Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A broadcaster who became the voice of India, reporting on key events as head of the BBC's India bureau.
On the island
Eight records
James Galway and The Chieftains
I've chosen this because for years and years when I'd had too much to drink or anything like that, I always used to say my favourite song is The Londonderry Air. And there is in fact a chap who plays the piano in bars in Delhi. And whenever he sees me, he automatically starts playing the Londonderry Air.
Vilayat Khan and Bismillah Khan
I I love uh various forms of Indian music, and including Indian classical music, and we're going to have something played by two of the great masters of Indian uh classical music
St Matthew Passion, BWV 244: "O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded"
City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus
I've chosen this because I love hymns. And the one thing which meant something to me at at school actually was chapel. And this love of chapel, love of serv the Anglican liturgy has remained with me.
Glenn Miller and His Orchestra
Record number four comes from the era of the big band, a wonderful institution
Where I live in in India is called Nizamuddin and it's opposite a Sufi shrine and Nizamuddin is a great Sufi saint. So I've chosen um some Kawali played by Nusrat Fati Ali Khan and it's a song written in memory of another great Sufi saint, Sharba'as Khaland.
Humphrey Lyttelton and His Band
this again is is nostalgic really, and it's a nostalgic title. It seems like yesterday played by Humphrey Lyttelton. Because when I was at university, Humphrey Lyttelton was all our heroes, and of course he is a wonderful broadcaster.
Record number seven is a very, very Indian record again. When I'm in India, people always sort of test your Indianness by asking you do you like Bombay movies? And I love Bombay movies, and this is from one of the great hits of a recent one called Lagaan.
Song for AtheneFavourite
Chorus and Orchestra of the National Academy of St Cecilia, Myung-Whun Chung
Record number eight goes back again, you might say, to my traditionalism in some ways, but it's a combination of both because it's modern religious music, wonderfully beautiful music, written by John Tavener
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:53How Indian is your life there [in India] in terms of your everyday affairs, in terms of what you eat or how you dress or how you live?
Well, it's very y really it's quite Indian. I I wear Indian clothes in the summer in in the evening simply because uh they're a lot more comfortable than this sort of shirt and tie which I'm wearing now in front of you. Of course I eat Indian food very regularly. I should think we have more than uh fifty per cent of our meals are are Indian food, and when you travel, of course, you eat Indian food all the time.
Presenter asks
5:36Would it be right to say that your passion for India was greater than your passion for journalism?
Oh yes, absolutely so. You know, in in India I'm always being asked you must have passionately wanted to be a journalist and I said no I didn't. It was all happened to me by accident. And one of the things I feel most strongly about really is that India has had a very profound effect on the whole way I live my life and the whole way I think.
Presenter asks
7:08When you got back [to India] aged nearly thirty, was it like a homecoming?
Well, yeah, yes, I had this extraordinary experience, you see, of when I got off the aeroplane … I went on the veranda of the hotel, and I smelt the smell of winter flowers in India, marigolds and things like that, and also, funnily enough, the smell of the gardeners cooking their food on a cow dung stove. And somehow the whole of my childhood rushed through my head like an electric train in some most extraordinary way. And from that moment onwards, I knew I didn't know what was going to happen, but I just knew that there was a really special place for me, India.
The keepsakes
The book
The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins
I love the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, but I don't understand a lot of what he says. So I thought if I took the collection of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and I could spend lots and lots of time trying to work out exactly what he meant or whether in fact he meant anything at all sometimes.
The luxury
I'd love to have taken my pipe with me, but I'd had to give that up, so I can't take my pipe with me. But the other thing I'm very fond of doing is having a pint of beer in the evening. And I discovered that in this country now there are all these mini breweries which are springing up everywhere. So maybe I could take a mini brewery with me.
Presenter asks
22:47Why did you decide that you should be this voice of disaffection [against John Birt]?
Well, it goes back again to what we were saying talking about earlier, fate. And it seemed to me that because I had been asked to give the Radio Academy lecture, therefore it was my fate, basically, to stand up and do this.
Presenter asks
25:06Did you resign a year later because you said you were gagged?
Yes, I was told shut up, you see, and I felt that they couldn't do this because either people would think I had lost my bottle if I could use that expression, didn't dare to speak out any more, or they would think that I was um had changed my mind and I hadn't done that either.
Presenter asks
29:29You live between two worlds, Mark, England and India, and you've been very publicly frank about the fact that you live between two women as well, your wife here, Margaret, and your partner, Gilly, there. Is that a situation which you're at peace with?
I'm not entirely at peace with it, obviously, for obvious reasons of my Christianity. But it's something which has happened. And there are two wonderful women of whom I'm extraordinarily fond.
“India has had a very profound effect on the whole way I live my life and the whole way I think. And one of the things about it of course is that it has given me a much greater appreciation of the role of fate in one's life, that you don't actually make your life half as much as in this sort of achievement oriented society in the West people are taught to believe that a lot of your life is made for you.”
“I always used to say that when I left Cambridge I was the sort of person who couldn't have a meal unless someone had rung a bell because, you know, it's so totally institutionalized.”
“I believe very much that India must progress, and I would be an absolute idiot if I didn't think that the Indian economy should grow. But I don't believe necessarily that our way of doing things is the right way for India. If you take consumerism, consumerism is after all based on greed, and who can say that greed is a healthy human emotion?”