Thursday, August 4, 2011

Dreams do come true

Whenever I want to meet someone’s work I hugely admire I am thrown in a quandary because people are seldom what they seem and especially with people in the creative field, they eccentricities and other maladies make me vary and apprehensive. I remember meeting Jagjit Singh, whose obnoxious behavior made sure that I never listen to his amazing music again and what was a daily durbar has been relegated to the dead end of my music soirees. So when I was about to interview Amitav Ghosh, I was all knots…will he be polite, will it make me swear off his wonderful wonderful books and most importantly, will he match up to his books?

In one word- Yes, he was all that and more. Soft spoken, affable and immensely likeable…mister Amitav Ghosh is charm offensive himself. Unfailingly polite and enormously well mannered, it was such pleasure speaking to him. I was so nervous that I forgot many questions I wanted to ask him and spelled pidgin (pronounced pigeon as pig- din!!) his book reading was well attended and a surprise, most questions made sense except one hilarious person who asked him why your books are so long and heavy (The moderator intervened and asked him to read newspapers)...it was a memorable night and I finally got my copy of the Hungry Tide signed by him!!

Was thinking, Hina Rabbani Khar looks smashing but when she spoke I honestly thought that it was SM Krishna speaking!

1 comment:

Zeba said...

I am always jealous of you because you get to keep meeting such interesting people. I mean that.

I am glad you like the writing. And that you think it has acquired a style of it's own. Encouraging.

I am almost done with Germany. But don't want to go back yet. :-(