Old Friends

I met an old friend yesterday. His name is Chinua Achebe.

We met after a year or so. It’s been a ritual these twenty years. At least once a year. Sometimes, twice or thrice.

I ran into him first in the mid-1980s while trying to scrabble together a living, wallowing in rebellion. If it wasn’t gloriously impetuous it wasn’t worth doing. Arguments over cigarettes and tea, or cigarettes and Old Monk rum. Battling mosquitoes and power outages in SQs, Delhi’s perennial bachelor digs both less charming and pretentious in its expansion, Servant’s Quarters, while dreaming of battling the world to save it.

Mr Achebe walked in one day. Second-hand, I might add, with No Longer At Ease. He gradually took me over. Soon, he came with Anthills of the Savannah, bought first-hand instead of rum. He never stopped. I have never felt alone since.

He brought others with him. Wole Soyinka, Buchi Emecheta, Nkem Nwankwo, so many others. They brought a world of rage, anger, beauty, thoughtfulness, thoughtlessness, bite, satire, and sensitivity. A world so rich in life, so rich in words. Nigeria, then not a country known for its drug peddlers and Internet scammers, seemed like a holy grail of modern English lit. The realism of western Africa is surely as magical as the magic realism from southern America.

My West African friends and I travelled together. We travelled a lot. As I moved from one SQ to another, then from SQs to a series of apartments, they moved uncomplainingly with me. They went in and out of boxes, on and off shelves—at first bricks wrapped in newspaper and castaway planks painted white and later, more comfortably behind glass covers. They moved cities with me thrice over, encouraging, consoling, energizing.

Now they are with me in Goa. The monsoon is upon us, and I met them, let them out for some fresh air. Imagine my joy when Mr Achebe won the Man Booker International Prize. There are those who believe he should have soon followed Mr Woyinka to the Nobel. For what it’s worth, I’m a believer.

Many gathered to take the air with Mr Achebe, not disappointed—at least in my home—they didn’t make it this year on his account. Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, John Banville, Carlos Fuentes, Michael Ondaatje, Amos Oz, Philip Roth…

Meeting old friends is such a joy.