Woman's Hour - Miriam Margolyes; Elaine Feeney; Cook the Perfect with Ravinder Bhogal.

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

Described as a ‘tender portrayal of experiencing dementia in lockdown’ Watching Rosie is an online play starring Miriam Margolyes. Portraying grandmother Alice, and Louise Coulthard, her granddaughter Rosie, Miriam joins Jenni to discuss the bond between the two as they face change and confusion. Sinead Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with terrifying secret. No one knows it; not her fellow patients in hospital, and certainly not her family. She’s only confided in a shiny magpie and Google! Poet Elaine Feeney talks to Jenni about her debut novel As You Were – all about the secrets we hold, the burdens we carry and why we all need people to lean on.The Care Quality Commission have described the maternity care at Basildon University Hospital as ‘inadequate’, after a whistleblower shared concerns for patient safety. Jenni is joined by BBC Look East’s Suzie Fowler-Watt, who has been following the story, and Lauren, who has had maternity care at the hospital and is part of a support group for women who’ve lost babies at the hospital.Chef and restaurateur Ravinder Bhogal's new book Jikoni celebrates immigrant food and its ability to adapt. Her recipes span flavours and culinary traditions from India, Kenya, Asia and Britain. She tells the stories of women who are marginalised and whose stories have been erased - stories she refers to as feminist gospels. She talks to Jenni about how to Cook the Perfect Coffee Rasgullas with Mascarpone Ice Cream and Espresso Caramel.Producer: Louise Corley Editor: Karen Dalziel

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 20th of August. Good morning. In today's programme, maternity care at Basildon University Hospital is described as inadequate by the Care Quality Commission. How did the failures come to light? A first novel by the Irish poet Elaine Feeney, As You Were, brings together a group of very different women in a hospital ward where there is no privacy but a community of sorts. And Cook the Perfect with the chef and restaurateur Ravinda Bugal. Her book is Gicconi, Proudly, Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen. Now there are a few moves to try and bring some live theatre back,

particularly where the performance can take place in the open air, but most of the work that's being done is being created within strict social distancing rules, using screens and to be shown on television or online to an audience at home. A short play called Watching Rosie is available online until the 30th of September and has been produced by the Original Theatre Online. It's about a grandmother, Alice, who has dementia, communicating with her adult granddaughter, Rosie, by Skype. Rosie is played by Louise Coulthard, who wrote the play, and Alice is played by Miriam Margulies. We spoke earlier, and Miriam described Rosie to me? Rosie's my granddaughter and I love her very much and I worry about her because

I want her to be married. So she's obviously unmarried and very much a modern woman coping with the stresses of being one. I don't know much about modern women and I didn't discuss it with Louise who wrote and played Rosie. So what you see of Rosie is who she is. And of course the only way you can communicate with each other is through the screen. How would you describe your character Alice? Alice much nearer to me an old lady living alone dwindling I think into Alzheimer's I hope that isn't true of me but you never know and just terribly much concerned with her granddaughter's being alone. She's alone and she doesn't want that fate for her granddaughter. How difficult was it to play a woman with dementia, who at times seems perfectly sensible, coping with the technology,

and then, maybe not quite so sensibly, trying to pair her granddaughter off with a delivery man? Well, it was not easy. I mean, the whole technique is difficult with Zoom because you can't look into the eyes of the person that you're acting with. You have to look above, into the camera's eyes. And I find that quite difficult. But Mike Fentiman, who was our director, is very experienced.

And he guided us through the difficulties of it. I don't really like doing it that way. I mean, it was hard and I wasn't sure how it was all going to work out. You know, none of my skills seem to be relevant in this matter. I just tried to think of Alice as coping. And as I'm familiar with coping, I kept it within my experience. What made you decide to get involved with the piece? I was interested in the script. I liked the script. I thought it was good. That was the first thing. Then I heard that it was for charity for Dementia UK, which is a charity that I support. And then I thought, well, it might be an interesting technical exercise, which, of course, it was.

But it made me rather scared if that's the way we're going ahead. And it may well be because it's not easy. Let's just hear an extract which shows Alice's anxiety for Rose to find a good man. Have you met anyone in there? No. No, it's hard to meet a man when you're in isolation. I met your granddad in isolation. No, I thought you met him at a train station.

Oh, yeah, that's right. He was handsome. I just want you to be happy. Having a man doesn't make you happy. Things are different now. People don't fall in love at smoky train stations anymore. Eh? People don't get married when they're 19.

I don't even want to get married. Rosie! I've got a lot of other things on my plate that I want to sort out before settling down and picking out

China patterns. Yeah, well, that's all very well and good. But I want to tell you this now. Being on your own is not all it's cracked up to be. You remember that. How much tougher would you say, Miriam, lockdown has been for older people,

whether they suffer from dementia or not, just because of the isolation? Oh, I think it's terribly hard. I found it very difficult because I need people and I'm living alone. And I'm really, you know, very often I wake up in tears and I feel depressed and then I pull myself together and realize that many people are worse off than me. But I think facing lockdown alone is horrid. And of course, if you're older and therefore at risk, as we are, you can't go out, you mustn't go to shops. And so you're forced to order things online, which is quite challenging sometimes. I think it's horrible.

I know genealogy is a hobby of yours. So presumably you've had some time to do that whilst you've been in lockdown. I doubt you have ever been short of things to do knowing you. But didn't you find a story about your great grandfather recently? Well, genealogy is my passion. And indeed, this has been an opportunity in which I found a whole lot more members of my family a few years ago, didn't come as a result of this period of lockdown. But it is one that I find compelling. He was a criminal. And I found it out because of the word of the initials, actually, CNV, which stood for convict, in the 1881 census. He was in Parkhurst Isle of Wight prison for fraud and receiving stolen goods.

You sound almost proud of him. You know, I am. I am because I think he was a criminal because he was poor and he didn't know what else to do. He couldn't speak the language. He came over from Poland. And I think it was because of that. And I've always been on the side of crims and the underdog. You know, I'm a bit of a rebel and I wondered if it came from that far back.

I'm not a criminal, however, I would like to emphasise. Now, Miriam Margulies, Almost Australian, was broadcast recently on BBC2 and is still, of course, available on the iPlayer. Why did you become an Australian citizen? My partner's Australian, Jenny, and I wanted to be able to visit Australia easily, coming and going. We have a house there and family there, and I didn't want to have to queue up for visas. I think that's the real reason that I became an Australian. It doesn't mean that I have stopped being British because I've just added it to my portfolio. Now, the programme's a very, very personal journey.

10,000 kilometres, two months to discover what it means to be Australian today. How difficult was it? I mean, you're not a very young woman these days. No, I'm not. I'm nine years older than you, Jenny. I found it very hard. I'm not particularly mobile. My back's bad. My legs are bad.

But I was fired with curiosity, which is, I think, what propels me through life, really. And it was a wonderful opportunity to see places I'd never seen and meet the sort of people that I don't meet because I live in a showbiz bubble, I suppose, a middle class bubble. And this was a chance to burst out of the bubble. And it was hard, but I had a team helping me, of course. Who among the Australians you met who were having a hard time really stood out for you? Oh, I think Modj, who was the young Afghani refugee that I met in Vinny's charity shop in Melbourne. His story and his bravery and his sweetness just moved me to tears. And as I found out from lots of letters afterwards that people wrote to me,

other people were moved by his story. We're still waiting to hear whether he's got his visa or not. And for him to be an Australian was a real dream. And I hope it comes true. And I also was very touched by the women, the homeless women who took to trailer life. I couldn't do that. I just know that's not for me.

And it's a big problem in Australia, women over 55 becoming homeless. That's the biggest increase of any section of the community is women over 55. And that's a shocking statistic. You did do some camping, though, never having been camping before. Why had you never camped in your long life before? I wasn't strictly camping because I did spend most nights in rather low grade hotels. The main reason was because I couldn't reach the bed in the camping van. It was just too much for me and there was no ladder to climb up. So I'm afraid I cheated. But the reason I've never gone camping before is I think parental restrictions. Mummy said Jewish

girls don't sleep on the ground. Now, whether that's true or not, I don't know. But this Jewish girl never did. One of the things you said about life in Australia was you said life feels brighter in Australia. What do you mean by that? It may be the age that I am, but I feel that in Australia, partly because of the weather, let us be honest, the sun shines brightly there. And there is a sense of optimism and can do about the people that they're irreverent, ironic, beautifully sceptical. Whereas now here in England, and you would expect me to say that it has a political source. But I feel that there is a gloominess about us here in Britain. And that just doesn't exist in Australia.

Reading a recent interview, you said you're moving in with Heather, the partner you spoke about a moment ago, who I think you've been with since 1967. Why move in together now after so long? It's a bit scary, actually, I think for both of us. Well, look, we're old. We're old. I'm 79 and Heather's 77. And we probably won't have that much longer. And I love her very much. And I just want to be with her. She lives in Holland. She works in Holland. But her books are being finished. And who knows how much longer I'll be working? I don't know. I hope I continue. But it's got to be in an English speaking country. And I think we're going to settle in London. And I want to be with her because I miss her so much. And being in this lockdown situation away from her has been absolutely horrendous. When you love someone,

Jenny, you know, you want to put your arms around them and hold them close and talk and laugh together. And I miss that dreadfully. Miriam, for you and Heather together, the very best of luck. Thank you very much for talking to us this morning. Thank you, Jenny. And may I wish you a glorious retirement. Oh, don't say retirement, Miriam. I won't wish you a glorious retirement. I wish you a continuous excitement. Thank you so much. And the same to you. Keep on keeping on, eh?

You betcha. I was talking to Miriam Margulies and you can see Watching Rosie online until the 30th of September. Elaine Feeney is best known as a poet, but she's now published her first novel. As You Were is set in a hospital ward, and the central character is Sinead, who's a young, driven property dealer who's

kept her cancer a secret. Her family doesn't know, nor has she confided in her fellow patients in hospital. But in the ward, where there's no privacy, there is a sense of community among the women who include Jane, who suffers from dementia, and Margaret Rose, who runs a rather chaotic family from her mobile phone. Here's how the story begins.

I didn't tell a soul I was sick. OK, I told a fat magpie. She was the first beating heart I met after the oncology unit, and she sat shiny and serious on the bonnet of the Volvo, one for sorrow. And I saluted her with that greeting you give when you find yourself alone and awkward with one magpie, and she flew away, piercing her black arc through the sky blue. After saluting magpie, I sped at 139 kilometres per hour out along the M6. Stone walls hurled past and end days of August conspired with night, letting a cold dusk down. 39, fitting.

On the car's windscreen, a fog was creeping around my eldest son's initials traced inside a fat heart. But I was fine. Father always told me I was fine. So as the years went by I grew increasingly mistrustful of bad news bearers. Miss Sinead Hines was fine. Father said so. I was fine. I am fine. I will be fine. Elaine joins us from Galway in the west of Ireland. Elaine, as I said, very well known for your poetry. Why did you decide to embark on a novel? Good morning, Jenny. I suppose I said that maybe, you know, novelists were making so much money. No, I'm only joking. I think that the eye of poetry became something that I need to escape. I think I had an illness myself in 2014 and I really was intrigued by the hospital as a setting. I've had some hospital admissions and it's a really, really interesting space. And the characters that you meet along your way, they're quite colourful. And I just didn't find that, you know, the eye and the lyric of the poems, it wasn't really working. And I suppose I had been a political poet pre-Repeal and pre-Marriage Equality, and I wanted to write something different, I think. And yet the novel

is set during that period with repeal the eighth and equal marriage when they were high on the agenda. Why are you so passionate about writing about national identity, institutions and women in Ireland? Yeah you're right I did write it before the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, and I think it's quite frantic in its language because of that reason. And I really wanted to write this big, noisy sort of intergenerational novel that represented the women that I knew, women that I'd grown up with, my grandmothers, my mother, women that had maybe suffered under the state to a great, to a large extent, you know. And also, I think the world started to begin to seem a bit like an echo chamber with regards to Twitter and the Internet and so on. And I don't think it's always very representative of the multi-voice space that I feel that I live in, you know. So I think that was my main reason, really. The format is unusual at times.

There are quite a lot of lists. What were you hoping to get across with list after list? Well, I'm a mum myself and busy and my mind is always made up with lists. And I think it's to represent, I suppose, that frantic emotional labour that women take on. You know, Sinead is 39. She gets this devastating diagnosis at the very beginning of the novel. And she doesn't fully think of herself.

She freezes in some ways. She goes back to her house where she lives with her three sons and her husband, Alex. And I often think of that moment where she arrives in the door of her house and decides not to tell Alex that she's terminally ill because her mind is so busy. It's so busy with lists.

So, yeah, I think we've become a list society. Everybody seems to be so busy. Where did the idea of Sinead keeping her illness secret come from? Yeah, so she speeds off in her Volvo, as you just heard there, and for eight months she freezes with her secret. And I think I wanted to write a character that reacted very differently to how I reacted. So when I was in hospital, I was resuscitated. And I remember the ICU reg saying, you had about an hour to live. Why did you let yourself get into this state? And my mother was present at that time. And so it was a very public thing. This had happened to me

and it became very public very quickly. And I was 18 months in recovery. And sickness has a very public face. You know, the neighbours knew about it work knew about it and sometimes I often felt like I would have liked to have been able to keep it a secret I don't know why maybe just so that I didn't become such a public conversation maybe so yeah so I think I was interested in Sinead getting a terminal diagnosis and keeping it a secret and I suppose that plays in a little bit to repeal and to women in Ireland have an agency and autonomy over their own bodies.

That was, you know, a lot of the chat at that time was about that. And I thought to myself, well, you know, should she be allowed to keep this secret? And is this a really selfless thing that Sinead does or is it a very selfish thing and I suppose that's really up to readers to decide. Why did you decide that she should confide in a magpie? Well that's a little bit to do with my own obsession with superstition so that these

are called pish rogues here and I'm not at all religious, but I do have these mad superstitions that I probably inherited from my grannies and my family. So when I see one magpie, I'll always salute it and say hello to it. You know, I don't put new shoes on the table and we don't cut down a fairy tree. I think it comes back. My grandfather was a farmer and there was a fairy tree in the middle of one of the fields and he'd never cut it down. And it looked so odd. But I realised I sort of respect it. So, you know, it just goes back, I suppose, into those sort of beliefs. So she confides in the magpie. And also when she leaves the hospital, there's a magpie sitting on the bonnet of the Volvo.

So I suppose she says it to the magpie and she gets it off her chest that way. Now, I have to say that the book is somewhat peppered with bad language. Why so frequently is the language below par, shall we say? Well, I wanted to really represent the vernacular and I suppose, I think, you know, we let a lot of bad language go here. A lot of me and my friends, we use it as punctuation, you know. I was thinking about that with regards to the language in the novel. And there's a lot of sorries in the novel. Sinead says sorry a lot as well. And I was thinking about women in Ireland, you know,

we tell our big story, but we apologise before we tell it. And then we apologise after we tell it and we say sorry throughout the story. So I think in a way the bad language is also a punctuation of sorts. Just as a general question, why do you think it is perceived as a failure to somehow open up and talk about things that are to a degree private?

Yeah, that is such an interesting question. And it goes back to that time when I wrote the novel, because at the time, so many Irish women were sharing such deep, dark stories on radio, on the TV, online, to try and, I suppose, you know, repeal the Eighth Amendment. They had so much skin in the game at that stage. And, you know, I don't even think we've come to terms with how much sharing had to happen for us to have what i would consider a basic human right at that stage um and i suppose you know

this book is a book about secrets margaret rose has a secret jane lohan on the ward she is in her 80s and she has a huge secret and even with her dementia she's she's able to keep the secret and she knows she shouldn't tell it to anyone but she's able to tell strangers because there's a safety I think in strangers that we don't always have in our nearest and dearest and I don't know does that come from a protection but I suppose when we share these secrets if we're not used to and we didn't grow up telling them and there wasn't a culture of, you know, oh, how are you feeling? That's I suppose in that clip you heard, I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine.

And everything will be fine. And we're grand, you know. But that influence comes from her father, doesn't it? Yes, very much so. Sinead is always fine. His voice is incredibly intrusive. And I suppose the novel Sinead and I wanted Sinead to grow out of his voice. And he has very much, I suppose, demeaned her as a young woman and a young girl.

And he is a very problematic father figure. He doesn't know how to raise this daughter that he has, this bookish daughter, this sensitive. She's a very sensitive person. And I suppose that voice comes back, doesn't it? And I think childhood voices, we never fully escape them. You know, we hear them constantly. And I was interested in that idea of women, you don't talk about, you know, the taboo subjects. I think that's breaking down now a lot.

And I think go back to repeal. We were having very difficult conversations and dinner tables and on trains and the radio and so on. But I think it, you know, it came at a great cost to some women, I think. Elaine Feeney, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. And I'll repeat the title of the novel. It's called As You Were. And thank you for being with us this morning and I'll repeat the title of the novel. It's called As You Were and thank you for being with us. Still to come

in today's programme, Cook the Perfect with Ravinda Bugal. On the menu are coffee rasgullas with mascarpone ice cream and espresso caramel and if only she were coming into the studio, which she's not. What a pity. And of course the serial, which she's not. What a pity.

And of course, the serial episode four of Lucy Loves Desi. Now, there have been rumblings about the safety of maternity care at Basildon University Hospital since 2018, when a baby died and then a mother died in 2019. At the time, the Care Quality Commission carried out an inspection and said the unit, which had once been rated outstanding, required improvement. In May of this year, a whistleblower expressed concerns and the CQC made an unannounced visit in June. Their report was published yesterday

and described the maternity care at Basildon as inadequate. What has it been like for women who have been treated there? Well, Lauren Beattie lost her baby in January. Susie Fowler-Watt is the presenter of the BBC's Look East. Susie, what areas of care are said by the CQC to be inadequate? Well, Jenny, this time round, the area of safety, leadership and effectiveness were all found to be inadequate. So, for example, staff did not always complete training in key skills. They didn't identify and escalate safety concerns appropriately. Multi-disciplinary team working was said to be dysfunctional and that had impacted on the increased number of safety incidents. The service did not make sure staff were competent for their roles.

Senior medical staff did not support, supervise or mentor junior medical staff effectively. And most damning leaders did not have the skills and abilities to effectively lead the service. There's clearly a kind of toxic culture there. And the CQC said there was a lack of learning from the previous incidents. Now, Lauren, I know you had several experiences with the maternity unit over the past year,

a couple of miscarriages and then your son what happened in the run-up to his birth so i went well i was at work on a saturday and i was just feeling pain and a lot of discomfort and some other symptoms that were new. So on the Saturday, I called up the Mulberry Assessment Centre to explain the symptoms I've been having. I was then told, oh, you've got a scan on Monday. So on Monday, come down after your scan and we will have a look over and see what's going on. The pain still went through the day and into the next day um which was my birthday and I decided to call them

later on on my birthday because the pain still hadn't gone and that's when they said um if I felt like I needed to be seen then to go up to the hospital so what happened when you went in um I was taken into a room in the Mulberry Assessment Centre. I was taken into a side room in there where they ran a couple of tests. And then I waited for a doctor to come in so they could do an internal examination. And then that's when they discovered that I'd gone into labour. So what happened then when they realised you were actually in labor far too early i was taken down onto the maternity suite and i was taken to the delivery suite and i was put into a room

called the forget-me-not room which i guess is where all the sort of the sadder side of births happen um so i was taken in there and they were they were pretty convinced at first that he was going to arrive pretty quickly they didn't think that it would sort of make it through the night but I was in there for about three weeks so I was in there for about two weeks before he was born or about two and a half weeks before he was born and then we spent a few days with him after that um but before he was born I was having having doctors come into the room every day, trying to figure out what they could do, and a lot of inconsistency with the information they were giving me.

It was very clear that there was a lack of communication between doctors and consultants at the hospital. What was the care like after the birth? While I was in hospital, the midwives couldn't do enough. While I was there, there was just nothing that could be done. Some midwives went above and beyond to really make sure that I was looked after. I was promised that I would have a meeting with a consultant and one of the ladies from the bereavement team.

Shortly after I left hospital, obviously coronavirus hit, so I received a phone call to say that the appointment, which was supposed to be three months after, I was told that that would now be done over the phone with a consultant so they could put a plan in place of what's going to happen in future pregnancies and what they're going to do to keep an eye on me. And they'd sort of basically told me before anyway that I'd have a lot more extra blood tests and scans

just to make sure everything was OK, because I had an infection which caused my labour, so they wanted to keep an eye on infection and things like that, but they said they would put an official plan in place with a consultant, but that's never happened. I know you had another miscarriage recently during the pandemic after the tragedy of losing your son. What were things like this time?

So my experience this time with the hospital was where I found that there was some other issues as well so um I again was what I believed I was showing signs of an infection so um about six and a half seven weeks I contacted the hospital and I was trying to get through to maternity I was trying to get through to anybody that could that could help me um so I finally got through to someone and they said if you're really not sure or if you really don't feel like something's right you need to go to A&E so I went to A&E and it was there that a doctor because I was promised as well oh well I'm sorry where I was

promised um early scans when I requested the early scans I was denied that and so I went up to the hospital A&E I had some checks done there and the late the nurse in A&E said that she would speak to someone to see if I could get an early scan and then I received a phone call the next day to go in for an early scan and that's when they started to realise that something wasn't right. Susie, as I said in the introduction, the Trust had been described as having excellent maternity care. How did things change so quickly? Yes, a few years ago, they were rated as outstanding in maternity. But yes, things have gone downhill quite quickly. You mentioned a little boy, Ennis Bikarkaki, who died hours after his birth in 2018.

And the coroner found that the hospital's neglect contributed to his death. And then Gabriella Pintilie bled to death in February 2019, hours after childbirth. The coroner said there were serious failings in her care. So clearly the CQC came in after Ennis Bukaki's death to find out what was going on. They then rated it as requires improvement and put a lot of things in place that they wanted done. But when this whistleblower got in contact with them this year and highlighted a cluster of six serious incidents where babies had been born in poor condition and then transferred out for cooling therapy. Well, cooling therapy is a procedure which is used when newborn babies

can have brain injury caused by oxygen shortage. So that's very alarming. That's when the CQC came in again, and they found that things had actually got worse. Susie, I know you've spoken to the chief executive of the trust on Look East. How did she respond? She was very concerned about the report. She said that no one would want to get a report like this. She was very apologetic to the mums who've suffered. She was at pains to say that they had been working very hard since last year to put things in place.

They'd recruited more staff, but it takes time to get them online. They've got a new leadership team in place. She agreed it was completely unacceptable to have this kind of toxic culture, which I put to her. She said they had worked on that. They were aware of it, but still a lot of work needed to be done. What she'd said was actually that it's not that they're getting more and more cases. They're getting more and more complex cases. And we were aware that one of the things mentioned in the report was that high risk births were being treated in the low risk area.

She said that was only actually five cases that they knew about and there were no adverse outcomes, but it still wasn't good enough and it showed really how they needed to manage the the situation differently well suzy fowler what and lauren beatty thank you both very much and i will just tell you what we were told we've also overhauled our processes and training to ensure that we offer women the very best care and support and that we are addressing the issues raised by the inspectors. Thank you both very much indeed for being with us. Now, Ravinda Bogal is a chef and restaurateur whose book, Jikoni, is subtitled as

Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen. The recipe she's making perfectly, but unfortunately, as I said earlier, not in the studio, is coffee rasgullas with mascarpone ice cream and espresso caramel. Ravinda, I am so sorry you're not making it here in the studio on account of this wretched virus, but how would you describe the rasgulla?

Well, the rasgullas are my favourite thing. They're traditionally from Bengal and they are like sweet dumplings of joy. But this one I've taken a bit of a liberty with because selfishly I love all the flavours of tiramisu. And I thought, how do I put the flavours of tiramisu into the texture of a rascola, which is what I really love, that kind of lovely, spongy, fluffy texture. So this is a rascola crossed with a tiramisu. Oh, you are making me so jealous. I'm not sitting next to you trying one. I wish I was there.

I know, don't we both? But, I mean, it's interesting that you've called your recipes proudly inauthentic of immigrant cuisine. What do you mean by that? Well, I think, you know, the idea of authenticity can only really ever be subjective. And I've always found it slightly restrictive. And I think when you're an immigrant, you come through so many borders, that your cuisine becomes very,

very diverse. And when you land up in a new place, you just often have to adapt because you can't get the things that you're used to getting. So the kind of food in the book is the food of immigrants. So it's the food of people who have the ache and longing for what they've left behind, but also the wonder of their new landscape. And it's when they reconcile these two things that they create a completely new cuisine, which is what I think immigrant cuisine is,

which is always proudly inauthentic. Now, there's a short story accompanying this recipe called The Audacity of Rasgullas. What's it about? So it really is about a woman who has come from the hospital. Her husband has died and she finds herself in a room full of mourners. And she's reflecting on her past, a very painful past. So the husband who has died, you know, you'll see in the flashback is was very abusive. And it's sort of about her finding a triumphant moment, you know, finding her inspiration, sorry, her emancipation through eating these rascolas that she finds in the fridge. Shall we hear a part of it, which you very kindly read for us earlier? Here we go. She recalled the first quarrel, the raised hand, the insistent clutch of hair that left a bald patch, the fist in the face, the alarm, the cowering and the rage.

Afterwards, he calmly stepped over the wreck of her and vanished for the next few days. Soon enough, she discovered he had a mistress, a pretty woman with large breasts who wore ornate gold toe rings. Once the profound humiliation had congealed, she accepted the bleak cards fate had dealt her. She cleared out any naive illusions of romantic love, instead making room for the absence of tenderness. She buried her pain deep, never to be excavated again. She walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. Inside, she found a small white Corelli bowl, which she pulled out. She helped herself to a spoon from the cutlery drawer and sat back at the table. At any other time, the two small rascolas suspended like pearls in sugar syrup

would have been just that, a happy encounter between milk, sugar and rose water, but at that moment the act of eating them seemed absurd, perverse even. The woman who had led her, heaving with tears and sighs into the kitchen, watched her uneasily. She lowered the spoon into the first spongy ball, pierced it, cut off a piece and brought it to her lips. Ravinda, why was it important for you to tell this story about this woman in your recipe book? Well, I just think that, you know, there are a lot of stories in the book and in a way I pay tribute

to all these wonderful maternal figures who taught me how to cook. And when I think of them often, I think that they've been written out of history. They've been marginalized, all of their experiences. And I felt it important to have an account of those experiences, the good, the bad and the ugly. But I also think that food is life. And, you know,

often our memories of food are attached to painful things, bad memories. And I think it's important to write about that. You know, it's not always sort of white picket fences and lawns. It can be painful. And yeah, I think it's important to speak about that. And what was your experience growing up as the fourth daughter in a traditional Punjabi family? Well, it was like being in a Jane Austen novel. You know, my mother really believed that to marry well, girls had to cook well. And, you know, so endure all those kind of feminine things. So it was interesting.

And I was the youngest. So I watched my sisters get married. And then I moved to this country when I was seven. And, you know, going to school and seeing another life and other options was just wonderful. You know, I knew I had other options. And what was it about Madhya Jaffray and Nigella Lawson that made you think cooking might be a career and not just a woman's duty? Well, I'd never seen that before.

You know, I just sort of watched woman after woman in my community join this sort of cult of domesticity. And it was only really when I came to this country and, you know, I loved food. Food always connected me to those sort of that ache for home. And when I watched people like Mother Joffrey and Nigella Lawson, I just saw them as these really kind of powerful female role models that showed you that there were other options. You know, my mother always said, well, you'll learn to cook and you'll cook for your husband and children. And I thought, well, actually, I want to cook for many other people other than just

husbands and children. And how easy was it to become a restaurateur? It was really difficult. I mean, I trained as a journalist originally, and then sort of fate came knocking at my door, and I found myself in the food world. But it was a good decade of solid hard work, and a lot of self doubt as well, because there's that sort of intergenerational burden of, well, am I really supposed to be doing this? Can I do this? This lack of entitlement to thinking you can never do something like that. But really, I've had an amazing support system around me that has always told me that I could. And it was actually a female critic who came to one of my pop-ups who just said, when are you going to stop being such a coward and just find a space of your own? That I, you know, it took another woman to tell

me that, to finally think, right, now's the time. I've got to find a site and open a restaurant. I was talking to the chef and restaurateur Ravinda Bogal about her new book, Joconi. Thank you for all your tweets and emails on Basildon Maternity Care. Claire said, I wanted to highlight the superb care and attention I have received from Basildon Hospital postnatally. I had an awful experience in the hospital I gave birth in and came to stay with my parents in Essex.

I've had more care in four days than in my traumatic time in a supposedly good hospital in London. I've been properly triaged over the phone, received constant calls to help with breastfeeding and a warm and caring visitor last night who helped me so much. On Elaine Feeney and her novel, Barbara said, cancer patients are all together on an oncology ward, so it's difficult to keep anything a secret. I didn't tell the woman in my room about my mastectomy because I didn't want to see her reaction. She found out afterwards and was surprised I was unaffected. And then on Miriam Margulies, someone said, I love Miriam Margulies authenticity. She just says it how it is. And then Stevie said, I was struck by Jenny's reaction to the wondrous, irreplaceable Miriam Margolies wishing her a happy retirement.

It's true that the word can have the negative connotation of the end of everything. However, since I retired two years ago, and despite certain financial restrictions, so not much foreign travel, even before lockdown, it's been the start of so many good things for me. So I prefer to use the Spanish term for retirement, la jubilación, which implies all the joy and positivity and for me a certain exaltation at the newfound freedom. I will bear that in mind, Stevie. Now do join Jane tomorrow when she'll be talking to the novelist Wendy Holden about her new book about Crawford,

Marion Crawford, who was the young Scottish trainee teacher who wanted to educate children in the Edinburgh slums, but ended up as governess to the young Princess Elizabeth and Margaret. It's called The Governess. She came from nothing and raised a queen. That's tomorrow with Jane from Me for Today. Bye-bye. Are you still there? Good. There's someone I want you to meet. Their name is Sean, they're 16, and they're in trouble.

Follow Sean's journey by subscribing to Power Up on BBC Sense. The world is dying. It's time to take action. Power Up. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.