Interlude: A Review of Amitava Kumar's latest book, Evidence of Suspicion

Taking a break from filing a Jaipur diary today. Have typed too much in the past week so I think I'm taking it easy today. In the meanwhile, here's my review of Amitava Kumar's Evidence of Suspicion which appeared in today's Business Standard.


Amitava Kumar’s latest book truly lives up to its title. And I don’t mean this in a negative way. On the contrary, it is remarkable that a work of non-fiction on a subject like terrorism — one which evokes extreme reactions, views, opinions and images — can be written in a manner where the writer has ensured that these elements do not impinge on the narrative. Indeed, Kumar performs a riveting yet erudite examination of a very complex phenomenon using a very methodical approach.


Essentially, Evidence of Suspicion examines the social and moral consequences of the war on terror through the prisms of literature, art and journalistic reportage. Kumar’s approach is a slightly dangerous one because — such is the nature of these prisms — he could easily have been lured into using just one angle. Instead, his methodical approach is what saves him, and what ultimately emerges is an even, structured narrative.


The book starts with Kumar meeting Iqbal Haspatel, a retired working-class man who was falsely arrested in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case and brutally tortured by the police. Kumar’s narration of the journey to Haspatel’s house, the story of his arrest and torture and his subsequent release is an example of journalistic writing of a quality rarely seen these days.


Using the example of Hemant Lakhani, an FBI informant standing trial for selling fake missiles, Kumar presents a powerful argument on how US authorities used a person’s habits, personality traits and behavioural patterns to build a case against him. This is one striking feature of this book. There are two more: Kumar’s interaction with numerous American artists who examine terrorism through their works, and his analysis of the “literature of 9/11”, which is a module Kumar taught at Vassar College in New York state.


The artists suggest that, since they are not bound by an “argumentative logic”, they can therefore express themselves more freely than, say, journalists, who are bound by editorial conventions. In fact, one of the artists, Donna Golden, created a documentary which mixed radio voices and TV images to tell a story that was devoid of editorial commentary. Nevertheless, it seems that some of that argumentative logic has found its way into literature on and about the 9/11 attacks — an area in which Kumar’s own academic interests feed into this book.


This bespectacled professor of English analyses contemporary literature, detainee logs, newspaper reports and the US 9/11 commission report, among other things, to give a 360-degree perspective on the war on terror. At the risk of blasphemy, Kumar says he considers Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist better than John Updike’s Terrorist. Reason? The absence of a dialogue with the “Other”, as Kumar puts it.


About the 9/11 commission report, he exposes its duplicitous nature by questioning America’s silence about its role in supporting Afghan jihadis even as it held up Al Qaeda as the prime accused. Kumar’s analysis is best exemplified by an Arundhati Roy quote: “Bin Laden has the distinction of being created by the CIA and wanted by the FBI.” Only towards the end of Evidence of Suspicion does Kumar bring in an element of poignancy. Nowhere is this reflected better than in his account of his travels in Kashmir and Punjab — where he is reminded of Srinagar while reading Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul and meeting with Tabassum Guru, wife of the main accused in the 2001 Parliament attack case. For a book which is self-professedly a “report”,  such poignancy might seem out of place, but perhaps it is Kumar’s background as a literature professor which ensures that such literary touches blend in with the reportage.


Overall, Evidence of Suspicion is an important book, and not just because it deals with a subject like terrorism. The book is important because it proves that no matter how passionately one may feel about terrorism, it is entirely possible to distance oneself from one’s own emotions while writing about it. Kumar is able to combine painstaking research, taut pacing and thought-provoking analysis to produce an outstanding work of non-fiction.


Postscript: The only, slight cause for disappointment is that, at the Delhi launch of the book, Kumar was in conversation with Lawrence Wright, author of an acclaimed book on Al Qaeda and the lead-up to 9/11, The Looming Tower. The attendee should be forgiven for having expected a discussion on terrorism. Instead, what transpired was a discussion and reading of the contents of Kumar’s book, much of which this reviewer had already read.

Jaipur Diaries 2: Decoding Diana; Tina Brown talks to Vir Sanghvi

This was a session I was really keen on attending because, just before the literature festival, I had read Tina’s biography of Princess Diana, The Diana Chronicles, and wanted to talk to her about it during the event. Alas, that never happened because Tina was, literally, mobbed by the media. I do plan to send her the questions over email but before that happens, l’ll write about the session at Jaipur which was about the book.

Moderated by the venerable Vir Sanghvi, ‘The Diana Chronicles’ session was – quite obviously – a discussion about the book. It was published in 2007 and is a fascinating account of, not just Diana’s life, but also of the Royal family and of British society through the 80’s and 90’s. Meticulously researched and written with a trademark irreverence and panache, The Diana Chronicles is a revelation of just how complex the late Princess was.

But the question to be asked is ‘Why Diana?’ and that’s exactly how Vir Sanghvi started the discussion.

“The Diana story is one of the most compelling that one would ever have read. Beauty, vulnerability, fragility, ambition, loved, rejected, royalty, monarchy…is it death, is it murder? I mean, come on, there is every single element you could possibly imagine (in her life). So it’s just too interesting for it not to be re-examined”.  But was she worried that she was writing her book after all the principal characters – Diana’s secretaries, security officers etc – had written their versions?

“One of the things I’ve learnt as an editor is that, just when everybody’s had their say is when you don’t know anything at all; because so much information is recycled and rewritten thanks to journalism and so much garbage gets written. And there’s always more to find if you go back, re-interview everybody and those who’ve never talked before. So, I think it’s these big stories which get so much coverage that need to be re-examined.”

In India, Diana is seen as a tragic figure who married a man who just wanted an heir and was having an affair with his mistress. But the Diana in Tina’s book comes across as a much more complicated person.

“Well if Diana were to be canonised soon after her death, she’d be far less interesting than the vain, mysterious, scheming yet tender-hearted, yet very sexual. She was a very empathetic girl; there was no question about it. Her desire to help people was absolutely authentic; her connection to people was authentic. She could look in a crowd and identify a person who was lonely or sad and connect to him on a one-to-one basis; that was absolutely real. But on the other side, she was also very troubled and that’s what made her appealing.”

A startling revelation of the book was that Diana had an affair with Barry Mannakee, her protection officer, quite early on in the marriage. “Yes, she did. And it was quite early on in the marriage; within one and a half years of it.”

Talking about Charles, Tina said that he did get married in “good faith” but that his “heart belonged to Camilla and, from Diana’s point of view that was something she couldn’t take.” So is that the reason why Diana had so many lovers? Could she have been faithful to Charles if he had resisted Camilla? “I think that Diana was a highly starved and a very needy woman and it’s possible that no one husband could have ever been reassuring enough for Diana” she said. “Diana tended to stalk them (her lovers) while she was involved with them to the point that she drove them away. She would call them a 100-times-a-day, demand constant reassurance and men got really freaked out by this” added Tina. “She freaked out Gulu Lalvani, who was one of her lovers later in life, because she couldn’t stop calling him, going to his house, checking on him all the time. And she did the same with Hasnat Khan; calling him a 100-times-a-day in the middle of his operations. So there was this tremendous insecurity and it’s possible that no man could’ve been enough for her” Tina added that had Diana married a man who was “tender and re-assuring, it’s possible that she would’ve settled down.  But she married into the chilliest family in the world. She was looking for an elder woman to be a mother figure because her own mother had left her when she was six and who did she find? The Queen of England, who wasn’t the kind of mother-in-law you could say ‘let’s have a cup of tea and talk about the problems.’ She was quite aloof in a sense. So there was this massive insecurity which only made her very much worse.”

Diana’s choice of Gulu Lalvani and Hasnat Khan – both Asian men – is intriguing. “I think Diana wanted to be with someone who was outside the Royal family. She felt, at that point, that because she had alienated the Royal family, most of the people she might have been involved with from the outside world (Englishmen), believed she was from there (the Royal family).  And although the Royal family doesn’t have the same powers it feels it does and you are the sort of person Diana wants to be involved with, you just don’t want to alienate the Royal family” said Tina and added “the celebrity she hung out with wouldn’t give her the neediness. So, in a way for her, the Asian men provided her with a new culture to explore; also the kind of men who were more willing to respond to her without the anxiety an Englishmen would”. Her choice of Lalvani was understandable – a playboy, rich and a member of Anabelle’s – but Hasnat Khan seemed to be an odd choice.

“Hasnat Khan for her was the ultimate person. As a doctor, he was a good listener, patient; Diana was inspired by his selflessness. Khan, in turn, loved the fact that Diana wanted to be associated with humanitarian causes and was quite proud of her. And that was the best thing about him” Tina said it was “rather tragic” that they broke up because “he was the best thing to ever happen to her”. “But then, like so many good things that happened to Diana, she drove them away. Also, it was very demeaning for a man to be the boyfriend of Diana; pictures in the papers, can’t lead a life without being hassled. Hasnat couldn’t take it and very few people can” claimed Tina.

But did Hasnat like her, asked Vir

“Yes, I think he loved her very much and perhaps loved her more truly than anybody did” said Tina. “But he also had his career and wanted to be a real, professional doctor and did not want to be Diana’s boyfriend. When I met her in July 1997 in New York, she said ‘everybody thinks I’m the most glamorous woman in the world but for me, it’s so hard to get a man in my life to put up with the celebrity status that I have and it makes me very lonely’”.

Tina added that Diana “dreaded” the following month because her children, William and Harry, were going to their summer retreat at Balmoral and that she would feel very “lonely”.

On the subject of Dodi Al-Fayed, Tina said that Diana was with Dodi because of the protection he offered her. “Diana kept referring to him and said that ‘he has all the toys’. By toys, she meant all the accoutrements of glamour, wealth and protection.”

Contrary to what Mohammed Al-Fayed said, her love affair with Dodi was very short and one which she embraced when she was very “vulnerable” according to Tina. “Dodi for her was a great blessing and at the time he invited her to the south of France, she was at her most vulnerable; it was a very tough time for her because she had to deal with the fact that Prince Charles had thrown a 50^th birthday party for Camilla Parker-Bowles at their former marital home in Highgrove. And that really, really upset her”.

Tina added that when she met Diana in New York, Diana was “obsessed” with the fact that she didn’t lose Charles to Camilla but that Camilla had had him. “Here was this woman who had always been there (in Charles’ life) and this is what irked her most.”

Tina said that while Dodi might have been a “sweet” fellow he was, essentially, “stupid”. But, Vir asked, did 

Diana seriously contemplate a future with Dodi? “She may have considered that as a many-solution option for her; slap in the face of the Royal family, the only person who could take them head on, slap in the face for Hasnat Khan. He (Dodi) was a good option in a sense but ultimately, it was only romance which would’ve helped”.

However, in the same breath, Tina also talks about Diana’s “other side”: as a professional who took her role very seriously. “She was a terrific executive and her secretarial staff loved her because she was decisive and organised. She did what she set out to do, never ever let anybody down, super committed and performed when she was asked to do it. And, she connected with people in a very real way. Dodi, on the other hand, never showed up anywhere on time. His staff said he functioned on ‘Dodi time’ which was nine hours later. He would drop into a restaurant any time he felt like it; Diana wouldn’t have been able to stand that.  So many, many reasons why the relationship would’ve ended soon”.

So there was a certain tension between the humanitarian Diana and the one who was on a yacht in the south of France?

“Well, that’s what made her interesting. Diana’s need for love and attention always interfered with her good side and that was the problem. Her marriage was so loveless that she had to keep looking for validation outside it. What she never got tired of was the attention so, in a way, the press became her lovers. She would treat celebrity coverage to believe that she was somebody of worth. And that’s a disaster because it (press coverage) was all fickle and invasive. In the end, she became very distraught, fragile and frightened”

But why would any man who married Diana want to leave her for someone like Camilla? Tina said that Charles’s marriage to Diana was “agony from the beginning”. She added “Here was a man raised as being the centre of attention; from the day he was born he had flunkies, courtiers and sycophants dancing around him. I mean, he would make a serious comment and people would roar with laughter and you’d think ‘that wasn’t particularly funny’. But how would he ever know? And then he marries Diana who he is enchanted by at first; this nice little, lovely girl whom he loves very much. But very quickly, it turned to rage and it began on their very first trip (a tour of Wales).  They were walking on a path and split up – Diana goes to the left and Charles to the right. Everybody on Diana’s side screamed, shouted and waved; people on the side were cold and seemed to be saying ‘we got him!’. By the time they finished their walkabout, he was in a rage”.

Among the many other things that were discussed at this session were the infamous “tampon transcripts”, Prince Harry’s paternity issue (Charles is understood to have said “I didn’t know what she was doing at the time!”), Camilla’s mistressy ways and Diana’s sexual inabilities. But I guess those are bits of salacious gossip that we’ve heard a lot about in the past and were injected into the session to add some spice to it . What really emerges out of the book and this session is that Diana was a very complicated person and that she remains an enigma till today.

Until next time, Ciao!

(Note: The statements which are not attributed to Tina Brown are either comment by me or by Vir Sanghvi, unless otherwise specified. The same statements have been rephrased and rewritten for this blogpost and every attempt has been to report them without diluting their meaning or accuracy.)

Jaipur Diary 1: Vikram Chandra on 'Sacred Games', writing and the anti-thriller

(This session was on the morning of the third day and, if my memory serves me right, I was quite tired the previous day after running between sessions and meeting a lot of people. As a result, I woke up late the next morning and missed a good portion of Vikram Chandra’s session. Below, I’ve reproduced whatever little I heard and it turns out that I didn’t miss a great deal. Or so I’d like to think. Also, apologies if the post reads like a news report; my role was that of a listener and what you see below is a listener’s extra-long summary of sorts)

One of the highlights of the literature festival this year was Vikram Chandra, author of the highly-acclaimed magnum opus, The Sacred Games.  The theme of his conversation with journalist Shoma Chaudhury was ‘The art of the anti-thriller’ where Vikram explains why Sacred Games shouldn’t be categorised as a thriller. But then, once you have Vikram Chandra on stage, how can he not talk about stuff other than Sacred Games? So, that apart, the soft-spoken writer also spoke about the intelligence and pickiness of a reader.

Slipping into his role as a creative writing professor, Vikram talks about a growing number of US scholars who’re researching romance novels. “We tend to think of audiences for romance novels as mostly women. And women who are, not exactly, intellectual and are looking for easy pleasures. But nobody’s actually ever investigated this.” Vikram then mentions scholar Pamela Regis’ A Natural History Of The Romance Novels and says that “there isn’t one romance novel. There are hundreds of sub-genres in a romance novel and readers are very picky about the novel they want to read.” Vikram again uses the example of the study on romance novels to say something, which sounded slightly unusual. “A lot of the times, readers start reading the end of the novel first.” But why would anyone do that? “What they (the people who were asked) said was that it enabled a reader to enjoy how the writer had handled the elements of the (writing) form.  Which is, in a way, a very clinical way of reading; 2000 years ago an Indian aesthetician said that it’s better to do this (read from the end) because when you do it, you’re not concerned with what happens next, but you’re receiving a much more exalted pleasure”.

And how did he start using the phrase “anti-thriller” for Sacred Games? “I started using this phrase while talking to my publishers. They were very excited (about the crime aspect) and I had to tell them ‘look it’s not exactly a thrilling book’.  There is a bomb, there’s a good guy and a bad guy but it breaks every rule of the conventional thriller”.

Vikram then goes on to talk about conventional narratives and forms and says that there is a limit to which you can “pervert” a form. His point is best illustrated in an example he cites from the book: “In the book, there’s a moment when Ganesh Gaitonde the gangster is going to make a movie which will star his actress-girlfriend… and the Bombay screenwriter tells him is ‘Sir, what the audience wants is a hatke movie but not too hatke!’” (Notice the use of convention in Vikram’s quote: hatke, the actress-girlfriend and Bombay screenwriter. Even the gangster’s surname is Maharashtrian a reminder of the underworld’s origins). “So, that tension between what you want the story to be and what the writer is doing with it, is a very a fruitful tension for the writer to play with.”

It’s at this point of time during the session that I’ve abandoned the faintest of thoughts of roaming around Diggi Palace, meeting up with people and peeping into other sessions.

Shoma then asks Vikram about the construction of Ganesh Gaitonde’s character; a man who’s story is based on the story of Chota Rajan. “When I started writing the book, what I knew of the underworld and the cops, was pretty much what I’d seen in the movies like everybody else. And since I felt fear and my family was being threatened, I was very ready to believe that these guys were monsters. The truly terrifying thing for me was to discover during the writing of this book, that these people are not monsters. They are people like us and want to have a narrative and chronological sense to their lives”

Vikram added, “Ganesh Gaitonde starts out as a sceptic and an atheist but becomes religious along the way. So my attempt was to create a human being, who is clearly a monster, does completely unspeakable things but (I had) to give you a sense of his universe and to make him believe in the living emotion and the inferiority of this complicated person”.

Vikram then said what, I think, are the most profound words ever uttered by an author on the Diggi Palace front lawns (in jest, of course). “After I’d finished the first draft of the book, I showed it to my wife who, after reading it for two full days said ‘I hate you for making me like this guy’ and I felt very pleased about that!”

So how much can he (or any writer) experiment with conventional forms given that the reader has a certain expectation from a book?  And did he have to avoid taking risks with Sacred Games keeping the reader’s expectation in mind? Vikram’s reply is lucid, humorous and frank. “I’m not saying I have great integrity or anything but I just did what I wanted to. I have no hopes of producing a massive fan following and so my imagined audience is actually very small. Hence, there are some readers who will read it and feel sympathetic towards it. So anything that happens above and beyond that is kind of incidental. So all the structures of the book that are in place are actually things that I did want to do. For instance, towards the end of the book in a thriller where you had a big climactic gunfight, I wanted very hard to not give the reader that. There is a climax but not that. And the Guruji actually tells Ganesh Gaitonde that when you write a big story you have to have a big explosion in the end. Hence, I didn’t want to do that big explosion and I didn’t do it”.

Vikram added that when he saw the shape Sacred Games was taking – that it was being produced for the marketplace – worried him and he told his publisher not to market it like a thriller or a detective story because “a reader who comes with that expectation only, is going to be very angry.” He said “And I did get a couple of very angry responses.”

Considering the fact that he’s an academician do the mechanics of his job interfere in his writing sensibilities? Is there a conflict between the two, asks Shoma? “It’s not exactly a conflict and despite the way I’m talking about structure and genre expectation, I hope you don’t believe that when I’m sitting down in front of my computer, I will be constructing something according to these rules. That will be completely paralysing. What leads you forward (while writing) are the characters, the story and the conflicts you’re building. It’s only much later in the process – maybe in the sixth or seventh draft – when you start working on larger structures and ideas.” Introspecting on the question and talking about it in broader terms, Vikram said “The tension between technique and freedom is something that all artists – even athletes – also experience. If you ever try to learn a sport, I think you’ll notice that, when you first start learning, you’re actually quite worse at doing that thing. And it’s only then that you suddenly become aware of technique. So what happens is you are taught technique, you’re taught analytical methods of thinking about what you’re trying to do but, over the years, by practicing it again and again, you achieve what athletes call a state-of-flow. And in that flow state, there is no separation between technique and the freedom – it becomes the same thing. And that’s when everything starts coming together. For me, it’s a kind of riyaaz; a daily practice in the material that I work with and learn something new about it”

Sharing his personal experiences while researching his magnum opus, Vikram said that it was “very easy” to meet gangsters “especially in Bombay”. But the task of meeting people was done in “a very random way; going into all directions possible”.  “Among that was the experience of meeting people on the other side of the legal line (gangsters). And that was very interesting since the bigger guys are sometimes easier to get hold of and get into a conversation with. The top guys act like corporate heads – they have a PR line they use to communicate and they think that you’re from the media. They want to tell a story that’ll extend their public persona. It’s the little guys – the casualties of the war – who are much harder to get.

And were there any jittery, tense moments during the research? “There were one or two moments when the situation got unpredictable. Like this one time where I had to go and meet this hitman in Colaba, Bombay and he led us to one of his watching bases because he felt safe around it. Also, he wasn’t very happy about it (the meeting) and was very aggressive unlike the other people. At that moment, I was wondering what was going on and where it would go. So both of us (Vikram and his companion) asked him two questions after which we said ‘Thank You sir’ and got up to leave!”

Vikram spoke a bit more about writing the book but by this time, my recorder’s battery died and my attention span started to reduce. Hence, a small portion of the session cannot be blogged about. Nevertheless, I think I managed to capture the essence of it and needless to say, the session was a mind-blowing one. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed listening to it.

Jaipur Diary: Short Note On The Litfest

- Recently attended the Jaipur Literature Festival and I have to say it wasn't as fun as it was last time round. That doesn't mean the festival was bad; it's just that this year it was insanely crowded and I hadn't heard of or read the works of most of the speakers. Also, I didn't interview anybody this time round. However, what I did was attend a lot of sessions so that I can blog about what was discussed as opposed to posting one Q&A after another (as it is, the blog has too many of them). 


 - So anyway, that apart, I seriously think Sanjoy Roy & Co. should move the festival out of Diggi Palace. As scenic and traditional as it may be, it simply cannot accomodate the hordes of people who come there.  And going by the popularity of the event, it's size will only increase in the years to come.  


 -  Felt slightly bad for the organisers because a lot of the speakers, authors and invitees were stuck in Delhi and/or in their respective cities due to the dense fog and visa-related issues. Which meant that a lot of the sessions had to be rescheduled (especially on the first two days) and a lot of speakers had to double up as moderators of other sessions.


- By far, the most popular speaker at the festival was - not surprisinly - Chetan Bhagat who was mobbed by schoolkids and fans and was the subject of much discussion amongst presswallahs, delegates and every second attendee. That some not-so-nice things were said about him is another matter, but it was quite evident that most people were envious of the life he led. Even the session which he moderated had to be moved out of the Durbar Hall to the front lawns. And this, when he wasn't even discussing a page of his works!


- However, the showstealers for me were Vikram Chandra, Niall Ferguson, Lawrence Wright, Tenzin Tsundue (whose session had to be scheduled keeping in mind his court appearances!) , Geoff Dyer, Alexander McCall Smith and Tunku Varadarajan. Can't describe how brilliant they were. You just had to be there to understand what I'm talking about. Suffice to say that it was these gentlemen which made the trip paisa vasool


Will start blogging about the sessions as soon as I've filed my freelance assignments in the next few days.  


P.S. Overheard at the festival: Two very popular authors discussing the finer nuances of masturbation. And that Chetan Bhagat's 'Teen Deviyan' session should've been renamed  'murder by Anjum Hasan' :)

'So when are you going to write your novel?'*

If there's one question which has been asked of me ever since I became a book reviewer, this is it. And by everyone I know. Friends, relatives, well-wishers, journalists, parents and absolute random people who I might have met at some of those boring book launches. 


Which brings me to the point about reviewing and book writing: why do most people assume that, if you're a book reviewer, you're also an aspiring writer? 


Perhaps it's got to do with the fact that some book reviewers in India are authors and vice-versa. Or maybe - and this is just a guess - there's this perceived notion that book reviewing enables to you to meet publishers, writers, critics who then help in cutting short the excruciatingly long process of  getting published. 


But ask any published writer of repute and he or she will tell you that book writing is an extremely arduous, ambitious, mind-numbing, finger-breaking, brain-frying process.  From what I've heard over the past one year, it seems getting a hair transplant or undergoing plastic surgery seem less painful (unless of course you do a Michael Jackson and change the way you look every alternate day). And this is just the writing process I'm talking about. Getting published is a different ball-game altogether. 

I won't drone on about the how's and why's of writing and publishing any more except to state both require the patience of a saint, mind space, lots of time and that brilliant, Stephen Hawking-invented component without which no book would ever get published: a story (a calm Shivraj Patil look on your face whenever there's some major issue in the manuscript will count as bonus).

As for me, I don't think I have very many of the elements listed above. And also, I'm very happy with book-reviewing. Most satisfying activity it is. 

*Disclaimer: This blog post is not meant to discourage/dissuade/demoralise/kill the aspirations of any aspiring writer. It is purely an exercise in random self-indulgence and to keep the craft of writing alive in the blogger. Please write/don't write at your own risk.

In Conversation with Soumya Bhattacharya

Earlier last week, I met up with journalist-writer Soumya Bhattacharya for a short chat about his book All That You Can't Leave Behind - a short collection of his essays on how life in India revolves around cricket. Soumya's debut novel, If I Could Tell You, about a father's letters to his daughter, was also published in the same week.


In the opening essay of your book, you wrote that cities remind you of cricket grounds. Why do you think so?


What I meant was that, for someone who is so obsessed by the game and who's so engrossed in it. what strikes you most when you take the name of a city is its cricket ground. You identify the city to its cricket ground first and then to other things. For instance, London would mean Lord's and Sydney would mean the SCG rather than the opera house. That's what I meant.


Do you think that T20 cricket will be the most defining sport of the next decade, despite the fact that it has competition from faster sports like football and Formula 1?


I don't know and I don't think anyone really knows. It's really early to tell; you can date it back to 2007 and India winning the T20 World Cup.  After which the Indian administration woke up and the BCCI, being the greedy pigs that they are,  woke up to the fact that 'oh! there's a helluva lot of money in this'. Immediately, the IPL was born; which did phenomenally well in the first season and not-so-well in the second one. Soon after, there was the IPL Champions League nonsense, which I think was fundamentally flawed in its conception - was a huge, huge flop. So, while at the moment it does seem that a three-hour-20-over-a-side-slam-bang extravaganza is quite popular, three years is nothing in the life of a sport/game. Hence, I think it's far too early for any of us to be able to tell.


The problem with T20 is that it attracts new converts (to cricket) who are looking for a nice, sexy way to spend three hours. Two or three years from now, the novelty having worn off, they might go to a Karan Johar movie or they might want to watch Dr. Zhivago at home which is longer and probably more fulfilling. That is when we will know whether T20 is the future. It looks like the future now because of it's phenomenal popularity. Test cricket has been around for 120 years and football for god knows how many years. So whether T20 will acquire the kind of following Test cricket and football have, is too early to say. 


In the book, you justify the numerous references to matches between India and Australia. Do you think this rivalry has replaced the sort hysteria and hype associated with the Ashes or an India-Pakistan game?


No longer, I think, because no longer is Australia the number one side But at the time it was number one and everyone was yapping at Australia's dreams, there was a huge gulf between Australia and the rest of the cricket-playing nations. I'd say from the beginning of that 2001 series going right up to (the time) when India beat Australia in 2008. It was the most potent rivalry in the contemporary game - the marquee show. And I say this despite the fact that England won the Ashes in 2005 after which there was a huge resurgence of cricket in England. Even then, that series was a one-off. There is nothing in the contemporary game like  an India-Australia match where, every time India played Australia, both teams raised the standard of the game so high, that they'd look each other in the eye to see who'd blink first. Hence, I say it was the marquee show. 


At one point in time, after the India-Pakistan peace process resumed, there was this be-nice-to-each-other feeling which crept into an India-Pakistan match/series because of which, a lot of the needle that people look for vanished..


But look, India and Pakistan have such complicated histories and we hardly have that history with Australia, although, things have happened on the field which can hardly be called sport (like the whole Symonds-Harbhajan fiasco). 


You write in your book that cricket is a symbol of popular Indian culture but isn't it also true that its popularity has overshadowed other sports as well?


Of course, I completely agree. Look at someone like Abhinav Bindra, Pankaj Advani and Vijender Singh and ask about the kind of following they have. It is to do with this whole hysteria about cricket. 


And most sports administrators blame the media for giving cricket undue attention. How much do you agree with that statement?


It's very to hard to tell for the media that 'okay we'll give our readers more of billiards and less of cricket and we'll try and change things. ' Readers start howling in two months. On occasions, we do panel feedback from readers and they say things like a Sri Lanka-Pakistan match should have been given more prominence. So do you try and keep your readers happy which is what you should do putting out a newspaper? But a lot of the times, readers are confused. However, one does get an inkling of what a reader wants. Eventually, you're caught in a trap of your own making; whether you should give shooting more importance than cricket.


In another of your essays, you write about cricketers coming from small-towns or lesser known places. Virender Sehwag, MS Dhoni, for instance. So it would be fair to say that cricket has shed its elitist tag?


Of course and that's the point.  And there's a theory that young people in the big cities have too many distractions and therefore, they don't have the hunger that their counterparts in B-towns have which is what propels these guys to the top. I don't know how true this is but (just to give an example) look at Bombay. Once the crucible of Indian cricket, how many players does it have in the team today?


On Sachin Tendulkar, while it is true that he is one of the greatest players of the game, some uncomfortable questions have been asked about him. For instance, I read someone's facebook status recently where the person said 'why doesn't anyone ask him about the shot he played in Chennai against Pakistan and why he played it.' And 'why didn't he win the match against Australia after scoring 175. Are we being inhuman in our expectations or are we being too objective in our analysis?


I think no one is above scrutiny or judgment in the game and no one should be. But there are two things at play here. One, whatever Tendulkar does is never enough for us and that is true; we always want a bit more.  At the same time - and this is bound to happen to someone who has been playing for so long - Tendulkar has completely changed his approach to the game over the past five years.  Its happened for many reasons but it has happened. So I think people do tend to feel nostalgic or seem to want back the Tendulkar they saw 15 years ago.  So we want him to be the savage and brutal Tendulkar of 1998, demolishing the attack all the time which he is no longer for a variety of reasons. So a lot of the dissatisfaction stems from that.


Coming to your writing style, do you follow any particular cricket writer or do you write about cricket from a fan's perspective? 


No, I don't see myself as a cricket writer. I am not a cricket writer. Nor is this book, a book on cricket. I've written two books and numerous essays about cricket. This is a book about cricket or about India seen through cricket. I've not done match reports or interviews and I'm not a cricket writer in the remote sense of the term.  In terms of reading, yes, I do read a lot and Nick Hornby's writings have been a great influence, which again were about obsession, London and football.  HG Bissinger's Friday Night Lights would be another. 


Lastly, what has been your most memorable cricket moment from a fan's perspective?


Very hard to tell since there are so many of them. Perhaps, being in Australia when India won the Adelaide match. Even the Sydney Test where Tendulkar scored 241. So was the Multan test in Pakistan when Sehwag scored a triple hundred. Eden Gardens 2001 and World Cup '83 have to be there.


And your worst ones?


The first one came quite early when I was a small boy. It was when India were bowled out for 42 against England. Again, too many instances because we only started winning in this century. Before that, we either held out for valiant draws or we got walloped all the time!  

On Dilip D Souza's Roadrunner

In 2009, two travelogues - Nine Lives: In Search Of The Sacred In Modern India by William Dalrymple and My Friend The Fanatic by Sadanand Dhume - came in for high praise from a lot of quarters. Although both of them explored different themes, the one common thread between them was the beauty of their prose - sweeping, engaging, descriptive and engrossing. Of these, Dilip D'Souza'sRoadrunner succeeds in only being descriptive. I'm not even trying to compare Roadrunner with either William's or Sadanand's books but just trying to underline a few features which were missing from Roadrunner. But that isn't to state that D'Souza's American sojourn falls flat on its face. Instead, it offers very interesting insights into American culture and asks some though-provoking questions 

D'Souza, who spent a decade in America before returning to India in 1992, goes on this road trip primarily to understand the idea of patriotism in a country which has been divided along several lines ever since 9/11. This road trip - or "quest"- according to D'Souza, is also to see the changes which have taken place in America since the 80's. It is also a quest to look beyond stereotypical constructions of the average American citizen.  Ultimately, while most of the questions thrown up by D'Souza's observations and commentary are slightly cliched, they assume a different meaning when looked at with an American perspective 

For instance, How would an Indian audience react if an American were to sing Vande Mataram in a Mumbai restaurant? Should Indian Muslims proves their patriotism by singing this one song? Why do some Americans go Asalaam-Waleikum whenever they see a brown-skinned man? These are just a few of the many questions that the book throws up.

But just when you think that this travelogue would be a riveting read, the book starts to disappoint; even though D'Souza uses conversation as a narrative tool. 

It is an excruciatingly slow read and you'll probably find yourself yawning after a 100 odd pages. Statistical figures and movie song lyrics are interspersed with the prose to validate arguments but they're really not needed. D'Souza's prose maybe slow but it is descriptive enough for the reader to do without lyrics from Lage Raho Munnabhai. More often than not, D'Souza goes into a ramble about his American journey and you start wondering why the editors of the book never bothered to cut out the flab. Roadrunner is a little over 300 pages but its languid pace and poorly edited prose make it seem like a 600-page magnum opus which refuses to end. 

Despite Dilip D'Souza's descriptive writing and quirky observations, Roadrunner is a promising book but one that fails to keep the reader engaged. Yes, D'Souza possesses an observant eye, has a very descriptive writing style and even tries to be conversational but sadly, it just doesn't work.

A slightly different version of this piece appears in this week's Open magazine