Revealed: V.S. Naipaul’s real shadow 

Gillon Aitken, one of Britain's best-known literary agents, who was born in Calcutta on March 29, 1938 - the son of a Scotsman dealing in jute - and attended school briefly in Darjeeling, has died in London from cancer. He was 78.

Gillon, a 6ft 6in tall, patrician Englishman represented V.S. Naipaul for 30 years and was deeply hurt when the author left him for Andrew Wylie, an American who had established a rival agency in New York.

Gillon and Wylie had once been partners but the latter broke away, and in time also persuaded Salman Rushdie to switch agencies, probably for more money.

At various points I met all four as well as the travel writer, Paul Theroux, who was once close to Naipaul. However, after Naipaul ended their friendship, probably at the instigation of his wife, Nadira, Theroux got his own back in a book, Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents .

But Naipaul's real shadow, I think, was Gillon. Wherever Naipaul went, be it his wedding lunch at the Bombay Brasserie, a polo match in London, a literary festival in India or the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm, the ever faithful Gillon would be always by the great man's side. Gillon even edited a book containing the exchange of letters between Naipaul and his father in Trinidad.

Naipaul's biographer, Patrick French, who left David Godwin also to join Wylie, once said: "Vidia likes to cut off and move on - it's how he works."

Spicy nights

Even The Sun newspaper agreed that Sarah, Duchess of York, Prince Andrew’s ex-wife who is better known as “Fergie”, “looked simply gorgeous when she celebrated the best of British curry. The 57-year-old wore a stunning blue sari to the British Curry Awards at the Battersea Evolution.”

Sarah - who was raising money for her charity, Children in Crisis - remembered her late father (whom I once interviewed at polo): "My father always brought me up on curry because he spent a lot of his life in India and he loved going to India."

 

The British Curry Awards, which brought 1,600 guests to a massive tent in Battersea Park lit up like a Puja pandal, is the creation of Bangladeshi restaurateur Enam Ali, who began the enterprise in 2005.

Prime Minister Theresa May sent a video message, acknowledging Britain has 10,000 curry restaurants and that the industry, worth £4.3 billion, employs 1,00,000 people.

It is a pity that in order to keep down migration numbers, Mrs May - she relished the lunch Narendra Modi gave her in Delhi - won't let in more chefs from India and Bangladesh to meet the critical shortage that has apparently led to the closure of many curry restaurants.

Enam cracked his favourite joke: "The British arrived in India with gun powder and we came here with curry powder."

Sarabhai guest

It is perhaps a little odd that the celebrated American contemporary artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) talked of the "the cruel combination of disease and starvation and poverty and mud and sand" he had observed during a visit to Gujarat in 1975, seeing he was staying with the wealthy Sarabhais in Ahmedabad as their honoured guest.

But he also commented that the poverty was "all punctuated with maybe just that one piece of beautiful silk".

He was inspired by the textiles he had seen and how they were deftly unfurled by dealers and worked with the fabrics when he returned home. These works, along with many others, are included in a major exhibition of Rauschenberg's art which opened last week at Tate Modern.

On display is a screenprint of Kennedy, whom Rauschenberg had much admired. But as the exhibition's curator and the museum's director of exhibitions, Achim Borchardt-Hume, took us round, he said the time of hope in America vanished with Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam War and the struggle for civil rights.

With Donald Trump elected president, he feels the exhibition is very timely.

Foreign affairs

At last, we are going to get something substantive on Indian foreign policy, I have learnt from Krisztina Csortea, books reviews editor at International Affairs, the journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs based at Chatham House in London.

She tells me that the special report will be published online on January 6, 2017, with a launch event at Chatham House on January 12.

Many of the submissions are from overseas scholars at Oxford, Cambridge, Boston, Singapore, Pennsylvania, Hamburg and London universities, offering such papers as Possible Future Directions in Indian Foreign Policy: What Kind of Power will India be?; Narendra Modi's Pakistan and China policy: outspoken bilateral diplomacy, active coalition diplomacy; Indo-US relations under Modi: the Strategic Logic underlying the embrace; and The Rise of India: UK Perspectives.

Bard business

Shakespeare's First Folio , a collection of his works put together by his friends in 1623, is on its way to the Prince of Wales Museum (CSMVS) in Mumbai from the British Library in London as part of the 2017 UK-India Year of Culture.

Had the folio not been compiled it is possible some of Shakespeare's work would have been lost, according to Jamie Andrew, head of culture and learning at the British Library.

It is also sending a high quality facsimile of the 1215 Magna Carta to the Jaipur Literary Festival and partnering with it to hold events in Jaipur and London next year.

Although the Brits are too polite to say so, the Magna Carta will be a timely reminder to the "world's biggest democracy" of the fundamentals concepts of human rights.

Tittle tattle

Lord Swraj Paul tells me he and Aruna are "thrilled" to get a card signed by the Queen: "I am pleased to know that you are celebrating your Diamond Wedding anniversary on 1st December, 2016. I send my congratulations and best wishes to you on such a special occasion."

Swraj will have to return the compli-ment on November 20, 2017, when the Queen and Prince Philip mark their 70th wedding anniversary.