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Here's Freda Bedi in her own voice. In the mid-1970s, while visiting her son Ranga in Calcutta, Freda - by then Sister Palmo - sat down with a cassette recorder and told the story of the first three decades or so of her life. This is a two minute extract from those tapes, describing how she first met her husband-to-be B.P.L. Bedi more than forty years earlier, when they were both students at Oxford. There's no trace here of a regional accent - indeed, if anything Freda has an 'Oxford' or establishment accent. She wouldn't have grown up speaking in this manner, so I imagine that at Oxford - as with so many northern students at this time - she tutored herself our of her East Midlands lilt. It is wonderful to be able to hear her voice - it's such an insight into character. And even though this is a brief extract, with the sound quality touched up to make it more clearly audible, you do get a sense of Freda's personality.
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Here I am talking about Freda Bedi's journalism - and the possibility that she was the first Indian woman journalist writing a regular column about women's issues. That column 'From a Woman's Window' appeared in the Lahore daily the Tribune for a year or so in the early 1940s. I was talking to Krishna Prasad, former editor of Outlook magazine, and he's posted this on YouTube.  This review has appeared on the books page of the Telegraph in Calcutta.
I'm not sure what I think of being called a 'veteran' journalist - but I suppose I've been called worse. And at least the reviewer likes the book - and indeed has highlighted Freda's championing of 'the voices of women in the struggle for Kashmir'. The website The Print has carried a chunky piece from The Lives of Freda: https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/freda-bedi-the-english-girl-married-to-a-punjabi-who-joined-indias-freedom-struggle/214143/ And the Sunday Guardian has published an extract from the book's introduction: https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/culture/british-birth-indian-cultural-affinity  A real thrill at the weekend - a chance to talk about Freda Bedi and The Lives of Freda in the wonderful setting of the Madras Literary Society. It's India's oldest lending library with a history stretching back over 200 years and the Society has been in its current, spectacular, premises on Chennai's College Road for well over a century. An attentive and well-informed audience came along to the event, which was co-hosted by the MLS and the Chennai chapter of INTACH, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. The photo above is a birds-eye view of proceedings - taken from the highest level of the library's vertiginous book stacks - as I am being introduced by Sujatha Shankar of INTACH.
These photographs were taken by Nandan Sankriti Kaushik - many thanks Nandan for permission to post them here. Quite the most exciting moment was when I heard that a network of women's reading groups across Tamil Nadu had bought eight copies of the biography, which has been sent to different groups with an informal translation of key points of the biography into Tamil. I was told that the groups has been enthusiastic about the story of a woman who challenged convention and moulded her own life.  And I'm adding a couple of other photos - group photos - from the weekend event at the MLS:    The first page of a four page letter that Freda wrote to T.D. Bedi This truly remarkable letter written by Freda Bedi (she was then Freda Houlston) to her Punjabi boyfriend's brother has just come to light. It was almost certainly written early in 1933, just before Freda and B.P.L. Bedi got engaged. It's a touch frustrating to come across this after my biography The Lives of Freda has been published - but I'm so excited to have seen it. It is a deeply moving piece of writing! This is how I came across the letter. Earlier this month I met for the first time in Chennai B.P.L. Bedi's nephew, Inder, and his wife Meena. Inder's father, T.D. Bedi, was B.P.L. older brother and an ICS officer and magistrate - B.P.L's father died young so his older brother was the head of the family. Meena mentioned that when she was clearing out the family's Delhi house some years ago, she came across a letter Freda had written. It is posted here with Inder and Meena's kind permission. The letter is clearly in response to one that B.P.L. had written to his brother. B.P.L. shared his intention to marry his English girlfriend; T.D. seems to have replied saying - forget it, that's not what we sent you to Oxford for!  The engagement photo of B.P.L. Bedi and Freda Houlston, both students at Oxford at the time: 1933 It's curious that the letter is typed, undated and unsigned. I suspect that Freda wrote by hand and then a copy was typed out at T.D.'s request either to make it easier to read or more probably to share the letter within the Bedi family. There are some errors of spelling and grammar which Freda would not have made. In the text of the letter below, I have sought to reconstruct what Freda would originally have written - do bear in mind she was just twenty-one at the time: Dear brother, I believe you are a fair minded man, your letter in spite of its disappointments has not shattered this belief which Pyare Lal [B.P.L. Bedi] and Shamsher [Bahadur] have given me in the first place. Because of this I have a great trust that we shall in the end completely understand one another. I know how it must seem to you when your dearly loved brother makes a decision to marry some one who is a stranger to your land, to your family, and to your race. The very same thing has happened in my own family when my dearly loved mother has had such a struggle. Many a time, although I never flinched in my decision, I cried myself to sleep at night remembering just little, before unnoticed, kindnesses that mother had done for me. And I thought that the day might come when I should 2 have to make a choice between her and all my home associations and Pyare and a country which I loved but had never yet seen. God has spared me that heart breaking choice – but if it had to come, it would have been for the man I love and India that I should have decided. I don’t want to labour my sacrifice because I am so rich in the love of Pyare Lal that all else seems insignificant. By love I mean all the glory of the tender, strong, passionate, peace -ful, contended, self forgetful love of woman for man. I do not believe man was created to live without woman. As you love your brother, Bawa Sahib, so I love your brother. But you are man and I am woman, and while our love in its strength must be the same at the core, for me there is also another complexion to it. I see in Pyare Lal the father of my children, and I tremble to the passion of tenderness when I think I shall one day suckle his son at my breast. None but the finest children could be born of the spirit which unites us and 3 the strength of our bodies. I can never be an Indian woman and can not give him pure new children. Would that alone prejudice you against them? Piyare and I are one country in spirit and colour is unimportant beside that. When I loved Piyare first it was not for the first time, we came together out of space – we have loved before – and after this life we shall love again. I would account it an unbearable shame to weaken my love; it does not weaken, it strengthens. I was not brought up in an easy school. I do not ask ease from the future. I want to serve and to serve as best a woman can, by the side of her husband and children. I repeat – there is one thing I can not do; become an actual Indian woman. And I know full well that some woman of his own race will miss a perfect husband in Piyare. But my spirit is with India and not with 4 England, with Pyare and not with a man of my own country. My children will be an even greater bond. My clothes another. Would you deny me your perfect understanding for something I can not help? It just happened that I was born in England – but it also happened that my soul is not in this country but in another. I have a different mission from Miss Slade. [Madeleine Slade - a British woman who worked with Gandhi] India accepted her service, I hope and believe that she will accept mine. I should be the last person to hold Pyare back from completing the promise of the struggle of his early life. I would rather cut my throat than “demanise him”. This letter is equally addressed to Bhaboo Ji [B.P.L.'s mother]. Your sister, Sd. / Freda.
A really warm review of The Lives of Freda has just appeared in the Indian Journalism Review, a long-running blog run by Krishna Prasad, former editor of Outlook magazine. The review focusses on Freda's column for the Tribune in the 1940s, 'From a Woman's Window'. He suggests that this may have been the first column in an Indian paper by a woman journalist addressing women's issues. Do give the review a read: https://indianjournalismreview.com/2019/03/23/how-a-newspaper-editor-inspired-a-spunky-english-mom-to-name-her-first-son-ranga-the-amazing-life-and-times-of-possibly-indias-first-woman-columnist-freda-bedi/ Separately, the Millennium Post has run an excerpt from the biography.
 These photos of the launch of The Lives of Freda in Chennai earlier this week have been taken by Deepali Saxena, who is in the TV journalism class I teach at the Asian College of Journalism - thanks Deepali!  L to R: Nalini Rajan; Madhulika Gupta; Andrew Whitehead; Kabir Bedi; Nivetha Sekar; Aman Khanna 
 
 'It was a pleasure to read this extraordinary book and I encourage you to do the same.' That's Awanthi Vardaraj's verdict in her review of The Lives of Freda on the new multi-lingual site Asiaville.
Her piece includes video of interviews with Kabir Bedi and the author of the biography, Andrew Whitehead. Do check it out! www.asiavillenews.com/article/review-the-lives-of-freda-by-andrew-whitehead-3292  The actor Kabir Bedi - Freda Bedi's son - was the chief guest at the Chennai launch of The Lives of Freda yesterday evening. It took place at the splendid new auditorium of the Asian College of Journalism, and was presided over by the dean of studies, Nalini Rajan, who is also a novelist. Three students - from left to right below, Madhulika Gupta, Nivetha Sekar and Aman Khanna - asked questions of both Kabir Bedi and of Andrew Whitehead (all three are in his TV journalism class at ACJ).  Kabir was generous in his praise of the book, and fielded questions from both the audience as well as the panel. More than a hundred people attended, and lots of copies of the book were sold - and indeed signed. 
The event was live streamed on ACJ's digital platforms - and you can see a particularly pertinent clip from the evening here: https://twitter.com/mvdhiraj/status/1107991888307482624 And the New Indian Express has done a quick turn-round story on the launch, Freda Bedi: an ode to a remarkable woman   The Hindu has - rather marvellously - carried another article about The Lives of Freda, pointing to tomorrow's launch event in Chennai which Kabir Bedi will attend. Do come along!
 Freda Bedi's biography was launched in Bangalore on Saturday evening - and you can see me here with Ranga Bedi, Freda and BPL's first child. Ranga and his wife Umi were the generous hosts of the launch event, held at the G-Gallery off Lavelle Road. It was a wonderful evening, well attended and very sociable. Many thanks to all who attended. And a big shout out for Seher Bedi, Freda's grand-daughter, whose photos I have posted here.  Here's Umi and Ranga at the launch - the family has a wonderful archive of papers, letters, photos and recordings which they very kindly made available to me as I worked on Freda's life story.   Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the head of Biocon, and her husband John Shaw were among those attending the launch. The novelist Sadiqa Peerbhoy - below with her husband Bunty Peerbhoy - was the moderator of the event.   |
The Lives of Freda- a blog about my biography of Freda Bedi 
Andrew Whitehead
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