Interview with Ann Casement Conducted by Joe Cambray on July 8, 2023

J: Joe Cambray

A: Ann Casement

J: It's my honour, pleasure and privilege to be interviewing a close friend and colleague of many years, Ann Casement. We've travelled the world together on many different professional and social occasions. Since her love of exploration and travel stemmed from her childhood experiences, let us begin there. Ann, could you please tell us a little bit about your background as a British Indian?

A: Yes, thank you very much. British Indian—that's how I always introduce myself. Two things are there from the first day I arrived in this world: India and Catholicism [see Figure 1, as a child in India]. What would you like me to say about India? Well, let me say one thing. I grew up in Bombay, which is one of the great cities of India. And, home to Bollywood. Two of my friends in the day school—I did have a few years at boarding school up in the hills—were daughters of Bollywood producers; all the producers at that time were Muslim, the money men basically. And, of course, there was also the Stock Exchange of India in Bombay. So it's kind of New York/Washington—Bombay/Delhi; though Bombay was much livelier, but the other side of that was every day I saw on the streets of the city poverty, disease and death because Indian funerals are very open—you see the corpse on a stretcher covered with flowers with the face open to view. I often joined the cortège and would talk to some of the people who were there as I spoke quite fluent Hindi at that time. I would talk about the dead person and try to find out something about them. That was part of daily life in Bombay.

J: This connection to the dead reminds me of The Red Book and how reading it has helped us understand Jung's interest in the

unconscious as the realm of the dead. It seems you had your first encounters with this realm on the streets of Bombay.

A: I never made that connection. That's a nice one, thank you.

A: May I say something else about Bombay