Where to buy:

1. Flipkart: http://goo.gl/paOrq
2. Amazon UK: http://goo.gl/kF0P4
3. Amazon US: http://goo.gl/s45Cl

The Terrifying Video Ultimatum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jalmNA8dAN4

You have 24 hours.

October/November 2012. Stay tuned.

But I’d pestered the Penguin people for weeks and I suppose cracking open a box at Jaipur seemed ceremonial enough. The guys who ran the shop, the same guys who run the Full Circle outlet at Khan Market in New Delhi, promptly took a stack of fresh Dork copies and dumped them on the lowest rack of a bookshelf, next to Shoba De and Sidney Sheldon.

As the day progressed the stack receded farther and farther into the dark nether regions of the bookshelf while, in more prominent positions, books by Geoff Dyer and William Dalrymple literally vaporised by the stackfulls. Still I was most thrilled. Every few hours I’d pop in and check on status. And the Dork stack would cough and wheeze and splutter and shorten itself one comforting copy at a time.

Very quickly, however, I was engrossed in the festival itself. Sure, I spent hours agonising over what those early buyers thought of my book. Things were not helped by Samit Basu’s motivating quip one morning that he had started reading the book, but had fallen asleep after a few pages. (A terrible cameo awaits him in book three.)

Jitters apart, I was truly enjoying the festival. In many different ways.

Now when I went to Jaipur I had no idea who the organisers or founders of the event were. I knew Dalrymple was involved in some capacity. I had no idea what their ulterior motives were, what their political or ideological agenda were and whether they cared about other Indian languages. (I say ‘other’ because it is ludicrous to think English isn’t an Indian language.)

I also did not know what their criteria for inviting authors were. Was I jealous of some of the invitees? Of course. Did I want to be invited one day? Of course. I still do. The appreciation of your peers is highly valued in any profession, not least in a creative and particularly criticism-prone one like writing.

Also at no point was I thinking to myself “What does this festival achieve for the nation as a whole?”

When I was at Jaipur the only things playing on my mind were: Which are the good sessions? Which authors should I be listening to? As a young author coming to grips with this vocation, who should I talk to, what advice should I be asking for and what lessons did these fabulous writers have for me?

And my experience was absolutely fascinating. And very fulfilling. Lawrence Wright’s bag of tricks and tips for reporters I will never forget as long as my messenger bag includes an audio recorder. The session on travel writing was both amusing and informative.

A remarkable session on terrorism and the Middle East involving Wright and Steve Coll exposed me to nuance on a subject that is often analysed with staggering, stifling polarity. That session led me to buy and read several books.

I also met a few people at Jaipur who have remained friends and twitter-buddies since.

All in all, I had the time of my life.

I say all this because this year JLF has been the cynosure of attention for many reasons, most of them negative. There was that Rushdie imbroglio that overshadowed everything else. Then there were the readings of the Satanic Verses, the assassins, the quotable quotes, the outrage and, most distressing for me personally, the reams of punditry condemning the festival as pointless, irrelevant or a schmoozefest.

Most of that is perhaps true. But my point is: so what man?

Tell me this: what can possibly make a literary festival vital? At what point in a society’s evolution does a literary festival assume a position of critical importance? Which nation in the world can standup and say: “Look, we’ve solved all our critical problems. All our vital shortcomings have been alleviated. Now we start with our frivolous shortcomings. And top on that list is a thumping huge literary festival.”

I don’t think even one. Even Norway, with all that HDI and GDP, has to deal with insane gunmen and Indian parenting quirks.

In fact, when you think about it, literature and literary festivals are perhaps important precisely because they are not vital. They distance–some would even say elevate–us from the brutal and mundane that frustrate us in our daily lives. Why do you come home after work and see a rerun of Friends? Because you identify with the moral rectitude of Matt Le Blanc and Courtney Cox? Because you are 100% certain that the producers of the show don’t have some ulterior political motive in their scripts?

Who knows? More importantly, who cares?

Then why demand of literary festivals, organisers, participants or even audiences the morality, clarity of purpose, sanctity of intentions and social relevance that we demand of hardly anybody or anything else. And especially so of a privately organised literary event where the public is allowed to visit freely.

Can you spend the whole week schmoozing at Jaipur? Of course. Can you spend the whole week stalking celebrities or sucking up to the clique-ish publishing industry? Certainly. Can you spend the week in the midst of a few wonderful authors and artists enjoying discussions, debates and perspectives? Yes you can, even if the quality of sessions can be very uneven and often helmed by bizarre moderators. But hey, it is free and you can vote with your feet. Bad JLF this year? Don’t go next year.

Disagree with the mandates of the festival? Want to focus more on translated fiction, Marathi poetry or Malayalam travel writing? By all means organise your own festival. JLF does not have an exclusive national license on literary festivals.

If anything we need plenty more festivals all over the country. As any Chetan Bhagat event in a small town shows, there are readers everywhere in this country. And they love meeting and talking to authors. There are more languages, topics and issues than can be handled by a dozen large Indian festivals. But chances are that any such festival will be tinged by controversy. We are not a country famed for our ability to get along with each other. Or for our restraint when it comes to putting public figure on pedestals.

You are welcome to try to organise a literary festival that will condemn any kind of schmoozing, celebrity worship, low brow conversation, political partisanship, NRI fixations or ideological leanings. Feel free. But literary festivals can seldom be less polarising than literature itself.

However a lot of the analysis I see right now is saddening. It is akin to saying let us burn down cinema theatres because too many people watch crap movies.

No screens. No crap movies. No movies at all. Victory for good cinema?

Hardly.

***

p.s. No. I am not trying to get an invitation. Why would you think like that?
p.p.s. I am getting old.

I know all this sounds terribly boring. But in reality it is spectacularly boring. But it must be done. Personally I am a believer in freestyle spelling. But many readers get very upset and send emails. Which I would like to avoid this time round. So more attention will be paid to grammar and niggling things like tense shifts. (D1 was full of horrendous tense shift things. Did you noticed it?)

D2 carries on a few months after D1 and takes place almost completely in London. This is not because I’ve been living here of late. It was always planned like that, with D3 happening back in India. But there is really very little London in it. (Unless lots of London will make you buy the book. In which case it is brimming with London.) But it was a pleasant coincidence to write of the same city you are typing in.

Our plan, ever since Penguin and I first discussed it in mid-2008, has been to tell Robin’s story in three books, with the ultimate aim being to make him CEO by Book 3. That plan is proceeding well. Otherwise significant changes have been made from my initial plan for the book. There was too much material in the CDs I found under the sink. So I had to cut and chop and shift things a bit. (Ahem.)

Anyway I won’t bore you with all those things right now. There is plenty of time for that. Also I need to leave some gossip for marketing no?

Instead let me share some data points that will, I hope, whet your appetite:

• D2D1 is currently 62770 words long. That will increase by another 2000 words by the time D2D3 is finished.
• That should translate to approximately 300 pages or so in print. But this is fully variable.
• Most of the book was written using Scrivener on a desktop and a laptop.
• A Dropbox account was used to sync the project between both machines.
• The whole things took around 5 months to write. But most of the writing happened in the last two weeks.
• Writing was usually done to background music by Earl Klugh, Fourplay, George Benson and this wonderful mix of Rainymood and The Fragrance of Dark Coffee. Anything with lyrics completely distracts me. So does anything that is too fast, too slow and too complicated. Smooth Jazz seems to be working of late.
• During the writing process I read the following: A history of the Popes, a biography of Paul Dirac, The Eye of the Red Tsar and, as I got closer to the deadline, Michael Palin’s Around The World in 80 Days. Reading humour books keep me cheerful. But I am paranoid about being too influenced by what I am reading. Palin’s travel non-fiction is most satisfying without leaking into Robin’s head. Now I am reading Jo Nesbo’s Nemesis.
• I write entirely in 14-point Georgia font. Have been doing so for 4 or 5 years now.
• In order to help me focus I removed a bunch of apps from my computers, and stayed off updating Twitter for two weeks. Whenever I wanted a break I played Stick Cricket on the iPhone.
• It will take at least 6 months from now till release date. Which means November-ish maybe? I hope so
• I am thinking of doing something online as a bonus track, if you will, for the book.
• The next project that is already beginning to ferment in the brain is a crime novel. (Yes, I know you are going to make Sreesanth-bowling jokes.) But no, seriously. A crime novel has been obsessing the mind for months. I have written just a little bit. Why not? You live only one life.
• Otherwise life carries on as usual. Mint, Cricinfo, Twitter and now a little Facebook.
• I intend to spend the next two weeks doing nothing but watch cricket, eat, cycle a little bit, read and blog/tweet/poke.

What else? Nothing much.

Enough about me. You tell me. What is up?

But I am over that now.

However this is not to say that life has been all milk and honey and single malts and paal payasam. Not at all. Writing a book itself is fraught with insecurities and doubts and fear of failure. Like any pursuit, I am sure, that is vulnerable to public criticism.

Yet I naively assumed that once the writing process was over,  the book published, and the reviews dealt with, the emotional turmoil of it all would be over. I would be free of the book, and vice versa, and life would go on.

Ha ha ha. And I as I say this I am walking down a flight of stairs clapping my hands slowly in a sinister fashion.

Ha ha ha.

I was a fool.

I was entirely unprepared for the petty politics, mini passive aggressions and tiny stabbings in the back that, I now understand, all small-time authors have to deal with.

As seen at Khan Market

Writers of greater success and wider critical acclaim don’t have to worry about such things. If you go and try being sly or clever with Rushdie, Naipaul or Seth, I am sure they’ll tear you a new one. (And you could then auction this new one on ebay later for the celebrity premium.)

But small-time writerdom, the vast, soft underbelly of the publishing business, are not spared a single thing. There is no escaping the sly observations, snide remarks and judgmental subtext.

Dear god. The judgmental subtext. That is the worst shit. That play of words where it seems like condescension on the surface but, deep inside, is actually snobbish dismissal. When this happens at Khan Market, and it mostly happens at Khan Market,  you want to reach for a shawarma knife and slap them across the face with it.

So if you are a budding author or an ambitious writer, you need to be prepared for the minefield of subtle insult that awaits. In order to help you I herewith list the top 10 passive aggressive things people have told me over the past few months. I hope this will assist in your literary pursuits.

Top 10 ways to be passive aggressive with small-time authors

1. “Hi Sidin. Congratulations. I read your book last week!” *Turns around and walks away*

Interpretation: “Ok listen, I saw your book at Bahri Sons and bought it. Ok so you wrote a book. What do you want me to do? Rip my clothes off and do it with you here in front of Cocoberry? Fat-free chance of that happening! I could have easily written a better book. Whatever. I am not even going to lie to you about it. But in the off-chance you become famous I will come back and leech on your fame and fortune. Till then you are pond-scum to me.”

2. “Wow. Nice. Indian fiction is just so vibrant now no?”

Interpretation: “Bastard. You think you are Rohinton Mistry?? Fool. Stupid book. Just because people buy it doesn’t mean you are some intellectual. Any shit gets published these days. When I say vibrant I mean it in the way that Padma Lakshmi eats Cockroach 65 in Taiwan and says ‘Interesting’. In reality, she wants to throw up. So do I. If you win an award, I will slash my wrists.”

3. “Reprint? Too much boss! A lot of alumni must have bought it…”

Interpretation: “You are worthless without your MBA. If it wasn’t for that diploma from Ahmedabad you’d just be a bottom-feeding loser. And now you and your brotherhood of suit-wearing group-wankers perpetuate your greatness. You disgust me. If I had not graduated from the elite Chengalpet Institute of Tantric Dentistry, annual batch size: 23, my book too would have become super hit. Also can you tell my son how to deal with the Data Interpretation part of CAT?”

4. “Someone just told me about the reprint! Whatay! I’ve been seeing it bookshops everywhere. There are 15 copies at Oxford… super distribution…”

Interpretation: “Cut the crap dude. No one is buying your Dork. When you say reprint, you mean they are reprinting the stupid plot with a new one? Ha ha! Comedy! I am waiting for it to reach Big Bazaar. Unless you can give me a free copy…”

5. “DOOOD! Saw you on NDTV last night. Superb. That’s the benefit of getting people like Penguin on board.”

Interpretation: “Yeah right. Someone at NDTV just *noticed* your book. Pfft. Sure. And the Chengalpet Institute of Tantric Dentistry is a real college. Screw you man. It’s all marketing and bribing and sexual favours. I know how all this works. Ok, I just came back from visiting an important client. I need to take a shower and disinfect myself.”

6. Book journalists: “Arrey, hold on yaar. I haven’t finished reading it yet. Just been really busy. But I like what I see so far.”

Interpretation: “Ok see this is the problem: I don’t want to say anything till some of the other reviewers say something. I like it and all. But what if Jai Arjun Singh says it  sucks? Then I don’t want to be seen as having an individual opinion of my own. Remember what happened few years ago when I said that one particular book was average, and then it won the Booker? Therefore I am now as insecure as the Gilgit-Baltistan region. So please wait.”

7. “Really really liked it. Good work. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been. Penguin must have really run you up the wall with editing requests no?”

Interpretation: “Ha ha ha ha ha. You wrote this book on your own? Ha ha ha ha ha. You fraud.”

8. “It was very interesting to see Dork on the bestseller list. Great. It is not my genre, to be honest, but I am really happy for you.

Interpretation: “Have you seen my collection of books? I read Proust man. Proust. And Kafka. Also Saul Bellow. And Paul Auster and Le Clezio. Do you even know what post-modern means? Plebeian asshole. Be gone! Oh, I am so sorry. Plebeian means commoner. A peasant. Just 300 pages, and you call this a book.”

9. “Bought it weeks ago. I have to rush now. Let me email you what I think.”

Interpretation: “Honestly speaking I think it is really nice. But admitting that in front of other people would ruin my high-literary positioning. I have a reputation here and also at the Habitat Center. Admitting to like Ulysses? Maybe. Dork? Poda patti.”

10. “Oh you wrote that book? I got a free copy at that reading at Lodhi. My husband really likes it!”

Interpretation: “Look, my husband is a classless beer-drinking brute. I am the creative one in the family. I attend book readings and debates and do shit for the United Nations. He liked your stuff. But I really married him for his house on Amrita Sher Gill Marg.

Me? Read your nonsense? Dude… I once gave Aravind Adiga a bouquet of flowers in Jaipur. So shut it slave, and bring me some white wine and a cocktail samosa.”

***

Ackowledgements: Cartoon from the NakedPastor. Thanks dude.

But there is more value-add in this blog post. So don’t go.

When I first started writing the column, in December 2008, the idea was to poke a little fun at the workplace. Or, to paraphrase the column’s boilerplate, to look at the pleasures and perils of the workplace.

Since April the column has gone from being fortnightly to weekly, but my mandate hasn’t changed. I still need to file, every Thursday even though they really like it by Wednesday night, around 850 words of somewhat amusing prose.

Humour writing is exhausting. Especially so when my product, in this case Cubiclenama, appears on a page which has pretty high standards. For instance every Thursday the same space is occupied by the wonderful, curious and endlessly informed Salil Tripathi. How do you follow a top act like that?

Which means besides poking fun at HR and IT and Consulting and Banking and BlackBerrys and things like that, I also need to make the reader think a little bit. Somehow. At least by some form of free association.

Compounding this problem further is the fact that many people read excellent workplace columnists like Lucy Kellaway, and all people read Scott Adams. Kellaway is one of those rare writers who make you laugh and think at the same time. Her column for the FT is an institution.

Adams is God.

So most weeks I start worrying about the column around lunch time on Monday.

First I start to Google for offbeat news stories about murders or electrocutions or amputations in the office space. Many of them are not usable directly or indirectly. But they sometimes point at themes. They point at some aspect of the office space or office culture that I might resonate with. The trick usually is to find something that is obscure enough to be fresh, but not so obscure that few people connect with it.

So I can’t do anything with the IT or jargon used in a newsroom. Few people would be bothered. But Lotus Notes jokes are good. Bloomberg terminals can be touched upon briefly. Spam email is old news. HR is an unending fountain of delight.

Eventually I end up reading or discussing something with somebody that generates a small seed of an idea. And then I semi-think about it till Wednesday morning. At which point I think about thinking about writing about it. (I don’t know about you, but often the hardest part about writing a column is the writing of the column. The brain sometimes does anything to delay the typing. That and Twitter.)

And then around noon on Thursday I panic and begin to type. (For weeks now I’ve been using the excellent Q10 app on the office laptop to write. If there is a lot of noise in the office or in my head, I listen to Rainy Mood on my headphones. It makes me drink a lot of water and pee a lot. But it is most soothing. Too soothing and its difficult to keep the language funny. Too frenetic and I feel rushed by the music. Boring podcasts are very good.)

This week I didn’t have to Google at all. As soon as I heard about the whole BlackBerry-government imbroglio I knew I had to write about it.

Eventually I wondered what the government would do once it had access to BlackBerry messages.

Sometimes, when the idea forms perfectly, the columns write themselves.

I rarely link to columns or articles on the blog. But quite a few people seemed to have liked this one. So here it is:

Note: There is a small Cubiclenama group on Facebook. It has been dormant for a while. But I hope to ignite the existing community and attract new members by amplifying the experience with relevant and engaging content.

—

The BlackBerry Spies

Originally published in Mint and on Livemint.com.

Sometime in the near future.

Deputy director Kumar of the National BlackBerry Monitoring Agency of India (NBMAI) briskly walks into his shiny new office. The floor creaks under the weight of his shoes. The maple wood must be replaced, Kumar thinks.

The offices of NBMAI are located in the netball stadium custom-built for the Commonwealth Games. After the Games, the facility was handed over to a developer for maintenance. Who converted it into a commercial centre. Now NBMAI shared a floor with a KFC and the top floor of a Big Bazaar. Thankfully, the netball field itself remained untouched, and netballers from all over India were allowed to use the facility, whenever they wanted, between 6am and 8am on all Sundays.

Kumar marches through a vast warren of cubicles. Employees peer at computer monitors.

Every piece of data exchanged between two BlackBerrys in the country is routed through NBMAI’s servers. As per government regulations, NBMAI employees are allowed to randomly pick any voice call, text message, instant message, email or MMS from this flood of communication.

The first few weeks of NBMAI were turbulent. Kumar and his superiors slowly realized that depending purely on human agents to randomly pick messages would lead to chaos.

For instance, on one evening, in the early days of the agency, Kumar discovered that 23 of the 34 monitoring experts were all looking for threats to state security, especially photos, on Deepika Padukone’s BlackBerry.

A few weeks after that the home minister suddenly visited NBMAI’s office for a surprise check. However, an employee had already read an email Kumar sent to the home secretary, from his BlackBerry, about the trip.

When the ministry team arrived they saw a banner: “NBMAI welcome the home minister. We wish you a successful surprise inspection visit.”

In yet another case of blatant misuse, a Lok Sabha member convinced one of NBMAI’s employees to tap into an arch-rival’s Berry. A debate was afoot, and the MP asked this spy among spies to rush any dodgy messages to Parliament.

Damage, however, was averted at the last minute. The MP stood up and said: “Speaker sir, I wish to bring to your notice this message sent by the honourable member last week. In it the member says, and I quote: ‘Lolz u cnt hz 3G yt. Eeeheehee reg: MNP. C u at Nth Blck @ 8.’ My question to the House is this: What does this mean for the country? In fact, what does this mean in general? Anyone?”

Since then Kumar had made several changes. First of all, a computer program was installed that could automatically check messages and flag problematic ones. Second, Kumar made it illegal to target checks on any individuals. Yet, NBMAI still faced crises on a daily basis.

Kumar settles into his office chair and switches on his computer. Instantly he notices a series of emails. One is an emergency message. The letters glow red. He summons his CTO.

“Sir,” the CTO gasps, “our terror-attack module flagged over 7,000 terror messages last night. We need to do something about this.”

“My God! 7,000 messages! We must alert Home immediately!”

“But it was a misunderstanding…”

“What do you mean?”

“Sir, there was a national conference of management consultants in Mumbai last night. It appears that their BlackBerry messages are throwing up many false positives.”

“I don’t understand…”

“First of all, in the morning there were several messages that mentioned airports, drops, flights, transfers and even one that said someone was going to ‘crash on the plane’. Our algorithm went mad.”

“Assuming a plane attack no doubt. We must fix this. Then?”

“During the day they had presentations. So we detected messages about ‘blowing up charts’, ‘exploding the process flow’, ‘boiling the ocean’, ‘deep dive’, ‘drill down’, ‘critical path’, ‘go live’ and more than one ‘helicopter view’. The system decided that some form of airborne attack was imminent at Marine Drive.”

“Understandably so. And then?”

“During the evening we got bombarded with ‘mission critical’, ‘chain reaction’, ‘collaborate’ and ‘cross platform’.”

“Oho. This must have set off our rail terror alert logic.”

“Correct. But things got completely out of hand in the evening. When the conference got over.”

“Oh God…”

“Yes…”

“The military site attack sensor…”

“Correct. We fended off all the ‘ice breaker’, ‘break out’ and ‘north bound’ alerts. But when three thousand ‘touch base’ messages flooded the system, it immediately alerted Siachen.”

Kumar shakes his head in frustration. He stands up in order to say something. When suddenly the wooden floor, built by the lowest bidder, gives way, and he disappears into the ground.

Cubiclenama takes a weekly look at the pleasures and perils of corporate life.

This, of course, is nonsense. And I have the PowerPoint slides to prove it.

Hah.

But, to be honest, at least one veteran consultant has written to me about how much Dork has touched one of his/her raw nerves.

So imagine how much pain a spectacular new blog post on the  the New Yorker’s website will inflict on them. Titled Christopher Nolan’s “Implementation”, blogger Gideon Lewis-Kraus mashes up management consulting and Inception to produce brilliance:

“If you fail,” says Watanabe, “you will stay in ‘limbo,’ which means spending the rest of your life developing dynamic solutions for leveraged market-driven global enterprise frameworks across downstream cross-platform industry. If you succeed, I will help you return to your former career as an independent boutique retailer of imported artisanal tapenade.”

Read the whole thing here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2010/07/christopher-nolan-implementation.html#ixzz0vXk3Ai46

Ayyo. Too much comedy.

Sunil Sethi and I recently chatted about Dork and a bunch of other things on NDTV’s Just Books show.

The outcomes of this were threefold:

1. I appeared on TV. This has made many people on both sides of the family very happy indeed. Kapoors and Vadukuts from Agra to Alleppey were overjoyed. The in-laws are finally beginning to reconcile with my career decisions.

2. I got to meet Sunil Sethi. And listen to him talk about growing up in Delhi as a lover of books. We recorded for maybe 12 minutes. And then stood around chatting for around a couple of hours.

3. I had no idea there was an Olive restaurant near the Qutub. Two thumbs up.

And this is the video.

Youtube:

NDTV: (full show including Aishwarya Rai and Karan Bajaj sequences)

I know I know. I laugh too much. Sigh.

A coworker said I looked “eerily unfamiliar” in the video. Do I?

P.S. Just noticed. It says “Author ‘Dork’”. Ugh.

Cover of Wolf Hall: A Novel (Man Booker Prize)

Have I told you about my obsession with author podcasts? About how I diligently download as many author interviews as I can onto my iPod and then listen to them many times?

Personally I like to skip the parts where they talk about one, or several, of their books. Instead, I like to focus on the writing process they follow. Do they wake up at 4:30 AM and start typing? Do they carry moleskine notebooks around to jot down ideas? And how did/do they go about researching their books?

The latest addition to this collection is an iTunes “Meet The Author” interview with Hilary Mantel. I haven’t read the Booker prize winning Wolf Hall yet. The book is one of the many I abstained from while editing up Dork. (Fear of “inspiration”, insecurity etc. etc.)

You can listen to that episode, and archives of the “Meet the Author” podcast, here.

My favourite-st author interview show however is the BBC’s excellent World Book Club. Superb interviews with great authors. And extremely accessible. Plenty to listen to online and on the iPod, here.

The latest episode of WBC featured John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas:

Some of the other authors featured on WBC include Annie Proulx, Kiran Desai, Wole Soyinka etc. etc. Splendid archives.

Another superb place to evesdrop on the “writing process” is the wonderful “Writers’ Rooms” series at the Guardian. The last update, however, is dated last July. Pity.

I am back. Again.

Ahem. Hello there. Welcome back.

As you may be aware this blog was away for three months doing authorly things like launching, reading, interviewing, posing for pictures, reading good reviews, reading bad reviews, crying ourselves to sleep and so on. And amidst all the celebrity-ing, Pranab Mukherjee presented a Union Budget. The union budget is pretty much the highlight of the annual calendar for the business journalism business. (Whatay play on words.) Which means the Union Budget is one of those “do anything as long as you are doing something” periods in the office. And boy did we do things. Many, many things.

Of course today no one remembers anything Minister Mukherjee said or announced during the budget.

(When I say no one, I am NOT referring to professional and hobbyist economists. Those guys are still going at it with shouts of “Good golly there is fiscal widening happening here!” or perhaps “I am perturbed by the supply-side inflationary tendencies of the moneterary policy implications of this policy shift…”.

Economists. Oh yeah. Those guys are fun.)

But for the rest of us the Union Budget was the Rashomon to the Rail Budget’s Wrestlemania XII.

FYI: That’s the one in which Shawn Micheals beat Bret Hart in the first ever WWF Iron Man Match.

PFA budget. @shashitharoor Pls. RT.

Mukherjee needs to do something about the public recall of the budget. How can he get people to talk about his budget for years and years after he presents it? How can he get coverage on every channel from CNBC to Dwarka Entertainment Network?

Exactly. Get Shashi Tharoor to live tweet the budget. Preferebly a day in advance.

So now that all such matters are behind us and in the past, I can perhaps share some of the more memorable moments from the last many months of hawking Dork to all and sundry.

First of all there was the wonderful experience of seeing Dork at the Full Circle Bookstore during the Jaipur Literary Festival. Which is where we cracked open the first ever cardboard box full of copies fresh from the press. In complete, reseplendent, uber-literary lemon-rice-yellow glory. Aayush Soni and Samit Basu were amongst the first buyers to ever pay for the book and indirectly earn me Rs.15.92 per copy. (Yes. Name-dropping.)

Next morning:

Sidin: “Aayush Aayush Aayush, have you read it, have you read it, have you read it, did you like it, did you like it, did you like it…”
Aayush: “I started reading it. And then I fell asleep.”

My lips said “That’s ok, Jaipur can be pretty exhausting Aayush. Tell me when you finish.”

But my mind said “Sidin stealthily approach one of those Festival khullar chai-wallahs. Steal his huge bronze tea drum. Then batter Aayush to death with drum. Write literary book about experience and block calendar for Jaipur 2011 invitation. Working Title: A Humpty Drum Tea Murder.”

Thankfully the response I got from the venerable Samit Basu was drastically different.

Sidin: “Samit Samit Samit, have you read it, have you read it, have you read it, did you like it, did you like it, did you like it…”
Samit: “I started reading it. And then I fell asleep.”

As you can see, the initial market response for the book was less than stupendous.

But things went up from there. We were 13,000 copies down some three weeks ago. And Dork continues to sell.

That was not the only Dork-highlight involving the Mulleted Basu.

Oh yeah.

The Mumbai launch had Samit and Gul Panag launching Dork, and me trying to gurgle up complete, gibberish-free sentences while talking to Gul Panag. During the un-gift-wrapping of the book, Samit ceremoniously pulled on the pink ribbon, and then let the book fall to the floor. There was an audible gasp from the crowd… who saw the book fall and then collectively internalized the spectacular dress Gul was wearing.

But then things went well after that and the Mumbai launch, much like the Delhi launch with Jai Arjun Singh, comprised laughter, banter and reasonable sales. The flightless ones are pleased. And so am I.

Book launch season also means many interviews and some photo shoots.

I will be honest with you here. After a point, there is a tendency to lapse into auto-pilot during interviews. Mind you, it’s not that interviewers don’t try. It’s just after a point, it is well nigh impossible to be asked an un-asked question. So there is an element of going through the motions.

Except, that is, when the interview stands apart. For bizarre reasons.

Like the guy who was paranoid that I would eat something expensive at the restaurant we met in, and make him pay the bill. When I ordered the Chicken Kathi Roll and Diet Coke, the blood drained from his face:

Sidin: “…so no, I dont think of any of the characters have been directly inspired from…”
Dude: “Excuse me…”
Sidin: “Eh? Yes.”
Dude: “I would like to tell you that I am not carrying any money in my wallet.”
Sidin: “Ok… Umm… Ok… No problem…”

And then moments after I completed the food and asked for the bill with not a hint of hesitation:

Sidin: “…so many inspirations. Books, movies, TV shows. Especially a lot of British…”
Dude: “Thank you so much for your time. I will go now.”
Sidin: “…”
Dude: *poof*

I don’t need to tell you that only the worst possible pictures from photo shoots finally make it to print. Or that around a quarter of my interviewers made desperate attempts to get me to bitch about Chetan Bhagat.

Sea Harrier doing its thing.

But then now, when I am thoroughly over the emotional roller-coaster of launches and reviews and interviews, I sit back and wonder. About the questions I’ve never been asked yet. Including those about books. And me. And the Harrier Jump Jet capable of V/STOL.

(I might cover ground I’ve blogged about before. Or not. I don’t remember any more. Afteryouth.)

For instance when did I really begin to read? As in read even when it wasn’t mandated by the CBSE or ambitious “At least read the newspaper for ten minutes, instead of watching Different Strokes on TV no?!” parents.

It all began sometime around 1985. I remember the incident clearly, if not the date, because there was a fire. A tiny little fire, confined to one corner of one room of one apartment. But a fire nonetheless. One that needed fire fighting. How exciting for a six year old no?

The fire broke out in the mostly empty flat next door, occupied by a Malayali family a day or so away from abandoning Abu Dhabi and moving back to India. (In the 80s. Who left the Gulf in the 80s?? Maybe only them.) They’d already started emptying the flat, room by room, and shifting everything into a cargo container. All that remained was one room which had some old clothes, old toys, kitchen utensils and such things that had no functional utility, would be a waste to ship, but were of borderline sentimental value.

And books. A closet in a corner had a man-sized stack of books. Most of them were damaged with covers missing and broken bindings. Others were useless ones like out-of-syllabus textbooks, and orphan volumes of old encyclopedias.

The fire had already begun to leap at the stack of books when mom and I started a bucket chain relaying water to fight it. (The brain works in such weird ways. I recall orange and red buckets, and mom running out of our front door, around the stair well and into the neighbour’s house. In her petticoat/nightie.)

As reward for my valiant fire-fighting, and in order to save on shipping costs, I was allowed to keep a few books from the stack. Mom, ever proud and independent, allowed me to pick up only one. I took the cover-less, slightly browned single-volume encyclopedia with the big colourful pictures in it.

For many years after the book had a strong smell of char and smoke. And then it began to pick up smells from my own cupboard: old blankets, pencil shavings and fountain pen ink. Finally it made up its mind and decided to smell comfortingly of home.

Mohenjo-daro Mr. T.

At first I liked only the pictures in it. Then I began reading the captions. Statue from Mohenjo-Daro. Man building a roof. Spectrum of colours. Isaac Newton. How a nuclear reactor works: in three steps.

And then, slowly, I began to read the paragraphs.

Soon it got obsessive. I’d lie belly down on the floor and read it always. Mom, and to a lesser extent dad, were staunch believers in the fact that 100% school attendance, well eaten meals and plenty of sleep in the afternoon were essential for growing children. (And indeed much physical widening happened in the years hence.)

So I would secretly slip the book under the bed, and when everyone else fell asleep, I’d roll over to the edge, pull the book out and read it. Sometimes with one slyly open eye.

Thus it began. With non-fiction mostly.

We never had too much money for years, and I normally got my books as a post-examination reward:

More than 5 A+ grades = Hundred dirhams for books and Atari cartridge.
3 to 5 A+ grades = Atari cartridge.
Less than 3 A+ grades = Name removal from ration card, visa cancellation, legal separation from family and “go and become a coconut tree climber or something…”

I got a lot of A+ grades. The first time I won a 100 dhirhams Vadukut gift voucher, I spent it all on one of those “Monster Book Of How Things Work” type publications. (It was the book Dad liked best from my shortlist.)

This was a stupendous achievement in publishing. Spectacular pictures, copious data, tremendously fun narration. It was here that I first read about:

1. Ayer’s Rock
2. D-Day and Normandy landings and therefore,
3. The Second World War
4. The Harrier Jump Jet with vertical/short take-off and landing.

The book had a wonderful hand-painted map of the beaches at Normany with hundreds of little markers and flags. And then there were comparative illustrations of American and German soldiers. Every few sections there’d be an illustrated three or four-page graphic story or biography. Gordon of Khartoum. Florence Nightingale. Famous mountaineering tragedies. Pele. And so on.

D dei!

That book kick-started a life long passion for World War II. At least 25% of all the books I have bought have something to do with the war. (And history in general.) Indeed it wasn’t till years later, maybe when it came up in school, that I began wondering about the first world war. (Between you and me, I’m working on a ambitious-ish World War II book idea. Proposal due early 2012. Fingers crossed. And of course I need to do that PhD in history.)

Forays into fiction are owed to a pro-active school library, the inevitable Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew clubs and excellent children magazines published by local Abu Dhabi newspapers. And, perhaps most importantly, a trip to a discount supermarket once that ended in a big bag of cut price children’s versions of classics: Moby Dick, The Last Of The Mohicans, Man In The Iron Mask etc.

It must have taken at least 5 years for me to work through that shopping trip. To this day I find it harder to cope with fiction. A stack of begged/borrowed/bought New Yorker magazines in a cupboard here in Dwarka. And not one page of fiction even touched.

Salaried employment, author discount, review copies and online bookstores now ensure that I don’t need to get grades or top exams to get books. I can always buy them when I want to. Provided the missus lets me.

But of course you don’t care for all this do you? Of course not. Or someone would ask me all this in an interview.

Sigh.

Have a good weekend. I have weeks of columns and a couple of longer pieces to complete. And yes, book reading trips to Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune.

And we are merely 800 words in to Dork 2. Manuscript due June.

Take care. Give kids books. (GiveIndia can help with that. Click below.)

P.S. One of the Pastramis became a father in December. The mother is healthy. The child is very healthy and already shows a propensity for bond market trading.

Photo of Mumbai launch from Raven_b’s superb Flickr stream. I am most grateful. See more here.