`Tina Turner was my Private Dancer'

“The greatest thrill for me, besides winning this award, was finding the chhokras at Haji Ali offering to sell me a pirated copy of my own book for hundred rupees!” laughs Suketu Mehta, who won the Crossword Book Award on Tuesday night, in the English non-fiction category. “Seeing that, I knew I’d made it — that Bombay had truly accepted this book.”

Likening his win to an “Indian Booker prize”, Suketu says, “The hardest part of writing ‘Maximum City’ was choosing what to leave in and what not to,” as he admits to the possibility of a sequel.

While the book intersperses a melee of colourful characters — from bar girls to filmstars to gangsters — it went on to sour one relationship, with Bollywood producer-director Vidhu Vinod Chopra.

“That was a misunderstanding by his own admission. He has said he hasn’t read the book,” counters Suketu on Vidhu’s vitriolic comments in an earlier interview, where he said he’d slap Suketu if he met him now for his unflattering portrait.

“It’s behind us now. Besides, it was a tsunami in a chai cup.”

A self-confessed ‘shower poet’, Suketu’s next planning a non-fiction work on New York city and a novel called ‘Alphabet’ — “a tale told by a foetus.”

And, yes, there’s also ‘The Goddess’. “It was a screenplay loosely based on a Sanskrit folk tale for a film that was to star Tina Turner,” Suketu says.

Although temporarily put on hold  with the passing away of Ismail Merchant (its producer), Suketu’s still reeling from meeting the 67-year-old pop diva.

“I remember being flown to Zurich, to this fabulous lakeside mansion to meet her. She comes in, makes me sit down on her sofa, puts on some music and then sits in front of me in the lotus position and starts undulating!” he chuckles. “Yes, she was my Private Dancer. And I’m still recovering from that.”
d_farhad@dnaindia.net