| Description | Track 1: recording setup 0.35 mins
Tracks 2-10: Interview with Frank Youngman, a British man who came to India in 1969 after graduating from Nottingham university. He talks about his interest in India and coming to Bombay via an overland journey to visit one of his university friends who lived there, his first impressions of India and the images of the country he had from his reading. He describes some of the incidents on his journey from Amritsar to Bombay, talking to a 'Sadarji' (Sikh) man on the train, and his experiences of sharing food and talking to people in his third class carriage, and the contrast between this and being taken to his friend's middle class flat. He describes the contrast between lifestyles feeling most acute when he was at a Christmas party organised for him and he saw the effects of a fire at the slum settlement nearby and people escaping with their belongings. He describes other instances where the contrast between western life and life in India becomes most striking and the need to suppress this sense to keep his peace of mind as much as possible. He explains his feelings of pity, despair and embarrassment at seeing beggars on the street, talks about his impressions of Bombay when arriving by train and passing through the slum settlements by the railway tracks, and the sense that you can pass from the ancient to the modern in India within one day, from the feudal system to atomic research and the computer industry. He goes on to discuss his work as an English teacher at the Cathedral school in Bombay, the influence of the western world on his students and his impression that he was more aware of Indian religion and politics than they were. He thinks that the students appreciated his informality as a teacher
Track 11: silence 0.13 mins
Tracks 12-17: Frank Youngman continues to talk about his experiences as a teacher at a school in Bombay, his students' attitudes towards western culture, their interest in hippies and Hare Krishna followers, their interest in whether they are representative of western youth, and their curiosity about him and his life; being able to cook for himself and having a job in a factory. He talks about spending most of his free time with Indian friends, meeting British people through the British Council, and having acquaintances amongst young British, European and American people who are travelling in India. He discusses his disillusionment with western society, the ways that his experience in India has changed his opinions about how to resolve social injustice, and his views about organised religions. He sets out his criticisms of the Hare Krishna movement, and goes on to talk about the places in India he has visited, his negative impressions of the young middle class western people who gather there, and their freedom to smoke cannabis and use heroin without much interference from the authorities
Total: 32.56 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0558680 |