August list

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, is a complex character. Without doubt an accomplished writer of English prose, he is a witty raconteur, a perceptive observer with an uncanny sense of prophecy and unsparing in his comments on current affairs. I was fortunate in being among the few Indians he befriended during his visits to India. On his first visit, he had his first English wife, Pat, with him. She was not a cheerful companion. I took them for a picnic to Surajkund and Tughlakabad. I took them to my friends’ homes in Delhi and to bookstores in Khan Market. He was happy to see his books on display. I had his mother stay with me for a few days: I also took her to the same bookstores. Her only remark after seeing Vidia’s books on the shelves was, “They don’t have any of Shiva’s” (her younger son). I did much the same sort of thing when he visited me in Bombay and back home in Delhi. I had people over to meet him, put him in touch with those he wanted to see. On the last few visits, he was accompanied by his third wife, Nadira, who was a Pakistani-Punjabi divorcee and the mother of a grown-up son. Naipaul acknowledged my association with him at the first reception after winning the Nobel Prize, presided over by the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee: he named only two Indian friends — Prasannarajan of India Today and myself.

However, despite many meetings and being with him for many hours, there were aspects of his personality which baffled me. He would suddenly lose his cool and be downright rude to people who could not hit back. In Bombay, while talking amiably to a lady journalist, he turned sour when she took out a camera from her handbag and asked politely: “May I take your snap?” At a writers’ meet, he snubbed Nayantara Sehgal and stopped her mid-way in her speech. He was rude to the American ambassador’s wife, who was to host a reception for him a few days later. He almost walked out of the Neemrana writers’ conference before the session was over, and had poor Himachal Som, who had organized it, tearing his hair in despair. I was never able to fathom the reasons of his unpredictable changes of mood and was very careful never to upset him. However, I did ask his wife why she kept nervously puffing one cigarette after another. She replied, “Because I married him.”

In his authorized biography, Patrick French has explored different facets of Naipaul’s character: his edginess, his total indifference towards his first two wives, his patronizing of prostitutes etc. I did not find an answer to the one question which nagged me: Why was a man, so richly endowed with talent, who got all the rewards any writer could ask for, so insensitive towards other people’s feelings? I got my answer from a chapter devoted to Naipaul in Diana Athill’s Stet. Diana was the book-editor of André Deutsch, who published almost a dozen of Naipaul’s early works. She saw him often, visited Trinidad where he was born, met his parents, brothers and sisters and had long sessions discussing his manuscripts with him. She thinks that the primary reason for Naipaul’s unpredictable behaviour was his feeling that he was rootless. He hated Trinidad’s three layered society of whites, Hindus, whose parents had come as indentured labour from India, and Africans, descendants of slaves. He was happy to get out of Trinidad and go to Oxford. He hated college life. He did not belong to England. He tried ancestral India. He disliked everything about India and Indians. He leads a sullen existence in his country home in Wiltshire with the long-suffering Nadira. Athill writes: “It is not easy to see where a man’s sense of his own worth turns into a more or less pompous self-importance. In retrospect it seems to me that it took eight or nine years for this process to begin to show itself in Vidia, and I think it possible that his audience was at least partly to blame for it.”

Naipaul broke relations with André Deutsch over his Guerillas and went to a rival publisher. Then broke with them for no other reason than that their catalogue of forthcoming books described him as “a West Indian novelist” and returned to André Deutsch.

Diana Athill also writes of an amusing incident in her home. She had invited some friends to meet Naipaul. He arrived first. She was carrying a trayful of wine glasses to put on a table. He jumped up from his seat and planted a kiss on her. Her arms were full; so she could not respond one way or the other.

Winning hand

I have written about the incidence of left-handedness (southpaw) among humans more than once. My friend, Amir Tuteja, of Washington DC, has sent more information on the subject — an article by Anjana Ahuja in The Times. It is based on the findings of Chris McManus of the University College, London, who has made a special study of left-handedness. Interest in the topic was triggered off by Barack Obama, who is left-handed. So was his opponent, John McCain. So were ex-presidents George Bush (Senior) and Bill Clinton, that is, four out of past seven presidents of the United States of America. McManus believes that the left-handed are better in music and mathematics than the right-handed. They are also more prone to autism, dyslexia, mental illness and are accident prone. Gay men, but not lesbians, have a higher incidence of leftism.

In all, 10 per cent of humans, more males than females are left-handed. Japan has the lowest, England, Belgium and Holland have the highest population of lefties. The phenomenon exists amongst monkeys. This has led to the conclusion that leftism is perhaps hormonal because it runs in families. The list of famous left-handed men and women is impressive: Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, Charlie Chaplin — and believe it or not — Osama bin Laden.