Hi! I am Indira Chowdhury.

I studied English Literature and then trained as a historian. I discovered what I most enjoyed when I started doing oral history interviews. Interviewing people across India for almost two decades now, I have been struck by the many ways in which people choose to tell their stories.

Some have greeted me with eagerness: “I often wondered if anyone would ever ask me what we did?” one of the scientists I interviewed had burst out. Others have modestly demurred, “There is nothing much to say about my life.” But even those who hesitated at first would invariably bring out gems that they had held close to their hearts and in the course of the interview felt generous enough to share.

As they talked I often wondered what made them choose the events they spoke about. And what episodes had they omitted to mention? What did they remember and what did they forget? And why did they fall silent sometimes?

My life as an oral historian has made me re-think the act of listening. My academic training encouraged me to listen critically to arguments, but as an oral historian I soon realised that I brought a different set of expectations to the interview. Ten minutes into the interview, I would find myself descending into a deep silence as I listened. And yet, this was no ordinary silence – it was a quiet space that united the listener and the speaker, and often revealed the unexpected. Sometimes, the speaker did not respond to my queries, but answered their own questions, articulating what they heard inside themselves.

But did the narrators evoke nostalgia or something else when they spoke? They narrated stories about the past, of course. But as many oral historians have reminded us the voice of the past is also situated in and shaped by the present. Most narrators compared their past experiences with the present – sometimes the past was rich though not in the same way as the present and sometimes the past appeared impoverished and dull before the glittery and blinding flashiness of the present. And yet their voice held both together in ways that can only be called stereophonic – for it echoed the past as well as the present. This voice of memory was able to traverse a complex pathway that moved between the poles of past and present, inviting the listener to pay attention to the dual quality embedded within.

Perhaps this duality enables the process of transmission from speaker to listener transforming the listener’s understanding of how the past is experienced. In this blog I explore the narration of life stories the acts of speaking, listening and interpreting and what shapes these acts especially within cultures of orality. This blog also includes the reflections of other oral historians about their experiences. I hope you enjoy our reflections. This blog also invites all those who have started on their journeys as oral historians to share your insights into the oral history process and thus become a part of a larger community of oral historians who ask, listen, record, collect and tell stories.

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Indira Chowdhury is a Ph.D. in history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. She has taught at Jadavpur University, Kolkata and at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology where she had founded the Centre for Public History (CPH).

• Indira Chowdhury began her journey as an oral historian and archivist when she began interviewing scientists at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, one of India’s leading institutions of scientific research, founded by the physicist Homi Bhabha. These interviews comprise the core oral history collection at the Archives at TIFR. Indira was also the first archivist at TIFR and responsible for setting up the collections of documents and photographs related to the institute’s early history.
• Indira also founded ARCH India – Archival Resources for Contemporary History – India which went on to create corporate, institutional and non-governmental archives – among them Dr. Reddy’s, IIM Calcutta, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Naandi, Sasha, and Cipla. ARCH which functioned as ARCH@Srishti from 2010 onwards also created archival exhibitions and archival books for IIM Calcutta, IMSc and the Indian Museum, Kolkata to mention a few.
• She was one of the founders of the Oral History Association of India (OHAI) and was its President from 2013 to 2016. She was also the President of the International Oral History Association (IOHA) from 2014 to 2016.
• She lives and works in Bangalore and is currently engaged with oral history in palliative care, a collaborative project between OHAI and Pallium India.

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