Vikram Seth. His bearing was elegant and cosmopolitan even as he walked barefoot across the centuries-old stone floor of the family courtyard.
I had just arrived from an 8-hour road trip. I was groggy from the Bonamine. His manners and speech were refined. I was smitten. I allowed myself the harmless attraction because: I could blame the Bonamine, I knew nothing about him, the attraction was one-way, I was leaving the city the next day, and I would never see him again.
He shook my hand firmly, checked the haveli logbook and complimented my penmanship. I had only written my name and “Udaipur,” but perhaps the combination of the letters with my handwriting looks slightly elvish.
I had booked a smaller room, but because the haveli was not fully-booked, he assigned me a more spacious room — the room he had as a boy. Of course, it had dreamy windows overlooking the courtyard and the sky.
He introduced himself as Vikram Seth. I squealed inside, “Like the author?” I immediately checked if they were one and the same person. Because of his air of profundity, I wouldn’t have been surprised had he turned out to be the writer. But Google came up with a different face. The author will have to forgive me: This Vikram Seth was younger and more good-looking.
When I had freshened up and settled down, he asked if I had tried Kingfisher beer. I indulged in a mug and a conversation. Theirs was the only garden in a radius of several kilometers, he mentioned. Friends thought it laughable, he said, to keep it when building a modern hotel extension on that garden can be more lucrative.
“I’m glad you kept the garden,” I said. “It’s proof that you treasure things that are more valuable than money.”
He nodded thoughtfully and smiled. I left for Udaipur early the next day and never saw that smile again.
But I did not feel wistful. It was not love. It couldn’t have been. And it’s easy to practice anasakti, non-attachment, whilst traveling (and groggy on Bonamine). But now I’m wishing that I were a better practitioner of anasakti and traveller of life than I am in and of India.
So forgive me if the only thing I can tell you about this book that I got from the Jaipur Sunday Book Market for 200INR/140PHP is that it has some poignant lines that accompanied me on days when I waited indoors for the sun to soften, and that British composer Jonathan Dove set the poems to music in a song cycle of the same name. And forgive me, if all you learned from this post is this: How not to write about books and their authors.
The Book-Butterfly 