CANDID CONVERSATIONS - A REVIEW

Title: Candid Conversations
Author: K P Bhanumathy.
Pages: 245; Price: Rs. 80
Publisher: National Book Trust, New Delhi

Review by M Rama Rao
New Delhi, April 28, 2007: ‘Preface’ and ‘Forward’ to ‘Candid Conversations’, KP Bhanumathy had with ‘towering persons’ of the past fifty years in her capacity as a broadcast journalist are as interesting as the stories that hold a mirror to the second half of the twentieth century and tell the reader that the leaders, notwithstanding the tough exterior they had reserved for the public, were gentle to the core and that they always cared for the detail even while focusing on the big picture.

Noted journalist Sardar Nihal Singh introduces the reader to Bhanumathy’s work as a ‘treasure trove’ of interviews that have been brought together ‘unvarnished by afterthought’. They represent a fascinating source of material for historians and researches because, according to him, ‘they tell us what men and women who made history thought in the prime of their lives’

Inder Malhotra, columnist, author and commentator, is no less effusive of his praise for Bhanumathy, whom he knew as a fellow journalist since October 1958. He compliments her ‘knack’ of asking precise questions and ‘gently nudging’ her quarry to stick to the point. The interviews that form the basis of the book under review were conducted when there was no Page Three and when TV was yet to make its presence felt in India.

As Malhotra rightly observes, the names of whose words adorn the pages of the book are ‘impressive’ to the point of ‘intimidating’. The author has resisted the temptation to confine her stories to her notes; the result is that a student and a researcher will find enough material about the ‘flavour’ of the period, some times in excess than needed and some times not enough to quench the thirst. But the nuggets Bhanumathy tells are something you will not find anywhere else.

Take this from her ‘first encounter’ with Jawaharlal Nehru. She was at the mike just behind the curtain as Bharat Natyam exponent Shanta Rao was performing on a make shift stage to mark the UNESCO Day at the Constitution Club. “As I reached the Talam Raga narration, I suddenly felt two hands gripping my shoulders with a hard shake, ‘what are you saying we cannot hear a word out there’. Puzzled I turned around. Lo and behold, what I saw made me tongue tied- it was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in person. He took the mike from my hands, ‘do you know the mike has failed’, he said, as he pulled the switch – you had switched it of, here take it and start again’ with a pat on my shoulder and a smile’.

No less interesting is Bhanumathy’s encounter much later with Panditji’s daughter. While covering a nine nation initiative held in Delhi for launching the Africa Fund, she was asked by Indira Gandhi to take protocol duties as well with the Uganda delegation led by Milton Obote because “I knew a smattering of Kiswahili’. At the Palam airport, to see off the delegation who were on their way to Bombay, Mrs Gandhi was surprised to see Bhanumathy and asked, “What are you doing here? Why are you not on that plane?” She immediately directed the Chief of Protocol ‘to take her with you’, and advised Bhanumathy ‘Don’t worry. I will take care…’. And sure enough when she landed in Bombay, Tara Cherian, the Governor’s wife smilingly whispered to her, ‘I have a set of clothes for you’. Now that was Indira Gandhi thoughtful and prompt in action.

Ho Chi Minh, Zhou Enlai, Che Guevara, Willy Brandt, Olof Palme, Lee Kuan Yew, Andre Malraux, John Kenneth Galbraith, Zia-ur-Rehman, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Vijaya Laxmi Pandit, Aung San Suu Kyi and a host of others from the world of politics, economics and letters come alive through the pages of the book and make us wonder how the author managed to make these men who had carved out a place in the history speak to her on tape quite often at a very short notice. Consider her interview with Zhou for instance. Just as he finished his midnight press conference at Rashtrapati Bhavan (1961) Bhanumathy went upto him and asked for an interview. “Have I not said enough for one night”, he asked. Her reply: “May be, but I would like something exclusive for All India Radio”. Zhou did not disappoint her even as he was getting ready to leave for the airport.

My best read in the book was the ‘conversation’ with Agatha Christie, when she visited India with her husband, Mallowan. He was in Delhi to attend an archaeological conference. “An archaeologist”, the writer of thriller detectives told Bhanumathy, “is the best husband any woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her”. Any doubt?