ATTENDING Arundhati Roy's press conference and reading at the British Council in Mumbai was quite an entertaining experience. The god of small and big things is clearly unjust. The least he can do is ensure that writers of extraordinary books are ugly in appearance and clumsy in public. Mostly so that others can gain solace (see above item: this week's theme-son). But no, Roy was a picture of prettiness and poise as she addressed a battery of media persons that would have done a prime minister proud. Some remarkably stupid questions were posed but she had the grace and generosity to not mock them. Only one man had her goggling. His question, "Does the title of this book have anything to do with Children of a Lesser God?" At the end of the reading, which she signed off with a heartstoppingly powerful passage, there was a flurry of questions, the answers to two of which really stuck in my memory. One asked: "You say you never re-write a single sentence--are you lying?" Roy answered: "Even if I am, I'm not going to tell you." And the second answer, making that effortless glide from the witty to the sublime, something that characterises her book, was about the passage she'd just read, which had to do with the family's journey in a "skyblue Plymouth, with the sun in its tailfins" to the town for a movie, and their brief bivouac at a level crossing. The question, sound academic question, was: "Where were you really when you wrote this particular passage?" Roy's answer: "In a skyblue Plymouth, with the sun in its tailfins, speeding past young rice-fields and old rubber trees.
Madonna's Sex Story
In his book Rodman writes of his affair with Madonna. She picked him as the perfect male specimen, and literally summoned him for sex. Graphically, he reports that she demanded oral sex and he refused. She also never let him wear a condom because she wanted his baby. Rodman's final rating: "She wasn't an acrobat or anything, but the sex was good. There's some passion there, and she isn't afraid to let it out.
Can you imagine such a book being written in India. This one was on the New York Times bestseller list for several months; and received a lavish five-page notice in the hallowed New Yorker!
I needn't have agonised. Neither did my host, Rahul Singh, a former editor with The Times of India, The Indian Express, and Reader's Digest. He too had spent the evening partying. In the morning we sat in the balcony of his lovely flat slurping scoops of papaya with morning tea, and squaring up with Delhi via the newspapers. In Mumbai, clearly, politics, even of the urgent kind, is not allowed to bust up the party.
I remember when my brother, Minty, first moved to Mumbai, he was appalled to discover that, at least in his line, television, few people bothered to read the morning papers. Most subsisted on the fitty opinion-rumours-news mix of the afternoon papers. While producing a personality show for Channel V, he suggested the name of K.P.S. Gill for an episode. Ed Sharpies, the head of the channel, said no. He had never heard of the man. This when Gill was at the height of his fame.
Delhi's politics and Bihar's Ranvir Sena are hardly the kind of thing to break the frenzied work-celebrate momentum of Mumbai. Famously, I think it was MJ. Akbar who once said that "it was time Bombay established diplomatic relations with India". On the other hand, what's there in being so obsessive about Kesri, Yadav and Gowda. In fact in retrospect I'm glad I was not in Delhi. I missed nothing, while gaining a party.
Paper Tigers
THIS is not intended as a rude statement, but the truth is Rahul Singh is adrift in a sea of newspapers, magazines and books. The veteran journalist--who has his father Khushwant Singh's full beard, but neither the great sardar's patka nor his strident iconoclasm--lives the classical life of the refined bachelor. But his fine old flat in Colaba with old furniture and older paintings cramming the walls is a literal minefield of publications. It seems unlikely that any strap of paper once it enters the house ever leaves it. The papers, magazines, books, press releases are piled up on sideboards, shelves, tables, chairs, ottomans, sofas. It's all very surreal, but in a way, they fill up the spaces in his roomy flat, for paper exudes a warmth unlike any.
In fact were it not for the conviviality of the paper, I would perhaps have been menaced by the calm stillness of the house. For after 12 years of marriage and 10 years of children, I am not used to quiet domesticity. In my picture of home, time and space are always contingent upon children, maids, dog, wife, guests, mostly in that order.
But what Rahul's adherence to paper did was bring back for me memories of my second post-marriage winter. My wife was away, accessing the comforts of her parental home, bracing to deliver Tiya. I fell into the arms of paper. When she returned, her side of the bed was heaped high with scores of newspapers, dozens of books, and many magazines. That was a month's solace. Rahul's is a lifetime's solace, and understandably overflows his entire house.
