Jeffrey Archer was in Mumbai earlier this week, enjoying a sort of Baba Ramdev like hypnotic fan following among the nation's English speaking elite as he read from something

Oh England, my England

Jeffrey Archer was in Mumbai earlier this week, enjoying a sort of Baba Ramdev like hypnotic fan following among the nation's English speaking elite as he read from something. When asked why he's been here twice lately, he replied, "I have readers here".u00a0 He could have said, "I only have readers here".u00a0 At a recent book reading at London's posh Soho Club, of hip English novelist Ian McEwan's new book, Solar, a wealthy Indian lady turned to her English intellectual friend and said, in a show-offy way, "I only read Jeffrey Archer" to which the response was, "Who?"

Now granted, glibness aside, Mr Archer is well known, even back in England, though perhaps more to do with tabloid things, than for literary stardom. Ironically though, English literary celebrities and Booker Prize Winners, (in the rare instance that it does not go to someone Indian), like Nick Hornby, Ian McEwan, Martin Ames, AS Byatt and Julian Barnes don't sell a hundredth of what Mr. Archer does in a week at, say, Thiruvananthapuram airport.

In the 1980s, it was impossible to find a single domestic Indian Airline flight ferrying an audience that ranged from mid-level bureaucrats to Doordarshan actors to the LIC chairman, not reading some Archer book (Kane and Abel perhaps the favourite). For full disclosure, I once had the good fortune of sitting near ex-India wicket-keeper (and hearing aid ad model) Syed Kirmani, as he enjoyed an Archer. Like Old Monk rum, or Pink Floyd, Archer swept through India's elite bungalows, middle class flats and Rajdhani compartments. He was Chetan Bhagat before Chetan Bhagat.u00a0u00a0
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I've always enjoyed the privileged English world of Mr Archer's books, the oak-panelled Cambridge parliamentarians, the brandy-drinking club members, the media tycoon's last hurrah sailing the Mediterranean, a rarefied world of wealth, power and English reserve, mixed with a bit of soap opera and globe-trotting. It seemed juicy dirt on the rich and famous, and it was wildly exciting if you owned a Contessa (remember that?) and still ate smuggled Toblerone.

All that changed thanks to one Manmohan Singh speech in 1991 and though many things (like foreign chocolates and foreign cars) lost their charm and populated our lives, Mr Archer's fame grew. And it grew inexplicably, through the years, when going to London for the upper middle classes became more of a routine summer ritual than a privilege, when we did not need the foreign rich and famous with sultry affairs and private islands because our own were born, and even when our writers like Shobhaa De and filmmakers like Karan Johar, channeled Jeffrey plots with Indian characters in London. All through, we didn't let go of him even when England had.u00a0

And in time, Jeffrey Archer, like cricket, became an Indian thing. Just as English people come here every winter hoping to find us in a Mira Nair movie, and we disappoint them by speaking in crisp British accents, we show up in England hoping to see people talking like Churchill and Sherlock Holmes and end up seeing the Buckingham Palace rented to Yash Raj studios to have Priyanka Chopra dance in it. Just as Londoners empty their city to vacation in Spain or Italy, we show up to shop at Selfridges and eat at Waga Mamas (a noodle chain), which like Jeffrey Archer and cricket, have also become Indian things.

As Chicken Tikka Masala becomes England's national dish (as it is a British invention), the only places left to find a decent steak and kidney pie would probably be The Willingdon Club in Mumbai. Like Mr Archer, the London Symphony Orchestra, one of the best classical music ensembles in the world, were in India and repeatedly expressed their desire to work with a Bollywood film. It's only a matter of time before they end up on an album with Anu Malik. "So where in the world does one go now to find authentic Britishness?" asked a friend, "Bandra," came the reply.

Anuvab Pal is a Mumbai-based playwright and screenwriter. His plays in Mumbai include Chaos Theory and screenplays for Loins of Punjab Presents (co-written) and The President is Coming. He is currently working on a book on the Bollywood film Disco Dancer for Harper Collins, out later this year.u00a0 Reach him at www.anuvabpal.com

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