Claws Célébre

What is that one piece of brilliant articulation that writers consistently refuse totake credit for? Bitching about their colleagues’ latest books (and advances), ofcourse. Here is a compilation of malicious one-liners on some recent Indian literarytriumphs by those who dare not cast the first stone.

"It’s on my guilt list," said the latest literary sensation (Manil Suri)when asked if he had read that other literary sensation, Salman Rushdie’s The GroundBeneath Her Feet. "I like Taki," guffawed another well-known writer. "Eachtime he refers to Salman Rushdie, it is with the epithet—‘that unreadableRushdie’."

And as for ace rival Vikram Seth: "It’s a love story by a writer who is sosqueamish about love-making," said a writer about Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music.And: "He’s so American. He leaves nothing to the imagination."

On Jaishree Mishra’s Ancient Promises: "It’s the Indian Mills &Boon."

On Amit Chaudhury’s A New World: "No writer should go on at such tedious lengthabout life’s mundane detail without offering a single insight. I stopped after thefirst three pages. Each time he or his son touches feet, the writer is talking over myshoulder to the western reader about what this means."


On Upamanyu Chatterjee’s Mammaries of a Welfare State: "When will he grow up?First time round (English, August), he was funny, now he’s tedious."

On Pankaj Mishra’s The Romantics: "Where is this Benares he describes? Certainlynot the Benares I grew up in."

On Sunil Gangopadhyaya’s First Light: "He’s the literary version of thesoap opera—goes on and on."

On Kiran Nagarkar’s Sahitya Akademi award-winning Cuckold: "It...needsediting."

On Rajkamal Jha’s The Blue Bedspread: "Something about a bedsheet, isn’tit? Bombed, I hear."

On Boman Desai, author of Memory of Elephants and Asylum, USA:  "Bomanwho?"