Remembering V.S. Naipaul

OBITUARIES AND THE Internet will tell you about Sir V.S. Naipaul. I want to write about my friend, inspiration and constantly engaging guru and even entertainer, Vidia, ‘the boss’ and ‘mamaji’, when he was out of earshot.

 

- Farrukh Dhondy

Yes, yes, he was a literary colossus of the twentieth century, inventing genres which told us more about the world we live in, and even about the language we speak, than James Joyce. As for his standing amongst other writers, one can say they are as slingless Davids to his Goliath with a plethora of slings, if not literary and observational AK47s.

Entertainer? Yes! With a determination that any writer of note has to provoke through accuracy of observation and insight. He was deliberately stimulative of dissension. His tongue stayed firmly out of his cheek when he knew he was being provocative and could predict the reaction it would stimulate from the people he wished to tease.

“When do you return Farrukh?” he asked when I visited him in his hotel in Delhi in the days after the Babri Masjid episode.

“Tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Can you stay for a day longer? I want you to come with us to a meeting to which I’m invited of the BJP’s Cultural Wing.”

“Isn’t that an oxymoron?” I said.

“Now, now. Don’t be clever Farrukh” says Vidia.