Festival des livres

I have a friend who lives in Paris. Envy is the word I most associate with him. I envy him. Several reasons. Especially so when I sit in front of my computer and stare at the market shares, sizes and shipments and wonder on how stupid I was to imagine a life without financial management.

He is a free lance journalist at one of the Parisian newspapers. He reads Indian books, interviews authors and writes reviews. He also handles a paper on Indian writing at the university there. I envy him because he is happy with his job and knows for certain no other job can make him happier. Organizations, yes, but job, no.

Every year when he visits India apart from Chanel, Coty and innumerable stories; he brings me something. Something special. A book. A book which he’s read and enjoyed most that year.

We have amazing conversations.

Why I like Salman Rushdie the way I do.
Did I think Anita Nair was an Indian author to be reckoned with? Are people in Kerala proud of her?
He liked Anita Desai and staunchly so, no matter what I say, so there! Could I write a book better than her?
Would I one day write a book? One day... some day? Oh, he’d never write one. He can only analyze a book and he’d wreck his own sanity if he was to write one.
Oh, he’ll never review what I write. He’s biased. Brown always made him biased; didn’t I know.
Bengal had amazing authors, yes.
I should read travel writing and I better start with Pico Iyer.
Why did I like Jhumpa Lahiri’s “interpreter of maladies”; which one of the short stories specifically?
I haven’t read the poetry of Vikram Seth; that’s a shame.

Did ‘God of small things’ mean more to me than it could ever to him because I was from Kerala?
These conversations would sometimes appear in the most delightful of places. An interview with Arundhati Roy where he mentioned ‘a young friend of mine from Kerala was one of the first people I talked to about your book and before the Booker’- a translated copy of which found its way to my inbox and a copy of the French paper in my post box with a note ‘You’re world famous now my girl!’



When I saw his number on my mobile, I looked up at the calendar... A few more days. He was coming in August.

Would he be introduced to someone special this year?
He can find his own girl.
Tch tch, he was talking about me here.
I’ll look harder the next few days and when I don’t; I’ll hire one to show him.
What was wrong with all the Indian men? Didn’t they see what he could?
He’s been too long in France.

It always went like this. No change. Year after year right from when I was out of school.

So apart from Satanic verses, what was the one book I was dying to read?

I’d taught him that- ‘Dying to do something’. On how it was almost sacred. You have to really, really want something real bad and only then can you use that word; did he understand? He did.I could have given him a list of books, but I honestly wasn’t dying to read them. Wanted to, yes; but dying, no. There’s a difference and a huge one at that. How do you explain all this to a person who’s waiting on an international call, pen in hand to jot down a few books names and buy them for you?

Hello, was I still there? Oh, he’s already bought me my Salman Rushdie, but is there anything else?

Yes there is. There is a book I’m dying to read and it’s still in the head of this amazing person I know.

How do I explain all this?

“Trotter Nama and Vernon god little”. Easier answers. Expected answers. Understandable answers.

“Ah. For a second I thought you are going to tell me you wanted an unwritten book”, he laughed at his own wit.

If only you knew. I laughed too.