Diary of a jumped-up intellectual

Speaking Volumes

It was a generous remark, and it had nothing to do, naturally, with the fact that his wife was coming out with her first novel and that (as he told several members of my profession when the alcohol had loosened him up sufficiently) he was hoping that she'd get good reviews.

A bright young thing who was also at the book launch looked impressed. "So that's what you do for a living, safeguard intellectual freedom. I'd always wondered, you know, because every time I drop in at the house it seems you're reading useless books and eating chocolates."

"That's part of the job," I said. "The hard bit is getting the wrappers off those chocolates. I hate it when the silver paper stays stuck on and you don't notice it until you've actually eaten it..."

"No, no," she said, "I realise I've misjudged you. And that friend of yours who giggles so much and makes outrageous remarks and waylays the wine waiters. I suppose if you're a last bastion of intellectual freedom, you need an outlet of some kind. The job must be very hard, monitoring the frontlines of intellectual activity."

"Well, yes," I said modestly, flagging down a passing tray of chicken reshmi kababs.

"So give me an idea of what it's really like on the inside," she said. There was a new note in her voice, one that heralded something alarmingly like adulation.

"Well," I said, and sought assistance from my giggling friend, also a reviewer and some-time columnist. She detached herself from a glass of red wine and looked solemn. "Lasht week," she said, slurring slightly, "last week, I mean, was rough." "It was?" I said.

"Yesh," she said firmly, "It was. First there was the Ramachandra Guha launch, where all the blashted intellecshuals in the bally bashtion landed up and we had to make intelligent convershation about Hegel. Or hegemony. And liberal something... liberated liberals? Liberalising liberals?"

"Ram gave a wonderful speech," I concurred. "Yesh," said my friend, "but I missed it like most of the other people who came to the launch because there was a traffic snarl-up in Connaught Place and everybody except for fifteen people arrived after his debate on liberals was over."

"That's terrible," said the BYT. "No, no," said my friend, swaying a little. "We got there for the best part, just as they broke out the drinks and snacks."

"But what about the rest of the week?" said the BYT. "There was the Bad Sex award," I offered. "For writers who have bad sex with their partners?" she said, startled. "No, no," I said.

"Then we'd have to nominate the entire lot of them. This was the prize for Bad Sex in Writing. Aniruddha Bahal won for a passage where he compared the woman to a Bugatti when her partner really wanted her to be a Volkswagen, but it didn't matter because the swastika was the whole point."

"The swastika? What swastika?" said my friend. "Oh, the swastika the woman had shaved on her..."

"Yes, yes," I said hurriedly. "That swastika; it was a significant swastika, never mind where it was, I think it tipped the scales for the judges. It's the reason Bahal won the prize."

"Well," said the BYT, who'd been following our exchange with some bemusement, "I suppose what matters is that an Indian made an impact on the literary world. A bit like the Booker."

"Like the Booker. The Bad Sex Prize. Ummm. Yes, I suppose so. World recognition and all that," I said. "Anyway, it was a busy week."

"Were you...opposing the forces of darkness and countering them with arguments of sweet reasonableness?" said the BYT in awe.

"Sort of," I said defensively, "I was laughing my head off over the 18-page letter that the Greater Sylhet Council for Development and Welfare wrote to Monica Ali, complaining that she had written despicable things about Bangladeshis in her book, Brick Lane."

"And of course," said the BYT, "she has done nothing of the kind and you sprang to her defence." "Rubbish," said my friend, relieving a passing waiter of three champagne glasses and draining the contents in the manner of a thirsty camel, "the book ish full of shtereotypesh. From those awful letters written in some unidentifiable pidgin English by the heroine's sister in Bangladesh to the way she's written about Brick Lane "" all shtereotypesh. You have good Bangladeshis, but they are shtereotypesh, and bad Bangladeshis, but they are shtereotypesh too, and in-between Bangladeshis, but they are..."

This was getting monotonous so I broke in hurriedly. "Yes, yes, what I said basically was that even if a lot of Brick Lane was rubbish, Monica Ali is still a promising writer and she's entitled to display her ignorance. I didn't think that cutting out offensive passages was a viable option."

"Oh," said the BYT dubiously. "But there must have been other issues that demanded your unadulterated attention and intellectual labour, surely." "Like thish launch," said my friend, wobbling off in search of the chapli kababs.

"Yes," I said, "this is a very important launch, because Leila Seth's book, On Balance, is a very fine memoir written by a woman who was a pioneering force in the legal industry."

"Ah," said my friend, wobbling back with a captive waiter and his tray, "ish that why it's important? In that case, why are all the Page 3 photographers taking more pictures of Vikram Seth than of his mum? And why have all the extracts been about Vikram Seth's childhood inshtead of..." "Instead of her battle against sexism in the courts?" I said.

"Because books page editors know that their readers really want gossip about Vikram Seth, not serious stuff about a woman's dignified struggle to balance work and family, which she did with flying colours, of course."

The BYT looked enlightened. "I'm not sure I understand yet how you've been upholding bastions of intellectual freedom, but at least now I know why so many copies of the book have been bought today. Everyone wants Vikram Seth's mother's autograph, is that it?"

"No, no," I said. "The people who're buying her book are actually the few people in the room who're here for Leila Seth and not to Vikram-watch. They really do want her autograph. Except for the man over there who just asked David Davidar to autograph the book, though he may have been confused and assumed that David was India's first woman justice of the Supreme Court. As for upholding intellectual freedom, it's a complicated business."

My friend, emptying a bottle of beer down her throat, nodded. "Outshiders," she said, munching on some aloo tikkis, "never understand just how hard we work."

nilroy@lycos.com