When glamour meets opulence
By Shashi Tharoor
"The Hindu", Online edition of India's National Newspaper
May 07, 2006

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A book launch extravaganza in which more than literary sensibilities were indulged.

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"DO you realise," asked the breathless ingenue, "that once upon a time people just published books and there weren't any book parties?" Not only was she right, alas, I am old enough to remember those days.

Publishers felt that they had done you a great enough favour merely turning your prose into print; the very thought of shelling out for drinks and hors d'oeuvres to commemorate the event would have made them collectively choke.

Today, of course, it is impossible to throw a stone in certain parts of south Delhi without hitting someone who has just attended a book party.

Contemporary publishers don't seem to feel they have really published a major book until they have a caterer's bill to prove it. And authors don't feel they have been treated right without some reference on Page 3 to the glitterati who turned up at their book-bash.

Having spent over a decade and a half living in New York, from which New Delhi publishers have tended to seek inspiration, I too have become used to the phenomenon, to the point of becoming a bit blasé about literary extravagances. It is not uncommon here, after all, to run into a world-famous author at the grocery store; seeing them at a book party is almost a bonus. But when Hollywood glamour met New York opulence at a recent event to launch a first novel, it wasn't just literary sensibilities that were indulged.

Striking combination

The novice author was Cheryl Howard Crow, wife of actor-director Ron Howard, whose debut novel recounts the hair-raising adventures of a young American woman in northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, amidst spies, terrorists and others who would, as we used to say, outrage her virtue.

Cheryl's hosts, Anjum and Pervez Ahmed, were successful doctors with non-medical connections — he's the son of former President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and she has been putting aside her patients in favour of a design business she runs with her daughters. Fantasy, fiction, physicians and fabrics: the combination was striking.

My lady friend and I walked into the Ahmeds' ground floor Manhattan apartment to discover their back garden had been turned into a gigantic tent, draped from ceiling to floor in a dazzling array of embroidered silk.

The lawn furniture had been covered up in colourful Indian materials; brass Afghan lamps dangled amidst the glitter, made to order in the bazaars of Kabul. Lush Kashmiri carpets lay underfoot. "A maharajah's boudoir on the Upper East Side!" my friend gasped. And after a decade in New York, she's not easily impressed.

An actor painted from head to toe in purple and swathed in green and blue feathers unfurled himself languidly as a human peacock (India's national bird, after all) while another, painted pink, sat immobile in the guise of a swan. Waiters wearing identical blue kurtas circulated softly, offering canapés on trays equipped with digital screens on which flashed a picture of the cover of the novel we were celebrating. Hollywood stars shimmered about in dresses worthy of the Oscar receiving line, making literary conversation with American cardiologists and Indian writers. ("I didn't know the stars could read," one guest remarked unkindly.) Ron Howard, taking a break from the filming of The Da Vinci Code, gamely admitted he had flown in from London just to support his wife's authorial debut. The guests all asked Cheryl if the movie rights had been sold yet.

`Something else'

I've been to Manhattan book parties, but as my friend put it, this was something else. Publishers do put themselves out for their marquee authors, so unusual settings are not unheard of in Manhattan. I remember the Italian publisher-author Roberto Calasso being feted by Knopf's Sonny Mehta amidst the rare-book collection in the magnificent Morgan Library, and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison signing books at a party that had taken over the entire space of the pricey Balthasar restaurant. Madeleine Albright's memoirs were launched at the Four Seasons, and Salman Rushdie's friends have drunk to him at a series of high-ceilinged bars in Chelsea and Tribeca. Book parties have revealed to otherwise humble guests the impressive interiors of a variety of prestigious Manhattan addresses, from the sprawling apartments of the late TV anchor Peter Jennings and celebrity editor Tina Brown to the three-storey townhouse of antiquarian manuscript-dealer Glenn Horowitz and his screenwriter wife Tracey Jackson.

But human peacocks? Dipping into kebabs while the book jacket flashes at you from a digital screen on the tray? Swilling champagne with an Oscar-nominated actor and a New York heart-specialist under a brocade wall-hanging in a tent in the middle of Manhattan? As they say in New York, fuggedabout it.

After a while, the pink swan, tired of sitting still, rose and wandered around the party. Oliver Platt signed autographs; Cheryl Howard signed books. Well-heeled Indian doctors and their well-healed American patients bought armfuls of copies. My friend and I downed a last swig in the brocade tent and headed out into the prosaic streets of New York. If there's a prospect of this in an author's life, I mused, you might as well write.