Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer, born in Trinidad to an Indian family, who won a scholarship to Oxford and later worked at the BBC.
On the island
Eight records
I spent some time in Indonesia last year and this. And on the way back, I rested in a neutral place. I rested in Madras and Bombay, largely because of the hotels there. And on the hotel tape system, the recording thing they have beside your bed, I heard this particular piece by Bismillah Khan.
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Well, it's going to be something I suppose I have heard more of than any other piece of music in my life. It's Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings. And this record was the record I heard every morning as I was going to school on the local rediffusion service. And it meant that one was a little late. It was the signature tune of a morning programme called Morning Melody, if I remember rightly. And I'd like to use it on the island. To mark the passing of time, to keep the calendar, very important.
They fed me. That was easier. The American accent was easier. Infinitely easier. And of course, Hollywood, the films of the Fortes, were prodigious. ... You know, I look at them again and again, the ones that really affected me. and uh moved me. And in addition to that, there were They were the musicals, and I'm choosing something To sum up that that side.
Well, I first came in touch with this song. with a British film made about the war, the El Alamein Victory. It's called Desert Victory. And I heard Lala Anderson there, I think, singing Lily Marlane. She was the sweetheart of the German forces, of course. Absolutely, and all that's very moving to me.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050
Bath Festival Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Yehudi Menuhin
Well This is where my music education began a few years ago. I had just finished a novel and was vegetating. And uh my wife both were cut price Brandenburg concertos. And in my vacancy I I just listened. I I think I listened for days to the to the Brandenburg concertos until I actually could distinguish the line or the tune, you know, if that doesn't offend too many people. ... I thought, well, really, this is good writing. It's immediately acceptable on the surface, and then you can listen to lots of things below, at different times, different things. And good writing should be like that.
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado
I must say why I am not having any nice things like Mozart and Haydn on the desert island. I am not having them, because they will stimulate my wish to listen to more. And I think I'll be tormented by that, since it would not be possible to listen to more, and I you know, I'm very ignorant of these matters. Whereas the the Mala is something which is complete in itself and it satisfies. The expectation it arouses, and it doesn't stimulate the wish for more. And it I like it because it also it's very, very long. I like its development.
Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111Favourite
This again is part of one's education. And I'm choosing it. Because it's long, this is very important. I like to be aware of development. I like to work at the music. And uh I worked a lot at this one and listened to it a lot and was able to pick the line out.
After listening to this [Gamelan] for all the time I was in Indonesia, I passed through India, and Indian classical music was suddenly extraordinarily easy. And I found it beautiful, just as Menuen says it is, that it's it's really wonderful. It's as it's as good to me as Beethoven.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:29How important to you is music?
Well, it isn't really important. Largely because of my My background. I was born in Trinidad, very musical place, but I was born in an Indian family, and to me music was something outside my family. I've I've come to to it. in the way that I have come to it. Only very, very recently. And although it is true that at times I want to play the odd record, I really can do without it.
Presenter asks
2:28Are there many Indians in Trinidad, and when and why did they go there?
When I was born, I suppose we were a community of about a hundred thousand. ... They went there to work on the on the sugar estates after the abolition of slavery. So they've been there for a long time. I think the first migrants went over in eighteen forty five. We're a very old community. I think that my own ancestors went over there about a hundred years ago. So I can really claim a grandfather who's come from India on one side, but for the rest I am very much a man of the New World.
Presenter asks
3:45It is said that you swore an oath at the age of twelve that you would leave Trinidad within five years. [Is that true?]
That is true. ... Because I was aware that I was born in a place that was very far from civilization. By civilization I meant a way of life where the mind and the activities of the mind would be given due regard, because I myself thought that unless I got to a place where the mind was regarded, I would be crushed and extinguished. And this fear of extinction Was The great driving force in my early my early life.
The keepsakes
The book
I'd like to keep my mind going, and so I'd like to live as far as possible, the other side of the life which I have not lived, I would like to live the mathematical side. I would like you to get me a book which would take me from A as high as possible as you would allow me in mathematics, so that day by day I can have this intellectual excitement.
The luxury
I would like to take that with a smile and meditate on it from time to time. I find it very comforting.
Presenter asks
4:25What was the first impact of Oxford? Was it as wonderful as you thought it was going to be, or was it a disappointment?
I had come from this curious background. I was among strange people with strange social manners. I was in no position to appreciate their manners. I was in no position to appreciate the complexity of English society. It is bizarre because I so much wanted to go to Oxford and then having got there, one really felt let down. I suppose not by the place, but I suppose one had expected something that didn't really exist.
Presenter asks
21:40What is your writing discipline? Do you set yourself so many hours a day, so many words a day? How do you operate?
It's become a very messy process of late, with age and with insomnia. ... I really, after thinking about what I have to do, and getting up very late and drugged, I can start writing at about four thirty, and write till about seven thirty, perhaps on some occasions, eight. And then I if I've written well, if I've written about seven hundred words or a thousand words, my mind becomes very, very active and I just stay awake. And so this good day of writing is followed by a period of stupefaction. But I am entirely involved and uh consumed. By whatever I'm doing, however small and however short, I live with the whole thing, I carry the whole thing in my head, and I am restless until it's all on paper.
Presenter asks
28:39Would you try to escape [from the desert island]?
No. I'll tell you why. Growing up on a tropical island I have always been terrified of the sea. I'm frightened of drowning and choking. The other reasons I think that after a little time in solitude existing in conditions like those of a mental illness, one probably will not be fit for human converse again. I'll stay. And because not because I dislike the world. I love the world. I love everything in it. It is just that I feel I'll become very strange away from the world.
“unless I got to a place where the mind was regarded, I would be crushed and extinguished. And this fear of extinction Was The great driving force in my early my early life.”
“I've oft thought, you know, that perhaps if my father had lived it might have damaged me. I would have felt Here was another person. As it was, when he died I I was I was free.”
“I thought, well, really, this is good writing. It's immediately acceptable on the surface, and then you can listen to lots of things below, at different times, different things. And good writing should be like that.”
“I think that after a little time in solitude existing in conditions like those of a mental illness, one probably will not be fit for human converse again.”