Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Storyteller best known for novels about modern India and Pakistan; winner of the Booker Prize for Midnight's Children.
On the island
Eight records
My shoes are Japanese, sung by Mukesh from the film Mr. 420.
Tum Aaye Ho Na (Tumae Ho Nachebe)
Noor Jahan singing Tum I Ho Na by the Urdu poet Faiz.
I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag
The Vietnam Rag by Country Joe and the Fish.
Ravi Shankar's improvisation of the theme music from the film Pather Panchali.
Maria Callas singing the Habanera from Bizet's opera Carmen.
Sympathy for the Devil from the Rolling Stones.
Call of the Valley (excerpt)Favourite
The Indian flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia playing part of the Indian symphony Call of the Valley devised by Shiv Kumar Sharma.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:08Has English always been your first language, or has it become so?
No, I wasn't born speaking English, I was born speaking Urdu, which is basically the language of India's Muslims. And I started learning English when I was five, because I was sent to an English medium school.
Presenter asks
5:00What sort of home, what sort of family life did you have growing up in Bombay?
Well, it was very untypically Indian really, because it was middle class in a country where most people are poor, and it was Muslim in a country where most people are Hindu, and it was urban in a country where most people live in villages. So it was rather eccentric Indian childhood, if you like.
Presenter asks
8:20You were packed off to England to Rugby school when you were thirteen. That must have been terrifying.
Actually, it was very exciting when my parents said to me, Did I want to go to school in England? And I jumped at it, really, and I did. But certainly I had no idea what it was actually going to be like because for a start it was very cold. ... I had never been so cold in my life.
The keepsakes
The book
It would be The Arabian Nights, because apart from anything else, it seems to me in a way to contain all other stories. It's also extremely long. ... I could spend the rest of my life reading The Arabian Nights quite cheerfully.
Presenter asks
9:07What about the other boys? How did you get on with them?
Well, not very well, really. ... It wasn't pleasant. There was a certain amount of fairly kind of racially based opposition. ... I really had the triple whammy, which is I was bad at games, good at studies, and foreign.
Presenter asks
25:00Why does identity matter so much to you?
I think probably it is just that you have a sense of identity being plural rather than singular, of it being made up of very many, very diverse elements. And then migration adds yet another element.
“The point about this song is that it's about how he sees himself as being made up of all sorts of different elements. ... That kind of mixed up character, that kind of hybrid figure, is very much to do with the kind of Indian life that I came out of, and it actually feels like my theme song.”
“I really had the triple whammy, which is I was bad at games, good at studies, and foreign.”
“Novels are born out of sudden lightings up of light bulbs above your head sometimes. ... They suddenly click together. And then I think, oh, that's what I'm thinking about. And that is always a kind of very pleasurable moment. But it doesn't happen by just walking around in the park. It happens by sitting at your desk and slogging.”
“I think if if it's a question of really being able to listen to something for a long time, I might just have that gentle flute music wafting along behind me. ... My bum might need soothing on the desert island.”