Pia Sinha

Pia Sinha0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:04

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is Pia Sinha, who earlier this year became Director of the Prison Reform Trust after almost a decade working as a prison governor. She was the first Asian woman to run a prison in England. The UK has the highest imprisonment rates in Western Europe. The prison population has risen by 80% in 30 years, and overcrowding, crumbling building stock and a mental health crisis place enormous pressures on the system. The woman who wants to solve some of these problems didn't follow a conventional route into prison governance and reform.

Presenter1:18

She was studying for a degree in psychology and running a pub when a colleague suggested she could apply for a job in the prison service. After years working as a psychologist, she switched to become a governor. She hit the headlines in 2017 when she stepped in at HMP Liverpool, then labelled Britain's worst jail. She turned the place around and was rewarded with the St Martins Award for Prison Governance. She says, I think part of my job as a leader is to maintain optimism about change and hope and be the holder of hope.

Presenter1:50

Pierre Sinhar, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. Lovely to be here. Pierre, I want to talk about your new role. Let's start there. You were appointed director of the Prison Reform Trust in April this year. We've just heard about a few of the many challenges that your sector is facing. How much hope do you have in that role?

Presenter2:09

Yeah.

Pia Sinha2:09

It's a really good question. And I think that for people who've been in reform charities for a number of years, for decades, I think it's quite dispiriting. I've heard colleagues talk about how they've given it their life's work and yet the statistics are going in the opposite direction. But for me, having worked in the prison service for over twenty years and then coming to the reform charity, ironically, I come with optimism rather than pessimism. And I think that

Pia Sinha2:40

There's so many ways to crack the nut. And Prison Reform Trust, its aims are about not just reducing the prison population, although that is a fundamental aim that we should all be aspiring to. It's also about how we improve the lives of prisoners who are currently in the system.

Presenter2:58

I want to talk to you about some of those numbers, Pierre. The prison population has increased by 80% over the past thirty years. According to government statistics, the current population in prison stands at almost 88,000, and there are concerns that there just won't be enough places to house them by March 2025. Are we simply sending too many people to prison?

Pia Sinha3:17

I think someone had quoted this, so it's not my words, but Britain seems to have a love affair with sending people to prison.

Presenter3:24

The highest rates in

Pia Sinha3:25

Uh

Presenter3:25

Western Europe.

Pia Sinha3:25

In Western Europe. And we can't sentence our way out of this. And I think that's part of the problem. So the combination of the sentencing council giving longer and longer tariffs for certain offences and the fact that we're quick to send people for short-term sentences, particularly non-violent, low-risk offences, means that there's a bottleneck in the system. So we've not got enough people exiting the system and we've got too many people coming in. And that over a period of time is just completely swelling up the estate.

Presenter3:59

It's interesting hearing you talk, Pierre, and you know, you said talking about the your new role at the Prison Reform Trust, you said that partly it's about trying to make life better for people in prison. And I wonder what you would say to anyone hearing that for whom it jars, because it might actually strike people as why is that a laudable aim?

Pia Sinha4:14

Because

Pia Sinha4:19

Yes. So you get so many people whose standard response is, A, if you didn't do the crime, don't do the time, or you you should be able to kind of cope with that because you've bought this on yourself.

Pia Sinha4:31

And I can to some extent I can understand that people, especially people who've been victims of crime, or know people who've been victims of crime, this is a very emotive subject.

Speaker 14:38

This is a bad thing.

Pia Sinha4:41

But

Pia Sinha4:42

Ultimately, the argument stems to is that we want to create less victims as we go on. And if prison is not a place of rehabilitation, those individuals are going to come back out into society and if they come out angrier and more frustrated and more traumatized and unrehabilitated, the chances are it will create more victims.

Pia Sinha5:05

So when I say that it's about improving conditions, it's about looking at what needs to happen in prison, what's the purpose of prison. And a fundamental purpose of prison is to rehabilitate people.

Pia Sinha5:18

And you can't rehabilitate people by locking them up for 23 hours a day. You can't rehabilitate people without compassion. It's time for your first disc, Pia. What have you chosen?

Pia Sinha5:28

My first one is a classic. It's Cathy Song by Simon and Garfunkel. And it's the song that when I listen to it, it literally takes me back to my childhood in India. I was born in North India and lived in Mumbai. And we at one point we shared our house. It was an extended family with my uncle.

Pia Sinha5:50

And my grandparents, and it was a very musical family. He played the guitar, he played the flute, and this was one of the songs that we often used to just all go into a bit of a trance over. And it reminds me of watching my uncle play the guitar to this. And I can literally taste my grandma's food, and it was just a happy, carefree time.

Speaker 26:12

I hear the drizzle of the rain

Speaker 26:18

Like a memory at fall

Speaker 26:24

Soft and warm, continuing.

Speaker 26:30

Tapping on my roof and walls

Presenter6:38

Simon and Garfunkel and Cathy Sung. So let's go back to the beginning then, Pierre. In nineteen seventy two, you were born in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, Northern India, and you were the youngest of two daughters to Tinu and Rita. What are your early childhood memories with your family?

Pia Sinha6:53

We had the upstairs flat and it had a big veranda and we had a dog.

Pia Sinha6:58

I've got black and white pictures, so my memories are probably in black and white around that. but m mostly spending time with my mum and my sister. My father was quite busy. He was at the peak of his career at that time, so he used to spend a lot of time being away.

Pia Sinha7:14

So it was the three of us in the house m mostly and um

Speaker 17:17

And uh

Pia Sinha7:18

It was an old fashioned rickshaw driver. He hand pulled the rickshaw, and there was loads of us kids squashed in the back of the rickshaw and we used to get taken to n sort of kindergarten. And I remember my mother used to sew and she would make me these pretty little dresses.

Presenter7:34

It said your dad was quite busy with his career. He worked for a large insurance company. Your mum had a job in the civil service too later, I think. And it was your dad's job that took your family to Mumbai. So you were you were five then, I think.

Speaker 17:44

Uh

Pia Sinha7:44

That's what

Presenter7:46

Were they quite ambitious people, themselves hard work?

Pia Sinha7:49

Working. Very hardworking. My father was someone who very early on I got the sense that he really enjoyed his work. He's eighty five now and refuses to retire, so you know, he's still kinda in the thick of it.

Pia Sinha8:02

And what I learned from watching him was that it was really important to enjoy work.

Presenter8:08

And what about school life? I mean, you went to a convent school. Were you quite a a diligent pupil? No.

Pia Sinha8:13

That was

Presenter8:14

Oh yeah.

Pia Sinha8:15

I was the opposite of diligent. So I had my older sister, she's nearly four years older than me, and we were went to the same school, and she was like the proper straight A student. So I was constantly compared to my sister saying, Oh, your sister, you know, she she wouldn't do that and so yeah, I had to live with that and I had to live under her shadow quite a bit when I was younger. So did you develop a bit of a rebellious streak? Yes. I I just felt that that was my natural niche. I think I gravitated towards it.

Speaker 18:36

Death

Pia Sinha8:40

And so even in my very strict Conben school, I was often on the naughty step. What that did was from a very early age, I became a very good observer of people. I think that was why I chose my career, why I chose to be a psychologist. I kind of was fascinated by people's stories right from an early age.

Presenter9:01

Huh.

Pia Sinha9:01

Before we hear more of

Presenter9:02

Yeah.

Pia Sinha9:02

Uh

Presenter9:02

We've got to hear more of your music, Pierre, so what's disc number two, please?

Pia Sinha9:06

This is a Hindi song called Ek Lurki Kodeka, which means I saw this woman and this is what I thought. It's from a film called Love Story. Whenever this song comes on, no matter what kind of what's going on at home, everyone sort of gets up and dances. So we have a tradition in our family now where my sister hosts Christmas and I host New Year's, so New Year's Eve in my house, and it's almost always that the clocks will strike midnight and you know, we've after a few too many glasses of wine.

Pia Sinha9:39

I'll put the music on. And whenever this song comes on, everyone gets up and dances. And we're probably dancing incoherently and uncoordinatedly with our arms flailing about, but everyone does it.

Speaker 19:48

Coordinated

Speaker 29:55

Oh equaler qui de cato esada.

Speaker 210:06

Ekul ki kode kato e salaga jesi kilwe takula bu jesi shair kakha bu jesi pujili kidanu jes banu mehiranu jesse chandunat jesse

Presenter10:28

Iklerki Kordeka performed by Kuma Sanum.

Presenter10:32

So Pierre, when you were fourteen, your father got a promotion that took your family even further afield. He became chief executive of his company's London office, and you guys moved here. How did you feel about leaving Mumbai?

Pia Sinha10:45

Oh, I was I hated the idea of leaving. I was fourteen. I was in my final year of high school. I'd made all my friends. You know, I had a really fun life. And so the idea of leaving them all behind and coming to London was just, you know, kind of broke my heart a little bit.

Presenter11:02

Yeah.

Pia Sinha11:02

So you and your sister died?

Presenter11:03

Adapted pretty quickly. You you went to school in Wembley, you would have been fourteen, which is is quite a tricky age to make that leap. How quickly did you find your feet?

Pia Sinha11:09

Yes.

Presenter11:13

Yeah.

Pia Sinha11:13

It's really hard to make brand new friends at fourteen because you go whichever school you go to, whether it's a kind of rough school or a posh school or whatever, friendship groups have already formed at that age and the only groups that accept you are the naughty crowd because they're all full of misfits and dysfunctional people. So, you know, I kind of gravitated towards them anyway because they were much more welcoming. And I guess, you know, I always had that naughty streak in me, so it felt much more like they were my kind of people. We were a bit naughty, but you know, not nothing that was, you know, scandalous. It was just that we bunked school and smoked and and drank.

Presenter11:48

Yeah. Your potential was spotted by one teacher, I think, who had a word with your dad about the circles that you were mixing in. What happened?

Pia Sinha11:56

Yeah.

Pia Sinha11:57

She spotted that I, you know, I did have some potential and I did have a brain and she's quite honestly and clearly told my dad that he needed to take me out of this school. So I was taken out of that school and put into a rather posh girls' school in North London. You know, it was not even on the cards that you wouldn't go to uni, so you you just did.

Pia Sinha12:20

Uh here it's time for more music.

Presenter12:21

You'll have disc number three if you wouldn't mind.

Pia Sinha12:23

Disc number three is when I when I listen to it, it's I'm back in Barram Park, which is a park in Sudbury, which is where my misfit friends and I spent our misspent youth. And every time this song comes on, if you remember the sort of video to it, it's just people sort of dancing and in the park. And it's soul to soul, back to life.

Presenter13:16

Soul to soul and back to life. Pierce and heart, I have seen a couple of family photographs of you around the time of that song's release. And I have to say you had the whole look going on. The buffalo look was in full effect. Yes.

Pia Sinha13:27

I'm afraid so. I cringe when I see them now. You rocked it.

Presenter13:27

I was afraid so.

Presenter13:32

Pia, after studying for a degree in economics and psychology, you got married to your first husband when you were in your early twenties. There was just a small group of friends there and you didn't tell your parents until afterwards why?

Pia Sinha13:44

Oh gosh. Probably one of the things that I regret a lot. Not getting married, but not telling the parents. I think it was I think some of it was that we I was a bit swept away by the whole romance of it all and doing it in this way. Yeah, we just thought it would be a laugh. I think nothing felt serious in my life at that time. And, you know, you j I just kind of went from.

Pia Sinha14:05

crazy decisions to crazy decisions without really thinking about consequences too much. Um but yeah, it was very sad hearing my father's voice at the other end of the phone. And that's when it sunk in. I thought, Oh, damn, I I've got this wrong here because he sounded so sad that, you know, he wasn't there.

Presenter14:18

Because

Presenter14:21

Yeah.

Pia Sinha14:22

Yeah.

Presenter14:22

So the two of you at the time, you ran a pub in North London. I think you were known as the Governor's Missus. Yes, the Governor's Misses, yes. And again, you know, it was attracting a a clientele who were sometimes on the margins.

Pia Sinha14:27

The Governor

Pia Sinha14:28

Yeah.

Pia Sinha14:34

Yes, it's funny when you join the dots that way. It was a pub in Islington called The Penny Farthing. I think it's become a Georgian restaurant now. So, but it was the Penny Farthing and it had a late licence and it had a boarding house above. So, it had about eighteen rooms. Oh, wow. So, that's quite a lot to keep going. Yeah, it was a lot to keep going. And I was, you know, it wasn't my profession. It was my ex-husband's profession.

Presenter14:50

A lot of the

Pia Sinha14:57

But it offered a house at the same time. And I was doing my masters at the time. I was also working in a market research company. I was doing voluntary work to clock up my counselling hours and working in the pub. And, you know, it was a full-on week. But, you know, I was in my early 20s and it just felt like everything was fine. It's time for your fourth music choice, Pierre. The song is Leftfield and it's Melt. I saw them live in Brixton Academy when they were playing, and I remember.

Presenter15:25

Remember that was a legend?

Presenter15:27

Awesome.

Pia Sinha15:29

Yes. Went to see it and just remember it being loud and just suffused with blue light and wow, it just blew my mind.

Presenter15:34

Seven

Presenter16:10

Left field and melt. So piercing. How there you were in North London working behind the bar, the governor's missus. And your first prison job wasn't actually too far away. You became a psychologist in Holloway Women's Prison. At the time that was the largest women's prison in Europe. What were your first impressions when you walked in?

Pia Sinha16:29

I think nothing prepares you for how you kind of react when you first walk into a prison and

Pia Sinha16:36

First thing that happens is that you go through an airlock.

Pia Sinha16:39

and you get into the airlock and one side of the door closes uh while the other one's shut at the same time and for a temporary moment you you're s trapped inside it.

Speaker 216:48

Yeah.

Pia Sinha16:48

And there's almost a sense of slight panic until the second door opens and then you go in and then you've got to go through this series of things where you've got to get your keys and then you get a belt and you've got to attach it and then you're going through gates and and it's really old fashioned, you know, it's not modern. So it's literally you're surrounded by metal and wire and clanging keys and

Presenter17:10

And those buildings are designed to have that psychological.

Pia Sinha17:12

That's psychological. I think so. Yeah, they are places of pain. And this is what I realized: you know, after 24 years of being in prison service, putting your sort of mask on, you do have to do that. And Holloway at the time used to have it's circular in the way that all the kind of wings are connected. And you had a subterranean level, which is sort of below ground and a bit dark. And that's where the psychiatric wing used to be. I mean, it was just a place of despair. And because I was working as a psychologist there and working in my crisis counseling service, most of my clients were in that wing.

Presenter17:53

And also, I know you've described kind of going home at the end of the day and trying to lock the bedroom door.

Pia Sinha17:56

Through doors. Yeah. It's just the key and the key fob and the pouch just become part of your body in a way. And so, you know, going through doors when I especially when I first started, I would try and lock doors behind me everywhere I went and it just, you know, becomes it just takes over your life a little bit.

Presenter18:14

And was work like that? Were you completely committed to it?

Pia Sinha18:18

Yeah. It gripped me, you know, it became it got under my skin and and I think people know very quickly whether prison is for you or not. It elicits really strong emotions in you and and sometimes not everyone's comfortable with that.

Presenter18:33

Yeah, and I mean it sounds actually you were traumatized by it to some extent, but there was something about it that you did react positively to. What was that?

Pia Sinha18:37

Yeah.

Pia Sinha18:42

What did you feel? People who work in prison somehow have this instinct that they either acquire or have it innately that they run towards trouble rather than away from it in the way that other people might do. And I think that I found myself being one of those people.

Presenter19:00

We'll find out where that took you next. But it's time for disc number five, please, Pierre. What are we going to hear?

Presenter19:06

Yeah.

Pia Sinha19:06

This is now two thousands, it's that decade, and this is probably where my love affair with Liverpool started.

Pia Sinha19:12

And what I probably found in Liverpool, and I describe it as my spiritual home, something about the scouses, the banter, all of it. So the song that kind of epitomizes my time in Liverpool is a band called Love, and it's called And More Again.

Speaker 119:34

And when you've given all you had, And everything still turns out bad, And all your secrets are your own

Speaker 119:52

Then you feel your heart beating Bum bum bum bum.

Presenter20:02

Love, and more again.

Presenter20:05

After a while, you're fast tracked under the Senior Prison Manager programme aimed at training Governors of the Future, and your first posting was as a Deputy Governor at HMP Send in Surrey. Now I imagine that's quite a different relationship with prisoners and staff compared to working as a psychologist. How did you adjust to that new role on the front line?

Pia Sinha20:23

Fine.

Presenter20:24

Yeah.

Pia Sinha20:24

I think it really helped being a psychologist, and it was a women's prison, so I kinda knew my stuff with it.

Pia Sinha20:31

But what happens when you are an operational manager is that you are automatically given rank and authority. So people just listen to you just because of your rank rather than because of what you're saying.

Pia Sinha20:43

And I think it's really important when that's the case that you say the right stuff, because otherwise people will just do it, but they won't respect you.

Presenter20:51

You've talked a lot about the importance of authenticity and the role that you have, but also in prisons in general, because you have a very unusual population in terms of the staff and the prisoners, in that everybody is very adept at kind of spotting someone who's pretending to be something that they're not.

Pia Sinha21:06

Yeah, a hundred percent. Prisoners spend a lot of time watching people. They're excellent people watchers and so are staff, you know. And so if you come in there as as a leader and you're not your authentic self, they will sniff it out and

Presenter21:07

Aha.

Pia Sinha21:20

You lose your credibility.

Pia Sinha21:22

And of c

Presenter21:22

Of course, in terms of taking on a new role, in a way, there weren't any role models out there for you because you were the first. You're the first Asian woman to become a prison governor in England. twenty thirteen, Thorncross Prison. Is that first important to you?

Pia Sinha21:37

Yeah, I wondered how I would be accepted in a sense, but I'd had quite a lot of experience of being.

Pia Sinha21:44

A woman of colour in the prison system. And ironically, prisons are weirdly accepting of people because it's more about: are you in our gang or are you not? And if you're in there and you're in the gang, you're in the gang. It doesn't matter what your colour is and what your sex is and what you know, you're just in it, you're in the trenches.

Presenter22:04

We'll find out what happened next in a minute. First, though, disc number six, please, Pierre. What have you gone for, and why?

Pia Sinha22:10

Okay, so disc number six is a song called Black by Danger Mouse, and I think it was on the soundtrack of Breaking Bad. If people remember that very famous series that everyone was addicted to, but I guess it's about some difficult and dark times working in the prison service, some real highs and lows, and some just really tough work. But there's something about this song that reminds me of that time of you know working both in Risley and in Liverpool. And it's a dark song, but it's also something quite powerful about it.

Speaker 222:48

Well the last pain is gone and all that's left is black.

Speaker 222:59

Red Nazis come to me in Someday they'll punish my deeds in hell fine

Speaker 223:07

All the crimes

Speaker 223:11

Then they ask when I gonna see them, then I gun asked if

Presenter23:16

Danger Mouse and Daniela Loopy featuring Nora Jones and Black.

Presenter23:21

So Pearson Hall, one of your biggest professional accomplishments was turning round HMP Liverpool. Now it had been described as Britain's worst jail. You started there as governor in November twenty seventeen. What did you find when you arrived?

Pia Sinha23:36

I'd worked in Liverpool before, so I was deputy governor there four years before that, and so when I walked in,

Pia Sinha23:43

It shocked me just how much it had deteriorated even in that short space of time. I knew the staff, they were pleased to see me, and so I kind of felt that in amongst all of the sort of

Pia Sinha23:54

devastation of it. There was still so like a beating heart in Liverpool prison, but the infrastructure was crumbling, it was filthy, it was literally no no window was left intact. Um rats and vermin everywhere. I mean it was like deeply shocking. So the building was under pressure. What state were the prisoners in? It felt like they were just living like animals and that sounds like a very dramatic thing to say, but

Pia Sinha24:21

You walked around and people were just, you know, vacant expressions on their faces and looking.

Pia Sinha24:27

Dirty, dishevelled, unshowered.

Pia Sinha24:30

It felt feral. This wasn't just happening at Liverpool. Liverpool happened to get caught with his pants down because that's when the inspector came in and saw it. But there were other jails within the country that were probably in exactly the same place.

Presenter24:38

Mem so

Presenter24:42

Pierre, as a psychologist though, you have to say the psychology of a person who goes, Yep, I'm going to go there and sort that out.

Presenter24:49

Okay.

Pia Sinha24:50

Particularly interesting. Well, I didn't go up there, please, miss, can I do this? Can I fix it? I was I was persuaded, shall we say strong armed is probably the more appropriate word by the bosses to say that, you know, we want you to do this job for us. What made you think you could do it?

Pia Sinha25:08

I think the thing that did it for me was Liverpool.

Pia Sinha25:12

the staff at Liverpool. They wear their hearts on their slaves. They're not the kind of staff that look down on prisoners. There isn't that kind of snobbery around prisoners, you know, and

Pia Sinha25:23

I kinda really liked that and I knew I could work with that. Uh

Presenter25:27

Yeah.

Pia Sinha25:27

Pierre Koff

Presenter25:27

Costs forty six thousand pounds a year to keep someone in prison. Is the service value for money?

Presenter25:34

Yeah.

Pia Sinha25:34

No.

Presenter25:34

Yeah.

Pia Sinha25:34

I think that if you think about how much money is spent, I think it's something like it's in the billions.

Pia Sinha25:41

the industry, the whole system. And if you think about

Pia Sinha25:44

Investing even a partial amount of that money in towards early interventions to preventing.

Pia Sinha25:50

the poverty and trauma and mental health problems that get people drifting into the service in the first place.

Pia Sinha25:57

you will actually make a very strong economic argument for not imprisoning people.

Pia Sinha26:04

Yeah.

Presenter26:04

One of the saddest statistics is the number of children in custody who've also been in care, so fewer than one percent of kids in England are in care, but almost half of children in secure training centres, I think it's forty-six percent, and more than half in young offender institutions, about sixty-two percent there, have been in care. What would you suggest to reduce those figures?

Pia Sinha26:24

Uh

Pia Sinha26:25

I think the investment needs to be in those early interventions. I think why does that cycle repeat itself? So a child will go into care because it has parents that are not able to care for them, and either that's because of mental health difficulties or extreme poverty or neglect or substance misuse. There's something that's causing that to happen.

Pia Sinha26:47

And the most simplest kind of explana the solution is, is that you invest that money on better schooling, on better welfare state, and better ways of kind of looking after people who are struggling with those conditions.

Pia Sinha27:04

Because

Pia Sinha27:06

When you do that, you're kind of tackling the root of the problem rather than just the symptom of it.

Presenter27:12

Pierre, it's time for some more music. Your seventh choice. What's next and why?

Pia Sinha27:16

It's a really uplifting song that talks a little bit to the elation that we felt when Liverpool actually came through its inspection. We had a radio station, and this person came to our radio station, and we listened to the song, and it hits all the right notes, which talks about the intensity.

Pia Sinha27:37

Of the experience. I think it was the highs and lows, but more than anything else, it was the intensity of that experience. And so this is Power of Love by Frankie Ghost to Hollywood.

Speaker 227:50

The power of love.

Speaker 227:55

Boards from

Speaker 227:59

Breathe into my soul.

Speaker 228:06

Flame on burn desire with tongues of fire burns the soul

Speaker 228:16

Make love.

Presenter28:21

Power of Love, Frankie goes to Hollywood.

Presenter28:24

Piers in our successive governments have taken a tough on crime approach. They sit as a vote winner with the electorate. But having worked within the prison system for decades, what's the one thing that you would like people to understand about that approach?

Pia Sinha28:38

I guess it's important to say that there are people who legitimately do need to be in prison, that they are dangerous and they have done terrible things, and for that they need to spend their time in prison. And I'm not an abolitionist, but I do feel that we need to look seriously at what are the alternatives to custody for those who have committed nonviolent crimes, who are low risk individuals, who the reason why they've committed crime has been around poor mental health and substance misuse issues. In this country, we are almost criminalizing poverty, we're criminalizing trauma, we're criminalizing mental health, because it's those individuals that drift into our prison system. And it's for those individuals, the plea is that we need to look at the underlying issues behind why they end up in prison rather than

Pia Sinha29:32

Just the crime that they've committed.

Presenter29:34

Pierre, it's almost time to cast you away to your desert island. Obviously you'll know much more than most people do about the effect of isolation. How do you think you'll cope?

Pia Sinha29:43

Yeah.

Presenter29:44

Uh

Pia Sinha29:45

Oh, gosh, I think I'll struggle because I'm a very sort of people oriented person and all my life I've kind of my whole thing about how I am is about trying to form teams and and family and and all that kind of stuff. So I will struggle.

Pia Sinha30:01

But, you know, just like I've done with other things in my life, I'll put my big girl pants on and try and adapt, you know, metaphorically loosen the tie and kind of work out what I needed to do, and I'll probably manage to do it.

Presenter30:15

What about the practicalities? How handy are you?

Presenter30:18

Uh

Pia Sinha30:18

I am Rubbish.

Pia Sinha30:21

Uh oh. So fishing and fruit pick I mean, I'll have to find a way, right? Because, you know, hunger is a powerful motivator.

Pia Sinha30:30

More importantly, I think it's about how do you keep yourself mentally agile. And I think I've probably learnt from the best places on how to survive some really tough

Presenter30:37

On how to

Pia Sinha30:40

Tough situations.

Presenter30:41

What have you learned? Where does that resilience come from in people?

Pia Sinha30:43

I think it comes from actually hope.

Pia Sinha30:47

and believing that things can get better. So I suppose I might spend my time either working out a plan on how I would escape and get out, or Oh, you're hatching an escape plan now. Already hatching an escape plan. But doing things that makes me feel hopeful.

Presenter30:59

Uh no

Pia Sinha31:04

But also, I guess, it's practicing mindfulness and practicing the the art of acceptance, I guess, at some level. You know, you can't just keep, you know, banging your head against things that are not going to change, but looking for the opportunities or things that will.

Pia Sinha31:20

So, um, yeah, I'll I'll probably have to have some strong words with myself.

Presenter31:23

Well, you can choose one more track before we cast you away, Pierce and Har, your last selection today. What's it gonna be?

Pia Sinha31:30

So the last selection is apt. It's Adele and Hometown. And it's one of those songs that no matter, you know, sometimes when I listen to it, I get transported to my life in India. Sometimes I listen to it and I'm in London. And it's just one of those songs that just reminds me of the buzz of life no matter where you are. So the rest, I mean, I guess where you are is geography. It's who you carry with you along the way. And this song just makes me feel like that.

Speaker 231:58

Round my hometown, many memories of phrase. Round my hometown, who the people are made.

Speaker 232:14

I do up on this and my world I do up on this and my world

Speaker 232:23

Oh wonders of the East world wonders now I like it in the sea

Presenter32:32

Adele and Home Town. So Pierce inhale, I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bhagavad Gita and the complete works of Shakspeare. You can take one other book. What would you like?

Pia Sinha32:44

So my book is going to be A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mystery. He's an absolutely stunning author. I've read him about, God knows, six, seven times, and I could read him again and again. So I won't get ever get bored of reading him. And it's about my favourite city, Bombay. So yeah, it will keep me company. What about a luxury item, something to make life more enjoyable?

Pia Sinha33:06

So, I kind of toyed with two, and you know, people who know me know that I always have my lipstick on me. You know, it's put your lipstick on and then face the world. But I realized that if I'm going to be cast away in an island, I won't need the lipstick, so I'll kind of put it aside. But what I will need is chili sauce. So, everything of my food has to have a bit of spice in it. So, if I'm eating raw fish, then it makes it so much more palatable with chili sauce. So, I'm going to take some chili sauce, a never-ending bottle of chili sauce. Absolutely, it's yours.

Presenter33:36

And also, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves if you had to?

Pia Sinha33:42

Oh gosh, it's just really, really hard.

Pia Sinha33:46

It's probably going to be

Pia Sinha33:49

Cathy song. Because whenever that comes on it just takes me back to just free, happy times and it gives me hope. That's

Presenter33:57

Bye.

Pia Sinha33:58

Yeah.

Presenter33:59

Pier Sinha, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you.

Presenter34:15

Hello, it was lovely to chat to Pia and I hope she's very happy on her island adding chili sauce to her cooking attempts. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive which you can listen to. You'll find people from many professions including psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Uta Frith. You can also hear one of Pia's favourite musicians, Adele's Desert Island Discs 2. You can find all of these programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio manager for today's programme was Bob Nettles, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my castaway is NASA's head of science, Dr. Nikki Fox.