Jaipur Literature Festival: Naipaul cries, Theroux smiles on day one

JAIPUR: It was one of the literary world's most famous feuds but on Wednesday, Sir Vidia and his one-time protégé Paul Theroux seemed to bury the hatchet by sharing the same shamiana (if not the same stage) at the opening day of the Jaipur Literature Festival.
The two estranged friends did shake hands on the insistence of novelist Ian McEwan at the UK's Hay Festival in 2011 but there was no sign of a lasting thaw.
Today, there were no signs of awkwardness as Theroux joined novelists Hanif Kureishi, Farrukh Dhondy and Amit Chaudhuri for a session paying tribute to Nobel-prize winning VS Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas on its 53rd anniversary. Some panelists did admit to a case of nerves. "It's a bizarre and disorienting experience to be describing a book to a writer sitting in front of us. Fortunately, we are all very fond of this book," quipped Kureishi, Incidentally, Kureishi's 2014 book The Last Word about an eminent writer and his would-be biographer is based on Naipaul and Patrick French. The authorized biography French wrote titled The World Is What It Is was less than flattering to the senior author. Chaudhuri was less subtle. "I think I'm going to have a heart attack," he said.
To ease them in, Dhondy kicked off the session on the overflowing Front Lawn by talking about how he was introduced to Naipaul through an essay he had written for a magazine called Encounter. "I thought wow, somebody with an Indian name is getting into this revered magazine," he recalled. Dhondy was then in college. When An Area of Darkness was published, people in India called Naipaul "a man doing dirt on India". But Dhondy says, "I read it and thought this writer is telling the truth. But with my friends condemning it in their nationalist way, I kept quiet about it." Instead, he sought out the book published before it – a tragic tale sweetened with comedy and humour titled A House for Mr Biswas. "I have been a follower of Naipaul's work since."
Dhondy introduced Theroux as Naipaul's earliest friend on the panel as they met in Africa. "People may know there have been ups and downs in the relationship, but it has mostly been up and today I can assure you it is very up," Dhondy joked. Theroux, who had earlier given Naipaul a warm smile, went on to describe A House... as Naipaul's greatest novel. "It was the most complete novel I've read since (Charles) Dickens," says Theroux, of the opinion that Naipaul's arc of creativity began with the ambition of Mr Biswas. "It was the foundation of his genius, but he went on to write more. That is his achievement."
At a time when all the "black and brown" Commonwealth Writers were kept on a shelf in the bookstore, Kureishi recalls, "You couldn't keep Vidia in that section. He burst literature out of that segregation, and marked the beginning of international writers like (Salman) Rushdie, Zadie Smith and scores of others coming out of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan."
The tributes moved the legendary author to tears. On stage, in his wheelchair, Naipaul took the mike for a second, to "Thank the speakers who have been so generous" even as wife Nadira, who was accompanying him, stooped to wipe his tears with her scarf. "My husband is overwhelmed by the attention," she said.