Sunday, November 15, 2009

A book was launched but not my career as a page 3 girl alas!

Last week,I went with a pal to the launch of Nine Lives by William Dalrymple at the Connemara. I really should learn to be laid back and arrive at these dos at half an hour late. Becausing arriving on time (or 15 mins before, which is what I normally do) means you get to soak in a mausoleum-like atmosphere for a good 45 mins. At the end of which you feel distinctly ghoulish. And since my pal managed to confuse Connemara with Coromandel, I had no one to joke for a goodish while. A drink or two at this point would have helped, but the Connemara people (unlike the smart, kind people at Coromandel) chose to withold the life-restoring elixir till the reading was over. Grrr.

At first the 'ballroom' was sparsely populated, only by people strictly over the age of 90. Some of them were in waterproof rain gear, which was quite incongruous in the 'ballroom'. But slowly a few bedraggled looking journo/lit students turned up and I didnt feel like some completely out-of-sync young(ish) person who's gatecrashed some Senior Citizens event.

Anyway, eventually WD showed up, in kurta and pyjamas with a veshti wrapped around him for good measure. The first thing I noticed was that he got a nice tall glass of beer. Sigh! He spoke and read from his book for about an hour. It was entertaining in places but the mind tended to wander in others. He talked about three of the nine lives (though it felt like a lot more at the time). After the usual inane questions at the end of the reading, my pal and I got our copies signed for each other. We also found out that in Scotland, its pronounced 'D'rymple' not 'Dalrymple'. We thanked him for the signatures and he thanked us for coming. All very civilised,if rather dull. Then it was off to the bar! At last!

But before we could get there, several photogs stopped us and asked us to pose for them. We even gave them our names. I think we were the only young(ish) people there, hence the interest. In fact, come to think of it, some of them interupted us mid-drink and got us to pose, claiming to be from 'a popular national paper'. But did that mean our photos were splashed about liberally on the page 3s and party pages? Did we get calls from loved ones enviously asking us about our glamourous lives? Nope. Not a whisker. Nothing. I wonder where the photos went. Into some void where they never see the light of day? Hopefully not to some internet porn site. Its such a tragic waste of posing and needless delay in getting to the drinks. Never will I let this happen again.

But the pal and I, sweetly unaware of the dastardly behaviour of these callous men who trifled with our innocent child-like faith in the universe, spent an hour or so swapping gossip on people we know (and hate). Have torn these people apart, we finished our wine (it would be more accurate to say that I finished our wine) and traipsed back home quite happily.

Is book launch season upon us? Looking forward to more such evenings!