Venu Chitale

Venu Dattatreye Chitale, also known as Leela Ganesh Khare (28 December 1912 – 1 January 1995), was an Indian writer, BBC Radio broadcaster, and secretary to George Orwell during the early years of the Second World War.

Chitale was born in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India, and was in England between 1934 and late 1947. In 1940, after assisting with volunteer work in a local air raid precaution unit in Oxford, she moved to London to work with Orwell, then BBC Radio's talks producer. She became a broadcaster for both the India section of the BBC's Eastern Service, where she read news and gave recipes in Marathi, and the BBC Home Service, where she taught British listeners vegetarian cooking at a time when meat was rationed and in short supply.

Around 1944, Chitale began working for Krishna Menon at the India League in London. Towards the end of 1947, after India's independence, she returned there and assisted Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit at refugee camps set up in Delhi following the Partition of India. Her first novel, In Transit, was published in 1950.

Chitale's life is recorded in a chapter in Vijaya Deo's Sakhe Soyare, a book in Marathi. In 2017, the BBC produced a video about her, and in 2023, a Google Doodle was made celebrating her 111th birthday.

Early life and education Venu Chitale was born in Shirol, Kolhapur, in present-day Maharashtra, India. Her date of birth is given as 28 December 1910 in the 1939 England and Wales Register, and as 1912 in Sahitya Akademi's Who's Who of Indian Writers (1961). (The Sahitya Akademi incorrectly give the publication date of her first novel, In Transit, as 1951.) (Du Preez was already a BBC announcer, according to her death certificate (1948) issued in Cape Town.) Every month she wrote and delivered a programme preview, which Orwell edited, and regularly read out translated scripts in Marathi, her mother tongue.

In 1941, in one programme titled "The kitchen in wartime: some suggestions for doing without meat", Chitale gave her suggestion of a vegetarian alternative to sausage and mash and spoke of what she thought an Indian housewife might do in Britain with the limited availability of ingredients and fuel; in another, she talked of "appetising curries". In 1942 she approached Orwell's wife, Eileen Blair, with a request to help out with Blair's In the Kitchen series on the BBC Home Service. Chitale also talked to a British audience on the cooking series The Kitchen Front and taught listeners vegetarian cooking at a time when meat was rationed. In addition she broadcast recipes to Indians in India in the programme In Your Kitchen.

In 1943, Chitale contributed the chapter on the European refugee children's exhibition in E. M. Forster's, Ritchie Calder's, Cedric Dover's, and Hsiao Ch'ien's book Talking to India. How popular she was with Indian listeners was documented in 1943 in an unclear Report on Indian Programmes. Not understanding Marathi, he once played her broadcast from end to beginning. There, she became acquainted with Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. Other members at that time included Bhicoo Batlivala, Ellen Wilkinson and Aneurin Bevan. There, she was introduced by Sarojini Naidu and spoke of the little interest in India she found in England; she suggested to Indians to learn as many Indian languages as possible to encourage more unity.

I was in England for fourteen years, fourteen precious young healthy years of my life. I lived in a cottage full of dainty flowers, and more full of wonderful books... I dined on nuts and fruit and on the most luscious greens and vegetables that any fastidious naturopath could prescribe. And I did this in company of English friends who lived for ideals, whether they were humble or elevated did not matter.

Later career Chitale left Liverpool for Bombay on 4 December 1947, on the RMS Empress of Australia. That year she assisted Pandit with refugee women and children in the camps set up in Delhi following India's Partition. Anand wrote the preface. She also wrote for Navshakti, a Marathi newspaper, and spoke occasionally on All India Radio. Her life is recorded in a chapter in Sakhe Soyare, a book in Marathi authored by Vijaya Deo.

Selected works