Karl, aaj aur Kal by Cyrus Broacha

In which Cyrus tries something new
I've been a fan of Cyrus Broacha ever since I first heard about him. Bakra was brilliant, and the moments of genius of The Week That Wasn't are usually well worth wading through its PJs for. Reading this book, the phrase The Indian Woody Allen sprang to mind repeatedly. However, I was sorry to find it rather mediocre both in terms of entertainment and literary merit. I wish Cyrus had tried harder, he could have come up with something much better than this. You can read my review of Karl, aaj aur Kal and my interview with Cyrus which appeared in The Hindu today by clicking on the links above, or just read on below:

This book traces the lives of Karl and Kunal from childhood to mid-adulthood.
In their early school days they pondered whether the one who invented exams had been heavily intoxicated or clinically insane at the time but their Maths teacher (Mrs. Batliwala) believed them necessary as they empowered the teacher.
Later, in the cast of more than twenty of Godspell (little did they know that this would be twice the number of members in the audience on any given night) Karl excused himself from dance practice (no other animal than the human suffers this indignity in public) taking recourse in his strongest talent – the ability to lie.
In New York as the boys take a course at an “acting studio” we are treated to hilarious stories that are politically irreverent to vegetarians, the hirsute, Rideley’s turtles, Italians and other minority groups.
Back in Bombay, they find themselves thrown into the theatrical film world (with prominent roles in Khalid Jani’s new blockbuster The Gaonwallah, The Britisher, and The Ugly). Eventually, Karl is taken to bosom by the eminent MP Nilesh Kane and by an inexplicable series of events may one day even land up as Prime Minister.
This book calls itself a novel. However, it’s more of a documentary with insights into the film industry, Indian politicians, the south Bombay approach to the universe and some features of life in New York, Paris and Delhi. The characters are not real people and do not change in the course of the book but more like cut-outs that are being pointed at and talked about. However, there’s a distinct Woody Allen feel to much of what Cyrus writes – funny, often surrealistic, and drawing richly from a background of privilege and cultural minority.
Then, this book drips with wisdom. We learn that in the Arthashastra, Kautilya, also known as Chanakya, said there are three phases in a male’s life. In the first he craves a canine companion, in the second he craves a female companion (not necessarily canine), and in the third phase he craves for the canine companion to return and bite the female companion.
It also has insights into world history: Medieval Europe was constantly going to war because of the strange French accent. The 100-years war apparently sparked off when the French ambassador said to his English counterpart, “Greetings to your King of Pascal” which due to the fatal accent was heard as “Greetings to your king the rascal.”
As a diehard fan of The Week That Wasn’t it had me cackling like an unladylike hyena in parts and, during the inevitable lame un-funny bits, waiting for genius to strike again, but frequently disappointed.


How did you select the title of your book?
It was a gift from my erstwhile friend and more importantly drinking companion Shree Kunal Vijayakar.

Which of the main characters in Karl, Aaj aur Kal is inspired by a real person (and who)?
Some have the base of a real person, but then they ignore my instructions and land up doing their own thing. A few are an amalgam of truth and fantasy and the rest are pure fantasy. Kunal would be roughly 50% and Nilesh Kane perhaps 60%. For better or worse it's a piece of fiction.

Did you attend acting school in New York like Karl and Kunal and have you drawn from what you experienced there?
I did, and I have, and I may add I had a ball. I came back with three truths about NY a) you must enjoy walking. b) you'll always be short of cash. c) after every girl there's an even more beautiful one in the future.

Did you really experience Pearl Padamsee as the way you’ve written about her?
Ironically, Pearl herself was really larger than life. Her brand of humour waxed between straight-faced disparaging remarks and over-dramatic statements. I absolutely will always love and cherish her.

What is the message you want your book to carry? Something you want the reader to come away thinking or feeling?
Absolutely nothing. I don't want to cleanse society and the world. Quite frankly I'm one who rarely cleans himself. This book is just a journey and all messages are incidental and at the reader’s own risk.

How did your publisher work with you on this book?
Mostly from far away. Publishers I believe are like wives. First everything is hunky dory and they appear quite submissive. Then before you know it they have the controls. All said and done they've been like a good bra - fairly supportive.

Did you always want to be someone who made a profession out of his wit?
If anybody out there wants to make a living of their wit alone, and aren't necessarily going into politics, then my message to them is please ignore people who tell you to shut up along the way. In the words of Jesus Christ, "They know not what they do".
I would also like to clarify that I see myself as a professional idiot, that is someone whose slated profession is idiocy, and bear in mind I was an idiot long before Chetan Bhagat, Raju Hirani and Aamir Khan came along.

What is your favourite medium to work in? Which do you find the easiest?
Writing for sure. I control all the variables, except of course my daughter's potty timings.

You sometimes have your family in your shows as props and though it’s usually quite hilarious, I always wonder how they feel about it.
They aren’t always chuffed. But they use an excellent instrument to 'cope'. For the past 25 years they simply ignore me.

Tell us something about your early friendship with Kunal Vijaykar and the professional relationship you now share.
I first met Kunal in 1990 for an audition. I think it was a children's play. He stammered, stuttered and coughed through the reading and seemed extremely stern. I found out later he just hadn't developed any muscles, whatever, and as you know smiling needs the co-operation of plenty of muscles. After a while we hit it off. I see us as Lennon and McCartney, without the talent. Although now that I'm nearing 40, I’d rather he was John.

How did you get the idea for the wonderful Kaneez in The Week That Wasn’t?
One day at a workshop we stumbled on a girl who was happily murdering the Hindi language. Her Hindi was so bad that she made me sound like Premchand. Such a gift should not be wasted. We stole her away, only to realise that she's a bundle of comic talent, who we heavily underpay.

In your shows you do a wonderful job of poking fun at important people. Have you ever got into trouble for this? Have you ever been stopped from doing it?
The network will from time to time censor something. But in general we try to use our common sense – short in supply though it is. Generally the team acts as a sounding board when we feel gags treading on dangerous grounds. Unfortunately there are a few holy cows to be adhered to.

Tell us something about how things have changed for you over the years in terms of response from your audiences.
One thing you realise, if people already know you, they've already judged you. It’s a prejudice of sorts. They either like you or they don’t, even when they’ve never interacted with you.
I treat the audience exactly like I treat my wife: I always begin with the two golden words, "I’m sorry”.

What has been your experience with the film industry and how do you relate with it?
It's a lot like everywhere else, sometimes efficient, sometimes corrupt and with many strange accents. Mostly it's been fun, except for the long drives.
I have appeared in about 5 films in total. They are: Jalwa, which was made roughly a hundred years ago, Sooni Taraporewalla's Little Zizou, 99 - People Pictures, Fruit and Nut and Mumbai Chaka Chak (not released yet).
However, I have worked as an interviewer with almost all the male and female stars of your generation and I've had to consume large quantities of alcohol to get over a few of them.

What about politics?
Well, I've been around politicians at public functions. Nilesh Kane's physicality and mannerisms left a great effect on me. Sadly due to security reasons his name can't be revealed at present. Perhaps after I get my green card.

If you really did make Prime Minister, what would be the first 3 things you’d do?
Well, I'd give myself absolute legislative powers and thus dissolve the two now defunct assemblies. Then I'd cancel the Judiciary, and hence without the Judicial review, I'd have absolute and complete power. My third noble act of statesmanship would be to bring back the dance bars, in fact I'd make them compulsory.
But even such a powerful Prime Minister would have his limits. I don't suppose I'd be able to get my daughter into my ex-school! After all there's only so much that even God can do!

Are you looking for a really good ghostwriter?

I believe in ghostwriters
I wrote this article for Open magazine about an insubstantial but integral side of me and although everything I've written is completely true I have to be honest and admit that I discern running through it a kind of plaintive "hire me, won't you!" tone. So go ahead: hire me.
I have worked as a ghost writer ever since I was quite young and always felt happy that people thought I'd represented them remarkably well. Quite by chance, I began doing this professionally after my friend Ritu Malhotra asked me if I would help her write the biography of her father-in-law S.P. Malhotra as an 80th birthday tribute to his dramatic and courageous life.
S.P. Malhotra is the founder of the Weikfield company and very few of us who grew up in India in the 1960s, 70s and 80s have forgotten the taste of Weikfield custard - the only one of its kind in those days.
The book, Doing it My Way, was published for private circulation and was well enough considered for me to receive a string of commissions after. Most notable was the biography of Finolex founding Chairman P.P. Chhabria, There's No Such Thing As a Self-Made Man. You can read more about this striking and inspiring book here.
This photo shot by photographer Ritesh Uttamchandani for Open magazine shows me smugly reading S.P. Malhotra's book (in my wispy, insubstantial way) while waiting for the next roll-out.

Just a few last things about the Jaipur Literature Festival

Just a few last things about the Jaipur Literature Festival ...
I had promised myself that I wouldn’t mention the word “Jaipur” again until next year. But unfortunately I found I have a few more things to say so here goes.
First: I’m too vain to resist showing off something else I wrote about the festival, which appeared in the current issue of Marie Claire. I’m pasting the page here, along with a flattering photo and mini-Q&A they did with me.
Besides vanity, another reason I wanted it up is to identify Mehran Qureshi as the student who asked the question I mentioned in the article. He’s a young Kashmiri studying architecture in Jaipur. After the session, I had a chat with him. A lot of times when I meet youngsters – including, occasionally, some of those who’ve lived in my home since their earliest days – I feel (quite characteristically for someone with an “in my days things were so much better” perspective) a little panicked about the future of the human race. I get the urge to say, “wtf go get a life guys” or something similar in inverted commas, with long-suffering sigh to reinforce the sentiments. But Mehran seemed thoughtful and discerning and I thought, “Duas, bachha, may your tribe increase”.
Second: when I meet journalist friends who scoff at the festival and shudder and call it a mela or say things like “Oh I’m glad I didn’t go, I heard it was really bad this year” I thank myself for being unsophisticated enough to have had a great time and know when I’m really enjoying myself as opposed to when I’m supposed to be enjoying myself so that others will think I’m cool. Last night I was at a dinner raising funds for the Olympic Gold Quest, a not-for-profit foundation promoting sports and games in India with the motto It Takes Just 6 Grams of Gold to Raise A Nation’s Worth. We shook hands with Leander Paes, Geet Sethi, Prakash Padukone and even M.C. Marykom. Over dinner, Rahul Bajaj sat down next to me and we chatted. And I kept thinking, how WASTED this is on me. Give me writers any day.
Third: the dramatic appearance of Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the festival. For security reasons the session was announced barely an hour before it took place, and was held in a closed space despite the many who were curious to see and hear this controversial person. Click here to read my article in the 6 Feb issue of Open magazine with some of what she said and did.

Chai Chai by Bishwanath Ghosh

Railway-junction tales
I read and enjoyed this book several weeks ago and the review I wrote for The Hindu appeared on Sunday 7 Feb 2010. Click here to read it on the epaper, or just read on below.
A book that offers to take you beyond the yellow-and-black railway-station boards of Mughal Sarai, Jhansi, Itarsi, Guntakal, Arkonnam, Jolarpettai and Shoranur is like one that promises to tell a child about the secret inner lives of Asterix, Bugs Bunny, Spiderman and the tooth fairy. These are towns that every rail passenger in India has passed through, but never stepped out to explore. Bishwanath Ghosh did, and in Chai, Chai tells us what he saw in these familiar but unknown places.
We learn here that Itarsi still has its brick kiln, but no longer produces ropes. The Gothi Dharamshala has a view of the railway station (much as a hotel in Kerala might have a view of the backwaters) and apparently “bore the invisible footprints of Gandhi”. In a detour to Benares, Ghosh loses count of the funeral processions and muses “it was like witnessing a carnival of the dead, with each procession showcasing its bier and the dead joyfully raising invisible thumbs from under their shrouds to exclaim, “We made it! We made it to Benares!” While waiting for a replacement autorickshaw on the deserted road outside Orchha he writes, “I could have spent the rest of my day there, if only someone had brought me a charpoy and a book and maybe the lunch that farmers eat when they are out on the fields.”
I felt disappointed to learn nothing about Arkonnam, a junction of numerous less-than-blissful blazing childhood days, whose (careless) 3-legged dog I still remember fondly. All he says is, “Strolling through the streets of Guntakal was like sipping vintage wine, walking through the streets of Arkonnam was like drinking rum on a hot afternoon.”
Everywhere is an endearing preoccupation with samosas. In the evenings, the bars have curtained cubicles that fill up quickly. “Drinking behind a curtain perhaps gave the occupants a sense of exclusivity and importance. And over here, the curtain also served another purpose: every now and then, one of the occupants would pull it in and wipe his oily fingers.”
As a travel book, this book gives us facts and a feel of the environment through the author’s poetic if un-idiomatic recounting. To judge Chai Chai’s literary merit, it might be appropriate to compare it with Pankaj Mishra’s celebrated 1995 Butter Chicken in Ludhiana.
From an anthropological perspective, both books provide similar descriptions of small-town India: brash, clamorous and kitschy. But in tone they differ severely. Mishra distanced himself from his subject and took a patronising view while Ghosh speaks with good-natured cultural tolerance.
One reason for the difference could be that Ghosh himself artlessly uses words like “backside” and phrases like “If she had no problem disrobing in public, what was mine?” He describes a dharamshala as “the Indian equivalent of an inn”. Mishra, however, is descended literarily from the snobbish dead white males of English Literature.
There is another, historical, reason. In the early 1990s, India was a wannabe on the world literary scene: wary and insecure, with writers like Mishra trying extra-hard to please and producing work which exoticised and contextualised the culture. With India’s nascent economic liberalization, the time was ripe for a curious (if sneering) investigation into the immense heartland which was going to provide backroom services for organizations across the globe.
Today, however, English is spoken placidly in the Indian accent and idiom in boardrooms across the world, and Bishwanath Ghosh is reflecting comfortably on the resource pool that powered it.
I enjoyed the author’s portrayal and perspective. However, the book suffers clumsy editing. There are better ways to translate non-English words than spell them out alongside in brackets. Worst of all, the proofreading is disgraceful.

Louis de Bernieres at Jaipur Literature Festival 2010

It must have been a dream
It’s definitely one for the memoirs that I spent a very enjoyable time chatting with Louis de Bernieres at Jaipur last month – and also that I managed to ruin it all by carelessly sending in copy that spelt his name wrong.
Here’s the slightly-longer version of what I wrote for Sunday Mid-day today, and of course posterity can read it with the wrong spelling on this link. Ironically, it begins with an explanation of his rather exotic (for a completely unpretentious Englishman) name.
You have an interesting name.
Bernieres is a small town on the Normandy coast. My ancestors came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066 but went back to France after an argument with the king. In the early 18th century, one of them, Jean Antoine de Bernieres, became a Protestant, a Huguenot, exactly the time when Louis XIV started persecuting the Protestants. He was a soldier and he went off to Northern Ireland where he married into another Huguenot family. In my family we still have a lot of French habits such as drinking wine and arguing about politics and religion at mealtimes. And I’m the only Englishman I know, apart from Prince Andrew, who kisses his father!
You mentioned your regret at the loss of the folk tradition among the English.
Yes. We don’t know folk stories or folk dances and the children don’t learn the folk songs. The English have been made to feel guilty about being English! Even though the empire was largely built by the Scottish – that’s why Sikh regiments play the bagpipes! We once had an imperial confidence, and felt we had the right to be everywhere and tell everybody how to do things but that’s gone now.
Have you heard the joke about Indian restaurants in Britain? There’s this place called A Taste of the Raj. You go in and they hit you on the head with a stick and get you to build a complicated railway system!
But of course Britain today wouldn’t be what it is without the Indians – it’s Indian energy plus British order that makes it so successful!
You grew up in Britain?
My father was in the British army in my early infancy so we were all over the place at various army bases. When I was born we were in Jordan and then I was sent to Cyprus, where it was cooler. But I could say that I grew up in the south of England, in a village in southern Surrey, surrounded by farm land, lakes and forests and meadows. I was sent to boarding school and the first one was really brutal. One of the headmasters was a sadist and the other one was a paedophile and I’d rather have had the paedophile any day. Then I was sent to a public school in Berkshire which was also in the countryside. When I was 18 or 19 I spent a year in South America, in Colombia, and I consider that’s where my life began.
You were a teacher there?
Yes. I worked with a rancher who was Anglo-Colombian in the middle of guerrilla country. People would get kidnapped and there would be ransom demands. The first thing I had to learn when I got there was how to use a revolver! My first three books were set in an imaginary Latin American country. It’s Columbia but I’ve borrowed politics and history from the other countries. The book is annoying to Latin Americans because they want to know which country it is!
Is that the only reason they find them annoying?
Yes. I had one of my nicest fan letters from Venezuela. I wrote a book called Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord about the ravages of the cocaine trade and I received a letter from a woman in Venezuela saying, “Dear Mr. Bernieres, thank you for getting it right.”
I’ve had comments from Greeks and Turks asking, “How do you know us so well!” I don’t really know. I just go there and listen. But I haven’t always got it right! In Captain Corelli’s Mandolin I borrowed names from Kazantzakis – and of course they’re all Cretan names. I didn’t realise at the time the names on Cephallonia were quite different!
Would your consider writing something based in India?
I certainly would if I got to know it well enough, but not after being here for 5 days! Except – if I had a brilliant idea for a short story, I would write it and then I’d show it to Indian people that I trust. If you show your work to enough people, they can always put you right.
Tell us something about your journey as a writer.
My first big influence was my father. He’s written poetry all his life and he’s he’s very good, in an old-fashioned way. He writes as Piers Alexander. I was also very lucky at school. I had a series of teachers who got me fired up. We had one who used to make us memorise metaphors and similies and proverbs. We had to remember a poem ever week and had to write a story every week. Another was a heavy-duty intellectual, into TS Eliot and that. Another had been an actor at Stratford and he understood Shakespeare from the inside and he used to act out all the parts to the class. One minute he’d be Othello murdering Desdemona and the next minute he’d be a murdered Julius Caesar collapsing on the floor. He was wonderful. Yes, there was another boy called William Revier and one year we had to share the English prize. He’s also a novelist – he lives near me in Norfolk … and he’s also of Huguenot origin! We weren’t friends at school but we are now – so we got at least 2 novelists out of that!
And how did you start as a musician?
Rather late, actually – when I was 17. It was the early hippy days and the only way you could get a girlfriend was if you could play the guitar. So I got a guitar mostly because of the girls but I fell in love with it. I’m still in love with the classical guitar. It’s my instrument really. If I don’t play every day, I start to go mad. As time has gone by I’ve got more and more dependent on music psychologically and emotionally.
I’ve been professional for about 6 years now so I have 2 careers. It doesn’t pay nearly as well as writing so I have to stop for a while and write for a bit. I can play almost anything with strings and frets though I must say I’ve never tried playing the sitar – I refuse to sit on the floor with my legs crossed! (giggling) If I was allowed to sit in a chair I might try!
And what are you working on now?
I’ve started a new novel which is also based in India to some extent. It involves the lives of one of my grandfathers. He was in Sri Lanka for a while during imperial days and then he was in the North Western Frontier, trying to control the Afghans which was as impossible then as it is now! In fact the technique then was the same – you just bribed them to behave themselves. He was never able to settle down because he had a very bad marriage and his wife refused to divorce him, so he spent his life wandering about the world. I don’t really know very much about him which is actually a very good thing because I just know he had an interesting life. I want to build a fairly epic novel about his life and just recently I had this idea that at least a third of it I could turn into a ghost story! My little boy gave me the idea – he’s only 5. I said, brilliant! Yes, I have a 2-year old daughter too. They’re my best creations!

Rosha by Vishal Bhandari

Beauty, romance, cruelty - and an awful idiom
Vishal Bhandari lives in my city, but we don’t know each other – as yet, I mean.
His book was sent to me by his friend Faheem, who is ace photographer with the Pune Mirror and who, for reasons best known to himself, addresses me as “Auntie”. Since I have a particular fondness for being called Auntie, I read the book and though it has major flaws, enjoyed it quite a bit.
One of the things I liked is that, well before it says so, I could sense that it was based in Pune. Then, Vishal Bhandari hints at his narrator’s profession without quite specifying it – and that makes you guess a bit before you find out.
In all, he is a wonderful story teller – he knows how to build up a story and hold interest, create strong characters, weave in subplots, interesting information and a strong sense of the difference between right and wrong too.
Together with the beautiful but unfortunate Rosha, we travel from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia to England and then to India, and along the way learn a little of regional politics and society. I even learnt something really special about a prominent but completely-neglected monument in my own city.
But there is one thing that’s all wrong about this book, and that is the language. It’s a strange idiom, strewn with inaccurately-used prepositions and adjectives and far too many clichés. Here are a few examples, which also give an idea of the colourful and lively story.
“Cocooned as a sex slave in Saudi Arabia, Rosha had transformed into a colourful butterfly that fluttered in an out of classrooms and libraries of an ancient college in the United Kingdom.”
“What would have been more embarrassing I thought – Edward marrying an orphaned barren bastard from Afghanistan and leading a happy life or exchanging vows with the daughter of a flourishing business tycoon, who just could not model herself in accordance to aristocracy?”
“Finally, that day arrived when I had to bid adieu to London. As I drove to Heathrow, I remembered that sunny morning when I had stepped in and four years of eventful life was nearing its end with each mile the taxi headed further. I had thanked everybody wholeheartedly for having helped me generously to build myself.”
On one hand I’m tempted to comment that the ferocious use of red pen could have earned this a book a wider market.
On the other, I can’t help wondering (with a little frisson of fear) whether, if enough books written in such language are published and sold, the quality of idiom will cease to be a consideration in the publication of a book.
Finally, I must say that I hope this book will fall into the hands of a really good Bollywood director. There's a super-hit film in the making here.

Hanif Kureishi at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2010

Getting Intimate ... with the author of Intimacy!
Well ... not really "intimate" ... but here's one installment from Groupie Saaz ... first appeared in Sunday Mid-day yesterday ...
One evening at the Jaipur Literature Festival, a woman journalist was startled when the cab she’d just got into stopped and two straight-backed, black-suited gentlemen climbed in.
The one next to her began to chat, saying he’d just arrived from London and was looking forward to a good night’s rest. She asked his name – and he replied, “Han-iff Ko-reshhy”.
“And what are you doing at the festival?” he asked.
“Hoping to meet Han-iff Ko-reshhy!” I simpered back, pretty much swooning at being seated next to the father – and in fact son – of The Buddha of Suburbia.
Writers are different from film stars. You can be a great fan but never recognize him even when he’s sitting next to you. “Yes, I suppose we all look alike,” he said, and we laughed.
Over the next few days, I trailed the man, eavesdropped on his conversations, and listened with proprietary satisfaction when the audience greeted him with the whoops and applause you’d give a rock star.
Hanif Kureishi sits with fretted brow, eyes closed or peering from tiny slits. “Waiting for an idea,” he said to a journalist. “Of course there’s nothing you can do to GET an idea! You just have to wait! That’s why I’m frowning most of the time!” There’s a perpetual impatience about him, and he’s constantly listening with critical ear, characteristic of the way he writes. When someone in the audience asked, “Do you remember the pain of circumcision”, he replied, eyes still closed but eyeball visibly rolling upwards in longsuffering disbelief, “I’ve not had so much interest in my genitals for a long time.”
How central is London as a backdrop to your stories?
I’m fascinated by the city. I’m a local writer, not like Kafka or Beckett. I write about the clothes, the politics, the language and I don’t go out of my way to research things. I just look out of a window and see something going on and write about it.
How has the immigrant experience changed?
In the old days it was a really big deal to be an immigrant. People looked at you as if you were from the moon. Now things are different. I haven’t seen a white English person in West London for years. My kids consider themselves entirely British. The thing that really affects people’s lives is the crash of the economy. People are concerned about housing, unemployment and what their future is going to be like.
Do your children write?
No, and they’ve never read a book in their lives! None of them! They consider reading books a very old-fashioned thing to do, something people did before they had PlayStations. They think it’s completely idiotic that anybody would be interested in one of my books.
Why did you agree to write the screenplay for White Tiger?
The money, I needed it to pay the school fees. But I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t enjoyed the book. Films about India are popular these days. A lot of Indians are writing books. Along with IT, Indian novel writing seems to me to be the primary brewing industry in the third world. And that seems to me a wonderful thing too. A culture, a literature survives, because there are new voices speaking into it. You can’t just read Dickens and Henry James forever.
Besides White Tiger I’m writing some short fiction. But it’s no good asking me what I’m doing, I don’t know. I‘m writing to find out.
What is your relationship with India and with Pakistan?
If I have any relationship with them it’s through the stories I heard from my dad and my cousins about these places I don’t know much about. I travel to India sometimes, I like it here. I haven’t been to Pakistan for a long time. I can’t face it; it’s a depressing place, rather dangerous.
What is it about you that makes you write with so much sensitivity and accuracy?
It’s talent! I think if you’re a writer or a painter or a poet, its talent that lets you convert something about the world into words. But it’s something you develop, by practicing. You have to learn to be a writer, to learn that this works and that doesn’t, which you can do by doing it a lot and working with other people.

Jaipur Literature Festival 2010

Disneyland for the reader
I could use a lot of superlatives here. Instead, let me just say I had a very interesting time. Jaipur is beautiful and exotic even if you don’t have anything as interesting as this to do, and this time the organizers of the festival hosted us hangers-on in a brand-new haveli-type place with wonderful atmosphere. The festival grounds are also done up like a mela. There’s bustle, food and fashion as well as books and writers walking around, talking about their work and putting on entertainment of various types. And there’s a strong feeling that people are here to really enjoy themselves – not just to be seen or to tick off a Must Do they have on their list.
One evening, the new Pakistani novelist Ali Sethi sang some verses of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. He sang so well that I couldn’t resist trotting off next day to buy a copy of his book The Wish Maker to get it signed by this very talented young man – or posing for this photo with Shrabani Basu and her sister Shoma.
I interviewed Shrabani for Sunday Mid-day before the festival, and you can read here what she said about her new book Victoria & Abdul, the very interesting story of Queen Victoria and a young Indian cook named Abdul.
At Jaipur, I also spent time with one of my favourite writers, Alexander McCall Smith. His books make you feel warm and comfortable, give you a sense of the world the way it should be, and have both wit and optimism flow through them. Meeting him is a very similar experience.
When I told him that my friend Gladys, who is 85, had said I should say “thank you” to him, he offered that we could phone and he would have a chat with her.
I saw him being just as kind and friendly to others too, listening with interest and asking names. I had interviewed him before the festival and you can read what he said here.
I met Hanif Kureishi too, quite by chance – I was heading back to the hotel when the travel desk stopped my cab and another 2 men got in. The one next to me started chatting and when I eventually asked his name, was embarrassed not to have recognized him. Hanif Kureishi is known to be usually grim-faced and silent so having the chat was quite special. Here’s my article about the encounter. The page also carries what I wrote about My Friend the Fanatic by Sadanand Dhume, who also happened to be at the festival.
Hanif reminded me a lot of his books. I’ve found that with other writers too - definitely Sadanand Dhume. Perhaps because the ones I'm thinking of have autobiographical themes. But it confused me when Louis de Bernieres, whose books cover a range of themes and styles and tend to be complex and darkly humorous, turned out to be an ordinary sort of person with no airs of any kind and who speaks in simple sentences.
I apparently discovered him before anyone else because we hung out for more than 2 hours and even went and had lunch together. The meal queues at the festival tend to go on and on so we had plenty of time to chat and talked about our families, various customs and more. This photo shows him writing something for Mark Tully.
Funniest of all was Roddy Doyle who told me that he became a writer, like most others I suppose, as a logical follow up of having been a voracious reader and the more he read, the more he thought that was what he wanted to do too. “I hope I die in mid-sentence,” he said in a session, “That would be the perfect way to go … leaving mystery behind!”
He also made everyone laugh by telling them this story. “My son Jack was at school and one of his friends came up to him and said, Jack, there’s a picture of your dad in the history book. Jack was a bit surprised because I’m still alive so I shouldn’t be in the history book so the kid took out the book and showed him a picture of Gandhi. So apparently a bald man with glasses died in India and another bald man with glasses was born in Ireland. And this is my spiritual home – I’ve been waiting a long, long time to get here!” In the next session other participants started calling him Ben Kingsley and everyone laughed.
One of the things I did not like about the festival was that there were too many times I wanted to attend more than one session that was happening at the same time. I missed one rather good one with Hanif Kureishi because I was attending one on Sindhi literature which I couldn’t tear myself away from. It wasn’t very well run, and the one Pakistani Sindhi writer wasn’t given enough time to speak and cut short, while the presenter took her own time telling personal stories which I thought was rather unfair.
Of course the Sindhi language is dying in India and has even been dropped from the new Mile Sur Mera Tumhara but Shaukat Shoro did say it was alive and well in Pakistan despite the language riots in which the Sindhis have been attacked over the years.
On the last day was a Writer’s Ball, this time with the very impressive Amber Fort in the background. I’m really not good at living it up at parties but here’s a picture of Shrabani and me again.
And more little titbits about the festival here.

Jaipur Literature Festival 2009

Purple Prose from the Pink City
My most memorable moment of the Jaipur Literature Festival last year was of a Japanese visitor approaching Pico Iyer for an autograph.
In case you’ve read The Lady and the Monk, you’ll know about Pico Iyer’s year in Kyoto and perhaps, like me, you’ve wondered what happened to the wonderful woman he has a relationship with while he’s there. In the course of our interview for Sunday Mid-day he told me, “Oh yes, I was silly! But then I came to my senses. I went back and married her.” More than 20 years later, they continue to be blissfully, blissfully happy together though (or perhaps because) both can barely speak each other’s languages.
Pico Iyer was delighted to sign this lady’s autograph book, and I’ll never forget her gratification at the way he welcomed her and said how much he loved Japan and admired the Japanese people. He was equally gentle and warm with everyone who approached him. I very much enjoyed the hour we spent chatting, and you can read some of what we talked about here. Another author who made a mark at Jaipur was Chetan Bhagat. He was at the festival with his wife and twin toddlers (and their ayah). He was mobbed by the press and by hordes of young and awestruck readers. But he was not nearly – now how shall I put this? – as well mannered as Pico Iyer.
One of my regrets from last year is that one evening my friend the novelist Namita Devidayal sang on stage - and I was elsewhere, having dinner with friends.
I really enjoyed the festival last year and am absolutely delighted to be going again next week - and am artless enough to say I'm not going to miss anything for anything.
Here’s are some excerpts from the gushing piece I wrote for Intelligent Pune about the Jaipur Literature Festival 2009:

The first person I connected with at the Diggi Palace in Jaipur was Bruce Palling.
Bruce is Australian but lives and works in England, and has been a journalist for more than 40 years during which time he lived in India for 2 stretches. He’s a well-known travel writer – he was once travel editor of Tatler magazine – and his book India, a literary companion is a collection culled from the recorded observations – bewitched, bemused, amused, dismayed – of travellers, traders, missionaries and artists over the past 2500 years. He was here to enjoy and write about the Jaipur Literature Festival, and while chatting he told me how, just the previous week, he had seen Colin Thubron being addressed scornfully by a visa officer at the Indian High Commission in London.
Thubron, whose novels and travel books have stopped just short of the Man Booker Prize but earned him the sobriquet of “gentleman traveller”, was apparently trying to assert himself as a delegate for the Jaipur festival but the documents he was presenting, rather than earning him a visa, seemed only fit to draw derision.
Bruce, with all his experience of India pulled him gently aside and counselled in a whisper, “Colin. Just go back home and come again tomorrow with an application for a tourist visa.”
Then Bruce told me he’d once seen William Dalrymple drinking out of a bottle of water the Indian way, tilting his head back, pouring the water into his mouth and glugging it down seamlessly without spilling a single drop or choking even once. “What a show off!” we concluded disdainfully – indulging the scruffy and embittered nature that writers traditionally profess towards other writers more prominent than themselves.
The festival, held this year in the last week of January, is an annual event that provides a kind of sumptuous buffet, with literary stars wandering around, speaking about their work and reading aloud from it, and being accosted by the press and autograph seekers. This year these included Vikram Seth, Pico Iyer, Tarun Tejpal, Ashis Nandy, Chetan Bhagat, Hari Kunzru, Patrick French, Prasoon Joshi, Vikas Swarup – need I go on?
The programme was so packed with high-quality activities that at any given point in time, you had to choose from 3, and quite often you’d like to be in all 3 places at once. Arthur Flowers, a professor of English at New York State University, instead of just talking about his book Mojo Rising which documents “not just a life, but also an entire belief system” recited from it in a stunning performance. But at the very same time, Brigid Keenan, Colin Thubron (who, of course, was only here because of Bruce’s intervention), William Dalrymple and Vikram Seth read passages from their work in a session titled “Jerusalem, Delhi, Damascus, City readings.”
Later on the same day, well-known Rajasthani writers such as Hariram Meena also read excerpts from their books while some of us sat there thinking wistfully, “How beautifully they write! If only I could read Hindi as well as I understand it! Why can’t I buy a digital audio of this story!”
A group of young publishers from the UK spoke about contemporary trends in publishing and how young writers could best attend the opportunities available to them.
Prasoon Joshi, Nandita Das and Vikram Swarup chatted with film maker Nasreen Munni Kabir in a session titled Scripting Bollywood which might have been better described as “All About Me”.
On the second day of the festival, a minor sensation had been reported – apparently Vikram Seth had been seen sipping wine while speaking at the podium! Long articles appeared, sternly decrying this singular act of depravity, corruption of youth and so on. It was the scruffy and embittered syndrome all over again and it’s unfortunate – though perhaps not surprising – that instead of focussing on the unique grandeur and artistic beauty of the event, much of the media indulged themselves by highlighting and sensationalising trivial aspects of it.
The Diggi Palace is an old Rajasthani haveli converted into a hotel, and the owners graciously lend the property to the festival every year. Besides the large and beautiful front lawn, two splendid tents had been set up with comfortable chairs and charpoys. In between was a space where you could sit at tables and be served with tea while conducting meetings or interviews. Several stalls lining the venue offered folk art and trinkets, and books you could get signed by their authors on the spot. The main hall was embellished with Rajasthani murals, woodwork and chandeliers.
One morning, Pico Iyer and Tarun Tejpal sat there chatting with Patrick French about his biography of V.S. Naipaul, and he described some aspects of Naipaul’s life and the interesting interactions they had had in the course of producing the book. I’ve always been a fan of Pico Iyer and approached him at the end for an interview. But he was keen to attend the next session. This featured Amitabh Bachhan – not because his father was a poet, but because a book in his honour, Bachhanalia, was being released on the lawns.
Pico didn’t want to miss a chance to see the great man in person, and agreed to have a chat after the session. Amitabh had naturally drawn a huge crowd and we stood on the sidelines, watching the superstar do his finest impersonation of a pompous dimwit. But he also brandished a flash or two of native wit – when a crowd gathered on an overhanging terrace came too close to the edge and an announcer requested them to move back, Amitabh translated, “Peeche hat jao nahi to aap mere godh me giroge!”
(Don't miss the attitude in his posture in this photograph).
Pico Iyer turned out to be calm and wise in a relaxed sort of way – turning a peaceful and charming attention to all who approached him.
On the final night, a Writer’s Ball at the Jaipur City Palace was a fitting finale. The grand, centuries-old property (the current Maharaja continues to live in private apartments here) provided a setting that can best be described by the type of gushing, superlative adjectives that I prefer to avoid. While some indulged themselves with food and drink, others fawned over their favourite writers, and the qawwali offerings of the Nizami brothers also found a rapt, ecstatic audience.
The best was yet to come, and wandering around to soak in atmosphere, I spotted Chetan Bhagat asking Vikram Seth for an autograph. As India’s young rock-star novelist tried to convince the cranky genius (who sat there fretting with wrinkled brow) to write something meaningful on a scrap of paper for his sister (or someone), I raced over to suggest that he might consider adapting the kind of line Asimov is reputed to have taken in such situations: “I’ll never forget our marvellous night on the beach.”
Every view of the inimitable Vikram Seth I’d had so far had revealed him irritable and self-absorbed, grimacing in a longsuffering manner and with general body language indicating the absolute limit of his tolerance. Now, to my great gratification, he guffawed aloud.
This festival is an annual feature and entrance is free of charge. The organizers even set up bursaries which provide subsidised accommodation to students. If you’re a lover of literature, definitely check it out on-line, and try to make it next year.

Come, before evening falls by Manjul Bajaj

Some things never change
I enjoyed reading this book and also admired the way it was written and the different elements of village life that the author brought into the story.
One of the bits I enjoyed most was the beginning.
For three days Naib Singh had lain in a ditch, bleeding, wounded, starving, but awake, willing himself to keep his eyes open lest his hands clasped tightly in prayer should come undone as he drifted into sleep …
These lines give no indication of whether what follows will make the book a classic, or trash, or something in between.
But it goes on to tell the wondrous and rather incredible tale of Naib Singh and his favourite black bull after whom the village he founded was named.
I mailed Manjul Bajaj asking her for more information about herself and the book and she sent me links. After my Sunday Mid-day review was published, I sent her this link to it.
I also found, to my surprise, two Manjul Bajaj’s on facebook and when I told her, she mailed me this funny, wry poem she had written for the other one:
Namesake
I run into you on Facebook
And you must despair
of googling me inadvertently.
I know you are a woman
and younger than me -
I wish you a husband speedily-
Tall, dark, handsome
and as masterful
as a hero in a Millsy
ought to be-
Someone who’ll insist
you take his name
and leave mine alone
with me!
When I mentioned that at times I’d wondered whether Jugni’s feelings in the book weren’t a little culturally alien and perhaps more like what a girl in Europe or America would feel and think, and arise from the concept of “falling in love” in those cultures rather than the spontaneous hormonal reaction of an Indian village girl, she replied, “You could be right, I don't know. When I first started working/living in a village in tribal Gujarat in the way back when I was twenty something what struck me overwhelmingly was how shared the human condition was - how feelings and families are the same across huge divides of culture and class. Some of that belief reflects in the way I've drawn her.”
Then yesterday, on facebook Manjul Bajaj posted this link that had appeared in the day’s Hindustan Times, a concise and positive review of her book.
One of the comments that followed said, “Nice review Manjul, I liked it better than I liked Saaz's” which made me giggle but also got me in touch with someone I’ve been out of touch with for years … how I love facebook!

A Journey within the Self by Deepa Kodikal

A journey that started twenty-six years ago today
This book was written by Deepa Kodikal, a middle-aged woman who lived the ordinary life of a traditional housewife, taking care of her home and husband and bringing up their four daughters.
At 11.30 p.m. on the 24th of December 1983, she had sat up with her third daughter Akshata, a teenager then, listening to Beniamino Gigli on the record player to see in Christmas day. After midnight they went upstairs to their rooms. Deepa suddenly felt impelled by the urge to sit in meditation. It had been fifteen years since she had had last had the experience of deep meditation, but she slipped into it naturally and describes being overcome by a peaceful vibrating buzz. It was the first step in a journey that led her deeper and deeper towards a state of ultimate awareness or spiritual enlightenment, with the primal force awakening and manifesting in her.
In the early hours of Christmas day she suddenly began having strange experiences which she came to recognize as being of a spiritual nature. Years later she would describe them as, “an inseparable mixture of discomfort and helplessness combined with indescribable ecstasy and bliss.”
Is it strange that a woman who had never read scriptures or philosophical treatises or undertaken any rituals or penances or yogic disciples should be blessed thus? Or is it usually such people who quietly have these experiences and carry them, unspoken, on to the hereafter?
Deepa was different, because she kept a diary. This described in detail all that she went through physically and the thoughts that accompanied the sensations. It also helped that her husband Raja had read a great deal about such matters and was able to help Deepa with a context and some understanding of the tremendous experiences she was going through.
She writes, “I was delirious with intoxication, every cell of my body melting into an unbearable though totally joyous ecstasy, when the deep rumbling and by now familiar inner voice again intoned: “This is ‘turyavastha’. You are in ‘turyavastha’. You have merged with the divine! You have become one with the Lord. This is the highest state of exaltation and this will be your permanent state from now…”
And later, “The word ‘turyavastha’ had a sobering effect on Raja as he had read a lot about such matters. He told me to come downstairs and give him breakfast and to be very careful near the cooking gas. He also gave me a few tips on what was to be done if I was totally overcome by the exalted mood. I laughed at him; by that, I mean the divine in me laughed as I was still in that exaltation. I told him he had not yet grasped the extent of my avastha (state) which was very rare as it was accompanied by full control of body and mind.”
Still later: “The path to Godhood is through bliss. To be blissful at every moment and to enjoy bliss without being aware of it and without making an effort, leads one to the eternal bliss. To begin with, one needs to cultivate the habit of being in bliss. Then it becomes totally natural. Without being aware of this minute bliss, the eternal bliss eludes you. Because this minute bliss and the eternal bliss are one and the same. One originates from the other, and one leads to the other. Just as by knowing the alphabet, one knows all the words, so also, only by comprehending this minute bliss, can one comprehend the eternal bliss.” The book also gives a theoretical context to Deepa’s experiences with explanations of various concepts such as five divine qualities, the different states of consciousness, Nirvikalpa, Vishwarupa, Avatar, layers of the mind, Ananda and so on.
She writes, quoting her own experience, “I am the ‘nirvana’. ‘Nirvana’ is not an object one picks up nor a place one reaches. It is only the Real Self shining forth in its glory in a state of total uncover. The natural state of Self in ‘nirvana’, in ‘moksha’, ‘freedom, liberation! The original state of man is ‘nirvana’ till he covers it with the binding and harrowing mind, complete with ego, emotions, and thoughts. An individual should endeavour towards this recognition and this experience.”
A Journey within the Self also says clearly that in her experience, there is no end to this evolution and it continues endlessly.
She was not keen on having her diary published, but Raja, himself a seeker and convinced that it would make an invaluable reference guide to others on the path, was able to persuade her.
I received the book for review soon after it was published in 1992 and was fascinated by what I read.
Burning with curiosity, I made an appointment to see Deepa. I don’t know what I expected – some kind of wild-eyed mystic perhaps – and was surprised to find a relaxed, smiling and completely normal person. She had cooked lunch and it was delicious. We became friends.
Many years later when Deepa asked me to edit her new book for her, her personal experience of the nature of existence, I said yes immediately without realizing how lucky I was. I read the manuscript over and over and it changed my life.
But more about that another time.

Leaving India by Minal Hajratwala

Part personal diary, part research thesis
Minal Hajratwala spent seven years travelling around the world researching this book, and interviewed 75 members of her extended family. Through their story we learn about the different paths traced by the Indian diaspora. Visiting different continents during different time periods, she shares insights not just of the immigrant experience but also of the different social and economic situations they faced.
I found this book easy to read, enjoyable, and filled with interesting information about Indians in many countries around the world. I reviewed this book for Open Magazine and you can read what I wrote here.
This is a book I’ll be sure to recommend to my many friends with strong Indian roots thought their ancestors migrated generations ago.

Burma to Japan with Azad Hind by Ramesh S. Benegal

A familiar face in an unexpected place
I had a very interesting experience while reading this book.
I’d received it some weeks ago and, flipping through it felt it deserved a wider readership. It hadn’t come to me through one of my regular channels (Sunday Mid-day, various publishers or my regular book-shopping sprees) but had been sent by Joseph Thomas to whom I’m connected through an old-school tie. We’ve never met but are good friends. He’d served under Air Commodore Ramesh S. Benegal, MVC, AVSM whom he described as “one of my heroes. Outstanding flier, thorough gentleman.” I suggested to my editor at Sunday Mid-day that I would write about this book for the 6 December issue and she agreed, and I did … you can read more about the contents of the book in what I wrote here.
The odd experience I had was that, right on page 6, I unexpectedly recognized someone who happened to be a main character in the first section of the book! Naturally that made it much more interesting to me.
This was the author’s uncle, Tirkannad Sunder Rao, and his two sons, one of whom had been married to my father’s sister. When I knew Mr. Rao senior he was elderly and bedridden. I don’t remember ever hearing him speak. But I do remember being, as a child, always impressed with the kindness and devotion with which my aunt nursed and tended him.
Reading about the adventures of his young days and the bravery and generosity he had faced them with, I wished I had paid him more attention - perhaps had a conversation, or in some way shown affection or respect.
So for me, the book was not just a few hours of vicarious adventure to enjoy but also something of a lesson in how to live.

Five Queen's Road by Sorayya Khan

The Englishman, the Hindoo and the Mohammedan
I tend to leap eagerly on books like this, hoping to learn from them something about the land of my ancestors which the Partition of India and Pakistan lost my family forever.
It did give some information, and I did enjoy parts but ...
More about the story and what I thought in my Sunday Mid-day review on 22 November here.

To the last bullet by Vinita Kamte & Vinita Deshmukh

Tragic end of a real-life hero
Ashok Kamte was one of the many who were shot down and killed during the terror attacks in Bombay last year.
But his is an extraordinary story. An exceptionally gifted child from a privileged and cultured family, his decision to join the Indian Police Services arose from a true vocation and a straightforward dedication to a safe and disciplined nation. When he died in the prime of his life, India lost a rare and precious person.
My friend the journalist-activist Vinita Deshmukh was writing the book for Mrs. Kamte, and I was privileged to hear this story in person from the two of them.
When Vinita Kamte spoke, soft, calm and objective, I often felt myself close to tears. You may get an idea of how I felt if you watch here what this brave and lovely woman said at the launch of the book.
Her objective in writing the book was not just as a tribute to her dead husband but also particularly to remove the misconceptions and mystery surrounding his death. Along with the shock and tragedy of losing her husband, she also had to cope with the gossip and conjecture of one billion people who were jabbering away, “Why on earth were three senior police officers travelling together in a jeep that day? What on earth was Ashok Kamte doing out of his jurisdiction? How on earth could they have been so ill-prepared?” and so on.
Anyone who knew Ashok Kamte would know that he never did anything without a perfectly good reason. He was a man of order and discipline, and with the highest standards. He would always, always be prepared for any and every contingency!
So Vinita, with the help of her twin sister Revati, started looking for the answers to these questions. To their great surprise, they did not receive answers. Instead, obstructions were put in their way. They had to file dozens of RTI applications for the simplest information. They even had to file 3 RTIs just to get the post-mortem report of Ashok Kamte, surely the prerogative of any widow whose husband is killed on duty?
This book is the story of Ashok Kamte’s life and of the circumstances behind its death. It does no credit to the Bombay police force but Mrs. Kamte is firm that she in no way means to demean it. The force was her husband’s life; he knew and understood all that was good and bad about it. In the end he gave his life in the line of duty.
The stereotypical Indian policeman is lazy, corrupt and invariably a pervert too. But Ashok Kamte was well known for being spotlessly clean, brave, incorruptible and contemptuous of those in power, no matter how powerful, who exploited and contaminated the system. When I casually asked friends on the force, I heard nothing but the most respectful praise for the man, and deep regret that he was no more.
This book is bound to give rise to controversy. But if it also leads to more transparency and reform, Ashok Kamte would not have died in vain.

A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux

An Old Hand
Much to my disgrace, I had never read a book by Paul Theroux before this one. I had bought a copy of Riding the Iron Rooster (by train through China) years ago and when I received this one from Sunday Mid-day, it stared down at me from the bookshelf, even more reproachful than before. I read bits but it was far too interesting (and thick) to read in a hurry.
I found the style of the books very different from each other – not surprising since they were written more than twenty years apart. Besides, Rooster is a straightforward travel book whereas Dead Hand is a travel book in disguise – rather a sad disguise actually – as a crime novel.
Rooster was full of fun and I liked what Theroux said about Paris: “The centre is a masterpiece of preservation, but the suburbs such as this one are simple and awful. The brutal pavements and high windows of St. Jacques seemed designed to encourage suicide.” Of course this is true of most cities – even of Bombay if you remove the word “masterpiece”. In Rooster, Theroux was travelling in a tour group and wrote, “It was extremely hard for me to appear to be a quiet, modest, incurious person. These people seemed to be illiterate, which was a virtue, because they didn’t know me.”
I was overwhelmed by the vanity of the statement till I it struck me that it’s probably better to be frank and honest than falsely modest. (Is that a poem? Ah, so there, perhaps I have more talent than is generally suspected.) My Sunday Mid-day review of A Dead Hand appeared today, and here's what it said:
I jumped into this book with eager anticipation, having just enjoyed Bishwanath Ghosh’s Chai Chai, in which he mentions that he values his copy of The Great Railway Bazar signed by Theroux about as much as he would a copy of the Bible signed by God.
So I was horribly disappointed to find this book – though a brilliant travelogue strewn with precise but poetic descriptions – a complete disaster as a crime novel. It’s only the language, and to some extent the flow of narrative, that holds attention. The actual events are limp and though the characters are vivid, the relationships between them are awkward and the plot hangs clumsy.
This is a book that shows how easy it is to commit crimes and get away with them in India. It has two dead hands, one belonging to the unfortunate writer who tells us his story. He has not been able to write anything for ages until one day, listless in his hotel in Calcutta (the perfect place to feel like a failure; a place where the air reminded him of the times he’d emptied a vacuum cleaner bag), he receives a letter from a Mrs. Unger which draws him into the events which result in this novel.
Mrs. Unger is a matronly American do-gooder with a put-on British accent. Our hero claims to have wooed enough women in the past to know that only a woman’s trust – and hope – led to sex, but he’s soon madly in love with her. Tantric massage happens (this is India, after all) and, to cut a rather tedious story short, this book is presently pitted against Philip Roth’s The Humbling for the annual Bad Sex Awards. Unless Roth came up with something better than “the sacred spot on her lotus flower” and “my wand of light”, it gets my vote.
It’s only half way through the book that we learn that the narrator is not Theroux himself, when Theroux suddenly appears as a character and is cleverly sneered at as “the sort of writer who smiled and encouraged you to chatter and afterwards wrote a pitiless account of the conversation, playing up his knowingness. He was not cruel but he was unsparing.”
What I did enjoy about the book were the un-cruel and unsparing descriptions of India.

Unmarried women are like schoolgirls, in their good humour and with their restrictions; certain of the men, no matter how accomplished and successful, remain like big hairy boys, ungrateful and tantrum-prone and spoiled; a hijra is a fierce she-man. 

The mission in our blame-shifting society is to win at any cost and to be blameless, and the simplest way is to rubbish the underlings. 

All of India is a work in progress. (Do I mean progress? Never mind).

The ability to provide baksheesh is the principal determiner of a person’s worth in India.

What upset me was the slipping idiom. A privileged Indian might certainly say something like, “We are so materialistical”. However, a less-educated one would never ask, “Have you breakfasted?” (It’s “Have you taken break-fast?”) Or, for that matter, “I am having a brace of complaints about you – giving a nuisance in the night”: almost there, but “brace”? No!

Theroux knows India so well – surely he has friends who could help with stuff like this.

The girl who kicked the hornets' nest by Stieg Larsson

The girl who didn't get what she should have
How lucky I am to have received this wonderful book just before I left for Sweden! Besides enjoying it immensely, I also learned something from it about social activism and Swedish life and culture while I was there. Better still, I had people there mighty impressed with me for knowing something about this local book. (And, characteristic of the Swedes, they did not swell up in pride or ask boastfully whether I had also enjoyed Henning Mankell, the other ultra-famous crime writer their nation has produced).
Now I tend to be a bit of a Swedophile, so it did surprise and rather alarm me to learn that Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson’s partner of 30 years (or was that 20?) was not going to inherit anything of the £20 million and more worth royalties the books would bring in. Larsson had been largely unknown – except locally for his exposé journalism – before he died. By Swedish inheritance law, the booty all goes to the author’s father and brother, and guess who isn’t sharing.
You can read about the Let’s Give Eva Something cause here.
If you'd like to read my Sunday Mid-day review of 15 November, it's here.