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Who Really Shapes the Narrative? SAM Youth Dialogue with Chicago-based journalist-author-filmmaker Mayank Chhaya | SAM Youth Dialogue Episode 1
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00:07so hi and welcome to this inaugural edition of the south asia monitor youth dialogue
00:13what makes this program a little different is that it's fully youth driven the idea is to bring
00:20a new generation perspective into conversation on a contemporary national and global issues
00:25and to create a space where young voices are not just listening but engaging directly with experienced
00:30thinkers and practitioners all of us on this side of the conversation today except our guest of course
00:36are under the age of 25 myself piyush and i'm the moderator for this session and over the next 20
00:43minutes my colleagues and i'll be in conversation with mr man chayasar who is a veteran journalist
00:51and writer with over four and half decades of reporting experience across india pakistan
00:56shri ranka and united states since 1982 he has covered major developments out of india is widely
01:03known for his commentary on global affairs particularly particularly south asian and
01:08sino-tibetian issue he's also the authorized biographer of his holiness the dalai lama with
01:15his acclaimed book man monk mystic published in 24 languages he has also worked in filmmaking as
01:20a creator of the documentary gandhi song he had his interview series manchari reports on the youtube
01:26as well so that's all about our guest i think we can begin with the questions now so yeah share
01:34okay sir you have spent over four decades in journalism and then moved into filmmaking and writing
01:40did that shift come from creative curiosity or from a feeling that one medium wasn't enough to tell
01:46the kind of stories that you wanted to no not really in fact cinema has always been my abiding
01:56interest it's just that i haven't gotten around to doing anything of substance yet but hopefully before
02:02i die which may not be that far i may do something um i you know the way i look
02:08at it cinema or any
02:09creative pursuit that we are talking about begins with writing and writing is something that is my
02:16home turf i've been writing since the age of 13 i started my first poetry writing when i was 13
02:24in fact i remember even the very first verse that i wrote it when that was when i was 13
02:39that we're
02:40talking about i'm 65 now so you can do the calculation that was how so anyway coming to your question
02:46i think
02:47generally media has always been of great interest to me uh within that uh visual medium attracts me
02:55because i think i have a sense of a very strong sense of uh visuals generally i've been painting for
03:03a long time but uh i haven't gotten around to making a feature film yet i have at least half
03:09a dozen
03:10scripts ready to go so but to the particular point about whether i think the media may not hold
03:16that much interest no in fact i remain at heart very much a hard news committed print journalist
03:25uh but i'm doing other things like he appears mentioned my documentary gandhi song
03:30uh it i don't know how many of you have seen it or are aware of it there is a
03:36an iconic bhajan called vaishnavajanto which is always sung it's it's one of the world's most widely
03:43sung songs sung songs uh people always associate that with gandhi as if gandhi wrote it uh i'm sure
03:52you know it was written over five centuries before gandhi uh it's written by a very iconic gujarati
04:01poet philosopher called nirsi mata and my intent was to tell the world that here is a truly great
04:08poet philosopher who wrote hundreds of ballads and other things and this one became a sort of an
04:14iconic song so that was my entry into the visual medium hopefully at some point in the next two
04:21three years i'll end up making a couple of feature films that like i said i have several scripts ready
04:26to go so that's my interest but yes media remains very much part of my interest
04:33all right sir you have reported from india pakistan shri lanka and now from the u.s for decades
04:41when you look at india today especially through the lens of younger audience does it feel more
04:46confident in telling its own story or more conscious of how it is perceived you know i'm a great great
04:54admirer of uh people of your generation uh all of you are almost my children's ages uh my son is
05:0330 my
05:04daughter is 23 so i married rather late so that's the age difference i'm very plugged into your generation
05:11i find all of you very skilled at what you do uh who would say that i mean i don't
05:20believe in that
05:21kind of construct at all i think the interesting thing to uh which people don't realize is the
05:27confluence of communications technologies that you are born into i mean i come from a time when if i had
05:35to make a phone call i had to go to a local post office and basically plead with the postal
05:41staff to
05:42make let me make one phone call now you are here with the confluence of mobile smartphones
05:51with broadband and internet it's a it's a it's an astounding coming together of technologies which
05:59has democratized expression for people of your generation and i find that all of you are really
06:05really skilled at using uh mobile phones for that purpose so i i think it's you you live in a
06:11fascinating time and all of you are you seem to be using rather well so i applaud you for that
06:17and i think uh your generation is the one that will fundamentally make all the difference that
06:24we need i mean you saw what happened to digress a little bit you saw what happened in hungary
06:28uh when they ousted uh victor orban the younger generation of people like you came out so
06:34i am extremely upbeat on uh those of your age so uh full full credit to all of you
06:43all right sir so now up to priyanshi
06:48priyanshi is traveling so i'll just take a question uh sure this is one of the fascinating
06:54thing i found in your you know uh what kind of biography or i kind of found when uh taramsa
07:01told
07:01told me about you that you have met rajas khanda sir and devan and sir i mean for our generation
07:08we
07:08count them as a iconic and one of the arguments which people give nowadays that's uh as srk even
07:15has mentioned that he is the last of superstar and nowadays it's all about the pr and you know
07:20things of algorithm and all of it so do you think that with the culture of the superstar and the
07:26culture of this pr will contrasting and anyhow would it be possible in today's time that
07:31will be having any sort of rajas khanda again or devan and sir again you know they were both
07:37products of their very unique time for instance devan started in the 50s in fact late 40s to be
07:46precise and rajas khanda i mean his ascendancy began sometime in 1968-69 so we are talking about a
07:55very different era when communications technologies were not anywhere close to what all of you are
08:01used to so i think the lack of access that people had gave them that enigma that aura that you
08:10know
08:10that mystique uh that people are fascinated by uh your question about whether if they entered the
08:18era today how would they deal with the pr systems and algorithms and things like that
08:23i think they would do it rather well but i think you may not have the kind of stardom that
08:30they enjoyed i mean i'll give you a couple of examples about since you mentioned my
08:34friendship with both i was this is i'm talking about sometime in 1990 sorry 1994-95 time phase i was
08:44uh he i mean i knew rajas khanda for a quarter century uh till he died uh i knew devan
08:51and for
08:51as long and they i didn't know them as sort of movie stars but uh as a journalist would come
08:58to know
08:59interesting people so once i was walking with rajas khanda into the ashoka hotel uh you know the the
09:06iconic ashoka hotel which is up uh still around i believe uh as i walk in with him there was
09:13a
09:13family of three father son and daughter sorry father uh mother and daughter and they saw rajas khanda and
09:21they absolutely froze in their tracks and they were stuttering and stammering just pointing at him and
09:29rajas khanda was of course used to these things and they wanted to talk to him so they all came
09:34and
09:35very gingerly stretched their hand out and said uh uh they couldn't say anything and rajas khanda
09:42basically made up on their behalf and they all started crying now imagine a father must be in his
09:49perhaps 50s mother was perhaps in a 40s and the daughter in the 20s to completely different
09:56generations and yet in 1990 well past rajas khanda's prime that's the kind of impact the man
10:04had even then so you can imagine the stardom he enjoyed you know there was a ridiculously funny
10:10story about rajas khanda when he was shooting for hati me reshati which was with elephants uh the rumor
10:18went around that one of the elephants gored rajas khanda and he went blind now think about this
10:25no matter how big rajas khanda's head is do you really believe that an elephant tusks two tusks can
10:33blind a man but people believe that a lot of them tried to commit suicide on that now that is
10:39the
10:39level of startup we are talking about the same with devanans i mean i've seen it firsthand
10:44but with both of these men but i think they if they had come of age in this time
10:51i suppose they would have figured out a way to deal with it because they are essentially people
10:56in the movie industry are very extremely smart at dealing with fame people stardom they are very
11:04good at that so i i suppose they would have figured out a way to deal with the current times
11:10i mean so uh in their timeline there was no instagram in their timeline there was no twitter
11:16but nowadays people are having nowadays celebrities are heavy so would that have impacted on any level
11:23no i think like i said earlier a lot of what we are talking about
11:30stars of that generation be dalib kumar raj kapoor devanan rajash khanda all of them i think part of the
11:38reason they became what they became was because the access was not easy at all people used to just
11:44wonder about who these people are i mean you couldn't if if you caught a glimpse of uh devanan
11:51driving his uh padded green fiat in in the bombay of the 1980s people would scream that's that's all you
11:58saw of devanan now these guys are in your face every day of flaunting the airport looks and all kinds
12:05of
12:05looks so i think that mystique has gone but i suppose they have fame of a different kind but i
12:10think
12:11uh i'm coming from that generation i find that more interesting uh because that mystique remains
12:19and you are not that easily available to your admirers interesting sir now i'd like to end it over to
12:27hadjun um so we're talking about bollywood and the most uh popular debate we have is that of nepotism
12:36right uh do you really think uh talent trumps um you know the family name or is it vice versa
12:45do you
12:45think that can happen no the talent always triumphs uh even if you get an early access because of who
12:53you
12:53are eventually talent takes over i mean if you look at any of these stars amitabh bachan was an outsider
13:03when he came he was a complete outsider so was sharuk khan so so were so many others so it's
13:09not
13:10i don't think okay nepotism maybe makes your entry easy but after that it's an open season on you uh
13:19there
13:19are so many uh children of movie stars who haven't made it uh i think talent really takes over after
13:27the first or maybe second film and people do judge you on the basis of your merit rather than your
13:33lineage so i i i think the this nepotism debate uh works only in the limited context of young people
13:43getting early access to the movie industry which is a which is a problem even without nepotism i mean
13:50it's not easy to get into the movie industry and the problem is there are so many of them now
13:56but at
13:56the same time the platforms have grown you have so many different uh avenues to showcase your talent
14:02including on youtube you you don't need the industry at all to make a full-length feature film and
14:08release it on youtube you don't need uh any of those established names to back you up so i think
14:14it's already happening in that way so i think nepotism debate is a bit silly one uh it has some
14:21currency among uh the film industry types but i find it a bit ridiculous and it's been it's been done
14:27to
14:27this thank you sir thank you uh now over to ashita hello sir uh my question is related to ashabhusle
14:41ma'am
14:41and before i ask my question i just want to mention that it's very unfortunate to have such a loss
14:49and we
14:51cannot deny the fact that ashabhusle ma'am was among the most versatile singers in the music industry
14:59and her absence feels like a huge loss to the industry and to us also and may her soul rest
15:08in
15:08peace so my question is uh with ashabhusle ma'am we saw a career built on reinvention and longevity
15:16creativity so today especially in the age of quick fame do you think the industry still reverts that
15:24kind of depth i think from what i observed the movie industry has an intrinsic feel to spot a talent
15:36they're very good at that uh so i think it's you have to give them credit they they won't just
15:41pick up
15:42anyone and make a star out of take years decades of stars be it in singing in composing in acting
15:51in in cinematography all of them you would find that they had the basic talent to become what they became
16:00in in the in the case of ashabhusle ashabhusle was a league of a league of her own she was
16:06in my book uh
16:08in the same league of the same league as her more illustrious sister let the mangeshi romai
16:13interviewed one for a couple of hours i never got to meet ashabhusle because i never sought an interview
16:18with her but ashabhusle was an astounding talent uh from the age of 10 to now it's you're talking about
16:27eight decades of singing talent and look at the sheer range of what she sang uh i think it's
16:36right now it's difficult because a movie industry has fundamentally changed since
16:43ashabhusle and let the mangeshi began obviously that's the nature of anything in life but you have
16:50say someone like shriya ghoshal shriya ghoshal is a brilliant singer but i i don't know if they can
16:56acquire the kind of sort of uh beatific status that these two sisters or mahmad rafi or kishore kumar
17:06did that's because the times have changed but within that i mean even sonar nigam walks or sean walks in
17:13or shriya ghoshal walks or any of these uh any of these uh any of these terrific singers they do
17:19get
17:20the kind of uh uh overlaid and respect that a lot of uh older generation got but we're talking about
17:27ashabhusle and let the mangeshi it's a different league i mean we have it's just a fact of life
17:33in terms of their endurance the lasting long i think it's everything to do with their talent
17:40and the fact that they came at a time see all of them grew up in the golden uh age
17:46of
17:46hindi cinema music especially the night late 1950s right up to early 1970s was is considered the golden
17:54age especially the 60s take any song from the 1960s and you you would marvel at the depth of writing
18:01and the depth of singing and the depth of composing everything uh it you do get it now but it's
18:08not
18:08exactly the same so but i think asha bosley uh is an exceptional figure there is just no no other
18:16way
18:16to put it there won't be anything anyone else like that for quite some time to come
18:25thank you sir
18:28okay so i'm having this very specific question i mean i'm dealing with it this dichotomy for a long
18:35time now that is society impacts the cinema or does cinema impacts the society for example if we try
18:42to talk about i don't know whether you are aware or not how durender has just generated a you know
18:47amount of you know things in india right now or even on the national sites or national media is just
18:53pushing out the durender daily so and when we try to talk about the filmmaker behind it aditya though
18:59who describes indian audience as one of the smart audience we have at the globe
19:03while i was just going through this argument by satyajit re that he mentioned that the indian
19:09audience is one of the most backward audience we have in the you know globe so i mean when we
19:14try to
19:15look look out towards this uh sort of uh dichotomies or we try to look out even the you know
19:20amount of
19:21fame animal movie got or the amount of fame or durender got both are very hyper violative or some sort
19:28of
19:29masculine kind of things so also what sort of dichotomy we are having with regard to cinema and
19:34society you know you talk i i know what you're talking about when you cite satyajit re but you
19:43you have to remember that this is 2026 we're talking about satyajit re of the 1960s 70s 80s it was
19:51a very different audience which was never exposed to world cinema it was not exposed to the kind of
19:58entertainment that your generation and even slightly older generation have been because of
20:04like i said communications revolution so i i think it would be unfair to compare what mr ray said and
20:12what aditya may be saying it uh it is true that indian audiences have become much smarter they've become
20:19much more discriminating they see through fakes up pretty quickly especially people like like i said
20:26people in their 20s you can't fool them too long they they have different different intelligence quotient
20:33i find so i i think it's not it's not the same obviously the satyajit re had a point in
20:40his time
20:41because especially the kind of cinema that he made it wasn't it's not for everyone even now
20:49so to think that it would be universally admired when he was alive would be a bit of a stretch
20:57but
20:58i think it's it's like i said it's not fair to compare the two uh your your point sorry for
21:03cutting
21:04out here but i think there is this you know diversifying my question i mean what i'm trying to tell
21:09here that i was going through this argument on the instagram not anywhere else not you know any sort
21:14of website or something but there was so many people who were relating with this argument of
21:20satyajit re that whatever indian audience has been served they are getting into that spectrum
21:24they are not going for any sort of research even if you had to talk about during the days a
21:28lot of
21:28assumption or accusation which is made on the movie that's it's a government-centric or it's a propaganda
21:33whatever it is so in that sense i'm just you know trying to make sense here that does society
21:38impacts the cinema or does cinema impacts the society i it's always the society that impacts
21:45cinema in my judgment because that's why i mean it all plots come from society right eventually
21:52everything a writer writes he or she has imbibed from what he or she has seen around of course there
22:00are
22:00fantasy stories but we are not getting into that but by and large the kind of movies that we're
22:05talking say for instance durandha now the politics of durandha uh is
22:12not problematic but it it's an interesting one in my judgment uh i've seen only the part one i haven't
22:19seen part two i don't know if i'll watch it but uh having reported from pakistan and having in fact
22:26been to larry i have some understanding of what what's going on here but uh your your point about
22:34whether cinema impacts society or society impacts cinema at some point it becomes an overlap but it
22:42begins in my judgments with society what cinema absolutely does reflect what goes on in society and to
22:50some extent i'm sure even durandha does it has picked up bits and pieces of what has happened and then
22:57amplified it put it on steroids in such a way using uh the powerful medium of uh cinema to give
23:05it almost
23:08operatic level of violence that you've seen in part one i i thought the violence was spectacularly done
23:14it was gratuitous but it was purely in terms of the way they executed it they did it very well
23:20you
23:21have to recognize that you may not agree with the politics that is propelling that violence but purely
23:27just if you look at it purely a cinema it was interesting one although in my book i wouldn't call
23:32it
23:33a great film it's just an interesting compelling film for that period when you're watching beyond that i
23:39window all right so now i'd like to hand it over to ishida
23:46sir uh you have had the unique experience of working both as a journalist and as a filmmaker
23:54so today with content being produced so quickly across platforms and in this fast-paced environment
24:02where attention spans are shorter and algorithm often influence what people see so where do you
24:10think there is a greater risk of storytelling becoming one-sided or influenced
24:17i i suppose it's a combination of both but i you know once again i would argue that
24:24from this churning that you see uh in terms of algorithmic churning that we are talking about
24:31a great deal of creativity is emerging you know there are all kinds of interesting things being made and
24:37released on youtube and elsewhere even little reels sometimes have so much creativity i mean i i i even if
24:45it's an absurd reel about something you have to admire the fact that there is something creative going on
24:51behind the scenes i mean i saw a video of a guy i think was it in silent perhaps there
24:57was a uh pretty
24:58young woman on a swing going up and down and this guy has his iphone and the jerks with which
25:06he's taking
25:07the angles and then eventually when he releases the final product you can see that the man has tremendous
25:15amount of creativity in terms of conceptualizing what he's shooting now if you saw him just shooting you
25:20might think who's this insane guy but you know exactly what he was doing so i i think it's
25:27we i'm by nature a very open person i am open to all kinds of technologies all kinds of themes
25:35all kinds of
25:35concepts even if some of them are offensive i i'm generally not offended by anything in life so
25:41i'm okay with what is going on uh in terms of content creation short attention span that's the reality of
25:50life
25:50you just live with it uh well i mean i'm not going to complain about the fact that people
25:55don't spend a lot of time watching and ruminating and thinking that's the era we live in i mean you
26:02can't keep complaining about the era that you live in you have to just lump it and move on maybe
26:08things will
26:08change uh maybe they won't change but so what i mean we we have come from 300 000 years of
26:16history so
26:18get used to it i'm talking about the modern human starting 300 000 years ago so that's my broad overview
26:25of what you're asking me i don't know if i answered your question but if i haven't i'm happy to
26:29retain that
26:32very true sir whatever you said it's really related to it thank you
26:40sir um you extensively wrote on dalai lama you called him a man a monk a mystique um while writing
26:48about dalai lama did you ever find a tension between his philosophy of detachment and the realities of
26:53political struggle and exile or how did you personally make sense of it all uh no i didn't
27:01find any tension at all because i think you know one has to recognize that buddhism by its very nature
27:09pragmatic it's not a dogma driven uh philosophy and the dalai lama from his very early age was thrown
27:17into a role where both as a temporal as well as spiritual leader he had to do both so it
27:26wasn't there
27:26was no inherent tension in his mind but uh after he came to india in 1959 and over the last
27:34i think 20 25
27:36maybe 30 years he has gradually and increasingly stepped back from the political aspect of his life
27:43he's no longer into the politics of tibet although for someone like him it's practically impossible not
27:51to have the politics of tibet ride on him all the time but i think i have written a few
27:58pieces where i
27:59argue that he has in a sense grown larger than the cause of tibet now he's sort of a global
28:09figure who articulates more fundamental ideas like compassion for instance compassion sounds simple
28:18enough but compassion in every walk of life is something that we so desperately need especially now
28:25when you're looking at at least three major wars going on simultaneously in russia ukraine
28:33israel gaza palestine and of course the u.s israel iran conflict not to mention pakistan afghanistan is
28:39going on uh off and on there are so many conflicts going on in africa so at a time like
28:47this
28:48compassion is something that people really need to recognize and i think it's a very practical
28:53matter so dalai lama these days talks mainly about that part of buddhism and i think i'm sure
29:01all of you know that by its very nature buddhism is a very rational philosophy it's
29:08in fact the fundamental part of buddhism is that you have to question everything you know tribal
29:15obedience that you see in the world in any other religion you don't see it in buddhism
29:20uh there is no obedience expected from you in fact i've since we are talking about dalai lama uh
29:27soon after i was authorized to the biography i went to mcleod gang for my first conversation with
29:35him and before i started his aides told me that uh well it's a request that please do not hold
29:42back
29:42anything at all ask whatever you want because he enjoys a good conversation back and forth so i said
29:50thank you for telling me i was not waiting for your permission but uh i would have asked all but
29:56my
29:56point is he's perhaps the only leader of that stature who would open himself to any kind of questions
30:06he wouldn't wear his being in quotes his holiness on his sleeve as it were he is not stuck up
30:14on that
30:15part at all i think that's to do with the fact that he is a lifelong practitioner of buddhism so
30:21i didn't
30:22feel any tension at all he doesn't feel it now he has never felt it he has handled it in
30:27an exemplary
30:28fashion and china has also ensured that the politics of being the dalai lama is is never separated
30:37from him so he doesn't have a choice but i think he has handled it remarkably well
30:43thank you sir that was really insightful thank you thank you yeah so that's all i mean it was uh
30:50extremely wonderful to you know to hear you talking about dalai lama because you have written about
30:55it and so much and i belong to the political science domain and there is one of the dream
31:01we have to make dalai lama because our university have initially planned that it got cancelled out but
31:06anyhow that's you know i mean that's fantastic to hear and we have covered a lot in this podcast
31:12particularly uh it was one of the fun conversation one of the intellectual conversation we had a mission
31:19and thank you so much sir for joining with us today and yeah we'll just see you in the next
31:24podcast
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