I have been living in a different world for the past two weeks. Days have rushed by with a blur; writers, poets, graphic artists, independent publishers and book designers seem to be spilling onto the Jude campus, the one site where book-creators and –lovers congregate, in the absence of an official annual book fair, courtesy the state government’s indecision in appointing a permanent fair ground. So the campus has ‘literally’ been teeming with academics like John Kerrigan and Jaqueline Rose, writers like Maggie Ferguson and Kunal Basu, independent publishers from Argentina etc, book designers aka Trinankur Banerjee and Pinaki De, and film makers like Anurag Kashyap (Remember No Smoking?). Last week, Robin Robertson swooped down on us, and dazzled all in a poetry-reading session where he read a few of his poems from his latest collection called Swithering which has bagged prestigious literary awards He has worked in publishing for more than twenty years and the books which he helps produce , usually make it to the top ten bestsellers list in the UK. It was such an experience to just sit and listen to someone who has been on both sides of the fence; the side which creates the book in a fundamental sense, and the side which shapes it, moulds it and packages it as a saleable commodity to the public. I had till then, only been a part of the former; I read books, and sometimes buy them, but never had the chance to look into the book-making process as such. Most of us in fact are oblivious to the publishing process , and have little or no idea about the various considerations which go into converting a manuscript into a proper book. Things like book design, the importance of typography, the layout, the cover, chapter divisions, copyright issues, matter so much to a publisher, and affect the ultimate look of the book in numerous ways. But the buyer doesn’t think twice about them, before buying a book, even though he/she might have been attracted to it precisely because of such features, in the first place. I often think that since a publisher does his best to make the book look good, and treats it as a commodity , selling a book is really no better than selling a cake of soap. The only difference is that while there you can print Kareena Kapoor’s face on the wrapper indiscriminately without thinking about which brand it is, here you try and coordinate the subject matter and the form, because even though all soaps are essentially the same, all books are not. So if you’d have to design a cover for a book, you’d first have to know what the book is about. In that sense, book-making is a far more involved process than soap-making. The saddest part is , however, that there are more people on Earth who buy soaps than books.

Post!

I wrote about ten posts in the last ten days. Did you read them? (‘You’ here implies the three and a half people approximately, who read my blog.) I don’t think you did, the primary reason being of course that they are still in my head. All ready, to be posted, with the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. And ready to go to the press, so to speak. Except for the fact, that I have the inexplicable habit of delaying transference from head to PC, and well, in this case, not transferring at all.

The saddest part is that now I cant remember what they were on. There was one on a sleepover get together with friends. That should have been fun reading, if I would have written about it at all. Suffice it to say, that I did think of including juicy tidbits, like who bitched about whom, how we all sat up till four in the morning talking, and how we planned to make voodoo dolls for unnamable persons, and stick as many pins and needles into them as possible. Being the extra-virtuous souls that we are, we of course didn’t carry out the voodoo plan, but it’s in the background. Just need to buy the pins.

Another blog post was on my version of award ceremonies. Film of the year- Taare Zameen Par, Actor of the Year- Darsheel Safary, and Businessman of the Year- Shah Rukh Khan, for single-handedly maneuvering Om Shanti Om into being the block-buster of the year. Come to think of it, srk has turned out to be my cheese omelette, and for people, who don’t have any clue what I’m talking about, please ignore. Its one of my enigmatic lines; I make sure to put a couple in each post.

One of the reasons why I have not been able to post in spite of hoarding up such post-able material in the head, is that I have been having 12- hour workdays at the end of which I’m only capable of shoveling food in and sleeping. If I feel too energetic, I stare at ‘sarabhai vs. sarabhai’ on star one, and then go to bed.

Such is life.

A balancing act.

A flurry of movement.

A tango in stilettos.


And I don’t want to slow down.