Loveable old grandma

Have you heard of a novel that has no romance, love, lust, sex, violence, suspense, purple or lyrical prose, not even a storyline in the ordinary sense of the term, and is nevertheless unputdownable? I came across one a few days ago and read it from beginning to end because it is also blissfully short — in fact, a novella. It is The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett.

The ‘uncommon reader’ happens to be Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and the Commonwealth. She has many libraries in her palaces —Buckingham, Windsor, Balmoral — stacked with rare books, but had never bothered to visit them. One morning she was distracted by the barking and yapping of her Welsh Corgis and followed them to see what had excited them. They led her to the royal kitchen of the Buckingham Palace, a place she had never visited before. Parked in front of it was the van of a mobile reading library. One of the dish-washers, a boy named Norman, was a member of the library and the van had come for him to take back a book he had borrowed a week earlier and to lend him another of his choice.

At his suggestion, Her Majesty became a member of the mobile library and started borrowing books to read at her leisure. She had Norman elevated from a dish-washer to a page boy so that he could be near at hand. She had to keep her new hobby a secret from her staff as heads of state are not really expected to spend their time reading books. Her private secretary, Sir Kevin, a New Zealander, thought it was his duty to keep the Queen away from books and to make her focus on her royal duties. His pleas to her to that end were of no avail. The Queen took a book with her when she and her consort drove out to open parliamentary sessions and other state functions. While the Duke of Edinburgh dutifully waved to the cheering crowds lining the roads, the Queen was immersed in her book. She hid it under her cushion when she had to make her speeches only to continue reading on her way back home. Sir Kevin had the book removed on the pretext that it might contain an explosive. Once when the Queen was away from London, Sir Kevin had Norman removed by arranging a scholarship to a far-off university for him.

But the Queen continued to order books from libraries. Instead of discussing political matters with visiting heads of states, she talked about books. When the president of France came on a visit, she asked him about Jean Genet. All that the president knew about Genet was that he was a homosexual and a jailbird; he hadn’t read anything by him. It would be like asking our lady president if she had read the Kamasutra.

Matters got worse when the Queen started making notes and keeping a diary. Sir Kevin thought that this was going too far; so he got Sir Claude, a man in his nineties to come over and talk her out of her new obsession. He had served many English monarchs and knew the appropriate royal decorum. The old dotard came hobbling on two walking sticks, stinking to high heavens because he never took a bath. He nodded off while talking and left a damp patch on the chair he sat on. Ultimately the Queen discovered that Sir Kevin was behind the crusade to stop her from reading and writing. She got rid of him by appointing him the High Commissioner to New Zealand.

On her eightieth birthday, when all the ministers, privy councillors and other notables had gathered to drink champagne and wish her, the Queen asked those who had read Marcel Proust to raise their hands. Barely six did so.

I have no idea how much of this novella is based on fact and how much born out of the fertile imagination of the author. Bennett is a renowned dramatist and producer of television series. He has succeeded in making Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth a loveable old grandma.

Beaker full of warm south

Our beloved country, which is still counted among the poorest of the world’s poor nations because almost half of its citizens cannot afford to eat a square meal a day, has people who think nothing of shelling out Rs 50 lakh to get number plates of their choice for their limousines.

Equally bizarre is the case of Narinder Singh Sawhney. He was trained to be an engineer. He migrated to England. He could not find a job there and so bought a liquor vend. Today his whiskey exchange is the largest in England and he has the most expensive collection of Scotch whiskies, of which the 60-year old single-malt Delmar is priced at Rs 30 lakh per bottle. Sawhney is also a professional wine-taster. In autumn, after grapes have been harvested and turned into wine, he travels around the wine-making regions of Europe, tasting their products and grading them. I asked him if he had sampled some of ours. He gave good marks to Grover, Sula and Riviera.

Sawhney is also a devout Sikh. Every year he comes on a pilgrimage to India. He is an admirer of Ruskin Bond and had stayed with him in the latter’s mansion in a London suburb.

Thoughts on a rainy day

One rainy morning, an obviously anxious mother called the school office to check if her son’s bus had arrived.

“What’s your son’s name?”, the office clerk asked, “And what standard is he in?

“Oh, he’s not a student”, she said, “he’s the schoolbus-driver.”

(Contributed by Reeten Ganguly, Tezpur)