| Description | Track 1: silence 0.11 mins
Interview with Adrian Stevens and his wife Hira Pande, in Calcutta. Adrian Stevens talks about his time in Bombay and Calcutta and explains that he came as an employee of a British commercial firm largely based in India, but that he also wanted to travel and work abroad because of his family background. His father worked in colonial service, and he was born in Argentina, and he explains that England seemed dull and drab to him and he could not visualise himself working there. He talks about his childhood in Argentina and West Africa, attending school in England, and working in London in various different jobs. He talks about being posted to Bombay with his job for ten years, and then being posted to Calcutta. He describes his first impressions of Bombay when he arrived in 1959, lodging with a Parsi family and meeting new friends and the woman who became his wife, who is also a Parsi. Hira Pande joins the conversation to talk about her family background and her education in Bombay. Adrian Stevens continues to discuss meeting other people in the Parsi community through his contacts with the family he was lodging with and his views of the attitudes of members of this community towards the past. He goes on to talk about his friendship with a Hindu who had a critical attitude towards the British but also had a respect for Adrian because of his interest in Indian culture. He considers whether his friend spoke about British imperialism, and describes his attitudes towards Hindu culture (tracks 2-10)
Track 11: silence 0.18 mins
Adrian Stevens continues to discuss his interest in aspects of Hindu culture and Hinduism and being influenced in the reading of Hindu epics by his friend and by a member of the Parsi family he lodged with. He tried to explain the reasons why people in India are interested in Hindu myths, and whether there is an element of 'Hindu chauvinism'. He goes on to talk about being shocked at witnessing extreme poverty in the country, but that the situation becomes less shocking over time. He thinks that there is more despair and hopelessness in Calcutta than Bombay and talks about being influenced politically by a Bengali ex-Communist friend and imagining that he himself would be attracted to the Naxalite movement if he were eighteen with no chance of gaining employment. He recognises he is in a minority amongst British people living in India. Hira Pande gives her opinion about the British community in Calcutta and thinks that they live in isolation, only going between their office and the 'club', and that they are living twenty years behind the times and are unconscious of political realities. Adrian Stevens tries to sum up his experiences of living in India. He thinks having an Indian wife has given him a certain relationship with the country that he might not have had otherwise, and talks about some of the different social attitudes that exist in India (tracks 12-16).
Total: 32.39 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0558880 |