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.

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.

Seeing Suu Kyi

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Amitav Ghosh met Aung San Suu Kyi twice in 1995-96, while he was “At Large in Burma” researching the essay of that title he wrote for the New Yorker (it later became part of his excellent book of narrative reportage, Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma). About seven months elapsed between the two meetings. Ghosh spent that time meeting dissidents; he also travelled to the Thai border in the east, to visit the Karenni, a minority ethnic group fighting a guerrilla war in its native forests against the Burmese army.

Delhi has Seoul

Mi Ran Lee makes an Indian success of Korean food

If location is everything, Kumgang’s Gonie Korean restaurant is possessed of a mixed blessing. The good aspect is that it is in the Ashok Hotel in central Delhi, within easy reach of its corporate and diplomatic clientele. The not-so-good aspect is that to get to the restaurant a visitor must trudge down two long corridors, one lined with guest rooms, the other with slightly dingy shops apparently devoid of customers. It’s not an effective appetiser.

But there are counterweighing advantages, chief among which is the admirable lady who owns this restaurant.

To Errol, divine

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By the time I closed the book at half past three in the morning and one third of the way through, I was all aglimmer. Partly it may have been sleep deprivation, but mostly it was Errol Flynn. You see, I was reading his memoirs, titled My Wicked, Wicked Ways. And you are reading these words on the centenary of his birth, in Hobart, Tasmania, the large triangular island off the southeastern corner of Australia.

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”.

Live well, dine well

Henry Ledlie, who helped make Australian universities popular among Indian students, collects recipe books and antique cooking utensils — and uses them to make the homemade treats he’s famous for

“One? Why did you get just one? Why not two?” asks my aunt, annoyed. One jar of Henry’s Juicy Gooseberries is what she means — a terrific jam concocted, bottled and labelled by Henry A S Ledlie, all in his own home. The jam is a take-home gift. “It’s dreamy,” says my mother, spoon in hand.

Lessons from a bystander

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A depression should be full of inspiring stories. But this one isn’t — there’s only misery on the wires. And that’s not right, because it’s during a serious downturn that the optimists, or at least the well-oiled pragmatists, stand out and shine.

Consider the good that came of the Great Depression.

Gay-Neck’s final message

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To an article on last year’s National Pigeon Day in America, on June 13, a reader named Nate Howard responded: “This may be the first I have ever ‘commented’ on a site. But I have to share this book with you all. It may be the best book I have ever read. It is called Gay-Neck. Newberry [sic] award winning book. Whatever your thoughts on pigeons and life are, they will be forever changed.”

Inky pursuit

Penguin India chief Mike Bryan links his work in publishing to his passion for antique fountain pens

“I’ll leave you boys to it, then,” says Heather Adams, as her husband enters the living room carrying three or four long, flat, felt-covered boxes. She departs quickly. Was there a hint of relief in her tone?

The romance of riches

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Thinking to write, in these times of furtive spending by surviving millionaires, about early millionaire authors, I entered a search for Alexandre Dumas in the New York Times’s online archive. Among the results was an excellent short tribute to Dumas by a journalist named Barnet Phillips (how names have changed) dated July 12, 1902.

Underground life

An unusual novel about coal mining breaks the surface

The Sound of Water
Sanjay Bahadur
Roli
pp 168

Visit an income tax officer in his office and, one way or another, you will come away poorer. Sanjay Bahadur, fortunately, is not one of those. He’s an OSD in the tax board’s Database Cell, whatever that is, so his office is clean, white and empty, airconditioned even in February, not full of dusty files and shifty-eyed people. He still wants your money — but only because he wants you to buy his book.

Looking and seeing

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There is a certain exhilaration that comes of reading of great deeds done and thoughts thought by one who describes himself as an ordinary and flawed individual, albeit lucky in some particular ways, and an almost unwitting beneficiary of events and personalities. There’s a lengthy tradition of such writing, from St Augustine’s Confessions to Richard Feynman’s brilliant and humane books on his own life. I felt that exhilaration again upon reading the short but warm-spirited autobiography of Charles Darwin — 22,000 workmanlike words by a man who changed the world.

Ambiguity is interesting

Henry Reece, head of Oxford University Press, relishes his work at an ancient institution with modern-day challenges

It’s a tiny office cabin, white-painted, glassed-in and stuffy, of the kind that people at middling levels in the corporate hierarchy tend to receive. But today it contains the chief executive himself: Dr Henry Reece, worldwide head of the world’s largest university press, Oxford University Press.

Winter warmth

Chilas and chilling with urban folk singer Susmit Bose

“I keep telling young people that those of us who were not there in the ’70s really missed out,” Susmit Bose says. “The first stage of globalisation wasn’t market-driven, it was just heart.” He’s talking about the musical generation of Bob Dylan, with such songs as “Masters of War”, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Blowing in the Wind”.