Peer behind the scenes

A glimpse of life in the political village of Westminster

Dead on Time
Meghnad Desai
HarperCollins India
pp 256

At 1.20 pm on the fateful single day in the late 1990s that comprises the timespan of this political thriller, British prime minister Harry White is sitting down to lunch with Matt Drummond, a newspaper billionaire, in Drummond’s suite at the Ritz in London. In order to be here, the PM has cancelled at very short notice a lunch with members of his Commission on the New Millennium — including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi, a Duke, a “fiery Black poet”, two professors and a “token woman”.

Instant books

OVERLEAF 31

There’s really no room for revolution in the design of a book. Makers and users — not professional designers — have perfected its form and features over millennia. (The real revolution, if we’re looking for one, was the invention of the alphabet by the Phoenicians 5,000 years ago.) After all, a book is basically a text-bearing surface, organised for convenience.

Art and Adam

A philosophical novel of utopias — for “young adults”

What a fantastic book this is! But you have to read it twice to know that. Repetitio est mater studiorum, after all, as Arthur Schopenhauer reminds us in an essay on reading, before going on to explain that “Any kind of important book should immediately be read twice, partly because one grasps the matter in its entirety the second time, and only really understands the beginning when the end is known; and partly because in reading it the second time one’s temper and mood are different, so that one gets another impression; it may be that one sees the matter in another light.” Everything he says here is valid for this book.

Rank weeds

OVERLEAF 30

One of my favourite columnists, David Brooks of the New York Times, this week wrote that CEOs need not bother to read novels. In the column, titled “In Praise of Dullness”, Brooks cited a study according to which, he says, successful CEOs are “humble, self-effacing, diligent and resolute souls” — dependable plodders. The readerly advantages of “greater psychological insight, a feel for human relationships, a greater sensitivity toward their own emotional chords” are useless for CEOs.

Class difference

Old warriors make bad rulers in our time of change. A new kind of politician is in the making

Smart rulers of old knew what they needed: ministers who knew the work and the details and could keep the administration running and revolt at bay. This would leave the king free to view the big picture and set the chief goals (and to enjoy himself while he lasted). This was especially true of newcomer kings, such as the early Muslim rulers of India, who started with a clean slate in a strange, but very rich, land.

‘I will teach you to be rich’

Self-help books in the business slowdown

It’s time to make money — for those who dispense advice, that is. The recession has left a few people without jobs, and many more uneasy about theirs. The smarter ones are thinking long-term, beyond this current slump: they want to know how to make themselves indispensable, and to enhance their work skills in case they do have to move on. The most adventurous are thinking beyond jobs altogether, to becoming entrepreneurs in their own right.

Not everybody has the confidence to take that bold step, and few indeed can afford to go back to B-school. So into the breach step the retail advice-providers, the army of authors and publishers of how-to business books.

Rubber duck

Looking high and low for NACO condoms at New Delhi Railway Station

“My kingdom for a condom,” I muttered, dodging through the crowds outside New Delhi Railway Station, my eyes raking the walls for the bright red boxes. With much fanfare last year the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) had installed 1,500 condom vending machines (CVMs) at railway stations, public toilets and bus stands across Delhi (“at several vantage points”, said one newspaper, unhelpfully) — places frequented by itinerants and the less well-off. Across India, 11,025 were installed. Now, on the busy Ajmeri Gate side of this station, I couldn’t see even one.

Talking heads

OVERLEAF 29

The wonderful French film Ridicule (1996) follows the short career of a minor nobleman named Grégoire Ponceludon de Malavoy at the pre-apocalyptic court of Louis XVI in Versailles. Like bees drawn to honey, the thousands of nobles of every degree massed there buzz for favour and advancement. For many, the only hope is to achieve conspicuous success as a wit — that is, to be able to engage in fast, clever and original repartee and rapier-sharp put-downs, thus getting rivals out of the way.

Summer in the city

The season in books

“Hot town, summer in the city / Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty”, go the words of Lovin’ Spoonful’s 1966 hit song. Back then summer was still innocent, and every day might end well: “Cool town, evening in the city / Dressing so fine and looking so pretty”. Something strange has happened in the world of books this year: the bubbling tumult of new books and gathering trends, so visible last year, seems to have faded a little. But there is plenty of urban grit this time around, and it looks as if “the city” has moved to the centre of the written world, in fiction, non-fiction or books for children.

Rights, camera, action

Fighting film piracy, with studies and statistics

Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism
Gregory F Treverton, Carl Matthies, Karla J Cunningham, Jeremiah Goulka, Greg Ridgeway, Anny Wong
RAND Corporation
xviii + 162

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Entertainment media companies should have put a stop to hardware development 30 years ago, once they had the LP and videocassette. It’s too late now — CDs, DVDs, mp3s, memory sticks, Blu-ray, broadband and file-sharing have totally democratised data dispersal. Content has escaped the container, once and for all.

Off track

BS blog 4

On my way home yesterday I paused for half an hour or so atop the pedestrian railway bridge at a minor local station in Delhi. Watching the people below in constant and reassuring motion, and caressed by a gentling, diesel-tinted breeze — now here comes the dreadfully trite thought — I thought: is it possible that India is globalisation-proof?

You are not our king yet

OVERLEAF 28

Now where to look for amusing and instructive historical parallels to this process of changing our government, choosing our leaders? I spent an increasingly frantic time flipping through Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power, Alberuni’s India, Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and a number of others (in other words, whatever came to hand or mind). Only to find that none of them truly serves, because although each is useful in parts, it is totally sui generis in the rest.

Life lines

OVERLEAF 27

When Luca Signorelli visited the Casa Vasari in Arezzo, Italy, he met the then-young Giorgio, a child (says Vasari) of eight. The encounter was apparently a memorable one, for when the boy grew up and wrote his collection of Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550, revised 1568, generally known as Lives of the Artists), he described it, and the old master, with the greatest affection and respect.