Fresh ignominy, but too much fun

And so onward. Copies of the book (hereinafter referred to as 3 Zakia Mansion, pyar se log usko 3ZM pukartay hai) come to me from my publisher. Now I am at least an agarbatti salesman with the actual agarbattis in the jhola to sell. In the interim, more people have admonished me to take matters in my own hands, as no bookstore anywhere, metros, second metros, it seems, has even heard of the book yet, my friends report to me. Leave alone standing at the door with their tongues hanging out waiting for large consignments of 3ZM, bookstore owners urge other books on to my friends. ‘Other’ writers have multiple launches in simultaneous locations, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai for good measure. As for 3ZM, informal reports pour in: they haven’t heard of it, Gouri. Sure you’ve written it? some friends ask kindly. When they hear my anxious silence on the phone line or on gmail chat, one of them hurriedly adds, god bless her soul: “I’ll ask again and again. So they’ll remember the name. And when the book is out, I’ll gift a copy of it for everyone’s birthday that comes up in the next year.”
Ah, really, where would I be without my friends. Serious. love you for that, Anjali.
Meanwhile, I hear from a smart, fearless young couple, that I simply have to take this show on the road myself. The laugh themselves sick when I tell them I am going to leafy lane bookstores and introducing myself. They advise me to get a manager, m-a-n-a-g-e-r they spell out helpfully. One last sweet bookstore that I have a personal connection with, I bargain with them, and then I’ll do everything that you suggest.
I take myself and new-born 3ZM on a small car trip into the city. I park and gently unstrap 3ZM from the baby chair, and stand at the signals waiting to cross. I fight back the image in my head of myself as a vagrant at the signal waiting with her baby and hoping to catch the eye of passersby. This kind of beggarly-thinking wont do, man, I tell myself. I visualize Oprah saying “You go, girl!” to me. And begin to stride across the road. The effect is a little spoilt by a two-wheeler fellow trying to run me down because I come in the way of his red-light jump. I have to scurry and skitter, dandling new-born on my hip. Which brings me rather quickly to the steps of another old institution, a 30 year old book shop whose owner I went to college with. He isn’t there, but that doesn’t stop me from plonking 3ZM on a table, where two assistant women are working quietly. I start with, “umm…do you hold book readings here?” I think people sell dirty pictures and drugs with more panache and confidence. They both look at me blank, and say, ‘book readings?’ I swallow hard. Not only are they not all agog, I am going to have to repeat my question, and possibly annotate and footnote my query, possibly mime out the book reading thing, so they get what I’m asking, in that choked dry-lipped way. But before I can do any of that, the phone rings in this small shop, and the errand boy picks it up, and passes it on to one of the ladies, announcing loudly, sure of its horrific effect on them: “Mr Hagawne cha phone.” For those of you who don’t speak Marathi (how dare you not? Want to be sent back where you came from? Huh?), you may not be aware of the awfully scatological last names that exist in this part of the country. Anyway, loosely (god the puns just happen) translated, Mr Hagawne means something like: Mr Shitter. I swear, I am not making this up.
I take 3ZM protectively off the table, and wander into one of the little aisles, and end up picking up 3 other people’s books. This seems to be going well as a promotional visit, I think.
The lady speaks into the phone to Mr H, and I can see from the corner of my eye that she is savagely fighting down the giggles. Her younger assistant succumbs to them, and quickly runs out of the shop. I see her standing on the pavement laughing uncontrollably into her hanky. This sets me off a little and I grin at the lady who manages to finish off the convo with Mr H without laughing. Her face is doing her in, though. And as soon as she catches my eye, she comes completely undone. We both burst out into huge lung fulls of laughter. She tries to say sorry madam, to me, and recompose her face. But she’s totally gone. She swats the errand boy with a book and says: “He always does this, whenever this man calls. Announces his name loudly and clearly, for all to hear.” The errand boy grins and says, “You tell him to change his name to something like Mr Joshi. So much cleaner.” This makes us bellow more, and the woman who was trying to finish off her laughing outside on the pavement, enters the shop, eyes streaming. Ah, why don’t such people change their names, really, I manage to ask. The shop lady leans weakly against a shelf and says softly to me….oh madam, you don’t know, there’s another distributor who calls, and his name is…She cant finish her sentence. She goes to her desk and pulls out a card to show me, laughing and jabbing helplessly at the name. It says: ‘Mr Sanjay Boob’.
Now with this kind of exciting time at this shop, somehow it didn’t seem the right time to show them 3ZM and extol its virtues or explain what a book-reading is, no? Thank you Mr H and Mr B for that priceless laugh with strangers - but if 3ZM remains unknown to the reading public in the Deccan area, it’s all your fault.

(…to be continued. In the next update, I’ll tell you about the strangest reactions from media people who I chose to tell one-on-one, that I had a book out. And then there is the Library than will remain unnamed, who asked me if the book had any UK connection. Only then could they consider holding a reading. What I told them in return, will be the stuff of my next blog.)