The Hindu : New Delhi News : Captured on tape for eternity

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 30, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Captured on tape for eternity

By Mandira Nayar

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 29. The father of the Indian novel, Mulk Raj Anand, might be silent forever now but in a small corner of the sprawling Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) here, "Uncle Mulk" as he was widely known, will be 95 forever. Capturing his rather eventful life, IGNCA has tried to keep alive on tape a little essence of a man who chose to do what no Indian had done before -- write novels in English.

Having lived through two World Wars, Independence, Partition as well as "free'' India, Dr. Anand wrote books that have made history and has also been involved in shaping the events of his times. And talking about his love, life and wife in an interview with the then academic director of IGNCA, Kapila Vatsyayan, recorded in 1999, Dr. Anand shared his rather lesser known side.

"I got arrested and my father who was an Army man was very angry. My mother cried. I then decided to leave home and take a boat to England on a chance. I thought I was going to Europe, this wonderful world, but when I reached it was only drizzle, drizzle and drizzle,'' he recalled.

During a journey that began in Peshawar and brought him "closer to his roots" in England to finally end in India, Dr. Anand lived with the legends that people read about in history books -- George Orwell, Hitler, Freud, Mahatma Gandhi, and even Rudyard Kipling. "My Irish girlfriend went back from France to return home and I felt that I must go home to join the Indian movement. I arrived in India on January 1, 1927, and went to the Ahmedabad Ashram to see Mahatma Gandhi. He asked me, `What do you want to do?'. I replied, `I have come to find out from you.' He then told me that I must find the answer for myself,'' he remembered.

Setting out on a pilgrimage to find India, Dr. Anand turned his search into a discovery for countless others. And going beyond just creativity, he actually lived by the values that he wrote about. Reaching out to less fortunate younger people as a mentor, he lives on in more ways than just his words.

"I was a student of English literature from Dehra Dun. I started writing to Mulk Raj Anand and we developed a relationship through our letters. He even invited me to live in his house in Delhi. He was my mentor. We used to sit under a tree in his house and scan the morning papers. He was a very disciplined person. He was always Uncle Mulk. He said he was 98 years young and had never lost the childlike curiosity he had,'' remembered social activist Vidya Bhushan Ravat. Giving people a little slice of his historic life, Doordarshan will be broadcasting his interview later this week. The news channel New Delhi Television will also show excerpts of his interview.

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