anita desai
Interview with Anita Desai
Magda Costa interviewed Anita Desai in Barcelona, 30 Jan 2001. Desai was in Spain to launch the Spanish and Catalan translations of Fasting, Feasting.
-How was it to grow up in a family like yours, with a German mother and a Bengali father, in India?
-When you are a child you take for granted what your family is; you don’t question it. The fact is that my mother adapted so completely to the Indian way of life that nobody thought of her as a foreigner anymore. It’s true that we spoke German at home, which is unusual in India, but I think it was only as I grew up that I realised our home was a bit unusual. We spoke German, we listened to to Western music, read Western literature to a greater extent than our friends and neighbours, but in every other way we were exactly as any other Indian family in that neighbourhood.
-You say your mother adapted completely to the Indian way of life. Did she also convert to Hinduism?
-No, she didn’t change her religion, but she didn’t bring us up to be Christians either.
-However, you went to a Christian school, St. Mary’s.
- It was a missionary school. My parents simply sent me there because it was nearby. In India children are often sent to a convent school because the education there is supposed to be of high standards. They are sent there for the sake of their education, but very few Indians ever convert. There’s a very small Christian community. When it comes to religion, when it comes to food, music, or cinema, Indians like their own ways; they don’t change very much. Indians manage to slip back and forth between the modern world and the ancient world, the Indian world and the Western world, with a great ease, without feeling any strain. If there’s one characteristic of India is that it’s very inclusive; it’s not exclusive.
-Later on you went to university in Delhi. Was it very unusual to be a woman in an Indian university at that time?
-No; it was a women’s college that I went to. Both my
Magda Costa interviewed Anita Desai in Barcelona, 30 Jan 2001. Desai was in Spain to launch the Spanish and Catalan translations of Fasting, Feasting.
-How was it to grow up in a family like yours, with a German mother and a Bengali father, in India?
-When you are a child you take for granted what your family is; you don’t question it. The fact is that my mother adapted so completely to the Indian way of life that nobody thought of her as a foreigner anymore. It’s true that we spoke German at home, which is unusual in India, but I think it was only as I grew up that I realised our home was a bit unusual. We spoke German, we listened to to Western music, read Western literature to a greater extent than our friends and neighbours, but in every other way we were exactly as any other Indian family in that neighbourhood.
-You say your mother adapted completely to the Indian way of life. Did she also convert to Hinduism?
-No, she didn’t change her religion, but she didn’t bring us up to be Christians either.
-However, you went to a Christian school, St. Mary’s.
- It was a missionary school. My parents simply sent me there because it was nearby. In India children are often sent to a convent school because the education there is supposed to be of high standards. They are sent there for the sake of their education, but very few Indians ever convert. There’s a very small Christian community. When it comes to religion, when it comes to food, music, or cinema, Indians like their own ways; they don’t change very much. Indians manage to slip back and forth between the modern world and the ancient world, the Indian world and the Western world, with a great ease, without feeling any strain. If there’s one characteristic of India is that it’s very inclusive; it’s not exclusive.
-Later on you went to university in Delhi. Was it very unusual to be a woman in an Indian university at that time?
-No; it was a women’s college that I went to. Both my