Farrukh Dhondy

Mar 31, 2010
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Farrukh Dhondy

Greet and grin

“To mock the flood that cleansed the earth
Noah built the ark.
Mock the eternal silence — Oh teach the dogs to bark.”
From The Guidance of Satan by Bachchoo
Amongst the million-selling hits of the late, great Louis Armstrong, sweet trumpeter and sand-paper-voiced singer, was the song What a wonderful world.

More correct than comic

“The meaning of the dance?
Don’t ask the dancer.
The meaning of life?
God never gives an answer...”
From Pensees de Bachchoo

My late father, a military man, would read the newspapers of a morning and, in response especially to reports of the hoarding of food, would inevitably opine that the hoarders “ought to be lined up against a wall and shot”.

A restless winter

“The problem with eggs
Is they haven’t got legs
So unlike your pet stork
You can’t take them for a walk.
Whereas your pet frog
Can be walked like a dog —
But beware the coup
The French will turn him into soup.”
From The Neffertitty Tales by Bachchoo

When Shakespe-are causes Richard III to say “Now is the winter of our discontent” he means that the bad days have gone, contentment is here. Alas! The ambivalence of English: the sentence today would mean that we have entered the bleakest period of our restlessness with not much of spring, what with global cooling, predicted to follow.

Something’s rotten in the city of London

“The piss on the poles is not canine
The red in the spit not blood,
Be not deceived by this city of mine,
Of smells and garbage and flood.”
From Bombay Nightmares by Bachchoo

Dear Ken Livingstone, You are the Labour Party’s nominee for the London mayoral election of May 3, 2012, when you’ll battle the present Conservative mayor Boris Johnson and Brian Paddick, a former police officer who will stand for the Liberal Democrats.

An Indian English biryani

“Goddam Goddam Dem hang Saddam;
Bush He done dismiss our Mush;
Obama done for Osama;
Now they get Gaddafy And no-one beg for Maafi
Hai Amreeka theyra kya khel! Masla kya hai?
Theyl hi theyl!”
From Oilnama
by Bachchoo

In Mumbai for a literary festival and to launch my translations of Rumi (Did you

Revolutions per minute

“I was awed by the
gatherers
Gave myself to the hunters,
I now chase celebrities
And brave hedge fund punters...”
From Laydissnama
by Bachchoo

Discovering Rumi on a jet plane

“The sky is dripping clouds of blood
The flowers are laughing at me
That postman is my girlfriend’s stud
I wasn’t born, God spat me...”
From Paranoia-hi-noia by Bachchoo
My publishers (I write books too — I swear this is not an advert) HarperCollins ask the authors featured in a particular series why they wrote the about-to-be-published book. The obvious answer, but one that wouldn’t be reproduced in the Q&A appendices, or even be countenanced by the (gorgeous, pouting) editors is “to get hold of the money you are foolishly offering me, of course!”

Disorder in the orderly escape from Euro

“The ultimate conspiracy
Informs me there are none
Things are what they seem to be
The earth goes round the sun!”
From The Fool’s Prayerbook
(Ed. Bachchoo)

Lord Wolfson, chief executive of NEXT, the worldwide clothing store chain, is offering a prize of £250,000 to the person who can come up with a solution to the economic problems that beset the eurozone.

A cat and a red herring

“She played me false
Though she called me ‘honey’
My love was a misty waltz —
Her romance was with money...”
From Song of the Elderly Millionaire by Bachchoo
In September, known as the “silly season” in Britain as Parliament is in recess, bankers are on yachts, readers are plied with the happenings in soap operas and petty scandals concerning their actors off-screen, and the political parties hold their annual conferences.

Confessions of a suspicious mind

Dear reader, this is not so much a column, but more a confession. No, I haven’t been caught swindling or murdering and my creditors still don’t know where I really live. It’s a philosophical confession. Whereas one thought that the world was an open book and one was a master practitioner and even manipulator and modifier of the various languages in which it was written, the truth is one knows less and less about more and more.

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I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.

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