| Description | Track 1: silence 0.17 mins
Tracks 2-8: Interview with Jean Modi, an American woman who lives in Bombay and is married to an Indian man. She looks back over her experiences during her first year in India and discusses her feelings of guilt were she to return to America because of the affluence of the country, and the problems she thinks she would have in readjusting to the American outlook on the rest of the world. She says that she feels caught between the two worlds of India and America but feels that she has a feeling of commitment to staying in India despite the current frustrations of her life there. She talks about having idealistic notions of going to rural India to do medical work, attending classes at medical school in Bombay and being disappointed and put off by the teaching and the apathy of her fellow students. She discusses the political beliefs of the students she met, who she thinks follow their parents' anti-Communist views without really questioning them, the activities and lack of success of the Anti-Communal Youth Front, organised in Bombay after the anti-Muslim riots in the city. She goes on to talk about her husband's research into Indian religion, principally Buddhism, which incorporated aspects of Indian politics and economics, his editorial job at Oxford University Press, the difficulties he has had in adjusting to his life in India after five years in the United States and the growth of his concerns about his own country since returning there
Track 9: silence 1.17 mins
Tracks 10-21: Interview with Peggy Jaggan, a British woman who came to India in 1952 when she married her Indian husband, Raj. She talks about her family's association with India, her sister's marriage to an Indian man, and her first impressions of India when she arrived in Bombay and travelled to Punjab by train. She talks about her difficulties in getting used to the heat, meeting her husband's family for the first time, and the reactions of their friends and neighbours. She describes her attempts to learn Hindi in London and her difficulties in being understood, and her good relationship with her husband's family, and the contrasts between life in Punjab and in Bombay. She talks about the opportunities for social activities in Bombay, the things she misses about England, and the aspects of Indian life that she prefers. She discussses the changes she noticed when she visited England in the early 1960s, feeling lost and strange there, and feeling homesick when she first arrived in India. She talks about being able to visit her sister and her husband in Kerala, her childhood in the Lake District, her ambivalence towards religion, and her Indian friends attitudes towards religion. She discusses the lack of curiosity she has experienced from people on the street and her social contact with other couples she knows who are in 'mixed marriages'
Track 22: silence 0.33 mins
Total: 32.58 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF534B0488080 |