| Your father, the late Nawab Hoshiar Jung, was the musahib of the last Nizam of Hyderabad. Your mother and brother are renowned Urdu poets. On the one hand, you seem to be rooted in your aristocracy and on the other; you have also broken from its conventions and led a life of your own. Was it easy? |
| Perhaps it was not but I did not think about it then. I moved with the flow. In youth it seemed like a torrent. Leaving for the US perhaps freed me and helped me to find a new identity. |
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| How did you develop an interest in the lives of women of India, especially rural India? |
| When I started travelling for my book, Unveiling India, I met women in a way for the first time. I have mentioned this in my foreword to Unveiling India and the answer lies there. |
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| Apart from spending many years on a scholarship in the US, you have also contributed articles on Indian women for The New York Times and The Sunday Times (London). What are the positive aspects that you have noticed about the West? |
| In the West, people work hard, strive for excellence and look outward with hope and optimism rather than going inward and losing hope, which comes naturally to us in India. |
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| As a widely travelled writer, what differences did you see in women all over the world? |
| They are different in cultural patterns and the way they live. However, the emotions and the way they deal with life is the same. |
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| Depicting the ‘mixed fortunes’ of women in India, “Beyond the Courtyard” - sequel to “Unveiling India”- presents a paradox. How do you see the position of women evolving in the coming years? |
| I cannot read the future. But change will come, albeit slowly. |
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| Do you think that the plight of the women in our country is a severe attitude problem, an attitude that is not just inherited but also ingrained in our social and educational systems? |
| Yes. |
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| What does education mean to you? |
| Education should teach us to be in control of our lives. It should endow us with that energy of making our own decisions about our lives. |
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| What do you feel about the present generation of young people in India? Do you have any message for them? |
| I do not give messages to people. But I did tell one young man from La Martinere School in Calcutta that the young must begin to talk to each other. Talking helps to ventilate the mind. The answers to many problems that they face may emerge from sharing views and dilemmas. |
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| Why do you feel the need of introducing adolescent studies in colleges and universities? |
| I feel few people care to understand the state of mind of a young person. They need to be understood. |
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| In one of his columns for Tribune India, Khushwant Singh wrote, “Though most of her writing is about women…she has no women friends.” Is this true and if so why? |
| No. My best friends are women. Khushwant exaggerates and writes to fit his own opinions. |
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| Interviewed by Satarupa Ray |
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