| Description | Interview with Adrian Stevens and his wife, Hira Pande, in Calcutta. Adrian Stevens talks about his experience of travelling in a third class carriage in Western India with a Parsi friend, his lack of knowledge of any Indian language apart from a little Hindi, not having the necessity to learn a language because his wife can speak three Indian languages, and talks about the Indian films and film directors. He goes on to discuss his expectations of India, his initial reactions to living in Bombay, and the beginning of his 'love affair' with India when he visited a blind welfare programme in a rural area and when he visited his wife's parents' farm. He talks about the attraction of rural India for him because he thinks that people there have a greater sense of identity. He compares life in Calcutta with life in Bombay and Hira Pande joins the conversation at this point. The couple talk about the changes they have seen, the declining number of employees from England coming to work in banking in India, Hira Pande's family's reaction to her marriage to Adrian Stevens, which she thinks would have been negative if he had been a Hindu, and her parents' acceptance of the marriage. They discuss Hira Pande's western education, European way of thinking, and superior knowledge of English literature, and Adrian Stevens talks about the benefits of having common interests in a 'mixed marriage' (tracks 1-7).
Hira Pande talks about studying education in Edinburgh, teaching at a Parsi school in Bombay and studying for an MA. She talks about lecturing in Bombay and at the Loretto convent college in Calcutta, the social background of the girls who attend the college, the texts she teaches, which include Shakespeare and Dickens and the varying enthusiasm of her students (tracks 8-10)
Adrian Stevens continues to talk about his attitudes and relations towards other British people in Calcutta. He thinks that there is a clique-ish atmosphere amongst the ex-patriat community, his resentment of the isolation that the British commercial community in Calcutta impose on themselves and their lack of contact with the rest of the city, and his suggestion that the situation might be different amongst people who are in India as part of the British Council or cultural institutions. He discusses attitudes of Indian people he knows towards British people and their exploitation of the country, the regular visits that he and his wife have made to England and the increasing affluence he has noticed there. Hira Pande talks about going back to Edinburgh, the differences between Scotland and London, and Adrian Stevens tries to articulate his feelings for India (tracks 11-16).
Total: 32.38 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0559180 |