Delhi Diary

Delhicatessen

The Shunglu report comes down hard on Sheila Dikshit. In my book, though, she is a very competent chief minister. I don’t know her at all but you can’t avoid her if you live in Delhi. She is all over the place. She turned 74 last week but has the energy of someone half her age. She has her detractors in both parties but they are just envious of her popularity.

I love this city. Eleven years ago, I moved here from Mumbai and I have no regrets. Delhi is green, Mumbai is treeless. The gardens where our babus take their morning walks are well-maintained. The winters are a delight when the flowers bloom. The traffic is a problem but far less than it is elsewhere. Our local trains are clean and world-class. And here, it doesn’t matter whether you are from Bihar or Tamil Nadu.

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out why Delhi functions as well as it does. The revenue that the city generates stays in the city. Mumbai’s enormous wealth is sucked out by Maharashtra’s politicians and ends up in places like Marathwada, wherever that is. They don’t care for Mumbai. I have a sentimental attachment to the city’s Elphinstone College, once one of India’s premier institutions. They have let it rot. Three of its last six principals received their highest degrees in Nagpur.

That said, after watching the World Cup final on television, I will grant you this: Mumbai has the prettiest girls in the country.

Mummy Parade

The troubles in Egypt, ironically, brought back pleasant memories of my two years in Cairo as spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping troops in Sinai. I have yet to meet an Egyptian I did not like. They are friendly and cultured, more sophisticated than their costumed Arab cousins to the east. Unfortunately, its economy has always been in a shambles. The very rich run the country as their personal fiefdom. They hoard millions in foreign banks and take over Knightsbridge in summer. The richest of them all was the president who was ousted, Hosni Mubarak. He did not like India, for he felt he was slighted by Indira Gandhi on an important occasion. The slight might have been imagined but one could never tell about our Indiraji, she was Machiavellian. Egypt was one of only three countries that did not vote for India in the last election for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Now we have a friend in Amre Moussa, the frontrunner to succeed Mubarak. He has the advantage of having been out of Egyptian politics the past 10 years while he was secretary-general of the Arab League. Moussa was posted in New Delhi in the mid-’80s as his country’s ambassador and gave elegant dinners at his residence on Prithviraj Road. He also had an eye for pretty women.

Cut It Short

I attended a lecture in the middle of the World Cup final. It was something I did not wish to avoid since it was in memory of a dear friend, a well-known journalist. The topic chosen for the evening was the importance of public service broadcasting. The lecturer was distinguished and erudite. Unfortunately, he did not know when to stop. He went on and on for well over an hour. Speakers should limit themselves to forty-five minutes when they are asked to address an audience. It’s a bad idea to consider everything you have jotted down as precious. Thirty minutes would be even better. After that, it’s a case of diminishing returns. Leave some time for discussion afterwards and for samosas if they are being offered. I learnt that from Khushwant Singh.

The Editor Lags

A publisher commissioned me to do a book on 20 of the greatest stars of Bollywood, from the introduction of sound in films in 1931 all the way to the present day. I am not giving anything away when I tell you that Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan have made the list of the super-20 and Katrina Kaif has not. Instead of going into the tedious business of writing eighty thousand or so words, I took the easier route. I asked 20 eminent writers on cinema to do a piece each of around four thousand words. The deadline for submission was end of last January. Nineteen pieces were delivered, good, thoughtful profiles. Two months past the deadline, I am still waiting for one final piece. I know the wait is futile. Why couldn’t she have declined in the first place and saved me the stress?

I would have never made a good editor. I would have surely died of ulcers years ago. Do editors of our newsmagazines sleep soundly on Wednesday nights? There must be at least one laggard on their roster every week. That’s why on some weeks the issue is brilliant and on others you feel something is missing. There are times when someone hands in a piece at the last minute that is totally unusable. That is when the editor rings up a hack like me to put together something that reads like what you are reading now.