Proust questionnaire with Rakhshanda Jalil

Wading deep into the heart of fellow citizens

The Proust Questionnaire represents a confessional game that owes its structure to answers given by celebrated French writer Marcel Proust in two parties that he attended at ages 13 and 20 in the late 19th century. We bring these Parisian parlour confessions into the Indian capital to explore people’s lives, thoughts, values and experiences. In a series, we interview folks from diverse backgrounds.

So today, say hello to Rakhshanda Jalil. An author, literary critic and an acclaimed translator of classic works, she often shares her baking experiments as well as reading experiences with friends on Facebook. These days, she is coping with coronavirus-induced isolation in her lovely central Delhi residence with her husband and two daughters. For the first time in a very long time, she says, she is doing absolutely no writing, not even translation. “Oh, yes, I am also losing a lot of friends ... to the virus of communalism.”

A gardener; to plant seeds in the soil, watch them sprout and grow is the greatest marvel

Ideally, in a cottage in the hills with a little patch of a garden; But I guess I am doomed to live in this benighted city

Favourite colour: red

Flower: I love the narcissus for their delicate beauty and tremulous fragrance. They come to us in Delhi for a very short while tied in bunches with a bit of a twine. Called Nargis in Urdu, they are a popular trope in Urdu poetry and used as a simile for the seeing eye (nargisi ankhein). And then there are the divine nargisi kofte, too!

Your favourite bird

Sunbird; it is quick and agile, I love the way the sun glints off its small, shiny body

The Urdu writer Intizar Husain – for the way he fashioned stories, the expressions and idioms he used, culled from what was once a real, spoken Urdu and a living literary culture, and the fact that he has single-handedly crafted a new literary sensibility

Your favourite poets

Oh, too many but chiefly, in English: TS Eliot. WB Yeats, John Keats; and in Urdu: Faiz, Iqbal, Ghalib, Mir, Shahryar and Zehra Nigah

Odysseus; not for the wars he fought but the adventures he had on his way home!

Alice from Alice in Wonderland… nothing fazed her ever!

I have been listening rather a lot to the Sabri Brothers recently

Your favourite painters

Amrita Sher-gil, Frida Kahlo, and I adore A Ramachandran and his ‘Lotus pond’ series

Jawaharlal Nehru: there is nothing not to like in the man. I admire his erudition, his humanity, his elegance, his leadership and most importantly his writings – be it his big books or the notes he wrote even to the most casual of acquaintances... Also, Dr Rashid Jahan whose biography I wrote: a feminist writer, activist, doctor, a complete human being

Hitler rather obviously but all those emperors as well as modern-day politicians who foolishly, and proudly, rushed into wars that caused thousands to die as collateral damage

The British suffragettes who fought for the most basic of rights for women: the right to vote

Paratha with aam ka achaar; coconut water Your favourite names

Tara, Ali, Benazir

Bigotry

The idea of military intervention goes against everything I hold dear. There is no nobility or glory in war

How do you wish to die?

In my own home, and as painlessly as possible. Just as the Believer has been promised death, like fragrance leaving the flower – as an aunt told me by way of solace when my father passed away suddenly sitting in his favourite armchair, talking to my mother