Big cities, but few bookstores

A SIMPLE rule of the thumb by which to gauge the literacy standards of a people is to count the number of bookstores they have and the number of books they publish every year. By the first reckoning we come off very poorly: Apart from the metropolitan cities, few, very few towns or cities have bookstores worth speaking of. Most of them sell school and college text-books: No creative fiction, poetry, sociology or politics.

It is hard to believe that large cities like Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala, Agra, Allahabad, Kanpur, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Surat Ahmedabad — and hundreds of others do not have a book shop where you can find works of Nobel or Booker Prize winners.

The publication scene is marginally better. Ahead of all Indian languages, except Hindi, is English. In terms of prestige and money English maintains its commanding lead. Understandably this causes a lot of heart-burning among language publishers, most of all to Dina Nath Malhotra who runs the top Hindi publishing house and is currently President of the Federation of Indian Publishers.

He has recorded "50 Years of Book Publishing in India Since Independence". He cites figures for 1997: of 57,306 titles published, 16,026 were in Hindi, 12,528 in English; other languages came lower down, with Dogri trailing with 54. These figures tell yet another story: 17 Indian languages are spoken by millions of people, English by barely 2 per cent of the population.

Also, while making authors subsidise publications of their works and often depriving them of royalties is common, very few English publishers resort to this unethical practice. This is one reason why Indian-English has produced millionaires like Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy, while no writer of Indian language has become rich through his or her writing.

Goa: X-mas to New Year

Third day in Goa and no one outside the hotel has yet recognised me, asked for my autograph or to pose for a snapshot. I do my best to look like as I do on the TV screen and cartoons made of me. Still if no one pays me any attention I feel very piqued. My haumain (ego) is punctured. I need to puff it up.

So on Sunday evening when Bogmalo Beach bears the festive appearance of a mela, I step out in my look-alike dress: saffron patka loosely wrapped round my head, an awami salwar-kameez. The trick works. I am accosted every few steps, shake hands, answer namastes, pose for photographs. Two young naval cadets make me deface two Rs 100 notes with my signatures.

I retrace my steps to the hotel. As I climb up the stairs, the gate-keeper feels I am not a five-star hotel type and demands, "Ay, kidhar jaata too?" I am appalled at his illiteracy and rudeness.

"Hotel jaata, aur kiddhar jaata?"
"Hotel mein rehta kya?" a little more politely.
"Haan!"
"Kamra number bolo?"

I show him my room key with the number on it. He can’t believe his eyes. He gives me a baleful look and watches me go past memlog in bikinis and disappear into the lobby.

Reading Goan English newspapers one gets the wrong notion that most of Goa is Catholic and a small minority is Hindu. As a matter of fact it is the other way round. Hindus outnumber Christians — two to one. Most of Goa’s rich families like the Chowguley, Dempos, and Salgaonkars are Hindus. But there are many more churches than temples, many more Catholic run schools, colleges and hospitals than Hindu institutions. Though out-numbered Christians dominate Goan politics as well. They live better, eat better, drink better and have more fun than their Hindu counterparts.

I never cease to be amused by Goan names. The Portuguese legacy of high sounding nomenclature persists. Names like Gomes, Fernandes, Miranda and Menezes are common place but all of them have a few others attached to them. Read the obituary columns of Navhind Times or The Goa Herald and you will read tearful tributes to the departed bearing high sounding names. One that caught my fancy the first day I opened the paper was Adolino Francisco Jose De Pildoide Noronha-e-Malo. When I put this to Maria who has made Hotel Park Plaza her home for half the year, she told me that this was true of Spaniards as well. While every one called her Maria, her full name was Maria de la Encarnacian de Lora Herrers. Italians also indulge in a multiplicity of impressive names.

The classes from which foreign visitors to Goa come from can be detected from their accents if they are from the English speaking world and their external adornments.

Many are distinctly Aussy, Cockney or country English. No ‘Haw Haw’ or the Queen’s English. And quite a few have their arms and thighs tattooed i.e. lower than lower middle class. Most of them are also grossly obese.

However, Goa offers them a cheaper holiday than any place in Europe, and few places in the world are as pleasant as Goa in its short winter season. So they come year after year to the same hotels.

A significant number are Germans. There are direct Lufthansa flights from Frankfurt and Dusseldorf. Amongst the regulars are Herr Kutzner and his wife. They spend over a month in Goa every X-mas time. They intend to sell their hotel Marienhof in Dusseldorf so they can spend more on their holidays abroad. Both are in their mid-sixties and somewhat overweight. They have no children and have seen nothing of India besides Goa.

One evening I find myself sharing the dining table with the Kutzners and Maria. Maria and I take whatever there is available in the buffet — there is plenty to choose from. The Kutzners have special diet from the a la carte menu: boiled vegetarian dishes. I ask them to share my bottle of wine. They politely turn down my offer. Kutzner explains in his broken German English: "I have diabetes. You know, too much sugar in my blood. I have to have insulin injections every day. And you?"

"I have no idea. My doctor says it is on the high side, whatever that means."

"You want to know? I can test you in a few minutes." The appointment is made for the next morning. No intake, not even coconut juice till after the test is over. I rise at 4 a.m. and drink up my glass of coconut juice. Its effect should flush out in a couple of hours. At 7 a.m. Herr Kutzner comes with a small packet. He empties out its contents. He chooses one of my fingers, rubs a little spirit on it and punches it with a needle. He squeezes a drop of blood on a pocket computer. My blood count flashes on its screen: 145.

"How often do you take your blood count?" I asked him.

"Three times every day. Also, these injections of insulin everyday!"

"You must be full of holes," I said.

"Yah, Yah, many holes. Not important." He shows me his fingers and places where he pumps insulin into his body.

Search for youth

There is the story of an otherwise non-descript general, who became notorious for his frequent reconnaissance visits to the picturesque, but militarily un-important jungles of west Sikkim.

An enterprising young planter approached his wife and offered to pry on his activities and bring back cogent photographic evidence of his misdemeanours. "Don’t you bother," said the lady, quite non-chalantly, "Jo ghar mein kuchh nahin karta, bahar kya karega" (He who is so inactive at home, can not do much when away!), and added "He must be looking for a herb to match the viagra!"

(Contributed by General Surjit Singh, Calcutta)

Courtesy

Conductor: Did you get home all right last night?

Banta: "Certainly! Are you insinuating I was drunk? I was perfectly sober. Did you not seem me get up and give that old lady my seat?"

Conductor: "That’s why I wondered, for you two were the only passengers on the bus."

(Courtesy:Shivtar Singh Dalla, Ludhiana)

Drop dead

Seen on the back of a bus:

"Latak Mat, Tapak Jayegaa"

Don’t hang on, you will drop.

(Contributed by Sandeep Advani, Gurgaon)