Book launch - River of Smoke - part II

Penguin formally released copies of River of Smoke here today. Presiding over the function was Mr Gopal Krishna Gandhi, who is himself a writer and a formidable speaker. Mr Amitav Ghosh was there to answer questions on his book and sign copies for the audience who had gathered in enthusiastic numbers.

After a short introduction and without much ado Gandhi held aloft a copy of the book and then there was a short speech by Ghosh, most of which was about his admiration for Mr Gandhi who had changed the course of governance in West Bengal, where he has been governor in the past. He emphasized on this especially because Gandhi during his speech quipped at the totally dispensable role he would be playing as "releaser of the book". Now that is totally unwarranted because his excellence and calibre are really well known among book lovers who have seen him in action at several book launches.
Gandhi's reference to the "gatecrashing freesnackers" to whom his presence would be especially irritating was perhaps a bit too uncharitable for someone in his position. Still you can;t have a perfect evening always!

The questions posed to Ghosh were skilful and the author opened out to them with aplomb. When asked how much he enjoyed the fame and the taj coromandel book launches, he replied that it had not come easily and explained how he had remained in relative obscurity for years when he worked with Ravi Dayal a much smaller publisher and his books were read by a few intellectuals only. He recalled with warmth his earlier publisher. A member of the audience asked him how he had worked with lascar pidgin, and whether there was a dictionary he had on this. He said that he had tried to learn sailing when embarking on this book and had realised that the ship hands would have been speakers of various languages, and so there should be a dictionary somewhere. Quite surprisingly, he had chanced upon one such dictionary in Harvard, not failing to add that the publisher had been a Bengali.
Mr Gandhi's perceptive question 'how did you differentiate between Parsi Gujarati and plain Gujarati?' was much appreciated by the author. He laughingly admitted there was too a dictionary of Parsi Gujarati available...

So leaving us all in an admiring trance, the evening surged forth, with a bunch of people wafting towards the author for signing their copies of the book, and some others on whom the edict 'gatecrashing free snackers' had bounced off lightly, went on their way to the bar.