By NASIR ABID

(An edited, shorter version of this essay had
appeared some years ago in Man’s World magazine.)

*

Call me the man who met V.S. Naipaul.

It all started innocently enough. A journalist telegraphed from Bombay that he was reaching Lucknow on such and such a date with V.S. Naipaul.

My excitement knew no bounds and I fixed it with a mutual friend, Azad, to go to the airport to pick them up. As luck would have it we got stuck in the traffic jam and reached the airport late. With hindsight I shudder to think what a close shave I had, what with Naipaul’s antipathy to people being late for an appointment.

We shook hands and since there was hardly any luggage we got into the car and headed back to the city. In spite of the intense summer heat Naipaul was wearing a summer suit and a felt hat. He was wearing a checked shirt with the collar buttoned but without a tie, white socks and loafer shoes, the kind in which the socks show.

His skin was dark like walnut, and because the felt hat hid his thick head of hair the initial impression which had become familiar to us from Hollywood gangster movies. The expression was fixed in a perpetual grimace with the lips pursed as if he was just enduring being stuck in a place like this. There was not a hint of a smile.

I told Naipaul that A House for Mr Biswas was one of my favourite books and I am sure that he must be pleased with it too. He modestly said, “It just got written and yes I am very fond of Biswas too.” Modestly because in one of his interviews Naipaul said that he knew that it was going to be a big one. I referred to the ‘skin tights’ episode and Naipaul gave an amused chuckle. In my younger days, when I had read the novel, I had felt that it was very cruel to write this episode however amusing it might have been. But I did not say so to him.

From the airport we went to a friend’s office in the city to pick him up for lunch as it had become quite late by now. I was still going nineteen to the dozen and my excitement must have got through to him. While the friend was winding up, I said to Naipaul that I was sorry that his brother Shiva had died so tragically young and asked whether he had stayed with him when he came to England, as he was already well settled there by then. He replied that Shiva had rung him up and he had invited him to stay but he had not taken up the offer. I had found it strange for in India with its extended families and friends of friends landing up to stay for days and weeks on end. By this time I was realizing that I might think of Naipaul as an Indian but obviously has values were different.

I then asked Naipaul if the incident I had read about him in Esquire magazine was true or apocryphal. He gave an amused laugh and said, “No I’m afraid that it is not true.” What had happened was this. A reader was convinced that the writer Ved Mehta, who was blind from the age of three due to meningitis, was not actually blind but only pretending to be so, otherwise how could he give such detailed descriptions in his writings, describing a person in detail and the objects in a room, little realizing that the details were supplied by companions. Anyway this man goes to a party, which is in full swing, and there is this Indian sitting all alone and staring vacantly. Aha, he says to himself, this is my chance to show once and for all that Mehta is not really blind. So he goes up to this Indian, peers at him and putting his face near his, sticks out his tongue. No reaction. He then puts his hands to his ears and flaps them. Again no reaction. By this time the host sees what is going on, rushes up and drags the guest away and asks him, “Why on earth are you making faces at V.S. Naipaul?”

Like all jokes it had a kernel of truth in it. Naipaul has taken his celebrated impassiveness to such an extent that stories like this were being circulated in literary circles. Naipaul credits London for having given him this detachment. The aloofness of the city had given him a mediator’s centring without having meditated.

While at the restaurant, Naipaul ordered a vegetarian dish. I knew that he was a vegetarian but he did eat fish. I gave him a small portion of my dish to try. He asked me what I did for a living, and I said that I was a copywriter. He was pleasantly surprised, as he did not expect a small place like Lucknow to have the need of a copywriter.

During conversation I told him that I had been to London for six months, bumming around, working in Kentucky Fried Chicken as a cook, and my adventures as a salesman for the Combined Insurance Company of America, trying to sell accident policies of six months duration, going from shop to shop on the high streets of London, being thrown out, and trying to get a word in edgeways by saying, “See you in six months’ time.” I told him how the butcher had shown me his cleaver and told me to run along and the barber had told me when I started my sales patter, “Don’t sir, please don’t,” and I had my sales file away and asked him to give me a hair cut instead. And the antiques dealer, a Jew from France, who had commiserated with me and advised me to go back to India. Naipaul said that Jews have a very soft heart.

After lunch we went for tea to Kwality restaurant where Naipaul broached the subject of the book he was working on, and that was to have a chapter on Lucknow, and could I help him? I asked him if he had read some thing on Lucknow’s Muslims and he said no. His excuse was that he wanted things to be fresh.

Fool that I am, in my lofty style, I said, all right, but the book must be sympathetic and not denigrate the Muslims, as he had done in Amongst the Believers. Naipaul looked surprised and said that Believers was a sympathetic book and I can swear that he meant it. My thinking was that if I show him the right kind of people, I would be able to influence the book, little realizing what a fool I was being. Naipaul knew exactly what he wanted, as the theme had already been worked out, and I was not going to be the one to decide who and what he will write about.

We went to the hotel and Vinod explained Vidia (we were all on first name basis by now) how Muslims had been marginalized in independent India. These were the days of the Babri Masjid agitation, and Muslims all over the country were in a state of turmoil. Briefly, for the sake of those who do not know about the Ayodhya incident, the background is this. The Babri Masjid was built in the time of Babar, the first Mughal emperor, by one of his generals, Mir Baqi, five hundred years ago in Ayodhya, on a piece of land which Hindu’s claimed was the birthplace of Lord Ram. In 1949, the agitation to reclaim the land became vicious, it was claimed that idols of the gods had manifested there, and to defuse the situation the mosque was locked up, and orders were passed by the court that no Muslim could go near it to prevent further flare-ups.

Now in 1988, a judge by the name of Pandey, on the petition of a lawyer also named Pandey, stating that the locks on the mosque were preventing him from exercising his fundamental right of praying there, ordered the locks to be removed. All hell broke loose, dividing the country as never before.

I explained to Naipaul that now it was the judiciary that was being used to attack the Muslims. First it was the Padma Khastigir case. She was a judge in the Calcutta High court who admitted a petition from a person from far away Bangalore that the Qur’an, in all its editions, should be banned as it was anti-national. As was to be expected, and hoped for by the mischief-makers, the Pavlovian Muslim reaction was to go berserk. All over the country there were agitations. Padma Khastigir got cold feet and another judge was appointed who threw out the petition, saying that the Qur’an was a basic document like the Bible and other religious texts and as such was not open to banning.

Next was the Shah Bano case. She was a divorced Muslim woman from Bhopal who had filed a petition against her husband for maintenance. Under Islamic Sharia law, once the woman gets her alimony she has no lien on her ex-husband. The case wound its slow torturous way through the various courts and ended up in the Supreme Court. There the Chief Justice, I think it was Chandrachud, granted Shah Bano maintenance, starting his judgment with words to the effect, that if a religion does not protects its followers then it becomes the duty of the courts to do so.

Muslims regard the Qur’an as the very word of God and such statements were blasphemy to them. From the proverbial Kashmir in the north to Kanyakumari in the south there were agitations. In the end Rajiv Gandhi, as Prime Minister had to move in and get the judgment set aside by an act of Parliament. This gave the right wing Hindu chauvinist BJP a stick to beat him with. If you can pass an act to change the law to appease the Muslims, then would you mind doing it once more and get us the Babri Masjid land through an act of parliament too? The argument was flawed, of course, as the Shah Bano amendment was not taking something from one person to give to another. But the BJP’s propaganda with its Gobbelsian techniques of repetition and giving a dog a bad name was having its effect. Grievances, against Muslims, real and imagined, were being aired and the sense of insecurity amongst Muslims was acute. I doubt the polarisation amongst the two major communities of the country had been like this since partition.

I explained to Naipaul that the partition of the country had been the worst thing that could have happened to the Indian Muslim. Till then both Hindus and Muslims had been spread out all over the country. But with partition Hindus for the first time in the history of India had come under one roof and Muslims had put themselves under three roofs and consequently made themselves weak.

The Muslim had been left floundering, weak and demoralized, with most of the pre-independence leadership of the community having left for Pakistan. He had lost his language — Urdu, education was practically non-existent in the community, and slowly but surely he was becoming a drawer of water and hewers of wood.

Naipaul heard me out and we agreed to meet the next morning. Not a word had been noted down while I had been speaking but when I read Million Mutinies Now, I found that he had quoted me verbatim. Naipaul has been blessed with a photographic memory, which he has trained to perfection. I read in one of his numerous interviews that whenever someone says something to him, he repeats it twice to himself mentally. When I mentioned to him that the BBC’s Aley Hasan was from Lucknow, he said “Ah yes! My friend Aley Hasan,” exactly the words he has used in An Area of Darkness in a footnote. I am sure that he can recite every word that he has written or uttered. He remembers not just the words but the gestures and expressions that went with it. This was in sharp contrast to that Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth, who, when he found out that I had shown Naipaul the old city, requested me to show him around too. He was a constant source of embarrassment to me when he took out a huge register and started making notes. The shopkeepers of Chowk must was have thought that a tax survey was in progress.

The next day we went on a trip to the old city. On the way Naipaul asked me, “Nazear, how would you describe your life?” It was always Nazear, never Nasir; always Veenod, never Vinod. Although I am sure that Naipaul spoke and understood Hindi perfectly, this was just an affectation to show that he was different from us lesser mortals.

“Well Vidia,” I said, “I would say that I lead a pretty rudderless existence.”

“Nazear yours is the life I would like to write about.”

I was pretty taken aback and there was an embarrassed silence. It was like bringing out matrimonial ads week after week and then marrying the girl next door. After a little hesitation I said all right. What else could I say? With hindsight I had little realization what I was letting myself in for.

Personally I did not think there was anything in my life worth writing about: no great events, no meetings with remarkable men, just a chronicle of failures and buffetings. But then I was not V.S. Naipaul. He knew exactly what he was looking for and by the conversation so far he had reached the conclusion that my life story fitted in perfectly with his scheme of things.

Naipaul is not like other travel writers, who describe what they see and whom they meet. He travels with a purpose. The book, I am sure was already mapped out in his mind, all that was needed was to flesh it out. It had an angle and a theme.

In the Chowk area of the old city we went to the street of the silversmiths, which further on becomes workshops of Muslim chikan embroidery workers and their suppliers. Naipaul noticed everything, noticed and remembered. He was like a government inspector, disapproving and censorious. He commented that the workers did not have a high degree of creativity and were churning out pretty basic stuff. In the middle of the road there was a table on which a tape recorder was braying. I told him that it was asking for donations for the mosque and telling the faithful what good things Allah had in store for them if they were generous with their contributions on earth. Mr Naipaul did not contribute.

Out of the street of the silversmiths we came to the residential quarters. On seeing a new building Naipaul asked what was that for. I told him that it was a seminary put up by a newly rich returnee from the Gulf or Saudi Arabia. Naipaul disapproved.

We went back to the hotel room. The conversation this time was about books and writers. I told him that you have now reached the stage where your comments can make or break a writer. Naipaul acquiesced.

Salman Rushdie came up. Naipaul said that the present crop of young Indian writers in English were more interested in selling themselves, which was what had put Rushdie in his predicament. I asked if he had been a signatory to the open letter to the Ayatollah signed by a hundred and twenty writers that they should also be treated as the authors of the Verses and punished accordingly. Naipaul said that a copy had come before he had left for the present trip but he had put it away in the drawer. No way he was going to put his neck on the line for some young fool who did no know when to stop.

Paul Theroux was mentioned. I said that the way he wrote about you made it seem that you were like a father figure to him. He had intense admiration for you and your wit. I was referring to a job application in Trinidad for which two Chinese, both named Wong had applied, but the job had ultimately gone to an Englishman. Naipaul commented, “Two Wongs don’t make a white.” I thought that it was funny but not that funny. I commented that Theroux has this obsession about his looks and kept bringing it up in his books. Naipaul said, “Well Paul is a very good-looking boy. But he has this weakness for black prostitutes.” It was a case of pot and kettle as I found later in one of his interviews. I did not tell him what Graham Greene said to Russell Warren Howe in an interview about him and Theroux, that both of them in their travels deride rather than sympathize with less fortunate people. Naipaul told me that he could tell exactly when a writer had arrived by looking at his shelf by seeing which was the last book was sent to him for comment. After that he was no longer needed.

Mr Naipaul did not think much of Passage to India, a book that I had read seven times. He said nothing happens in it. I said a silent prayer of thanks that that means no rape took place. The London Review of Books was no good too. He said it in such a way as if he was sure that I would agree with him. Bowing before experience I concurred.

During the conversation, confusing Isherwood’s A Meeting by the River with Naipaul’s A Bend in the River I said that I did not like Bend. Naipaul looked embarrassed and said “That is one of mine, why did you not like it?” as if referring to one of his children, which I suppose, books are to authors. I said showing the brother with western orientations, as a homosexual was a flaw. It came out that I was referring to the Isherwood book and the air got cleared.

I told Mr Naipaul that The Guardian was my favourite paper. He told me that when he was in England he read The Telegraph. That is understandable as it is the bastion of conservatism.

For dinner we went to Azad’s house, a class fellow of Vinod and husband of “Parveen” in the book. There he met Amir, the Raja of Mehmoodabad. You could see the gleam in his eye. At last he had found a subject that was suitable. When returning from dinner, the moment we got into the car he asked me to arrange a meeting with him and find out if he would agree to be a subject in his book. He needn’t have worried. Amir was even more interested than him, when I returned to Azad’s he asked me to invite Naipaul to his place.

The next day we sat down to write the story of my life. Naipaul has these small notebooks in which he writes in his neat longhand. He has this rather irritating habit of saying, “Yes, yes,” to everything you say. These “Yes, yes,” sounded very synthetic and condescending to me, trying to show that he was with me, carry on my dear fellow, you are absolutely right. He let me speak on and in conversation I relayed some information that I did not want to be known. Realising my mistake I asked him to remove it but did not see him making the excising gesture. To make sure that it had been removed I tried a little subterfuge and asked him to read out what I had spoken so far. This he did without reading out the part I had asked him to remove. When I reminded him of it he told me not to worry, it will not come out in the book, and it did not.

After a while of this Naipaul said let’s go and eat, so we went to the top storey restaurant. Naipaul ordered a single vegetarian dish and one Indian bread for himself. When I ordered a single dish too, he said expansively “No. No. Order some more, I want you to have a nice meal.” I was touched, to say the least.

During lunch we conversed about Lady Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter. Naipaul was amused that I knew about them and their affair, and said that I seem to be very well informed about literary London’s gossip.

Anthony Burgess came into the conversation and I mentioned how, because of his terminal illness, doctors had given him only six month to live, so he decided to write a book. “Yes,” said Naipaul with a dry chuckle, “and he hasn’t stopped since.” No sign of literary brotherhood here I notice.

I told Naipaul that I had always wanted to be a writer but did not know how to go about it and if he could give me some tips. “I think a lot,” Naipaul said dismissively and I discreetly closed the subject, thinking that I was more fortunate than the Pakistani writer whom Naipaul told that he did not have it in him to be a writer.

In passing I asked Naipaul what he had wanted to be before he became a writer. He told me that he had wanted to join a firm and be a company executive. Tight white collar! I could just see Mr Naipaul in a bowler hat and pin stripe suit going to the city of London every day and heading one of the large corporations.

We discussed prejudice in England, which I had found all pervasive. Naipaul did not deny its existence, but since we had chosen to live there, knowing full well that it exists, there was no sense in complaining. Quite right.

After lunch we went over to Amir’s where he was introduced to his wife. During the conversation Naipaul commented on some characteristic of Amir which reminded him of Nehru, probably his ability to inhabit several worlds, but I am not sure. Amir’s wife promptly checked him to say to the effect that Amir was better than Nehru in some respects. We all felt quite overawed in the face of such sacrilege but Naipaul looked impressed with such devotion.

After a while Amir’s wife went into the inner chamber and I excused myself so that Amir could tell the story of his life. Three hours later, I was having a cup of coffee in Kwality restaurant, when Amir’s manager came to get some sandwiches packed. I realized that the session must have been still going strong, which the manager confirmed.

Being a copywriter I did not have to be in the office the whole day, and anyway I had made my excuses with the boss that I would be more absent than present for the next few days. I would go to the office in the morning and check if there was any work, see to it and then carry on to Naipaul’s hotel. The next day I got delayed and Naipaul was livid. “You’re late! Let’s hope the Raja will forgive us for this.” I told him, look I am not working for you, just helping out, and don’t worry about the Raja. I’ll explain things to him.

Naipaul was very taken up with the Raja. “He is a prince amongst men Nazear, I’ll say this.” I said that yesterday must have been a very long session for I saw the sandwiches being packed at a very late hour. Naipaul was surprised. “You mean the sandwiches were not from the Raja’s kitchen?” From the tone of his voice I could guess that the Raja went down a notch or two in his estimation.

On the way to the Raja I told him of the touching portrait he had painted of his father in Finding the Centre. Naipaul was surprised as to how I could have read it as it had not been published in a book form yet. I said that I had read it in the inaugural issues of the re-launched Vanity Fair.

“You know they paid me seventy five thousand dollars for it.”

I whistled silently in admiration. His agent told them take it or leave it, and they took it.

I asked Naipaul what had happened to the film that was being made of Guerillas, the book that had launched him in America. It was shelved but they paid him a fifty thousand-dollar retainer for it.

I said, you know Vidia in Darkness on the first page you mention the character asking you “Have you got any cheez?” Cheez means “thing” in Hindi and he was asking you if you have any smuggled goods to sell. Yes, said Naipaul, some of his friends later did tell him that, but it did not seem that that he was going to worry himself about that at this late date.

I mentioned how tickled I was with the Madoodi description in Among the Believers, where a failed by-pass heart operation in Houston Texas led to his demise.

“Yes”, said Naipaul quoting himself with mush amusement, “to meet his maker, Madoodi, for at least part of the way, went by a modern device.”

Naipaul has this thing about how we in the third world have helped ourselves to the benefits of modern technology but shun the modern mind-set that goes with it. On my asking him about this theory, he illustrated his point by telling about this African (or Negro, as he would say) who said, “What is the German getting excited about his Mercedes for, after all I have a Mercedes too.”

One more session with Amir took place, and after that during the day, since he had hardly seen the city except for that single trip to the old quarter, so I decided to show him some historical buildings.

We went to the ‘Residency’. This is where the British had gathered during the mutiny of 1857, an event known in the history books as “the siege of Lucknow”. Generals Havelock and Campbell subsequently rescued them in an operation called the Relief of Lucknow, about which Tennyson had written a poem.

In front of the main building, there is a marble plaque, which gives the story of the siege detailing how many of the British had perished and how brave they had been. I decided to have some fun. As I read from the plaque I kept muttering, “the bastards, the bastards”. Naipaul kept quiet but in Million when he relates the incident, he says that all my Shia sympathies came to the fore and I started abusing, showing no sympathies for the besieged British. Never once did it strike him that I must have been to the Residency many times before and this was nothing new for me. Maybe he thought that it made good copy and he put it in. And pray, why should I have any sympathy for the British, who had taken my country and killed my people. I think this incident also explains the title, A Million Mutinies Now. Gentle readers, whom I like so much and identify with, can look forward to the same, a million times over, if India goes berserk again.

From one site to another we used to talk. I asked him whether he had given any thought about whom he was going to dedicate his book to. He said No. I recommended Amir, since he was so taken up with him, but he stuck to his No. He seldom dedicated his books to anybody and besides he hardly knew Amir enough to dedicate his book to him. At the Husainabaad Imambaara he expressed his admiration for its architecture, especially the steps leading up to the mosque, which had been placed at a very pleasing angle. Naipaul said that he hardly met anybody in London and all his socializing was done during his travels.

We went to the Butler Palace. This had been built by Amir’s grandfather and named after Harcourt Butler, Governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, who had bought the capital back to Lucknow from Allahabad. It now housed the Institute of Philosophical Research. Its library had row upon row of books on Philosophy, in mint condition, untouched by hand. On my asking, Naipaul said that he had not read any Philosophy, and literature was his subject. I quoted Stevenson, and in my anxiety to appear clever said, “Of books there is no end.”

Naipaul promptly corrected me, “Of the making of books there is no end.”

The director of the institute got to know that Naipaul was in the library and sent a messenger to invite him for tea, we went inside and even before sitting down Naipaul made his excuses and we left as fast as we had come. I have a feeling that Naipaul lost himself a fan.

On the way back to the hotel we talked about Naipaul’s theory on elites and how essential they were to society by being role models, for lesser mortals to look up to. He said that he could very easily have gone with the trend and become a socialist and built himself a much wider readership along the way, but instead he chose to be true to himself.

I asked Naipaul if he had ever contacted his aged relative again, who had come on his haunches in Darkness to ask for money for litigation so that he could get the family land back. Decades had passed since then but Naipaul still got angry remembering that person and said something derisive and dismissive.

I was sitting next to the driver on the way back, and as we approached the hotel the driver asked me if we would like to buy some chikan goods, the local handicraft, and he knows just the places for it, very good and very cheap. I said No. Naipaul asked me what was the driver saying. I knew the driver was asking for trouble and said, nothing, nothing. But the nearer we got to the hotel, the more desperate the driver became. He could see his commission vanishing. Pleadingly he said again, very good, very cheap. Naipaul again asked me what is he saying. I thought it better to tell him as he was getting very heated up.

Naipaul went berserk: “Tell him we will report him. Rascal! Tell him we will report him. Look in front, you.”

His reaction was out of all proportion. Defeated and dejected the taxi driver dropped us at the hotel.

Back in the hotel room we found the bellboys cleaning and vacuuming. Naipaul made them shift the bed and vacuum under it. He told us that the fluff that collects there plays havoc with his asthma. The bellboys humoured him in his idiosyncrasies. The washer man bought his shirts freshly laundered and ironed. He was made to stand there until it had been checked that every button was intact. Naipaul told me that once he had found a button missing and had sent for the manager. Instead of commiserating the manager had told him, “Your buttons! They break my buttons too. What to do with them!”

Tea was ordered. Naipaul did not tip the waiters in cash, but when signing the bill he would write an amount and circle it. I do not have any idea what the international convention is, but I doubt if the waiters ever got to see their tip.

While having tea I told Vidia that I had met his mother in this very hotel. He was taken aback. My mother! In this hotel! When? I told him that a travel agency called Odyssey Travels had arranged a ‘roots’ tour for Indians in the Caribbean. They had camped in Lucknow and from here moved on to Gorakhpur, Gonda, Basti, Bahraich and other places from where their ancestors had come. I asked Naipaul, didn’t he know about it, and when had he met his mother last. He said thirty-eight years ago when he left for England to study.

I mentioned about a lady I had met whose husband was an American academic and she told me that Naipaul’s father and her mother were brother and sister. Naipaul looked blank. I gave him some more details but he looked as blank as ever. He told me to be careful of such people and not to be taken in by them, as if advising me not to buy smuggled goods.

On my asking, Naipaul told me that yes, he was married but they did not have any children. Because of the constant travelling that his writing entailed, he could not take the responsibility of bringing them up. He mentioned that both Vidiadhar and Surajprasad were his given names, and had caused much confusion at school, so much so that his mother was called by the principal to clarify. I told him that ‘Naipaul’ was a corruption of ‘Nepali’. These were Brahmins of the Dubey group from Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh who had gone over to adjoining Nepal in search of livelihood and had become known as Nepali Dubey, which had got corrupted to Naipaul in the Caribbean. He did not show any interest in this gem of family history that I had dug out for him.

In conversation Naipaul told me about the Muslim boy who was living in Bombay with his large family in half a room, partitioned by curtain made out of jute bags. Naipaul had advised him to get out of Bombay and make a life for himself abroad. But the boy said that he could not bring himself to do this as his first duty lay to his parents. Naipaul could not understand this and was genuinely sad that the boy had not taken his advice.

More meetings were arranged for him. There was Roshan, a follower of the straight and narrow path. After five minutes I could see where the conversation was heading. I noticed that Naipaul did not interrupt and ask the person to come to the subject he wanted to discuss. He took digressions patiently. Realizing that nothing was going to come out of this I made my excuses promising to be back in a few hours time. Naipaul was disgusted. “Nazear, what a self-righteous man. What a fool.” I expected this so I kept quiet.

The thing is that Roshan was the only man to arrive on time. On the dot. Naipaul used to get very angry when a person was late. “I do not force them to come, the least I expect is that they come on time. I tried to explain that with the best of intentions a person was sometimes unable to be on time, and Lucknow was not London that everything ran with clockwork precision. Never once did it strike him that maybe they come because of me, because I asked them to. Lucknow was not exactly abuzz with the name of Naipaul.

For my next offering I suggested a lady magistrate, who had been the first to pass judgment based on the revised laws after the Shah Bano case about which I had told him earlier. I went to see her in her chambers. She was sitting there with her lawyer husband and I could see that they were recently married. She had never heard of the famous V.S. Naipaul but her husband had. Yes, yes, Naipaul, An Area of Darkness. I have heard of him. We’ll come.

So we agreed to meet at the hotel’s restaurant at 4 o’clock. Naipaul tried his best to make them relax and feel as comfortable as possible, ordered tea and made small talk before getting down to brass-tacks. He commented on the teapot. How ugly it was and was the work of the National Institute of Design. Ever the gracious host he started pouring tea. As if on cue, the lid fell off. You should have seen the disgust on the great man’s face. The husband told him proudly that he had allowed his wife to continue using her maiden name. We tried to bring up the subject that had led to her being in the news. She kept whispering to her husband in Hindi: “You go. You go,” as if she wanted to discuss some gynological problem with her doctor. So us men folk went out to stroll.

Two cigarettes later it was all over. They left and Naipaul turned to me: “Nazear, what kind of a magistrate is she. She doesn’t know a thing. How can she pass judgment on Muslim law, without having any sympathies and without knowing any Muslims.” I thought that was very shrewd observation on his part. “She kept telling me, ‘Please don’t use my name. Please don’t use my name.’ I kept telling her ‘Madam, rest assured that your name will not appear.’

We both laughed and I said, “Vidia I am afraid that your sarcasm got wasted.”

“Tell me Nazear, do Indian men like this kind of women?”

“Well Vidia, you could see how proud he was of her. She is educated and brings money into the house, not to mention the prestige that goes with being a magistrate; at the same time he is happy that she is not a flirtatious type.”

“Are they Brahmins?”

“Dubeys Vidia, Dubeys. Same as you.”

I did not notice Naipaul’s face breaking into a warm smile at meeting a fellow Dubey.

After the Dubeys there was Parveen, of the book. She must have been a welcome change as Naipaul found her ‘very serene’. I translated for her. After she had finished telling her story I asked Naipaul, “Vidia, why don’t tell her a little about yourself.” Naipaul declined saying there was nothing to tell.

The five days were coming to an end. I asked Naipaul whether he was satisfied with his trip to Lucknow, and he comes out with: “Nazear, you haven’t given me any pictures.”

“Pictures Vidia! Now you tell me! Where am I going to arrange a photographer at this late hour?”

“Not photographs Nazear, you have read my books. You know they contain lots of word pictures and your account hasn’t given me any. You must give me some word pictures. We will talk on the way to the airport.”

I had felt the resentment building up inside me. Something snapped and I said, “Oh I am coming to the airport with you now, am I?” Now I admit that it was very rude on my part. Nothing justifies it. But it had been five days. All my illusions about writers and writing in general and Naipaul in particular were in tatters. Five days of looking after the great man, missing office, missing lunch, arranging interviews. Handing over my contacts of a lifetime, just because I had idolized him once and wanted that he have a sympathetic chapter on Lucknow. It was spontaneous on my part and the resentment must have been a long time a building. Of course I realized immediately that I had been extremely rude.

But it was too late. The moving finger had writ. Naipaul said stiffly, “I appreciates all that you have done for me.” After all this time I still feel he should have at least asked.

So we went back to the room instead and I gave him vignettes of my life from Lucknow and Ranikhet. I noticed that Naipaul used to love it when the story was about the English. More sales I suppose. All these were written down in those notebooks of his, of which he seemed to have an endless supply.

It was time to part. We went downstairs to pay off the bill. The manager was there to thank Naipaul for honouring the hotel with his presence. A taxi was called. Naipaul sat down and said “airport” to the driver. I said, “Goodbye Vidia,” but there was not reply. Thinking that he hadn’t heard me I said it again. As the engines started and the car started moving, I said it for the last time. I cannot swear that I heard the cock crow thrice but Vidia was gone. As it is I was feeling bad about my behaviour and he clinched it with this. That hurt and after so many years still hurts. I remember that in a Face-to-Face interview on the BBC with Jeremy Isaacs, Naipaul had said that he had chosen writing as a career because it enabled him not to be beholden to anybody. No man is an island, Vidia. It’s just that you don’t acknowledge the debt.

Within months of his visit, India: A Million Mutinies Now was on the stands at a ridiculously low price of Rupees Seventy, it was a subsidized price presumably to beat the pirates. But I did not have the heart to buy it. I wanted to put Naipaul behind me.

Naipaul had advised me to change my name for the book, as the material might prove to be dynamite. Bowing to his experience, I agreed, though it did not do me any good, as every one who knew me recognized me in it immediately.

When the wounds healed somewhat, I bought a copy, but to be honest I have not read the whole book. I marvelled at his memory. How he had written verbatim every word I had spoken. But Million seemed more like a draft for a book than a book itself. The “pictures” interview done later had not been dovetailed into the main story. Amir’s sandwich incident was more like a note to jog his memory. Overall there was a feeling that Naipaul was in a hurry to get the book out of the way.

Apart from other mafias there are literary ones too. The first version of this article was in the form of an interview, mainly because I was very unsure of my writing ability, and to preserve the fiction of Nasir and Rashid. It was sent to the Times of India in Bombay and soon I got a phone call from the editor.

Had I really sent this interview?

I had.

Was it true?

Every word.

Do I stand by what I had written?

I do.
Mr Daryl D’Monte must have given much thought to the matter but in the end decided to spike it. As if Naipaul’s reputation could be spoilt by one disgruntled non-entity.