because she firstly was the child of a very abusive father and a pretty weak

Arundhati Roy10:47

mother with failing eyesight who played the violin beautifully. I was told that she was of concert class and her husband broke her violin because how can she be allowed to do that? And then she married my dad who I never met until I was very much older in my twenties. I di he was just a mysterious figure.

Presenter11:09

And he was a tea plantation manager when she met him.

Arundhati Roy11:11

Yes, he was, but I think chiefly he was drinking a lot, you know, and she just bailed out. She was very ill all the time. She had asthma and she didn't have anywhere to go, so she was living in my grandmother's house. And everybody used to just tell us, Why don't you get out? This is not your house. You have no right to be here. And so I'd spend all my time just on the river and with people who used to fish. And, you know, I just grew up wild. I knew every beetle and insect and blade of grass. So she was harsh and she was bitter and she was beautiful and she was tender. I suppose when somebody upset her, the only people she could take it out on was me and my brother. So there was a lot of a lot of anger against us. And she would say what sort of things?

Presenter12:03

An edge.

Arundhati Roy12:05

You know, you're like millstones around my neck and all that. And yet, then she would embrace us too and love us. So it was difficult because you never knew what was coming at you, you know, which is very unsettling, I suppose. But maybe that's what made me a writer. I mean, my mother broke me and made me and broke me and made me, and she still does. I think she's a fundamental force in me in all kinds of ways.

Presenter12:38

You have said previously to you know, of the many things you've written and said about your mother, that to have seen a woman who never needed a man is a wonderful thing.

Arundhati Roy12:47

Yeah, I don't mean it as never needed a man, but like I grew up without the presence of the father who's going to look after you. I just didn't have that. So in a way, you know, I love men because I don't accept bullshit from them, you know. And so I once in Kerala had a very funny occasion where my mother and I were at some meeting where they were talking about dowry and my mother was yelling about, you know, why you shouldn't accept dowry. And I said, why don't you just give your daughters whatever you want to give them? Why do you link it to marriage? So very woman with lots of diamond earrings said, you know, but that will make our daughters very bold and bold girls can never have a happy marriage. So I said, why I was brought up to be bold and I've had several happy marriages.

Arundhati Roy13:41

Yeah.

Presenter13:42

Aaron Datty Roy, it's time for some more music then. Tell me about your third. What are we going to hear now?

Arundhati Roy13:47

Oh, if you just called my mother now and played this, she'd start singing it back to you. So this is a song called Old Man River by Paul Robeson. And I heard it as I was growing up on this very small river. And you think about this Mississippi, you know? And I've never been there yet, but I will get there one day.

Speaker 214:13

I get weary and sick of crying, I'm tired of living.

Presenter14:49

Composed by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein. That was Paul Robeson, of course, singing Old Man River. Tell me, Arundati Roy, about the beginnings of your writing. It's interesting that its very beginnings are situated in a sort of protest. The first little essay you ever wrote was I HATE MISS MITON. Who is Miss Mitten?

Arundhati Roy15:06

Oh yeah, right. Miss Mitten was an you know, when my mother finally left my father and didn't have anywhere to go, so she she went to this little cottage in a hill station called Uti, and it belonged to her father. Her father had died and was gone. But there was an Australian missionary there. There were a lot of missionaries there, and Miss Mitten was an Australian missionary who used to teach me and I was five years old in in class one. And every day she would tell me that she could see Satan in my eyes. And I still have that book. My mother kept it. It was the first thing I ever wrote. I hate Miss Mitten. And whenever I see her, I see rags and I think her knickers are torn.

Presenter15:51

And did Miss Mitton read it?

Arundhati Roy15:53

Miss Mitten might not have read it, but Miss Mitten uh once asked me and my brother me, he was six and I was five or less, and she told us that we had to collect mushrooms for her and uh she told us which were the right ones and which were the wrong ones and we deliberately picked all the wrong ones. We didn't know that it was so lethal. Anyway, she she h had mushrooms and then she had fits and had to go to hospital and we were very scared, but fortunately she survived.

Presenter16:23

I don't know if this has anything to do with why your mother founded her own school, but she went ahead and did that, and you were one of the first of just seven pupils, you and your brother. What sort of pupil were you? Were you diligent?

Arundhati Roy16:30

Yeah.

Arundhati Roy16:35

Uh I don't think I'd use that word, but I was a guinea pig, you know. She would use teachers to experiment on me before she allowed them to teach the other three. So it was pretty unorthodox. An education

Presenter16:49

An education indeed.

Presenter16:51

Tell me about your next piece of music then, Aaron Datty Roy. What are we going to hear? We're on your fourth.

Arundhati Roy16:57

Yeah, that's going to be Ruby Tuesday. So I grew up in this town and it was made very clear to me at all points as I was growing up that I was just not going to be accepted there. But it was even clearer to me that I did not want to be accepted there. And for me, it was close to having a bag put on my head and told, look, you've got a small supply of oxygen and that's about it. So I just dreamt of leaving. In many ways, it wasn't just because of the town. It was also, of course, there was a lot of conflict between my mother and me and

Arundhati Roy17:41

There were these two songs, one was She's Leaving Home and then there's Ruby Tuesday, which somehow told me that, you know, cash your dreams before they slip away, don't get caught in this mire.

Speaker 417:54

Catch your dreams before they slip away

Speaker 418:03

Dying all the time Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind

Arundhati Roy18:08

Who's your dream? And you

Speaker 418:15

In life unkind

Speaker 418:22

Goodbye, the room that you stayed.

Presenter18:27

The Rolling Stones and Ruby Tuesday, and for you, Aaron Dati Roy, the message was in the music. You say that when you were 16, you decided that you had to get away. I've seen a photograph of you. I think it is contemporaneous. You were.

Presenter18:41

Well, you had a cigarette in your mouth. You look very cool.

Presenter18:44

You looked very thin, and you looked like you sort of were slightly ruling the world. I mean, did you how did how did it feel?

Arundhati Roy18:46

And you

Arundhati Roy18:50

So how do you how do you

Arundhati Roy18:52

He went

Presenter18:53

I'm sure jaws dropped as you walked down the street.

Arundhati Roy18:55

I I had already got into architecture school, which was a wild place, you know. No rules, no girls, hardly any girls, you know, so there wasn't a separate uh hostel or whatever. So I remember some rather creepy uncle came to the campus and he saw all these people sort of smoking dough, boys and girls, lying around and

Arundhati Roy19:18

He said, Aren't you going out of bounds here? And I said, No, we don't have any bounds. He says, Can I see your wardens? So I said, We don't have one. He said, Oh, when do you have to come home at night? And I said, We don't have to. So he just scuttled off to tell everybody in the small town the news. You know, the girl's gone bad. But I. And had the girl gone bad. Had the girl gone bad. I think the girl had come good, actually. You know, she was just like, Okay, guys, thank you. Bye-bye. I mean, I.

Presenter19:38

And had the girl gone back.

Arundhati Roy19:47

My mother was very angry with me, but I was angry with her too, you know. So we.

Presenter19:51

A moment ago you described your mother as you said very head strong, very beautiful, and I can't help thinking the apple has not fallen far from the s the tree. I mean, because you're a very well known author, people will probably know what you look like, but it is worth me telling them. You are luminously beautiful, and I can only imagine that as a young woman

Arundhati Roy19:58

Yeah.

Presenter20:08

You got a lot of attention.

Arundhati Roy20:10

Not true, not true, you know, because you must remember that I am not conventionally the good-looking woman in India. You know, in fact, I used to say I was the worst thing that a Syrian Christian girl could be. I was thin and black and clever. Like, oh god, you're not dangerous here. And I think I signaled trouble to most people. And I think School of Architecture was a great liberation because I just said, oh, I don't need any of this anymore, you know, and I'll just live on nothing, but I'll be free, which is what I did.

Presenter20:46

You uh by the age of seventeen you had I mean, I I read it uh termed an on undocumented marriage. I mean it it wasn't an official marriage. You did a sort of ceremony between the two of you. Did did your family know you were living together?

Arundhati Roy20:53

Wasn't an official man.

Arundhati Roy20:54

You did a sort of ceremony between the two of you.

Arundhati Roy20:58

Yeah. I mean, I didn't have any family by then. You never went home? No, she she didn't want to hear about me and I I just disappeared. For years, six, seven years, there was absolutely no contact. And in fact, what happened was that after I finished architecture, I went off to Goa. I thought, let me sell cake on the beach or something. So me and Jara and my boyfriend, we went there and then I realized that I didn't like the hippies, you know.

Presenter21:01

You never went home.

Presenter21:26

Uh What was the problem?

Arundhati Roy21:27

I'm not a drifter, I think I'm more like a

Arundhati Roy21:30

Let me light a fire here and let me kick that thing down there as I walk past, you know? Just a little bit of more trouble.

Presenter21:37

An agitator.

Presenter21:42

I'm going to ask you more about that in a second, but for now we need to fit in the music, and it seems an absolutely perfect time to introduce your next track. Tell me about this.

Arundhati Roy21:45

Gonna see

Arundhati Roy21:47

Use your next

Arundhati Roy21:49

It's Janice Joplin. Her voice, along with Billie Holidays, to me is absolute freedom of women. You know, the absolute refusal to be bottled in and, you know, squeak and be made to be what people want you to be. This song, I knew it earlier in the more traditional way it is sung, but when I heard her singing it, I thought, how will anyone ever sing this song again?

Speaker 422:22

Time, time, time.

Speaker 422:28

Child, the living disappear

Speaker 422:38

Fisher jumping out

Speaker 422:44

Hey the cotton on, cotton's hard

Speaker 422:53

Young Tana Serie

Presenter22:59

That was Janice Joplin in Summer Time. You spoke earlier, Arun Dati Roy, of the fact that you had said to somebody at a public meeting you'd had lots of very happy marriages. In fact, you've only been married twice, we should be clear. Tell me about how you came to meet the man who became your second husband. That's the the filmmaker, Pradeep Krishnan.

Arundhati Roy23:08

In fact, you've all

Arundhati Roy23:10

It should be

Arundhati Roy23:17

Well, when I came back from uh Goa, I actually left uh my first boyfriend saying, you know, I I'm going to be a writer. And I came back to Delhi and I was working in a in a government office called the National Institute of Urban Affairs. And uh Pradeep's wife used to work in that office. And he saw me and he was making a film at the at the time called Masi Sahab. And he asked me to act in this film that he was making. The marriage was already breaking down and I acted in his film and then I went off to Italy on a scholarship and when I came back his wife she had already left.

Presenter24:00

He said just there that, you know, you'd finished all your architecture training, but you had said to your boyfriend stroke almost husband.

Arundhati Roy24:06

Cool.

Presenter24:06

I'm going to be a writer. So, had that been percolating away inside you throughout the years?

Arundhati Roy24:06

Yeah.

Arundhati Roy24:11

Well, when I was young I didn't even think there was anything else I would be doing. You know, that was it. But it just went underground, you know, when I had to leave home. And for years and years I had no ambitions. I just needed to survive. And I was alone, but I I was on a life raft of friends and um it was a haze of dope and music and

Presenter24:39

Uh

Arundhati Roy24:39

When you uh as you

Presenter24:39

And when you married you became you don't have children yourself, but you became the mother of two stepchildren. It's interesting to me that when you've been talking about, as we know, your your your activism is such an important part of what your life has been up until now, you've said that not having children has helped your activism. And I wonder why that is.

Arundhati Roy24:57

I never used that word activism about myself because I'm just a a writer. I mean, I I keep saying activism is a new word, you know. In the old days when writers used to write about the societies they lived in entrenchmently, they were not called activists, you know. So the the the activists to me are those people who stay in that place, who are the architects of that struggle, whereas I'm a person who sometimes supports, who shows up when it will help, who's more involved in trying to write a world view. I feel that I'm a risk taker, and to me, my writing is nothing if I don't take that risk.

Presenter25:01

What what would you prefer?

Presenter25:39

So you have a responsibility only to yourself as somebody without

Arundhati Roy25:43

It's not a responsibility only to myself. Let's say that I'd say if a family makes you more selfish, children make you more selfish, this way your love is wider, you know.

Presenter25:53

Because you're thinking about their specific interests.

Arundhati Roy25:54

Specific interests.

Presenter26:06

You and your husband, as I understand it, live apart cordially.

Arundhati Roy26:09

Well, we have separated, but we have a lot of affection and love for each other still.

Presenter26:15

Let's fit in a little bit more of your music, Arnati Roy. Tell me about this. What are we going to hear?

Arundhati Roy26:20

This is a song by a musician from Rajasthan called Bhungar Khan. It was Pradeep who introduced me to this music. It's called Jhatke Ayo Chomasho. It's the song about the coming of the monsoon. And it says, The rain is falling, the peacocks are calling, and they're singing. It's almost like a desert yearning for rain, but he sings it like a lover yearning for her love to come back. And it's haunting.

Speaker 427:06

But a little fair live.

Speaker 427:14

Be I know to a mushroom

Speaker 427:17

I don't know.

Speaker 427:19

Partalicer l'emour.

Speaker 427:24

Set the game, I know it's so much more.

Presenter27:27

Jatke Io Chomasu, that was Bunga Khan. I feel I probably mucked up the pronunciation there, but I did my best. Pretty good, Aaron Datty Roy. You had been working a little as a screenwriter when you embarked on your first novel. The world knows it, of course, as The God of Small Things. It made your name around the world and it would go on to sell. I'm right, am I six million copies? Extraordinary. And it's interesting that when you published this first novel, I've read that you were granted complete control over the text and over the cover. First of all, is that true?

Arundhati Roy27:33

My best friend.

Presenter27:57

And secondly, if it is true, how on earth did you manage to swing it as a first-time novelist?

Arundhati Roy28:02

Granted, I insisted on it. Nobody was doing any granting. I was just a stubborn thing. And what I said was that, look, if you have any suggestions, I'm happy to consider them, but you know, that doesn't mean I'm going to listen. And when they first asked me, I didn't know anything about publishing, and they said, What would you like from us? And I didn't know that I was supposed to say, you know, world tour or whatever. I just said complete design control. No saris, no tigers, no on my cover, you know. So I don't want to come off as this really arrogant person who thinks no one can tell me anything because I'm open to listening, but I do make the final decision myself.

Presenter28:05

Yeah.

Presenter28:07

Yeah.

Presenter28:45

Let's have some more music, Carnant Datty Roy. Tell me what we're gonna hear. We're on your sevenths.

Arundhati Roy28:50

Oh, now we're going to hear Hindustani classical music and it's a rag called Chaya Malhar sung by a legendary singer who's now no longer with us. His name is Bhim Sen Joshi and as they say the words are Tan Man Dhan Sab Unhi Parwar. It's a song of surrender. It says my body, my wealth, my mind, everything I lay at your feet. And that could be the feet of a lover or it could be a divine being or it could be a divine love. But it's a song of beautiful surrender.

Speaker 429:35

Ada

Speaker 429:42

Bob

Speaker 430:03

Oh man, you feel like God

Speaker 430:12

Yeah.

Presenter30:26

That was Boom Sen Joshi singing Chaya Malhar. Now tell me, Arundati Roy, as you explained it, there was a period of some six or seven years when you you didn't see your family at all, and you certainly never spoke to your mother, and you have been reunited over the years. What did she think of your work?

Arundhati Roy30:43

Um sometimes she says just yesterday she called me and said, I'm reading Sidney Sheldon and every sentence I read I think my daughter writes better than that. But then I said, Is that a compliment or an insult?

Speaker 230:55

Yeah.

Arundhati Roy30:57

But then the other day she called me and said, I went somewhere and somebody asked me if I was Arundhati Roy's mother and I felt as if she had slapped me. So you never know. For me, she's such a central person in my life. And also when I was speaking at her school anniversary, the town was there and I said, Oh, I know you people talk about how the character in the god of small things who's Ammu is my mother and you think it was a terrible thing for me to have a character like that have an affair with an untouchable. Well, I think it's a great thing. I think.

Arundhati Roy31:34

All of you should go and have affairs.

Presenter31:37

What were the looks on the teachers' faces?

Arundhati Roy31:39

The pages sort of uh decided that

Arundhati Roy31:43

You know, there are three people, my mother, me and my mother's brother, who's like Charco in the book, who's also an equally important influence in my life. I think they've just given up on the three of us. They're like, whatever.

Presenter31:55

You know I don't know if you will have had time to imagine this island that I'm going to cast you away.

Arundhati Roy32:01

I do and I have

Presenter32:02

But I have. How do you think you'd cope on it?

Arundhati Roy32:05

Yeah.

Presenter32:05

Quite okay.

Arundhati Roy32:06

I don't know if I'm practical, but I'm very calm in high stress situations.

Presenter32:09

Reach.

Presenter32:11

Uh tell me about your final piece of music then, Arlenati Roy. What are we gonna hear?

Arundhati Roy32:15

We're going to hear Leonard Cohen's Winter Lady, and I've chosen this because I love it and because it's in a beautiful way in my new book. Its spirit is there in all sorts of ways.

Speaker 432:31

Travelling lady

Speaker 432:34

Stay awhile until the night is over

Speaker 432:42

I'm just a station on your way

Speaker 432:48

I know I

Speaker 432:49

Not your lover.

Speaker 432:54

Well I live with a child of snow.

Speaker 433:00

When I was a soldier

Presenter33:05

Leonard Cohen's Winter Lady It's time now, Aaron Datty Roy, for me to give you the books. I give every castaway a copy of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You get to take one other book along with those. What's your book going to be?

Arundhati Roy33:19

I think it's going to be uh Hope Against Hope by Nadejda Mendelstam, because it has a lot of secrets in it which I haven't unearthed yet, but secrets about love and endurance and harshness and poetry. It's yours.

Presenter33:38

You don't Quite a luxury too.

Arundhati Roy33:39

Yeah.

Presenter33:39

Uh

Arundhati Roy33:40

A mango tree, and my favourite is a mango called ratoll.

Presenter33:44

It's yours, then. And if you had to save just one single disk from the waves, which one would it be?

Arundhati Roy33:52

When I was sitting on the top branch of the mango tree it would be

Arundhati Roy33:56

Bhim Saint Yoshi's Chaya Malhar when it was time to surrender to the waves.

Presenter34:01

It's yours. Aaron Datty Roy, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Islandists.

Arundhati Roy34:06

Oh, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

Presenter34:53

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.

Arundhati Roy35:25

This is the B B C.