Pride and prejudices

Retro India

R M Rajgopal

Manipal Universal Press

310 pages; Rs 350

The attics of our minds contain memories, good and bad.  Gradually, the edges of the bad ones become less sharp, much as old photographs get blurred.  The sepia hues of the good ones become alluring by themselves. We bring them out from time to time, share them with those we think may be interested in them and then put them back, until they fade away. That is nostalgia. 

Some people polish these and arrange them for public display, as autobiographies or memoirs. But not all such exercises yield treasure troves. Very often, they are just trash, fit only for the scrap heap. The book under review is a prime example of this. The title suggested that it would look back on India of the seventies, and eighties, both significant decades for the political economy. Instead, it turned out to be a self-admiring memoir of little consequence. 

For the record, the author, R M Rajgopal, “has extensive experience in human resource management and has served in different corporate houses for over 40 years…[He] is a company man-turned-writer (sic),” to quote the blurb. 

We learn, in no particular order, that: He grew up in Thrissur in Kerala; was related to the ruling family of the erstwhile Cochin state; his father was a professor of English and a connoisseur of whiskey; he studied science but before he was 20, joined on graduation a major company — DCM disguised as Yamuna Mills — as a management trainee; served a tediously long apprenticeship at Kota; rose through the ranks, spent long years in Madras (now Chennai) and Delhi; is well connected through family to both bureaucratic and political elite; travelled widely and although took his first flight when he was 28, made up for the late start by taking 2,000-plus flights over the next 35 years (that is a hair more than a flight a week, an impressive achievement at any time but especially so since in the first 10 years of that time, the wretched Indian Airlines with its limited connectivity and flights was the only domestic carrier).

With becoming modesty, he hints at being the soul of the party, a host nonpareil, having the ear of his bosses through his smart ways (some may consider them too smart-alecky) and had a role in major decisions (we know not which) from early on. Most of what we gather of his professional experience comprises handling cases of what would be termed petty chicanery of colleagues (not uncommon even now) and fixing things with officials, mostly at local levels (again, not in the least unusual).   

All of this is narrated in what could be called rambling sketches (calling them vignettes would be monumental exaggeration), not always complete or related to those that precede or succeed them. Some of them have pompous-sounding prelude paragraphs. They are of the kind and length of some of the contributions to the Saturday Eye Culture feature of this paper, although I hasten to add that almost none of these would pass the editorial muster for that column.  Their banality is exemplified by one midway through the book describing a trek in the scrub jungle near Kota under hot sun for a game shoot, culminating in the killing and eating of one duck and one hare (I have not made up these details).  A sketch titled “The Icon and the Bania” is unspeakably racist. 

Mr Rajgopal describes his prodigious drinking and eating all through the book.  That makes him more of a glutton than a gourmet. He is also obsessed with elaborate descriptions of all those who appear in the book, including those only on the periphery, especially their height and clothing. All of this, we are told, is without the help of notes, the feat of a prodigious memory we are supposed to admire.  But that does not make him Ved Mehta, because he has none of Mr Mehta’s mastery over prose or the ability to use the nuances of the descriptions to further his main point. 

The blurb says that Mr Rajgopal is a “full-time writer.”  He appears to fancy himself to be some sort of a wordsmith, who uses visitation for visit, circumvent for circumnavigation, insensible for idiotic, indulges in phrases such as “The veracity of this cricketing story is unverified,” and “overgrown acres where …the undergrowth was forest,” to cite a few that come readily to mind. Almost every page has such gaucheries. 

The writing is meandering. Long asides interrupt the narrative out of the blue. References to events yet to be described appear with regularity.  The small size of a not particularly attractive font makes reading the book, none too charming to begin with, even more tiresome. 

Talking of his once immensely wealthy and powerful family (we have his own word to vouch for it), Mr Rajgopal says, “Today only the past glory remains.  Along with plenty of conceit and arrogance.” 

No reviewer of the book could have described it better.