Epis-too-late

OVERLEAF 55

When was the last time you wrote a letter? A real letter, in your own hand? Not since boarding school, in my case — although there was one, just for fun, sent to a friend last year. It took 10 days to reach Mumbai. Even India Post seems to have lost its faith in letters. If I become famous in my declining years, even if only by mistake, that friend will have a sample of my state of mind circa 2008 to offer my biographers.

Letter and spirit

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Deprived of finer speech, my chief utterance during the time I spent reading van Gogh’s letters was: “Oh, this is brilliant… this is brilliant… brilliant…” It isn’t as often as one would like that one’s reading matter is of such quality as to interrupt one’s respiration, and even less often that form, substance and function come together so satisfyingly as they have in the latest, and finest, edition of the great artist’s collected letters.

This is no democracy

In her latest fervid essays Arundhati Roy unmasks the evil in Union and Progress

Tolerance is bred deep among Indians: we are told this ancient verity by both “secularists” and “communalists”. After all (the story goes), most Indians daily rub shoulders with a variety of other Indians from apparently different social or cultural categories. For the most part, we muddle along well enough together — well enough to share a country and a civilisational outlook.

This may be true, but the fact is probably overstated.

Asterix in history

OVERLEAF 53

“I think of Asterix as a comic version of wily Odysseus,” says the brilliant translator Anthea Bell of the subject of her best-known work, the ancient Gaulish warrior whose village, frozen in 50 BCE, still and forever holds out against Julius Caesar’s Roman legions.

Vidal, withal

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A year or two ago Gore Vidal was expected at the Jaipur Literature Festival, and was scheduled to make one appearance in Delhi. I was all ready to arrive early and stick my hand out to have it shaken by the master. There must have been many others with similar aspirations. But in the event Gore cancelled his trip to India.

It’s forgiveable: he’s old now (he turned 84 this month). I suspect, however, that I’ve missed my chance to see the great man in the flesh.

Clues to a qila

Q&A: Madhulika Liddle

In Muzaffar Jang, first-time novelist (but award-winning short-story writer) Madhulika Liddle has invented a new kind of character for Indian historical fiction — the amateur detective. Muzaffar follows in an old tradition, as Liddle reveals when she describes her reading tastes. He is a maverick in Shahjahan’s capital: an aristocrat with friends in low places. When one lowly friend is wrongly accused of the murder of a wealthy tax inspector in the Lal Qila, Muzaffar swings into action and puts himself in harm’s way.

Monk’s quest

An American sadhu recounts the story of his search for his spiritual home. Surprise: it’s a good book

On a clifftop above the sea, on the Mediterranean island of Crete, a young man meditating at sunset heard a voice inside say “Go to India.” He climbed down to his cave and there met his childhood friend and fellow traveller, who had been meditating on the seashore. This other young man had heard, at the same time, a voice telling him to “Go to Israel.”

Author, impresario

Any book that William Dalrymple writes is likely to be a bestseller, including his latest. Watching the salesman at work

“Ganja? I didn’t see any ganja, did you? I’ve never seen the stuff in my life!” says William Dalrymple, uproariously. I only asked because he was describing the celebrations at home after his grand book launch the previous evening, an event which included a performance by a small group of Bauls — Bauls who are friends of Dalrymple’s and currently lodged in a neat beige tent pitched on his lawn. Like many mystics, Bauls are known to smoke ganja.

Energy saver

OVERLEAF 51

The scene is New York City in 2025. Henry Poiret, a former FBI scientist, is a specialist in environmental balance sheets who tracks down energy wasters of all kinds for his clients. For the very first time, he allows a journalist to watch him at work — and to get an inside glimpse of his new lab.

Officers on the beat

BS blog 9

As if there weren’t already reason enough to fear and doubt rather than respect the police, this past week offered a fresh bouquet of police crimes. ContentSutra lists four random instances from around the country, two of which happened in the Delhi region.

Pulp fiction

OVERLEAF 50

“Above the pulp-line — but the exact boundaries are impossible to draw — lies the world of erotica, of sexual writing with literary pretensions or genuine claims,” writes George Steiner in Language and Silence, a collection of his essays dating from the 1950s and 1960s. “This world is much larger than is commonly realized.” Below the pulp-line, of course, is plain pornography.

Thubron 1987, China 2009

OVERLEAF 49

The People’s Republic of China marked its 60th birthday with a show of manpower. It was as spectacular and heartless as the opening ceremony of the last Olympic Games. These extravaganzas may be doing the nation a disservice abroad, by reinforcing stereotypes of the Chinese as obedient, mass-produced and invisible as individuals; collectively, able to achieve feats of engineering and display; separately, merely well trained. What an appalling public relations burden to carry!

Tasting forbidden fruit

Filmmaker and novelist Ruchir Joshi has assembled perhaps the first collection of modern Indian erotic fiction in English

Caught between “the inexorable bulldozers of mostly male-driven hard porn” and “people setting fire to the forest from inside” (that is, Hindu Talibanisation), writes Ruchir Joshi, our inner Brindavan is being subjected to a “double rape”. Brindavan, of course, is the forest on the Yamuna riverbank near Mathura where Krishna romanced Radha and the gopis.

Kabir says

OVERLEAF 48

So the SMSes have started again: 2/3/4 bedroom apartments 10 minutes from here or there, from this or that reputed builder, booking amount 10 per cent, call this number. Last chance, don’t miss. Also the full-page ads: nondescript apartment towers rooted in a Middle Eastern abundance of palm trees and waterways, all surrounded by improbable oceans of virgin green. And on the TV: ads for the flat-screen TV that will turn your house into a home.

Clearly the economic downturn is fading and sunny aspiration is breaking out again.

Something to remember

BS blog 8

When travelling one is always on a search for the memorable experience. It may be a vista of snow peaks or a moon-sickle of sand, a good meal in warm company or a treasure-filled museum. Whatever it is, it is something you take back with you to your humdrum life and work, and hold on to, when the holiday is over. Something of that joy and release must survive to remind us of how good we are away from the daily nonsense. In its simplest form such a memento is just that: a keepsake, an aide-memoire, a souvenir.