Interviews Across Time and Space: A useful manual for interviewing
Writer by interest, Ajit Baral has profoundly asserted in his new book ‘Interviews Across Time and Space’ that interviewing people is not as easy as we in the media usually take it to be.
While working with media, interviewing skills are very much essential for journalists. The skill of talking with people is not developed only through regular interviews, talk shows or interactions but extensive knowledge of the interviewee and the biography are also a must. Unless the interviewers have detailed information about the works and life of the interviewee, the content generated will not be as worthy as it ought to be and the presentation will quite easily erode the essence of the whole interview.
Expectedly, Baral has focused his interviews on books, writings and literary travelogues. His interviewees are such people as CEO of tehelka.com Anuradha Bahal, cricket writer Ramchandra Guha, fiction writer Amitava Kumar, Penguin publisher Ravi Singh or Nepali revolutionary politician Dr Babu Ram Bhattarai yet he managed to concentrate his ideas around literary works and ‘book talk’. However, while focusing on political issues while interviewing Dr Bhattarai, Baral has not missed the chance to talk about the philosophy behind the Maoist doctrine ‘Prachanda Path’.
Intensive reading before interviewing people is a necessary quality that an interviewer has to develop. For instance, while talking to Baral, Guha said cricket could not flourish in the US because Americans think time is money for them. The answer is interestingly linked to Guha’s reasoning that Americans haven’t mastered in cricket because it is a socialist game.
Baral’s anthology includes two Nepalis writing in English – Manjushree Thapa and Samrat Upadhyay. He attempts to bring out the inside stories of these writers as he asks them to tell how they write, edit and re-write before the creations are sent for publication. Certainly, interviews with Nepali writers portray the closeness that Baral maintained with them as if letting the readers know he has been a witness all through the process of writing, editing and re-wiring by these writers.
Interview with Pico Iyer, a writer for Time magazine, is wonderfully presented where Baral talks of all books that Iyer wrote, with details. Baral’s book could be a wonderful resource for those willing to gain expertise on interviewing and learn how an investigative interviewer has to prepare oneself before setting out for the interview.
However, Baral’s interviewing technique has one thing redundant. To most people he asked ‘when and why did you start writing?’ and they always came in the beginning. In modern techniques, interviews reasonably start with the latest issue that arrests the attention of the public. On the contrary, Baral begins with early life.
Yet, ‘Interviews Across Time and Space’, which is a collection of interviews published over time in national and international newspapers and online news portals, could be useful for beginners and a refresher for those already experienced with interviewing techniques.
Published in Nepalnews.com