Reading in the stone age

SPEAKING VOLUMES

To read the Mahabharata in Modhera, start at the bottom of the first pillar to your right as you enter the outer sanctum of the Sun Temple and work your way around until you run into the Ramayana.

The temple is better known as only the second Surya temple in India, the first being Konarak; but to bibliophiles, it should be known as the temple of the epics.

Each pillar is exquisitely carved with scenes from the two epics and you can "read" your way through the sculptures""but be careful to stick with the natural order of the pillars. A few careless steps in the wrong direction, and you've moved from Bhisma dying on his bed of arrows to the burning of Lanka.

Modhera is not the only example of manuscripts in stone by any means""Mahabalipuram, Konarak, and several other temples come to mind. What is the appropriate term for them? Pageturner is clearly incorrect, and blockbuster, while perhaps technically appropriate, sounds flippant.

Beyond the great epics, however, we're not very good at preserving our literary history, in stone or otherwise. London and Paris offer a choice of literary tours divided by period: there are Bloomsbury tours or Dickensian tours, even tours dedicated to early feminist writers or famous fictional ghosts; visitors can choose between Hugo's Paris and Balzac's version.

The Irish have made a ceremony out of a date that exists only in a book""on Bloomsday, dedicated to James Joyce's Ulysses, you can see Dublin through Leopold Bloom's eyes, join the Joyce marathon, or do a Joycean pub crawl. (A cautionary note for visitors to Wales: if you're ever offered a shot at a Dylan Thomasian pub crawl, refuse. The poet died after drinking eighteen whiskies, after all, not quite the most pleasant of feats to emulate while on holiday.)

Edinburgh has annexed the title of the world's first city of literature and its Royal Mile now commemorates writers from Robert Fergusson to Robert Louis Stevenson. One hopes they will also pay homage to William McGonagall, often described as the worst poet in history.

And Romania went a step further; ignoring the fact that Bram Stoker hadn't so much as seen the country before he wrote Dracula, the Romanian Tourist Board first constructed the ruins of a castle and then built a hotel on top of the faux ruins in order to draw visitors!

In Delhi, people like Rakshanda Jalil are trying to make a difference: she's already done one Ghalib festival and is planning another in the haveli in Old Delhi where he used to stay. A Munshi Premchand festival was also on the anvil.

But while you can do a heritage walk in Delhi, there are no literary heritage walks. That's a pity, because they would be just as interesting""especially if you began with Chand Bardai and Amir Khusro and came all the way up to Nayantara Sahgal's "government" Delhi.

And in Motihari, the efforts of a few committed souls may mean that the house of Eric Arthur Blair, born to a family he wryly described as "lower-upper-middle-class", will be restored and preserved as a museum.

George Orwell, to give Blair his pseudonym, spent only the first year or two of his life in Motihari, but he often referred to himself as "Indian". Under the present Person of Indian Origin act, he would've qualifed.

The US election reading list: Only in the US could two parties debate the merits of books as fiercely as they do the merits of the candidates. Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, a scathing if cheerfully juvenile attack on the Bush administration, was seen by the Republicans as a potential threat.

The book has sold in the millions and Moore's been joined by a string of "liberal" authors, such as Craig Unger, whose House of Bush, House of Sand has been a steady bestseller.

On the other side you have the likes of Anne Coulter, whose rightwing rants have earned her a huge following among Bush supporters. How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must) is soaring on the Amazon charts. Coulter is currently expending a great deal of vigour on prosecuting two young men who threw custard pies (flavour undeclared) at her at a recent book signing. (One got her on the shoulder.)

Also doing the rounds is Unfit For Command, a no-holds-barred attack on John Kerry, written by authors who combine the moral scruples of a backalley streetfighter with the honesty of, well, Bush and co on the subject of whether there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But the one who's making the biggest stir is Seymour Hersh (we remember him; at least Morarji Desai would have if he were alive!), the investigative journalist who won a Pulitzer for his reporting and broke the news of the My Lai massacre in the bad old days of the Vietnam War. Hersh has kicked up a storm with Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.

This expose of the Bush administration and how it behaved as though, in the words of one staffer, as if it was "on a mission from God" is solidly researched. Readers in the subcontinent will find the section on Pakistan's peddling of nuclear technology on the global black market of particular interest. And Hersh is drawing vituperative comments from pro-Bush readers on Amazon's website, always a good indication of how well the book is likely to do.

As journalists are discovering, the one question that's off limits if you're interviewing Hersh is the obvious one, about why the torture in the prisons at Abu Ghraib is so significant.

In an interview with the San Francisco Gate, Hersh exploded: "Why are you asking me that question? Are you trying to torture me? Is that a torture question? If you can't answer that question, I'm not going to answer it."

Tailpiece, and never mind the pun: Most guests of honour at book launches are Old Venerables who say deeply meaningful things into their coffee or Young Turks who are prepared to bore the audience at interminable length.

It's a pleasant surprise, then, to receive an invitation from Roli to the launch of VIPs: Very Important Pets. The guests of honour are Franto and Don, "canine heroes of the dog squad of Delhi Police". If you have a question for them, raise a paw and bark into the mike.