‘Broken Mirror’: Conversations with Bengal’s public intellectuals shine a light on their inner lives

“You did not want an esoteric conversation, [you] wanted a simple exchange of thoughts. I hope we have kept it so…” This is how Chinmoy Guha reassures danseuse-actor, Mamata Shankar, and perhaps himself, interjecting in the middle of their exchange to point out that he keeps things simple. In fact, across all the interviews in Broken Mirror: Conversations with Artists and Thinkers, Guha sticks to this basic principle of keeping things simple and uncomplicated. Even when the conversations as he calls them move along profoundly philosophical lines, this feature makes every single colloquy in the book eminently readable and hugely entertaining, informative, open, and, in many places, deeply poignant.

The interviews were conducted between 2000 and 2023. But, despite the broad timespan and range of intellectual and artistic preoccupation of the dramatis personae, Guha’s unwavering integrity holds the book together with a firm grip.

I won’t agree

Interviewing intellectuals and artists can be daunting, especially if someone like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is among them. If they happen to be celebrities in their respective fields, the interviewer cannot afford to let slip his guard, nor can he always anticipate their ironic or smug responses communicated verbally or through body language. Who knows if sometimes they are put off by...

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