Drinking wine through a straw

Book launches are curious animals, a hybrid between earnest intellectualism and unabashed tamasha

Intimations of challenges for the book publishing business started 10 days before the national lockdown. A publisher abruptly told an author that her book launch scheduled for that day stood cancelled because the office had decided to institute Covid-19 social distancing norms. Having invited industry notables for a panel discussion, the author pointed out that it would be embarrassing to cancel at a few hours’ notice (a predicament that the entire country was to face not long afterwards). 

A bizarre sequence followed. The publishers agreed to allow the book launch to go ahead at the hall they’d booked and even offered