Random Notes

It's Naipaul again

WHEN Paul Theroux came out with his famous damning account of his "experiences" with V. S. Naipaul (Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents) two years ago, it was greeted with some scepticism and generally viewed as the ramblings of a man spurned and "betrayed" by a trusted friend. Some of the incidents - particularly about Naipaul's tight-fistedness and intolerable tantrums - sounded particularly exaggerated.

But it seems that he was pretty much on dot. For, much of what Theroux wrote is now confirmed by another old friend of Naipaul's, Diana Athill, who was his editor at Andre Deutsch when he started out as a writer in the 1950's. Editing Vidia, extracted in the latest issue of Granta (No. 69 - The Assassin) from Athill's forthcomig book Stet, is almost as unflattering, though without the bitterness which marked Theroux's account.

As in Theroux's book, here too Naipaul comes through as a testy, perpetually brooding man whose own sense of himself borders on arrogance which Athill guesses had its roots in a deepseated anxiety as much about his past as his future: his inflated ego, his bid to constantly score points over others, and a desperate desire to prove himself add up to a message - look, do not trifle with me because of the skin of my colour or my rootlesness. I am as good as any of you, maybe even better: and you had better take me seriously. His sense of his own worth, Athill recalls, tended to verge on "pompous self-importance".

Often Naipaul exaggerated, according to Athill, to impress on others his belief in self-respect (one such exaggerated account of how he refused Times Literary Supplement's "usual fee" of œ 25 for a review in the 1950's has been nailed by the journal in a recent issue after reading what he told Athill); and he was "miffed at being taken to a cheap restaurant or being offered a cheap bottle of wine".

Athill writes:"I became careful to let him choose both restaurant and wine. And this carefulness not to offend him, which was, I think, shared by all, or almost all, his friends, came from an assumption that the reason why he was so anxious to command respect was fear that it was, or might be, denied him because of his race ..."

Elsewhere, Athill recounts how he was offended when she suggested that two of the three central characters in his book Guerrillas which he submitted to Andre Deutsch in 1975 did not seem to work. The next day his agent called to say that he had been instructed to "retrieve" Guerrillas because it seemed Andre Deutsch had "lost confidence " in his writing. He went to Secker and Warburg - only to "retrieve" it from them as well because in their catalogue they described him as a "West Indian novelist".

Athill has a lot more to say in the same vein, confirming the eccentricities with which Naipaul is evidently very generously endowed; and appropriately her accounts ends, as all stories about Naipaul's do these days, with his no-longer-new-but-still- newsworthy wife Nadira. The news that Naipaul was "amazingly jolly" after marrying Nadira pleased Athill no end. Finally, the perpetually anxious and depressed Naipaul had something to cheer him.

* * *

Ali Sardar Jaafri

ALI SARDAR JAAFRI, the doyen of progressive Urdu literature and often compared, with some exaggeration, with Faiz Ahmed Faiz by his more enthusiastic admirers, is seriously ill, with a brain condition. A deeply committed poet - he got his baptism in commitment before it became a dirty word - he has clung to the old-fashioned belief that writers, poets and intellectuals are as important to the cause of the revolution as the boy in the bush. Brotherhood, universal peace (love can wait until after the revolution), a more just and humane social and political order - those have been his themes; and even those who find him unbearably didactic at times admire him for the sheer power of his poetry, and, above all, his intellectual honesty. Even when he succumbed to the charms of Bollywood he did it on his own terms and, unlike some of his other contemporaries, never plunged the bottom line.

A consistent champion of peace with Pakistan, Jaafri's famous lines on the eve of Prime Minister Vajpayee's bus ride to Lahore - "Tum aao gulshan-e-Lahore-se chaman bardosh aur hum aayen subeh Banaras ki roshni lekar aur phir uske baat ye poonche ke kaun dushman hai" (you come with the breeze of Lahore and we come with the dawn of Banares and then let us see who is the enemy) - would remain relevant no matter how many Kargils come in the way.

Though a self-confessed atheist, Jaafri botched his slate somewhat when during a TV conversation with Mr. Khushwant Singh he hedged his bets on being asked if believed in life after death, and whether indeed there was such a thing as heaven and hell. While Mr. Khushwant Singh was unambiguously certain that after death there was nothing but a full stop, Jaafri hemmed and hawed and eventually declared - well, who knows, the Believers may after all be right: there could be life after death. Well, we shall see.

* * *

Farewell, Penguin

FOR 30 years, Mr. Zamir Ansari had been the public face of Penguin; as the marketing head of Penguin Overseas he was there long before Penguin India arrived on the scene and the glitterati took over. His quiet exit from Penguin last month, following his retirement, and equally quiet entry into Dorling Kindersley (DK) is typical of the man: an unemotional, no-nonsense approach to professional affairs.

Though there had been rumours for sometime that he might be leaving Penguin, few outside a close circle of friends and colleagues knew that he had really quit Penguin until - nearly two weeks after the event - they got a routine business letter from him forwarding a latest DK title for review.

"Oh, didn't I tell you I was leaving Penguin ... I thought I did," he laughed when one asked why he had been so coy about it.

So after 30 years at Penguin, how did it feel not to be there? "Well, no withdrawal symptoms yet, but yes it is not easy to forget a place where you have worked for so long," he said. And how did he look back at the changes in publishing? "It is certainly more exciting now - yes, there is more competition, you have to be constantly on your toes but there are also more shops, more outlets, hundreds of new ways of selling," he pointed out. What others would call "challenge" (with a capital C), he shrugs off as all in a day's work.

Thanks to the complicated business of international publishing, with its mega takeovers and mergers, Mr. Ansari ("Zamir" or "Ansari Sahib" to his friends depending on the age and proximity to him) would continue in a roundabout way to be under the comforting shadow of Penguin. For DK has just been taken over by the Pearson Group, United Kingdom, which owns a number of publishing companies, including Penguin.

Another enduring link is Mr. Bikram Grewal, the boss of DK (India), and a one-time member of Mr. Ansari's "inner circle" whose other leading lights included Mr. Ravi Vyas, one of our most widely read guest columnists at The Hindu.

Over the years, Mr. Ansari has been "the" man you instinctively turned to for anything about books: a difficult-to-get title even if it was not a Penguin book; a quick update on publishing; an advance copy of Granta; or even a view on the latest gossip.

He assures us that he would still be just a phone call away.

HASAN SUROOR

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