Bombay Dreams

Sickness and joy during the second leg of my book tour

“Acclaimed author!” Hahaha. (First, if you are lucky, you are a published author. Then, you might get to be an acclaimed author. If your luck holds, you could become a prize-winning author. Higher up than that is successful author or, if you hit the jackpot, bestselling author. I’m fine occupying the lower rungs. Next time, though, I want to be called a “critically acclaimed author.”)

Forget the dreams. Let’s get real and talk about nightmares. Let’s say you arrive at the bookstore to sign books but there is no one there who wants copies of your book signed. A real nightmare. I was rescued from that fate at the White Crow bookstore because some friends showed up. Here’s my sister from another mother, Supriya Nair, the sparkiest commentator in the whole of Indian subcontinent. Photo below by the immensely photogenic Raghu Karnad. I then went to Title Waves bookstore, see photo above, and the photographer Raj Lalwani had come and so had the artist Naresh Kumar.

I did lots of things in Bombay, not just book signings. A podcast recording with very sweet students from St Xavier’s College. An expedition with Chirodeep Chaudhuri which included his photographing the 109th public clock in the city. I did interviews and met friends for meals and—talking of nightmares—also managed to fall violently sick on my last day. Vomiting, the runs, the growing suspicion that I was going to die away from my beautiful wife and loving kids. I exaggerate, of course, but only a little.

Yesterday I was being interviewed in a cafe by a pleasant journalist from Mid-Day and she asked why I kept journals. Just before sitting down for the interview with her, I had been talking at the same table with my dear friend Jairaj Singh who works for The Times of India. (He also works out in the gym, doing difficult exercises on the rings, but his biceps deserve a separate story of their own.) I told my interviewer that I had taken notes in my journal about a story that Jairaj had been telling me; I was taking notes because I didn’t want to forget the story. When Jairaj was only 18, he got his first byline. This was for the paper The Hindustan Times. V.S. Naipaul was visiting Delhi and was the chief guest at the High Commission of Trinidad & Tobago. Young Jairaj shared a ride on the motorcycle of his paper’s photographer. They arrived a few minutes late. Standing outside the glass door of the main hall, Jairaj could see that someone was giving a speech. Then a car pulled up and Naipaul stepped out with his wife. Coming up to where Jairaj was standing, Naipaul asked, “Has the event already started?” He was miffed. Jairaj was still holding in his hand the invitation card that his editor had given him. Naipaul now took the card from Jairaj’s hand. On reading the card, Naipaul underwent a transformation. His eyes emitted hate. He stormed inside the auditorium, leaving Jairaj transfixed outside. He could see Naipaul berating the audience inside. Naipaul was so angry that nothing he was saying made sense. Within a few seconds, he was already walking out of the building and the event was over. The High Commissioner came out of the hall and asked Jairaj what he had said to Naipaul. But Jairaj had said nothing. Then they looked at the invitation card that Naipaul had taken from Jairaj. Vidia Naipaul’s first name had been mistakenly spelled as “Vidya.”

One night I took the ferry from Versova with the singer Aamir Aziz and went to visit my actor-friend Danish Husain. Before the party got underway, I asked Danish to write down any striking dream he has had recently. Readers of The Yellow Book might remember my fascination with a book called The Third Reich of Dreams:The Nightmares of a Nation. (Recently, Zadie Smith had nice things to say about that book because it is being reissued.) In the photograph above, you see Danish working on his text for me; in the background is the beauteous Pooja Shyam Prabhat enacting a different dream of a raised arm. Here is my translation of what Danish wrote:

When I woke up in the middle of a dream, I found myself on a rooftop. This wasn’t the roof of my home. This roof was atop another house in the same posh gated community where I had my home. A gang of rioters carrying a list of Muslim homes was going around looking for Muslims to kill. My friends from the theater world were engaged in trying to save my life; however, they didn’t appear to be too perturbed. Now and then, they would watch Insta reels or YouTube videos and laugh loudly, but every time they received alerts on their phones about the movement of the gangs, they would point out the paths of escape and urge me to make my exit, telling me that I was safe. Filled with fear and exhaustion, in a country that is after all my own, I asked myself how much longer would it be possible for me to keep running.

Before I boarded my flight out of Bombay this morning, there was once again the opportunity to sign books at the Relay store. Please pick up a copy if you are passing through the airport.