A voyage through many Indias

This collection of essays is an absorbing portrayal of the many facets of a country that is constantly reshaping itself.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, in his brilliant Foreword, draws a parallel between Captain G R Gopinath’s latest book Our India and Minoo R Masani’s of the same name, first published in 1940. Masani’s book was reprinted in 1953 and that is how a young Gandhi, who till then was finding his ‘textbooks a burden to bear and a chore to study’, found it to be an ‘exception’.

Masani’s Our India, Gandhi writes, “was a book for children, essentially, but grown-ups profited from its carefully presented facts and figures about India …. And in the 1953 edition, (it) suggested solutions, clearly and gently.”

Captain Gopinath’s Our India, a collection of his writings in various media outlets in the last three-four years, does exactly the same, though in a different way: in short but powerful bursts through 53 articles on wide-ranging subjects.

The best quality of Gopinath is that he has no pretensions to class or scholarship as revealed in his biopic which won a slew of awards last week. This lack of pretension shows up in every aspect of his life. And in his writings, too. He gets to the heart of the matter without any tedious preambles or odious comparisons, like, ‘for instance ….’ or, ‘for example…’ or, ‘on the other hand…’.

He's as thrifty in his usage of words as he may have been while offering anything free to his passengers, including a glass of water, while successfully running his low-budget airline Air Deccan.

In this collection, an eclectic mix of articles — under four categories — Enterprise, Society and Governance, Politics and Musings — the Captain covers a wide range of subjects including his twin passions — organic farming and aviation, the latter with a special focus on the Tatas and their romance with Air India (in two separate articles: you can’t miss his pithy reference to Helen of Troy, Christopher Marlowe and a quote from Walt Disney at the end of one of the articles).

As with any other book in this genre, all the articles between its covers may not retain their relevance over a period of time, but some of them seem to have already done so, particularly those close to the author’s heart, like his battle against the behemoths in the aviation industry and the pieces on his personal friendship with wide-ranging personalities from R K Laxman, the best of the lot, to Café Coffee Day founder Siddhartha (most poignant), Pandit Jasraj, Girish Karnad and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, among others.

But the most engaging and riveting is the lengthy piece on the heart-wrenching moment when he had to hand over his beloved airline to Vijay Mallya. “It was like marrying off my daughter,” he told a journalist at that time.

The author is at his best narrating that period of time in his life when he was having sleepless nights. He writes about it with such deep feeling and flair, that at times, it reads like the script of a fast-paced episode in a thrilling web series on a business rivalry gone sour. Add to it his bitter relationship with Vijay Mallya (‘Vijay is from Mars, and I’m from Venus’, he had said then) and the climate of doubt and betrayal prevailing at that time, these essays reveal as much as they thrill.

Self-deprecating humour

Gopinath was simultaneously dealing with not just one (Anil Ambani) or two (Vijay Mallya) buyers but four with the Tatas waiting in the wings and Dayanidhi Maran at the door. It’s hard to believe that the deal was stuck in flat 30 minutes after such a painful and protracted buildup and that too across a phone line with the Captain sitting at his home in Bengaluru (and ordering Mallya to take a pen) and Mallya on his luxury yacht swaying on the Mediterranean waves while attending the Monte Carlo Formula One Grand Prix.

“I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming, for the deal was done in a flat 30 minutes. It was probably faster than his Formula One cars,” writes the author-entrepreneur.

He also takes a dig at himself and his self-deprecating humour is best captured when he says his cheques were flying faster than his aircraft when faced with growing crude oil prices and falling footballs.

The other rich facet of the collection is his ability to find a matching quote or a reference to enlighten his point or argument. That they do not in any way interfere with the flow speaks for his articulation. They, in fact, “flow into the narrative as gently as the gleaming gold does in the Kanchipuram yarn”, as Gandhi puts it in his Foreword.

Overall, this collection of essays has the power to spur debates, energise dialogues and stir emotions in young and old alike. Even if you have read any of the pieces in their original format (or his 2011 autobiography Simply Fly), some of them can still make you sit up and think.