Bibliofile

Happy Backchat
Just how great an honour it is for an author to be invited to the litfest can be gauged by the length they are willing to go for a slot in it. Take Chetan Bhagat. His appearance fee, as his PRO will inform you, ranges from Rs 2-5 lakh. But the fee was happily waived when Bhagat received an invite to the country’s now most prestigious literary event. Bhagat’s parents, wife and twin sons were all there to share in this signal honour.

Cryptic Humour
V.S. Naipaul is not as upset with his biographer, Patrick French, as his wife Lady Nadira Naipaul would have him be. French dismissed the request she made to a witchdoctor to hex him as "merely her sense of humour". We had another taste of her humour at the litfest, when she starred prominently in a documentary film, The Strange Luck of V.S. Naipaul. To the many detractors of her husband’s books, Nadira’s suggestion was simple: "Read the books, you creeps!"