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Beyond the Great Railway Bazaar

Parul Sharma

Famous author Paul Theroux reveals his many magic mantras during a stopover in Delhi

Photo: V.V. Krishnan

Paul Theroux .

NEW DELHI: “What was important for me was that he believed in me. He was certainly my benefactor, an interesting monster….” That is how celebrated American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux summed up his extraordinary association with his “mentor”, Nobel laureate Sir V. S. Naipaul, on Tuesday.

Speaking to a gathering here at American Center, the author best known for his bestseller “The Great Railway Bazaar” reminisced how an interviewer once asked him if he thought Sir Vidia would have read his book on him, “Sir Vidia’s Shadow” .

“I told that person that Sir Vidia was much above all this. After all, he was knighted by the Queen and was a Nobel laureate and I really did not expect him to read my works. The same interviewer met Naipaul and repeated that question to him. And he indeed said he had not read my book,” he quipped.

Author of books like “The Kingdom by the Sea”, “Sailing through China” and “The Mosquito Coast”, Mr. Theroux did allude to the rupture in his three-decade-old friendship with Sir Vidia. “Friendship is not like love. In love, you give the other person a chance and can start off again. But in friendship, once there is a break, you do tell the other person ‘let’s start it again’, but that never really happens. After that, you are just being polite….”

Speaking on “Time travel: Return journey”, the author said: “A return journey is full of revelations. You realise what time and money do to a place, what people’s ambitions do to a place. I left the U.S. in 1963 and became a teacher and went to Africa. I went to a lot of places after that but I would keep thinking about that school, wondering what must have happened to it.”

“In 2001, I went back to that school in Malawi. I saw the school that I helped build, saw my students; some prospering, some dead. The school had been severely neglected…. It is sad but if you are a writer, you are aware that you want to see a change, some drama… Travelling ought to be not a portrait of a place frozen in time, it’s a kaleidoscope…. I would not have known about the school if I had not have returned,” said the writer of over 40 books.

Talking about his epic journey in 1973 by railway from London through Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia including India, South-East Asia and up through East Asia that resulted in “The Great Railway Bazaar”, Mr. Theroux said a lot had changed when he undertook the same route in 2001.

“In 33 years, the Soviet Union had become many different countries. In 1973, India was a different country. It was almost impossible to make a phone call here. Today, all of you have cell phones and are connected to the world. Today Indians are proud and prosperous, which was not the case in 1970s.”

Asked what interests him as a time traveller, Mr. Theroux was quick to respond: “People! I am not interested in ruins and building. Human architecture, lives of people interest me.”

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