Bibliofile

I will die, in autumn, in Kashmir,/and the shadowed routine of each vein/will almost be news, the blood censored,/for the Saffron Sun and the Times of Rain" goes a poem in Agha Shahid Ali’s collection, The Country Without a Post Office. As it happened it was neither in autumn, the season he loved best, nor in his beloved Kashmir that Shahid—hailed as one of the finest Indo-Anglian poets—breathed his last. Suffering from a brain tumour, the "triple exilé" as he called himself (moving from Kashmir to Delhi and finally to the US) died last week in the US. But till the last it was Kashmir and its suffering that preoccupied his emotional and imaginative life.

Yet another feather in Penguin India ceo David Davidar’s cap. And so what if it’s only a recycled one? Davidar, who justifiably brags about publishing almost all the finest writers India has produced, finally added publishing sensation Arundhati Roy to his list. A "definitive edition" of Arundhati Roy’s book of political essays, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, was launched, with a celebratory cocktail party. All except one (the ladies have feelings, so...) of the six essays were first published in Outlook. Sanjeev Saith and Tarun Tejpal of IndiaInk, the publishing house created to launch Roy’s bestselling GOST, looked on as Davidar toasted his triumph.