Delhi Diary

The Winds Of Change?

All bets are off. I cannot remember another state election where everyone from the district hack, to the cynical poll pundit, to the haughty opinion pollwallah, is scratching his or her head—befuddled, confused, exasperated—as he or she tries to make sense out of the “churning” taking place in Uttar Pradesh. It is a cop-out to say “something is happening”. That’s the easy part. But precisely what? Trends, data, caste break-up, local factors are not in short supply. The devil lies in the detail, or in its interpretation. Each party is convinced the wind is blowing in their favour, that the mysterious churning is going to benefit them. The staggeringly high turnout should normally be bad news for the incumbent. However, Mayawati believes her supporters are coming out in droves in order to teach her detractors a lesson. Similarly, the other three contenders are convinced the omens are good for them. Everyone is smiling!

I was in Lucknow a couple of weeks ago, and while many I spoke to had a confident hunch, no one was prepared to put money on their confident hunch. “The result could surprise us all,” was the most honest assessment I could get. As a Lucknow Boy, I regret to confess that I returned to Delhi no wiser about the hawa in Lucknow.

One fact is incontestable. Young people of both sexes are coming out in unprecedented numbers. Most are first-time voters determined to exercise their recently won right. Will an 18-year-old Brahmin lad vote like his dad? Will an 18-year-old Muslim girl vote according to the prejudices of her family? Will caste, creed, religion be compelling pulls for the young in UP as well, or will they break the shackles and vote for good governance and rapid development?

Let us hope and pray the new Indian voters of Uttar Pradesh set an example for the rest of the country to follow. We will know on March 6.

Run To The Well

Most urban middle-class males have, at some time or the other, watched pornography. Naturally, one chooses the right time and place for such passions. The three Karnataka ministers were either very foolish or very brave to have chosen the wrong time and the wrong place to satisfy their morbid recreation. I feel sorry for the BJP as it is struck by yet another thunderbolt. No political party can anticipate or prepare for this kind of disaster. It could easily have been three Congress MLAs or three BSP MLAs. In the circumstances, the BJP for once took absolutely the correct position of not defending the indefensible. They condemned it unequivocally.

While porngate will add to the already widespread revulsion against politicians, might I point to a silver lining to this sordid business (mercifully, the three worthies have not approached the court claiming “invasion of privacy”). With what face will the good men and women of the parivar now mount their moral crusades assaulting young girls visiting pubs and young boys sending Valentine Day cards? The cleansing from “Hindu society” of decadent Western evils that the Sangh parivar is so keen to achieve must now R.I.P.

Veiled Put-Downs

Is page-turner supposed to be a criticism or a compliment for an author? Eric Ambler and Agatha Christie and John Grisham are masters of the aforementioned art. But is there a slight putdown in the description? Does it suggest a lack of gravitas? Of course, if there are page-turners, we also have page-stoppers. However hard I tried, I could not finish Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown while Midnight’s Children made for riveting reading. When people tell me they wrapped up my memoir Lucknow Boy in one sitting or that it was “unputdownable”, I feel I have somehow failed. A serious book, serious critics maintain, should be 50 per cent pleasure and 50 per cent pain for the reader. Otherwise, it can’t be considered a serious book. James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is considered a literary masterpiece. Alas, for me it was a page-stopper. I couldn’t go beyond 50 pages and had to constantly remind myself I was reading a “classic” to get even that far.

I’m currently on my first P.D. James thriller. It’s undoubtedly a page-turner, while being “fiendishly clever”. Ms James gets rave reviews in serious papers and her novels are on bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic. Needless to say, I’m turning the pages of A Certain Justice fiendishly!

All You Who Sleep Tonight

At the magnificent ITC Sonar Bangla hotel in Calcutta, the affable writer Vikram Seth, attending a literary meet in the city, had one staffer close to tears. “Do you know where Mr Seth is? He has not slept in his room for two nights,” he would repeatedly ask the other writers. Why was he so anxious to know? “I am his butler.”

Last Week, I Met...

Press Council chairman Markandey Katju. He said he wanted to come over to my place, not to meet me, but to meet Editor. I told him he was welcome as long as he brought along some Italian cheese!

Vinod Mehta is editorial chairman, Outlook, and its founding editor-in-chief