00:17Veteran journalist and writer Ashok Neelakintanayir, also known as T.N. Ashok, has turned to profoundly
00:25wrenching tragedies caused by chronic kidney failure into an engaging fictionalized memoir
00:32titled Borrowed Time, Borrowed Hope. Ashok's first wife died in 2002 at age 46 after a prolonged and
00:42harrowing ordeal because of her chronic renal failure. Some years later, Ashok remarried, but by
00:49a cruel quirk of fate, even his second wife, Samantha, developed a kidney disease and passed
00:56away at age 59 in 2025. The aftermath of his first wife's chronic renal problems was deeply
01:04traumatic since it seriously disrupted his career as a journalist as well as caused enormous financial
01:11challenges. Much against his professional instincts and passions, Ashok joined the corporate world,
01:17heading the public affairs division of a major multinational company. That also brought a
01:23different set of challenges for a former journalist. This is Ashok's fourth book, the other three being
01:29No Time to Hide in 2022, its update of the same name in the same year, and No Time to
01:37Escape in 2023.
01:39Ashok spoke to MCR from New Delhi. Welcome to Mayang Shah Reports. Ashok, it's a great pleasure to have you.
01:46Thank you so much, sir. And many congratulations on your book, Borrowed Time, Borrowed Hope.
01:54I'm delighted. You know, your novels, I mean, it's sort of a fictionalized version of your life.
02:03Yeah. It fictionalizes your life along with your late wife, Usha's real life together in a rather
02:10compelling narrative. I read quite a bit of it, and I think it's, it's, it is very engaging.
02:16Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.
02:19Since fiction offers creative freedom that honest biographies don't, how do you resist the challenge
02:27of not going overboard in terms of your narrating your life story? Why are this fictionalized versions?
02:34No, I fictionalized the version for two reasons. One was because it was narrating one half of the
02:42book in my life in the corporate sector. And I had a NDA with the corporate company. It was a
02:50$23 billion French company. So I didn't want them to get upset. So it took me about 23 years to
02:58publish the book because I left that company in 2008. And I wrote the book only in 2025. I wrote
03:06the
03:06book. So that makes it about nearly 17 years after which I've written the book. So the reason is,
03:14I didn't want too much of my personal life out in public. So I fictionalized the book and narrated
03:22the real life incidents and made it a little more dramatic to resonate with the people so that they
03:28understand the situation one goes through in such critical times, you know. You know, at one level,
03:35the book is about Ushad or her fictional avatar, Arushi's life upended by chronic renal failure and
03:44your tenacious battle against it. How was it on the pages of the book? I didn't get you. How was
03:54reliving the whole experience again via this book? Yeah, it wasn't emotionally not very tiring or
04:03exhausting because the actual incidents happened between 1998 to 2002. And I was writing the book 22
04:10years later and I got married a second time and I lost my second wife also to the same disease.
04:16So the death of my second wife was haunting me more than the death of my first wife. I don't
04:21know if
04:22people like me to say that or not, but that's the fact. That's the hard facts. So the sadness had
04:29receded into the background and I had found a new partner in my life. My son had got married.
04:34So it sort of receded into the background. So it wasn't very difficult to write the book.
04:41But after I wrote the book and I started reading it, I was in tears. I see. Since you mentioned
04:48your second wife, I was going to come to that a bit later, but I might as well now. It
04:53is quite striking
04:55that even your second wife fell victim to the same renal failure problems. I mean, I personally don't
05:03know if any case where something like that can happen. It must have been absolutely devastating.
05:09Yeah, I remember when I met one of my, I know him from childhood. He's a well-known
05:16film director in India. His name is Rajiv Menon. So I was just dropped into his studio and I was
05:22talking to him. He said, Ashok, I know him from his childhood. So he was saying, Ashok, you know, in
05:27our
05:30Malayalam myth, we have a saying that when a person is struck with the same tragedy twice,
05:39there is something wrong in his karma. I think there is something wrong in your karma and your
05:43previous janma, if you want to believe what I say. So in my state of mind, I was inclined to
05:49believe
05:49what he said. But that's not a very nice thing to say. Yeah. Are you still friends with him?
06:04Yeah, we are very good friends. I'm just kidding.
06:08Yeah. You know, again, to elaborate a bit on having gone through twice the same medical condition,
06:19I think by the second time, obviously, you were very used to the challenges that came along with it.
06:26Was it easier for you to deal with it the second time around?
06:32Yeah, it was much easier for me to deal with it the second time because the first time there was
06:38no
06:38doctor in the family from the other side. So I had to take care of my wife in Delhi all
06:44alone by myself
06:45or my mother, my aging mother and my small child was going to school. But in the second case, what
06:51happened was my son had already gone to college and he was studying there and I was alone with my
06:59second wife. And my second wife went on a holiday to Bangalore, where her mother and her sister
07:05lives. Her sister is head of the brain bank of Nimhans in Bangalore. So she's a doctor herself.
07:11So when they discovered that she had a renal failure, she said, Ashok, I don't want you to go
07:20through this experience again. So you can come and visit her every month or whatever. But
07:26what I suggest is that since I am a doctor, I am well connected with all the hospitals here,
07:31I will be able to take care of her better than you. If it's agreeable to you, you can you
07:35shift
07:36her to Bangalore. I said, if you are comfortable treating her in Bangalore because of your connections
07:42with the community, medical community, I'll be too glad to bring her to Bangalore. So I brought her to
07:48Bangalore. I left her there. In 2017, I left her there. Eight years, we were separated. But every day,
07:55every hour, we used to text each other, we used to send jokes to each other. And then we were
08:02for eight
08:03years, believe it or not, every, almost every day or every other day, we used to be on phone talking
08:09to
08:09each other. So I did not miss her so much. I see. I want you to take me back to
08:14the sort of the
08:15inception of this memoir, fictionalized memoir. What triggered it? I mean, it's been in the making
08:22for quite some time. So tell me a bit about that. You want me to talk about actually what happened
08:29to
08:29her or what made me write the book? I'm trying to get you at the inception of the book. At
08:35what point
08:35you thought you should convert that into sort of a life story, somewhat fictionalized?
08:42Ah, that was, it was a sudden decision after I went to the US to stay with my son in
08:48Manhattan,
08:49New York, that I found that I was not having much to do. And then Tilly put me on Substack,
08:57and I started writing on Substack. I had nothing much to do. Then I reflected, I had already written
09:02three well researched books on COVID-19, which was inspired by the death of my two of my very close
09:08friends within 24 hours of each other. One is that Shillong Times special correspondent Mr. Baruwa
09:16and his wife Meenakshi Baruwa, who used to work in Times of India. And we were very good friends. I
09:22used
09:23to drop into their house for coffee or tea. And then I had a huge library of films and they
09:27used to borrow
09:28films from me. They had a young daughter. So we used to have a nice time over the weekends. And
09:32then when I
09:32found that they had been struck by COVID before the vaccines had actually rolled out. So she was,
09:40both of them died within 24 hours of each other. And that shook me up like anything. So I, then
09:46I said,
09:47I have never written a book, let me write a book on the chronology of the disease COVID-19 and
09:54what each country has done, what the WHO has done or how it broke out in China and all that.
10:00It took me about
10:00three volumes to finish. It took me about six months to write and I got no less than a vice
10:06president
10:07of India than Mr. Naidu to release the book. So it got good publicity, but it did not sell.
10:18Well, that's the story of a lot of books too. That's true.
10:22You know, one of the themes that you list early on in your book is, as you, as you write,
10:28love as both anger and unbearable weight. Yeah. That's a rather telling construct. Tell me a bit
10:36more about it since, precisely because anger has weight, it works.
10:42Yeah. You see, I had no support. My brother, my entire family had migrated to the U.S. My sister
10:49had gone to the U.S., settled down in Texas. My brother had gone down to Michigan and settled down
10:53in Michigan. And my father had died in 1996. And then only my mother was there and my small kid
11:00was there. We were the only three of us together bonding as a family. And it struck me like a
11:09lightning when I came to know that she is suffering from real failure. Actually, we all went out for a
11:15nice magic show in one of the Indira Gandhi stadiums. And there she complained she had a blurry vision.
11:22I went to an ophthalmologist and then he examined her and then said, Ashok, I'm not very happy. There's
11:30a lot of activity in the fundus and I think better to get an MRI done. So I was scared.
11:36Are you suspecting
11:37a brain tumor? He said, maybe, maybe not. But what I want you to do is get an MRI done
11:43and tell me. So
11:44we got an MRI done and then everything was clear. And I said, no tumor, nothing. This is
11:52occasion to celebrate. We went and had a nice dinner outside and a nice restaurant in Conrad place.
11:57But then two days later, it hit me again. She had very high blood pressure. She could not move. It
12:02was
12:02200 by 100. And then I rushed to the local clinic and he put her down on the couch and
12:09then said,
12:09let me measure the blood pressure again. And the blood pressure slightly came down. And he was the
12:14first one to diagnose my local doctor in Mayur Vihar. He said, I have a feeling that her kidneys have
12:21been
12:21damaged. And maybe it is because of high blood pressure, but then it could be reversible also.
12:27But you take an expert's opinion. And then I went to another ophthalmologist and this is Dr. Madan Mohan,
12:33who was the vice president, was the president's physician. He was the head of AIMS
12:40ophthalmic division. So his son is a brilliant
12:44ophthalmologist and then eye surgeon. Rishi, very first part, he said, uncle, your wife has got
12:52kidney disease, get her kidney screened. And then we got it screened and we found out that 30% of
12:57the
12:59right kidney had shrunk. And then they were working at 30% efficiency. So that's when the whole
13:05rigmarole started, it took me about a month to find a good doctor in Apollo hospitals to fix the
13:12treatment. You know, I read that whole passage and what I found quite remarkable about the book is that
13:21it has a very matter of fact, but still very informative tone to it. I find that you have
13:29controlled your personal emotions rather well. Your narration is not very personalized and yet it
13:37tells a deeply, profoundly personal story. Thank you so much, sir. No, because especially when you mentioned
13:45the magic show and subsequent blurry vision and the whole series of events, it was quite cinematic to me.
13:54So I thought I should tell you that. Let me confess with you,
13:58I wrote the book like a cinema script because I had a fond hope that one day it could be
14:05made into
14:05a movie. I think it's ready for that. You know, there is a fundamental deviation between
14:13the real life of Usha and your protagonist, Arushi, in terms of what happens to both.
14:21I'm not going to spoil it for the viewers by saying what happens, but tell me
14:26how you made that literary choice without revealing what that choice is.
14:33I don't get you. What do you mean by literary choice?
14:36In a sense, like I said, I don't want to spoil it by revealing what the fate that
14:42Usha suffered and the fate that Arushi has because I want the readers to get into it themselves.
14:49So without anything, how did you decide to give them two different perspectives, very different
14:56perspectives? Yeah, I think somewhere in the introduction of the book, I have mentioned that in real life Usha died
15:03and then in the fictional book, I made her survive the...
15:12I could have asked you directly, but I thought you didn't want to reveal it.
15:16No, no, it's already revealed. It's already revealed in the introduction of the book.
15:19So I said I made her live to give hope to people who are suffering from the reason that you
15:25can survive the disease.
15:27I was thinking more in terms of readers coming and discovering themselves rather than me announcing it on the show
15:32anyway.
15:36Tell me a bit about how you chose that.
15:43As I told you earlier that I didn't want the book to have a sad ending. So I wanted to
15:49give hope to
15:50people who are suffering from the disease that modern medicine is there, technology is there, you can survive
15:56the disease and leave it a normal life. Because I remember one of my cousins in New York, I'm talking
16:03about somewhere in the 60s, he developed a kidney failure and then his wife donated the
16:09kidney to him. He lived for 30 years after transplant.
16:12That's amazing, yeah. Yeah, that's amazing.
16:16It is, it is. In real life Usha's kidney problems turn everything upside down for you.
16:23I'm interested in one particular aspect from being a passionate, committed journalist with limited salary,
16:33you had to change over to something most journalists scoff at people, vintage,
16:38old vintage like us, public relations. Yeah.
16:41How was that transition for you as a professional journalist to go on the other side?
16:45How did you navigate it? Did it affect your self-worth in any way at all?
16:51Yeah, it was, to confess, it was a very traumatic experience because in, you know, in journalism,
16:57the editorial rooms at five o'clock in the evening, the guy who breaks the news is the hero of
17:02the day. So there is no hierarchy in journalism, at least in the editorial meetings.
17:06Right. So even the junior most reporter who broke the news is the hero of the day. That's not so
17:11in the corporate circle.
17:12So when I joined the corporate first, I joined Burson and Marstella, which is a New York based company. I
17:18joined the daily branch and I was given a very heavy portfolio because the boss trusted me that I could
17:25deliver.
17:25So Tata Motors were fighting a battle against the environmentalists. And I had to tell people that diesel is not
17:33bad for you, short of saying that you can drink diesel from a cup of tea and nothing will happen
17:39to you.
17:39That's the kind of bluff I was telling the people all the time. The conscience was rebelling saying what I'm
17:44doing is not good. But then I also had to satisfy my conscience and say, look, I need the money.
17:50So I don't care a damn for my conscience right now. I need the money to treat my wife. So
17:57it was a very traumatic experience at a personal level.
17:59And then submitting to hierarchy was another big problem. I want an absolute freedom to work and the hierarchy would
18:06not allow me give me a free hand to work.
18:08So it cramped my work style and I brought out the journalist in me and rebelled and went directly to
18:14the bosses and said, give me a free hand to work.
18:16And they removed the head who was controlling me and I got direct access to Tata's and I was able
18:22to work freely.
18:22I saw that. That's fascinating. You know, I can imagine how stifled you must be feeling during the transition.
18:30Yeah. Yes. It took me about six months to settle down to corporate hierarchy.
18:35I'm sure. I'm sure. Just a, by the way, piece of information.
18:40You mentioned that in the novel that Arushi is a sort of a polyglot speaking Pashto, Bengali, Tamil, English and
18:49German.
18:49Yeah. Was that true of Usha too?
18:54Usha was, she used to speak German. So part of that is true, but I borrowed it a little from
19:01my second wife.
19:02She, she's a polyglot. So she spoke about seven European languages, including Russian, and then she could read and write
19:09about seven European languages.
19:10So I combined the two ideas. How come? How come was she professionally doing it or she was just interested
19:18in languages?
19:20No, no, no, no, no. She was professional. She was actually, she got a degree. I'm talking about my second
19:26wife.
19:27She was, she is a degree holder in catering science from Bangalore. And then she found that all the cuisines
19:36are all written in French.
19:38She said, unless I learned French, there is no point in being a catering science specialist. So she got her,
19:47she got her master's degree in French and then she got her MPhil in tourism and things like that.
19:53And then, and then she said, then the hunger for learning other languages grew. Then the profession center, she was
20:01working also for a French company like me, then they were dealing with Russians.
20:06So first she was a French translator because the medium of communication was French. So she used to sit at
20:14all the conference tables and translate in French to English, English to French.
20:18And then with the Russians, she used to do it with Russian, Russian to English, English to Russian. And my
20:24first wife, she knew German as a passion. She took it, but she was basically a clinical psychologist.
20:30So she knew how to handle her own crisis. She knew how to handle my mother. She knew how to
20:35handle me. And then she gave me full freedom.
20:37She gave me instructions on how to handle my mother and how to handle my child, which was very, very
20:42useful to me.
20:44Indeed, indeed. You know, I noticed that you kept your, a lot of your chapters are rather short, which is
20:50good. Was that a conscious choice or it just happened that way?
20:55No, no, no. It was a conscious effort. And if I wrote a long chapter, I would break it into
21:00two so that, you know, the readers don't get bored by reading a long chapter.
21:05So they go, it should be a seamless flow of ideas and experiences. And then if broken into chapters, you
21:13can always stop at one chapter, go have a cup of tea, watch some TV, whatever, and then come back
21:17and read the book. That's the whole idea.
21:20Tell me by now, are you yourself sort of a kidney specialist?
21:25Sort of. If anybody wants to consult me on renal diseases, I can tell you from step one to step
21:3423, how to go about, how to navigate, how to navigate your personal life, how to handle your emotions, how
21:41to handle your family, how to handle your children, all that.
21:47I can give a huge lecture. I've got a lot of gyan. I can do a promotion on that.
21:54Speaking of which, your epilogue talks quite a bit about some of those details, right? I read the part of
22:01your epilogue too.
22:02Yeah, I wanted to bring a lot of drama. So actually, I'm not a surgeon, so I don't know how
22:10it, now this is where I found AI technology so useful that
22:16I would feed all the inputs I wanted to dramatize and tell AI, reconstruct a complete operation theatre scenario, reconstructed
22:27completely an ICU melodrama.
22:29It was doing it beautifully for me. All I had to do was edit it and cut out whatever I
22:34thought was not necessary, which was too dramatized.
22:37Right. You know, in chapter 12, there's a rather interesting passage which brings alive your protagonist or rather your personality
22:48type quite well, and I'm going to read that little passage.
22:51Okay.
22:52It says, I held the empty box in my hands, marvelling at the chain of human ingenuity that had led
23:00to this moment. The research, the manufacturing, the coal chain logistics that had brought these precious wild across continents and
23:09oceans to save my wife, unquote.
23:10Now, for a character in the midst of such a life-threatening crisis, to think of this is quite revelatory
23:21to me that is it you or is it your character or is it a combination of the two?
23:26I think it's a combination of the two. And then sometimes, you know, when you're depressed, a lot of ideas
23:31come out. And sometimes when I get up in the morning and have my cup of tea, so many ideas
23:36bristle in my mind for writing an article on that day. I should do this. I should do that. People
23:41have never written about this.
23:42So I would get down to it. And then when I was writing the book, all these ideas came to
23:47me seamlessly saying, let's put this idea into the book. Let's put this chapter. Let's put this text into the
23:54book to make it more interesting.
23:57Right. How long did you actually take to write from start to finish? I'm not talking about what preceded your
24:07struggles. I'm talking about the actual process of physical writing. How long did you take?
24:13Physical writing. You see, I didn't have much to do in New York. You know, see, in New Jersey, I
24:18and my son used to loaf around in the car. We used to go into the wild. So we had
24:22a lot of time for ourselves. In New York, it's a concrete jungle. You know, it's difficult to go out.
24:27And then my son would go to office. My daughter-in-law would go to office. I was alone at
24:31home, either watching CNN or BBC or I would be watching BBC or I would be watching
24:42some television network. But that would be for an hour or so for drinking a cup of tea. But then
24:49the whole I had six, seven hours how to kill it, you know. So I had a lot of time
24:54for six, seven hours to sit and write at least two, three chapters a day. That's what I was doing.
24:59Now that's remarkable because two, three chapters a day is excellent speed. I mean, I do that too. But I'm
25:06very glad to know that you've done that too. It's the very, you know, this is the training of a
25:11journalist.
25:13Yes, true.
25:17Yeah, your bingo, bingo on the spot.
25:21How is the book doing generally? Have you had any response yet? Have you heard from any readers so far?
25:32No, look, I have a lot of readers. I have a lot of people who have purchased the book in
25:36the US. Very surprisingly, my Corona book sold more in the US than in India.
25:41Same way, I find this book has sold, I've sold about 100 books so far, which is, which is, I
25:47think, a big achievement for me as a debut fictional writer.
25:51But then I want to reach at least 10,000 books before the year end. And I'm doing and, you
25:57know, we are all journalists. We don't have, we are not a corporate guy to hire a PR company to
26:03promote our book.
26:04So we have to promote it ourselves. So I'm doing my best to promote it across various channels. And I
26:11got, I was very successful in getting the book listed on Barnes & Noble, which I think is a big
26:15achievement for me.
26:16But then how many people will actually go through the list and buy it as a million dollar question.
26:21Indeed. You know, that's why I thought it's important that fellow journalists should always reach out to others too. I
26:28mean, I'm part of the reason why you reached out to me, but I was always very keen to have
26:34you at some point soon.
26:35And I'm glad that in whatever little way I can help through this platform. Speaking of which, why don't you
26:42tell my viewers where it's available and what kind of pricing are we talking about?
26:48Oh, the book is listed on Barnes & Noble in the US. And then it is not a physical display
26:54of the book. So in Barnes & Noble, a lot of people want to know what are the upcoming books
26:59up for sale.
27:00So they go to the librarian or the bookstore manager and ask him what are the future books that are
27:05coming up. So there I found, I was surprised to find my book, Borrowed Time, Borrowed Hope by Mr. Ashok
27:12Neelokunton on top of the upcoming Easter sale.
27:16So that would, maybe out of 10 people who see it, at least two will buy it.
27:23Right, right. And Amazon, it's available everywhere, right?
27:30Yeah, it's available. I went through Notion Press and they have put it up. I paid money to the publisher.
27:36So they have put it on Amazon. It will be on Amazon India, Amazon UK. They have put it on
27:41the Indian online shopping center, Flipkart and Walmart. All of them are selling my books.
27:49All of them are selling books.
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