Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer best known for the epic Indian family saga 'A Suitable Boy', winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
On the island
Eight records
I love the Beach Boys. I think this is great. Except for one thing, which is that for a long time I wasn't sure what a tea bird was. And then I realized that it was the underbird. And a friend of mine was confused. He said that for a long time he thought it was till Daddy takes your teapot away.
Aja Utaku Maha Utaku Haburaat Guzarene Wali (The Night Will Soon Fade Into Dawn)
This is a song now from the movie Avara. And Lathamangeshkar has been singing now for God knows how many decades. And this is an actress called Nargis. She's waiting for her lover and missing him. And the night is fading into dawn and he hasn't arrived.
Nightingales and Lancaster Bombers (recorded in a Surrey wood, May 1942)Favourite
A few years ago I got a CD which had different tracks of nightingales singing. It chose a track of a nightingale with a very different kind of bird, a songless bird really, a bomber or in fact not a bomber, but a whole lot of bombers flying over the southern countryside of England on their way to a bombing raid in Germany. It's kind of heartbreaking in its counterpoint.
Am Abend da es Kühle war (At Evening Hour of Calm and Peace)
Johann Sebastian Bach (from St Matthew Passion)
This is something that comes from the work of Western music that I just consider really the supreme work. Every minute of it moves me and at the same time speaks of genius and beauty.
Prelude from Partita for Solo Violin No. 3 in E major
It's a wonderful sort of dance-like energetic prelude where it really seems as if there's more than one instrument playing because they're different tunes intertwining with each other.
Thoughts While Travelling at Night
Alec Roth (from Songs in Time of War, text by Du Fu, translated by Vikram Seth)
Over the last few years I was involved in a project to bring out a libretto each year which would be set to music by Alec Roth. This is from the first year — a libretto set in China, translations of a poet called Du Fu. The poems were written for the most part in time of war.
Amir Khan is one of the greatest singers of the last century of Indian classical music. This is him singing an evening rag, Rag Marwa, which is a very contemplative rag. I can almost listen to anything that Amir Khan sings. At every minute I feel that I am in the presence of a musician who is singing for himself as if the world were no more than the world of sound.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:50What happens when you're not able to write? Is it because you're distracted by something else?
Yes, quite often. I mean the fact is I am not a particularly determined person and not a particularly industrious person. So something has to grip me before I really get into it. The impulse to write has to be very strong. Now if, for example, I'm impelled instead to do something at which I'm no particular good, like sculpture, but that impulsion is stronger, then I'm afraid writing will take a back seat.
Presenter asks
5:31Are you somebody who always wants to be travelling? Do you have a fairly nomadic impulse?
I would have said perhaps earlier, but I with the years I've grown, I think, more sedentary. But here again it's something since you touched upon California. I was supposed to be writing my dissertation … and then I wandered into a bookstore and read Pushkin's wonderful novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, and out went my dissertation, on which I'd spent a number of years, and in came the idea to write The Golden Gate.
Presenter asks
6:21When you're travelling, do you almost travel in order to fuel the writing?
I wouldn't say so. I like travelling kind of freely and unburdened by any future use … sometimes I think that really what I do when I'm travelling is not so much to gather fodder for future books, but to gather fodder for future nostalgias.
The keepsakes
The book
Tang Shi San Bai Shou (An anthology of Tang dynasty poems)
Various (including Du Fu)
I'll take a book that sounds a bit strange, but I think would give me a lot of sustenance.
The luxury
calligraphy materials (brushes, paper, red seal)
After having read a few poems of the Tang dynasty poetry, what I will do is take my calligraphy materials along.
Presenter asks
10:00You have said of those times [at boarding school], 'Sometimes at lights out, I wished I would never wake up.' You sound like you were desperately unhappy.
In those days, I'm not sure I would have been particularly happy anywhere. I mean, slowly, as the years pass, I've become increasingly happy if such a thing can be said. But in those days I can't really blame it on anything particular. I think it was loneliness, really. I was into books and reading … I don't think I enjoyed people's company very much, and … until my mid thirties I was so terribly shy that I really, even in a one-to-one conversation, couldn't really look people in the eye.
Presenter asks
23:42Where was the pain located? What was the pain about [regarding coming to terms with your sexuality]?
Uncertainty about myself, uncertainty about acceptance by society, uncertainty about ever finding love, all sorts of things of that nature. But it also perhaps went with my feeling of as a child being lonely. So I think all those things fed into each other in a kind of strange vortex, really.
Presenter asks
27:44You'll be sixty next birthday. What do you feel looking back about how you've spent your time so far?
It's gone very fast. I don't know how I spent my time, and there are plenty of things I want to do. But who knows if I'm going to be given another few decades or not.
“The way I could interest myself in writing a sequel … was not to make it a standard sequel, but to jump to the present. A sixty-year jump.”
“The fact is I am not a particularly determined person and not a particularly industrious person. So something has to grip me before I really get into it.”
“In those days, I'm not sure I would have been particularly happy anywhere. … I think it was loneliness, really. … I don't think I enjoyed people's company very much, and I think until my mid thirties or I was so terribly shy that I really, even in a one-to-one conversation, couldn't really look people in the eye.”
“We live for such a ridiculously short time in this life … to not add being with people that one loves and spending time with them … is as important to me as a literary inspiration or Welsh or pottery.”
“I love them enormously and they me … the last project we had together was my teaching them bridge. … I think with kids if it's a game then they can learn all sorts of stuff.”