Rise and rise of a paperback writer

Whoever organises the next literary festival in Calcutta should perhaps consider inviting the hugely talented Abir Mukherjee, whose debut novel, A Rising Man, published as a hardback in the UK last year, will come out shortly as a paperback.

The novel, which begins with the murder of a white burra sahib in Calcutta in 1919, has been translated for a German edition with the cover featuring the Victoria Memorial (although the landmark wasn't fully completed until 1921).

An American edition is also in the pipeline.

Readers of The Telegraph will be familiar with Abir, about whom I first wrote on February 15, 2014, when his 5,000-word submission for a Daily Telegraph crime fiction writing competition in London was picked as the winner out of 427 entries.

Abir, born in London on January 5, 1974, to the late Satyendranath and Suchitra Mukherjee from Calcutta, was brought up in Glasgow - he can turn on his Scottish accent when the mood takes him.

In recent weeks, A Rising Man has been one of six novels shortlisted for the inaugural "Jhalak Prize" - earmarked for a "writer of colour". Chairman of judges Sunny Singh called it "even more than breathtaking".

A Rising Man is also on the longlist for the little known Waverton Good Read Award, which is given by the residents of Waverton, "a tranquil, rural village (population 1,560 in 2001) in Cheshire where the locals judge a host of British first novels".

Abir, who is married with two young children and works as an investment analyst, has decided not to give up his day job. But he has written a sequel to A Rising Man.

Ottawa bound

Another author friend who has also decided to keep his day job is just off to Canada as the new Indian high commissioner, having served as spokesman for the ministry of external affairs. Despite his worldwide success with Q&A, turned into the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, Vikas Swarup — once based in London — remains a diplomat (possibly to gather more masala for future novels?).

Don't be surprised if, in Jeffrey Archeresque style, a senior bureaucrat in Delhi goes missing, with the mystery deepening when the CBI suspect he has been kidnapped by his own foreign secretary acting on the orders of the PM and with the trail leading all the way to the White House...

Marigold India

A wife in the new ITV drama, The Good Karma Hotel , set somewhere in south In-dia, declares she has fallen in love with the country and refuses to return to England for urgent NHS treatment for a fatal tumour.

The central character is Ruby Walker ("English mother, Indian father"), a young doctor who has come to India to mend a broken heart and find a new direction in life - she is played by the engaging Amrita Acharia, an actress with a Nepali father and a Ukrainian mother.

TV viewers have been getting an idyllic impression of India (with no demonetisation nightmares) ever since the success of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel.

Last year the BBC took real-life pensioners to Jaipur for a reality TV series, The Real Marigold Hotel . The programme has just returned for a second series but this time the motley collection of celebrities from yesteryear are trying to see if they can retire in lovely Kochi.

Helpful as I always am, I am encouraging the BBC to set the third series in Shyambazar.

Love actually

The news that Charles Bronson, 64, a violent criminal usually described as "Britain's most notorious prisoner", is to marry Paula Williamson, 36, a bisexual actress, rang a bell.

Bronson, who has had several names, including Michael Peterson, has been an object of desire.

"He's so eccentric, but so am I," Paula confided after romancing Bronson during prison visits. "It's a perfect match."

Bronson's second wife was a Bangladeshi divorcee, Fatema Saira Rehman, 31, who developed a passion for him after reading about him. They married in prison in 2001 after he promised he would move to Bangladesh when freed, adopt Islam and have "loads of babies" with her. The couple divorced, alas, in 2005.

Tittle tattle

News of another diplomat. When Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha presented his letter of commission as India's new high commissioner in London to the Queen at Buckingham Palace last week, Her Majesty raised possibly the most pressing issue in bilateral relations - Joe Root's apparently unfair dismissal, given out lbw to Jasprit Bumrah for 38 in the second ODI in Nagpur.

I promise I am not making this up.

Sinha, who has replaced Navtej Sarna (who is having fun following Trump in Washington), was impressed with the 90-year-old Queen's grasp of cricket.