The mild winter sun made a latticework of sparkling silver on the placid waters of the Diggi Palace pool. The Jaipur literature Festival was into its second day and the participants had retired for lunch. I was comfortably stretched out alongside the pool, merrily taking in Mohammed Hanif’s hilarious ‘fictional’ account of General Zia’s last days. For a few tranquil moments, it did seem as if ‘if there is paradise anywhere on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here’
The voice, when it did make itself heard, was very tentative, like the gentle perturbations set off by a piece of tile, lightly skimming over water.
“Sir, may I disturb you for a moment?” A comely young lady had appeared by my side.
“Whatever for?” I asked, not quite pleased to tear myself away from the shenanigans of Under Officer Ali Shigri.
“Sir, I’m from XYZ newspaper. I want to talk to you about your book. And about your plans for the next book”, said the earnest rookie.
“My book? Oh, you mean this one?” I pointed to ‘A Case of …..’ in my hand. “Yes, very nice book. I’d recommend it to everyone. And my next book? Maybe I’ll check out Empires of the Indus”.
I was delighted that young reporters were taking such interest the reading habits of the laity, even when the high priests of contemporary literature were present in such felicitous abundance.
“No, no sir, not this book. I want to talk about YOUR book, sir. The one that has been made into a movie? The one about KBC? Hmm, what’s its name……….haan…..Slumdog Millionaire! That one. I want to talk to you about your book Slumdog Millionaire”. Poor darling, she couldn’t be faulted for not trying.
The penny dropped. So, this was simply a case of mistaken identity. Not a sterling example of a trailblazing hack’s abiding interest in the literary pulse of the aam aadmi.
“Young lady, Slumdog Millionaire is a film, not a book. And I’m not Vikas Swarup to talk to you about Q&A. Can I go back to my book now, please?”
“You are not Vikas? Why? If you are not Vikas, what are you doing here?” she was quick to recover and counter-attack. It seemed the poolside space was reserved for a certain Vikas.
“No, I’m not Vikas. I’m not Vikas because I’m ABCDEF. And, what am I doing here? As you may have noticed, I was reading a book till you came by” I answered, preparing to reclaim my place by the poolside.
“That’s OK if you want to say you are not Vikas” she conceded grudgingly, not quite willing to accept that she might have blundered. “But, who are you? A writer or a critic or an academician? And are you a celebrity?” The in-your-face interrogation technique was most endearing.
“Well, I’m not a writer. I’m not a critic. I’m not an academician. And God forbid, I’m certainly not a celebrity. I’m just a layperson who reads a book now and then”.
I thought the emphatic disclaimer and my non-celebrity status would bring the impromptu interview to a welcome, if abrupt, conclusion. But little Miss Hack was made of sterner stuff.
“But surely, you must be doing something for a living?”
Now, be careful, sonny boy, and watch what you say, I told myself. This could get tricky.
“Yeah, I sure do something for a living. I work for the government”. That was entirely true and utterly vague, I reasoned.
“But, what are you in the government?’ bleated the greenhorn.
“A soldier”, I gave in.
“A soldier, you say? What’s a soldier doing here, in a literary festival?”
Professors and pimps, imps and impostors, scholars and scumbags, bards and beggars, clerks and clerics, radicals and rowdies, hawkers and hookers, any and all could be here but a starchy soldier? Nuts! She surely was not amused.
“Why? Why not a soldier? You think soldiers can’t read and write? As a matter of fact, this book…..” I waved ‘A Case of …….’ vigorously in front of her face. “This book’s written by an air force officer. It’s a political satire.”
Well, okay, Mohammed Hanif was actually a former air force officer. Of the PAF. And he himself didn’t think much of his days in uniform. A tough and boring life, he called it. But my current discussion with the unrelenting scribe transcended petty service and national identities. It was now a matter of defending the fair name of the armed forces the world over. This was a gauntlet I simply had to pick up.
“Aha, now I understand. You have been sent by the army to lookout for trouble and report back, right?”, she gloated in her secret discovery.
She was determined to extract a journalistic victory from the jaws of literary defeat, still hopeful of a scoop, the one interview that would launch her into the stratospheric orbits of celebrity journalism. Much like the Mick Jagger interview that may have kick-started the very colourful career of Sir Richard Branson.
An army spook snooping around for seditious scholars and rhapsodic saboteurs! Wow, this could be much bigger than a fortuitous interview with a part-time writer. I could see she was thrilled by the potential for screaming headlines about skulduggery in Diggi Palace, plotting poets and thwarted coups.
“No, no”, I almost yelled.
My God, this petite bundle of dynamite was forever running ahead of the script. I’d better clear matters before she went berserk with her vivid imagination.
“I’m here on a holiday, attending this purely in my private capacity. I am a simple spectator here, that’s all. It has nothing to do with the army. Or with celebrity authors, for that matter”.
I thought I’d set the record straight for good.
“Simple spectator? Oh, yeah. And I’m the Cheshire Cat”, she snapped and walked away, quite obviously miffed at my reluctance to share what appeared to be a wickedly delicious intrigue.
But I knew this was not the end of it. Sure enough, last Sunday, one of the papers carried the following story.
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