Nikhil Lakshman remembers the times he spent with the legendary writer who passed into the ages six days before his 86th birthday.
'I don't think you have anything to say to me and I certainly don't have anything to say to you.' Bharat Bhushan recalls his encounters with V S Naipaul.
Naipaul wrote more than 30 books of fiction and nonfiction during his career with a sharp critique of established religion and politicians characterising much of his work.
Jaitly flayed the Nobel laureate for expressing disappointment on Tehelkas treatment and said he should not play politics on behalf of the website.
'Will the BJP now replace a Muslim name for a street or a railway junction with Naipaul's name?' 'It is the least the party can do for its sole Nobel Prize-winning admirer,' says Amulya Ganguli.
In any institution that has a passionate ideology, the moderate is always vulnerable to the person who is more extreme, because that is what the supporters want.
'Literature ought to always remain the outrider of society, the advance party of civilisation,' says Tarun Tejpal.
Naipaul's views against the commonplace perception towards colonised countries and their people were not the only thing controversial about the famed author.
'We demonise the Others.' 'We are constantly reminded that they are different and are an existential threat to Us.' 'The toxin of Nellie in 1983, Delhi in 1984 and Gujarat in 2002 is not yet flushed out of our body politic,' says Shreekant Sambrani.
