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Watch | Ramachandra Guha On the Man Who Made Him an Author, Rukun Advani

From Guha’s account, Advani emerges as an extremely perceptive and insightful observer of human nature and character.

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In an interview to discuss his recently released book The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir, which is about his 40-year friendship with the publisher Rukun Advani, Ramachandra Guha has spoken at length about how the unseen hand that made him the author he has become is that of Advani.

“Had I not met Rukun Advani…I would probably not have become a published author…had he not befriended and guided me…my move from social history to biography would surely have been more tortured and less satisfying. Had I not had Rukun to instruct and encourage me I may never have thought of writing books on cricket.”

In a 30-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Ramachandra Guha talks about the six or seven drafts his well-known and much loved biography of Verrier Elwin went through before it was published and how each of these drafts was shaped and improved by advice from and correspondence with Rukun Advani.

However, there was an occasion when Advani pushed Guha into an area where he realised he had neither the talent nor the personality. In 1995 Advani suggested Guha should write novels. It led to an effort called Ratendon Road but, Guha says, he very quickly was disillusioned with it and tore up the manuscript. Of this he says: “I do not regret this and surely my readers regret it even less.”

From Guha’s account, Advani emerges as an extremely perceptive and insightful observer of human nature and character. In 2013, when Guha wrote an essay on Narendra Modi, just before Modi became Prime Minister, and sent it to Advani for his advice, amongst other comments this is one of the comments Advani made:

“Modi’s voice betrays his authoritarian streak more straightforwardly than anything else that he does. Anyone who has heard him speak in public instantaneously recognizes that he is a fascist of thoroughbred pedigree…you only have to listen to Modi for 15 minutes to know this is a man who will remove anyone who comes in his way.”

One of the most engaging exchanges between Advani and Guha is over Shashi Tharoor. Tharoor, like them, is also an ex-Stephanian. Advani compared Tharoor “unfavourably to other novelists from St. Stephens”.

Guha said Tharoor was “charming and outgoing but, from the start, ferociously ambitious. Shashi wanted to make a mark in the world, quicker and more dramatically than any Stephanian (or perhaps any Indian) before him”. Indeed, Advani compared Shashi to “Macbeth with vaulting ambition”.

In the interview, Guha talks about the early years of their friendship when Advani and he would meet for lunch at Kwality’s in Connaught Place and go for long walks in Lodi Garden.

In the last 10-15 years, Advani effectively cut himself off from the world and retreated to Ranikhet.

Of their last meeting in March-April 2019, Guha says: “I had seen him long enough to sense that he was happy in his reclusiveness. To mail him sometimes, to think of him often, made me happy too. But to demand to speak to him more – on the phone or in the flesh – would be an intrusion. Things were best left as they were – for now.”

The interview ends with Ramachandra Guha saying the one thing he hopes for is a last long, chatty lunch with Rukun Advani.