close encounters of the express kind

Tuesday, 13 November. 6 p.m. I'm sitting in a small restaurant-cum-bar somewhere in south Delhi drinking a glass of cold Castle beer and smoking a Wills Navy Cut cigarette as I wait for the staff writer from the Indian Express to show up. It’s a pretty affordable place, which is why we’ve chosen to meet here. She’s caught in traffic at ITO, she’s told me from the auto she’s travelling by, and will be late for our 6 p.m. meeting.

So I smoke my cigarette and drink my beer and wait, the debutante novelist waiting for the moment of his first interview. The place is empty except for two young couples playing the mating game—one couple at the bar and one couple at one of the tables. The boys try to look cool and nonchalant as they calculate their chances, while the girls are getting giggly on their beer, teenagers who have to be home by 10 p.m. maybe. “He played such a game with me yaar,” the girl at the table tells the boy. “And I let him!” A while later she says, “Are you looking for maximum fun or just fun?” “What do you mean by maximum fun?” the earnest-looking boy asks. “I don’t know,” the girl says, slowly and coyly. Two formally dressed south Indian men walk in and order beer and spring rolls. They look like serious drinkers. In the market outside people and cars move about in the evening haze.

The staff writer shows up around 6.30 p.m., by which time i’m done with my first bottle of beer. We move to the upper floor, which is quieter at this time of the evening. Her name is Anushree Majumdar, she’s from Kolkata, has been in Delhi for about five years now, but hates the place. A couple of months earlier I had figured in one of her stories, about four young writers from Delhi who were awaiting the publication of their first book. She tells me i’m the first one she’s followed up from that story. We order beer and mushrooms and talk. She has a notepad on which she scribbles very fast. She likes some parts of my book very much, but thinks some other parts are pretty bad. She points out the flaws in my book, and I think I surprise her by agreeing wholeheartedly with her. “But you’re not even defending your book!” she says. Nobody sees the flaws in a first book as keenly as the writer himself with the benefit of hindsight. We’re done in about an hour. The photographer didn’t come because of the light, she tells me—night shots and all that. Though I did think I would have looked pretty hip with a glass of beer in my hand and a cigarette dangling from my lips: a portrait of the artist as a dissolute young man.

The photographer comes over to the office I work in in Panchsheel Community Centre the next evening. I take a break from working on an illustrated dictionary and go down to the reception. His name is Tashi Tobgyal, he’s a Tibetan from Darjeeling, and he’s been at the Express for a year-and-a-half. The light is starting to fade, so we go up to the terrace of the building, where he asks me pose and takes a number of shots. “Won’t you just need one for the story?” I ask him. “Well, we’ll have a stock,” he says. “We can use it if you become famous.” One of the office support staff looks on bemused as I gaze out at the grey sky over the ragged buildings of Shahpur Jat behind our building, trying to look thoughtful. Then I’m asked to relax and smile. We’re done in about 20 minutes. Tashi asks about my book, and is very interested when I tell him that parts of it are set in Majnu ka Tila. Later, he plugs his laptop in at the reception, transfers the photos from his camera, and sends them to his office via a wireless internet data card. The results of all this should hopefully be out in tomorrow’s edition of the Indian Express, in the Delhi city supplement section. Of course, my “piece” will be out before the Express one.

For a man who doesn’t particularly like to talk or smile, I think I stood up to my first interview pretty well. “Don’t be this honest in your next interview,” Anushree had said to me. I don’t know whether to take her advice or not. The picture you see is of Tashi, taking a photograph of me on the third-floor terrace of the Dorling Kindersley office, where i work.