Welcome to Celebrate The Podcast Season Two: Flip The Script

[This episode has been released on the auspicious occasion of Parakram Diwas (Birth Anniversary of Indian revolutionary leader Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose).

In 2026, this day also happens to be Basant Panchami -the day that marks arrival of spring in India by celebrating the Goddess of Knowledge.]

Accomplished and British Film and television actor and author, Leena Dhingra is a name, voice and face recognised worldwide as ‘Nani Umbreen’ from the ‘Demons of Punjab’ episode of Doctor Who but for Indians from pre partitioned India, she is the personification of strength and courage of one who has shown that it is still possible to reclaim personal, filial and generational identities through writing and find closure even if they had been forced to be hidden and be unspoken due to adverse political and social circumstances. She is also Auntie Bindu from the comedy show, Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee, Mrs Shah from the movie ‘East Is East’ and most recently, she was Zainab Hyatt in the Channel 4 school drama Ackley Bridge.

Both her debut novel, ‘Amritvela’ and recent book, ‘Exhumation: The Life and Death of Madan Lal Dhingra’ focus on the pain, dislocation, confusion and heartbreak that come from being denied the basic human acknowledgement of having existed and held an identity.

In this episode, Leena ji shares how writing and publishing Exhumation: The Life and Death of Madan Lal Dhingra, part memoir part biography that helped her put to rest lifelong questions of who she was beyond being a constantly displaced child who carried the pain of her parents displaced by the Partition of India, much like her great uncle Madan Lal, the son of a privileged, anglicised Indian family, who while on a quest to find out what he is was destined for ended up being the first Indian freedom fighter to be executed in London.

Who Was Madan Lal Dhingra?

On July 1, 1909, Dhingra assassinated Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie, a British official and political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India, during a public meeting in London. Madan Lal Dhingra was executed on August 17, 1909, at the age of 24. He had arrived in London in 1905 to pursue engineering. A staunch nationalist since his young days, during his trial, he expressed no remorse instead expressed pride in his actions. His daring act continued to inspire many young Indians until independence, however, along with the marginalization of patriotism of Indian revolutionaries, his contribution too has been pushed to the back seat.

Episode highlights:

1) What ‘exhumation’ means here: waiting to go home, sense of non-belongingness & not talking instead carrying pain as a huge burden

2) Similarities in life patterns with her great uncle despite being separated by a generation

3) Reading book excerpt: on how she first came to know about her great uncle

4) Writing the book being on a self quest- his quest: where did they both belong?

5) The story behind getting his photograph

6) About Pentonville and Indian Sinn Féin-ists

7) How shooting for ‘Demons of Punjab’/ Doctor Who helped her disidentify from the family trauma she had internalised

8) Re-looking at great uncle 's life and times from the present.

9) Visit to the mazhaar of her uncle who had become a sufi saint jumpstarted her acting career 30 yrs after she left drama school

10) Her path to publishing the book

11) How telling her great uncle’s story and her own has now brought dept to her writing and brought healing

12) When will this book be released in India

13) Why she now identifies better as a writer

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