Épisodes

  • Fraud, fear and loathing from Jamtara to Sihanoukville

    Fraud, fear and loathing from Jamtara to Sihanoukville
    Oct 30 2025
    "I wanted to use fraud as a way to look at our society today. We have a fraud underworld industry that employs multitudes. If you have such a large number of people who will readily go over to the ethically grey zone -- they join to help family and then they find there's no coming back -- they are an incredible asset not just for someone running a scam in India but anyone anywhere in the world who is trying to target any demographic. The story of fraud is the story of globalisation and to my mind, more vice versa. It's a workforce that has also come to the attention of these very sophisticated transnational scam cartels, proper cyber crime mafias from China. They can see that people can be very easily lured into migrating to some of the scam cities being set up in South East Asia where there is very little regulation and the political class is complicit. Those who are lured, some younger than 20, are kept in closed compounds and they could lose their lives if they refuse to scam. In India, decades of inequality has pushed some people to the point where they feel they have nothing to lose. It is a matter of survival. The human trafficking part of this is grisly and the truth is it's continuing at a very large scale."- Snigdha Poonam, author, Scamlands; Inside the Asian Empire of Fraud that Preys on the World talks to Manjula Narayan about the scam ecosystem powered by a transnational workforce from low income countries that's leaving a trail of devastation from Delhi to Manchester, Texas and Melbourne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    50 min
  • The ache of a phantom limb

    The ache of a phantom limb
    Oct 23 2025
    "I have my own history. I was evicted from Kashmir like many thousands of others. But when I went to Bastar and when I looked at other conflicts and what it was doing to other people, my own misery faded in comparison; because even in the worst of my situation, I had not touched the kind of pain and marginalisation I touched while travelling in the hinterland of India"- Rahul Pandita, author, Our Friends In Good Houses, talks to Manjula Narayan about drawing from his journalistic work in his first novel, points of similarity with Neel, the book's protagonist, the vibrance of his female characters including the Maoist guerilla Gurupriya, who stays with the reader long after the book is put away, and how, besides being a study of one man's search for home, this is also a snapshot of contemporary India with its great dreams and unfulfilled yearnings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    53 min
  • Grip of a godman

    Grip of a godman
    Oct 17 2025
    "In India, we don't use the word 'cult' but the photo of a godman hangs in every other home and it's all placed under the umbrella of culture. Cults go after the most vulnerable, those who are not thinking with their rational mind. That's exactly what happened with my parents. When they saw death, they gravitated towards what gave them most certainty. The majority of people going to such gurus are going for something related to their health; they are going in the hope of getting better. It could be related to disease, addiction or poverty. When you don't get answers from anywhere, you go to someone who gives answers as the guru did in my parents' case. People won't get healed but they are hooked by the continuous promise that if they sustain on this path, things will change. When you become part of a cult, there is manipulation, fear and guilt. In my case, everything got attached to my mother's wellbeing; that if you don't follow the rules, she will lose her life. You start getting manipulated because you don't want her to die. I see my parents as victims too. Within the cult, you are only allowed to do certain things like watch the guru's sermons or listen to his mantras. After a while, from disuse, your brain starts to atrophy and you lose critical thinking because you are not allowed to question anything, These cults may be born from any religion; the thing is they distort the teachings of that religion to suit their own narrative. This is possibly the first book by an Indian about being influenced by a cult. I'm trying to create awareness so people can spot when this happens. You need mental health professionals to deprogram victims because indoctrination changes your brain wiring. There has to be a larger systemic change with the creation of proper programmes so victims can be led back into their lives."- Priyamvada Mehra, author, The Cost of a Promised Afterlife, talks about how her family was drawn into the fold of godman Rampal after her mother was diagnosed with a brain tumour, the blind belief that led to the deterioration of her condition, the proliferation of religious charlatans who prey on those who have lost hope, and the mental abuse that being part of a cult entails Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h et 2 min
  • Stories from the Seven Sisters+1

    Stories from the Seven Sisters+1
    Oct 10 2025
    "Life is uncertain, which many of us tend to forget, and there are many things we can't explain; for those things that are inexplicable, we have stories. I was born into conflict, and growing up in Shillong in the 1990s, literature was a lifeline. It allowed us to see that, whatever the past we had inherited, there were other possibilities. Literature gives clarity to the messy parts of life, even if it doesn't have all the answers. Stories tell us to not let life wear us down. A lot of the creative nuances of the storytelling from the northeast come from the oral context, things that are not readily available in print. It influences style and gives the sense that the narrator is talking to you, the reader. Oral traditions have a way, especially with storytelling, of not being fixed, of being fluid. They can move from context to context and generate a new meaning from each of these contexts. This is because they take the reader into account in terms of delivery and register. In the stories from the northeast, orality and print play off each other and what emerges is a hybridised writing where you have both traditions feeding into the new writing. I wanted to represent diverse perspectives; so representation was one of the things that drove me to these stories." - Jobeth Ann Warjri, editor, The Greatest Stories from the Northeast Ever Told, talks to me about the black humour of people from conflict zones, the rich oral traditions of storytelling being threatened by globalisation, and the task of putting together a volume of stories from an area as diverse as the northeast of India, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    57 min
  • On the record

    On the record
    Oct 3 2025
    "I was picked to cover Punjab in 1984 and that's how my journey began. After that, I was sucked into the lives of people living with everyday violence. For me, it was about being a storyteller and about the sociology and the psychology of violence and why it had taken root in the different conflict zones that I've mapped. I'm talking about conflicts that are still relevant. I've tried to trace them from where they started, how they started, and why it's still so easy, four decades later, to stoke the embers. What makes young men turn their bodies into missiles? This has kept me going for 41 years. I've never been pulled by the force of religion. I don't question other people's faith but I've seen religion play a part in fuelling violence. I've never wanted my face to be my calling card. So, except for two years when I worked with TV, I've always been a print journalist. I enjoy the anonymity of print. All I've ever tried to do is be an archive. This book is part of that archive. Along the way, I've learnt it isn't just conflict which is murky; politics makes it murkier." - Harinder Baweja, senior journalist and author, 'They Will Shoot You, Madam' talks to Manjula Narayan about the conflicts she's covered including Punjab, Kashmir, the Mumbai attacks and Afghanistan, the people she's encountered from Chhota Rajan and KPS Gill to Yasin Malik, and about the fascinating and still unknown backstories that set her book apart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h et 9 min
  • A desi love story: adventures with Indies

    A desi love story: adventures with Indies
    Sep 26 2025
    "I love travelling and I was sad to leave my dogs all the time. I had to find a way of travelling with them so Indian Railways came into the picture. Our first journey was from Nizamuddin in Delhi to Madgaon in Goa and the dogs were really well behaved. They really took to it. Tigress fell in love with the pantry! Since then we've done over 75 train journeys across India and by the end of it there was me and my husband and son and three dogs! When you travel with your dogs, you have to chart your own course, make your own map and do it at your own pace and you can really do that in India on the railways. Also, Indies are so much fun and so intelligent, I really hope more people rescue and adopt them. We live in a very hypocritical society. If a pandit says feed a dog or a cow to get something, only then will people do it because it means they will gain somehow! Otherwise, we don't care about anything beyond our own unit; we don't care about the immediate surroundings, the trees, the garbage... These animals too are invisible to most people and many view them as a nuisance. To change this we have to raise kind kids. I hope this book will change the way people view Indian dogs. I wanted to write a very positive, very funny book about them." - Divya Dugar, author, Chaos in a Coupe talks to Manjula Narayan about the great joys of rattling around the country with her family, the magic of Indian railways and slow travel, and the unconditional love of canine companions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h et 9 min
  • Of birds, bees and educated fleas

    Of birds, bees and educated fleas
    Sep 19 2025
    "Humans don't really know what we are doing. Mostly, we are blundering along. A lot of animals that were once looked upon favourably and bred - like the pigeon for sending messages - are now considered as pests. It is really because of human intervention that many of these animals and birds have become abundant"- Deepa Padmanaban, author, Invisible Housemates, talks to Manjula Narayan about familiar creatures found in and around our homes like geckos, rats and ants, stuffing her book with amazing factoids about everything from incest-averseness among cockroaches to how India once exported rhesus macaques for scientific research, and how the elimination of sparrows in China was one of the factors that led to the Great Famine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    47 min
  • Hymn to Hanuman

    Hymn to Hanuman
    Sep 11 2025
    "As a child I lived in a hostel away from my parents and I was always scared so my parents told me to recite the Hanuman Chalisa. That's how the text entered my life. Recently, I met a delegation from Trinidad and Tobago who said that the one thing they desperately needed was a singable translation of Indian spiritual texts as they can no longer read the original Awadhi or Hindi. So then I decided to do a translation that was not only literary but could also be sung with music. The Hanuman Chalisa teaches us ultimate humility; to approach everything with the notion that you do not know anything. Everytime I read it, it has a fresh angle. That's the beauty of Tulsidas' work. It's a tool for mindfulness and focus and it's also a text of diplomacy. It is amazingly condensed and layered and I'd like people to explore it not only as a spiritual text but also as an introduction to Indian sutra traditions."- Abhay K, poet, diplomat, translator of The Hanuman Chalisa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    53 min