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Journalism of Courage
Some people study to better their career prospects; others because their parents say they should. Then there is the inscrutable lot that enjoys academics. Fatemeh Zargar-Yaghoubi studies mostly for the love of the common people.
It8217;s no surprise that Zargar-Yaghoubi turns heads on the campus of Jesus and Mary College JMC in New Delhi, where she studies English Literature: She8217;s 45; she8217;s the mother of three; and8212;get this8212;she8217;s the wife of the Iranian ambassador to India, Siavash Zargar-Yaghoubi.
8216;8216;Being a university student is a great way to be in touch with society,8217;8217; Yaghoubi says, explaining her decision to return to the classroom.
Fellow-undergrads may wonder whether to address her as 8216;8216;aunty8217;8217; or just plain 8216;8216;Fatemeh,8217;8217; but Yaghoubi says there is compensation for 8216;8216;sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench in a non-air conditioned room8217;8217; in a college building.
8216;8216;My classmates are young, you know. They have love problems. They come to me for advice,8217;8217; she says. Then she adds pertly, 8216;8216;And if they don8217;t, I make them listen anyway.8217;8217;
Yaghoubi belongs to a rapidly evolving diplomatic circuit that is peopled by men and women with uncommon outside interests; with careers back home that have not a whit to do with international relations; and, increasingly, with spouses who are full-time professionals.
Foreign affairs have always bred flirtations with other fields. The Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda was a diplomat. Another Nobel laureate and scribe, Octavio Paz, served as Mexican ambassador to India in the 1960s. And best-selling spy novelist John le Carre belonged to the British Foreign Service from 1959 to 1964.
Perhaps burdened by this lineage, Philip McDonagh, the Irish ambassador to India, says self-deprecatingly, 8216;8216;I am just a Sunday poet.8217;8217; Those Sabbath scribbles have resulted in a second volume of poems, Memories of an Ionian Diplomat Ravi Dayal, which will be released by former Bollywood star Shashi Kapoor in New Delhi on June 17.
His first book, Carraroe in Saxony, was published in Ireland last October.
McDonagh8217;s travels as a diplomat are a reservoir of inspiration that he routinely dips into for his poetry. From memories of God8217;s Own Country emerged this poem:
I shall remember Kerala
for the emptying of silence,
as if the stirring of hens, the coffee
women carried to their men
in battered cups, fulfilled a destiny.
Extract from the poem Kerala
Has being a diplomat opened doors to publishing houses? 8216;8216;Maybe for a start because an ambassador-poet evokes some curiosity,8217;8217; McDonagh says. 8216;8216;But you won8217;t last unless you are good.8217;8217;
The shy Irish author would find a soul sibling in the ebullient Slovak ambassador. Ladislav Volko is not a career diplomat; he was earlier a sociologist and film critic.
8216;8216;When I was finishing my studies, you needed to be a communist to become a diplomat in Czechoslovakia, so I studied sociology and went in another direction,8217;8217; says Volko. 8216;8216;But when the country was free, I became a diplomat in 1992.8217;8217;
Volko8217;s Polish and Slovak poems have been published in European literary journals.
8216;8216;When Hindi translations were published, I was amazed at how Indian readers related to the themes,8217;8217; he says.
He shouldn8217;t be. The translation of the poem Mother sounds like a monologue that Shah Rukh Khan may spout in a Bollywood movie some day:
Maa,
Tum apne nanhe se dil mein,
Itna saara dard kaise sambhaal leti ho?
Sara dard khud peekar
Doosron ki khushi ka kaaran kaise ban paati ho?
Mother, how do you manage to bear so much pain in your tiny heart? How can you bring yourself to embrace all that pain to give joy to others?
Maa, a book of Volko8217;s poetry in four languages8212;Polish, Slovak, English and Hindi8212;is slated to release a month from now.
It8217;s a feat of transnational cooperation: The Slovak originals have been translated into Hindi by India8217;s Sharda Yadav, while the English translations of the Polish verses owe to the efforts of Volko8217;s friends in the Polish embassy. Maa will also feature paintings by Manjit Bawa, Satish Gujral, Gopi Gajwani and Jatin Das.
These diplomats hardly fit the lightweight stereotype of the-ambassador-who-writes or the-wife-who-paints. For two years now, Brian Dickson has been playing the guitar and providing back-up vocals for Banned in Delhi, a group of expat and Indian musicians who perform at hotels and embassies across New Delhi.
Dickson is the Canadian deputy high commissioner and an accomplished photographer. Recently, exhibitions of his photographs were held in Delhi, Thiruvananthapuram and Jaipur. They featured photographs that Dickson took in the remote hamlet of Igloolik in the Arctic.
Life has come full circle for the 59-year-old. His first exhibition happened by chance when a friend at the Indian mission in Romania in the 1970s saw photographs that he had taken during a posting in New Delhi from 1973 to 1975.
Music. Photography. Diplomacy. How does he do it all? 8216;8216;Diplomats are usually multi-talented people,8217;8217; Dickson replies. 8216;8216;I know of colleagues with interests ranging from music to astronomy. It would not be correct to say that we can pursue these interests because we lead a structured life. It8217;s just that you take a decision to commit to certain things.8221;
Some of his fellow diplomats are merely staying in touch with interests they once renounced as career options. Fifty-one-year -old Jon P Dorschner8212;drummer, blues enthusiast and first secretary at the US Embassy8212;chose foreign affairs over music when he was young 8216;8216;because the lifestyle of professional musicians didn8217;t appeal to me, and because the chances of earning a living from music are so slim.8217;8217;
When he arrived in New Delhi last year, he formed The Burdon Band which performed at a charity ball in the city. Dorschner reveals that Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit too is a blues lover and plans to bring a Chicago blues band to the capital. When that happens, he hopes his will be the warm-up act for the show.
Through his music, Dorschner hopes to make a difference in a country he fears is 8216;8216;exposed to only the dregs of American culture8217;8217;. Embassies encourage employees in such pursuits. And enterprising diplomats use them as an opportunity to interact more closely with the local people.
Hans-Joachim Kiderlen, a minister at the German embassy, has chosen a different route to Indo-German bonding. Kiderlen regularly hosts exhibitions and plays at his residence in Delhi. 8216;8216;The idea of an open house came from the fact that that8217;s the way Indian homes are,8217;8217; he says. 8216;8216;People are always welcome, doors are always open, and there8217;s not as much emphasis on privacy as in Europe.8221;
In many ways, the diplomatic circuit mirrors social changes taking place across the globe. Top-rung women diplomats are no longer a rarity, nor are diplomats8217; wives who are full-time professionals. Alexander Ehrlich-Adam, first secretary at the Austrian Embassy, says, 8216;8216;Most diplomats8217; spouses no longer fit the image of the traditional housewife who will move around the world with her husband, hold dinners and go to aerobics classes.8217;8217;
Even so, Adam has a unique story. His wife, Cristina Fraile, is the deputy head of mission at the Spanish embassy in New Delhi. Their story would be the joy of any Hollywood-infatuated romantic8230; When Harry Met Sally Part II: When Alex Met Crissy. But seriously, when Fraile met Adam, she was posted in Vienna.
Along came a fortuitous opening in the Austrian mission in Madrid for Adam, just as work took Fraile back home. After marrying in Vienna, they moved to Madrid and, since the gods still seem to be smiling on them, India followed for both.
In diplomatic circles, Reciprocal Employment Agreements REAs are increasingly important. An REA between two countries allows the spouse of a diplomat from one country to work in the other country while the diplomat is posted there.
Such an agreement would have helped Marina Valverde. A trained flamenco dancer, 29-year-old Valverde is married to the economic counsellor at the Spanish embassy in New Delhi.
8216;8216;People have been asking her to teach, but the rules don8217;t permit it unless it8217;s on a voluntary basis,8217;8217; says husband Jose Antonio Bretones.
Men, too, are making similar career compromises. Simon Mark, husband of the New Zealand High Commissioner Caroline McDonald, is an artist-turned-photographer. 8216;8216;When you are married to a diplomat, photography is easier than painting, because as a painter you need a studio, it can be messy, and you end up spoiling New Zealand government property,8217;8217; he says with a grin.
Ego hassles? Now there8217;s a foreign term.
Here They Were
These international figures once served in New Delhi
DOMINIQUE DE VILLEPIN
The world knows him best as the most visible face of the global anti-war movement last year. When the then French foreign minister8217;s impassioned speech on Iraq in the UN Security Council was telecast live on television channels worldwide, it brought back memories to his many friends in India. De Villepin served as the second counsellor at the French embassy in New Delhi from 1989 to 1990, and as first counsellor from 1990 to 1992. In those years, he became well-known in Delhi8217;s art and social circles. To this day, he retains a keen interest in Indian literature8212;ancient and contemporary8212; art and cinema, areas in which his friends say he has considerable knowledge. He is currently minister of the interior, internal security and local freedoms.
OCTAVIO PAZ
For a man who believed that poetry is 8216;8216;the secret religion of the modern age8221;, it8217;s but natural that a visit to India would be fruitful. The poet-essayist had been writing for more than a decade when he joined the Mexican diplomatic service in 1945 at the age of 31. He was posted as Mexican ambassador to India in 1962, during which time he wrote several significant books including The Grammarian Monkey and East Slope. India cornered this literary luminary for six years, an unusually long stint for an ambassador. But Paz resigned from the diplomatic service in 1968 to protest his government8217;s bloody suppression of student demonstrations in Tlatelolco during the Mexico Olympics. He won the Cervantes Award in 19818212;the most prestigious honour in the Spanish-speaking world8212;and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. Paz died in 1998.
