Sunday, June 23, 2002		Books

Busybee, The Best of Thirty-Six Years.
Penguin. Pages V+234. Rs 250.

IT is very difficult to come to terms with a life with an eloquent void created by the sudden removal of a person who once had an unassuming, non-interfering but habitual presence in our lives. Such a blow struck the readers of Busybee when instead of their favorite column "Round and About" they read, "Busybee will not hum anymore" and "The Buzz stops" in newspapers following the 9th day of April 2001. It was perhaps then that many readers came to know that the name of the person behind the pseudonym "Busybee" was Behram Contractor. The man who shunned media lights and preferred anonymity to enter our lives 36 years ago, baptised as Busybee (by S. Viswam), visualised the column as "barely more sophisticated than a diary item. It would start with something like, ‘Yesterday, I went to an exhibition…’"

Through this book, Behram Contractor has returned to our lives with the same name but different form. I wish that the newspapers of April 15, 2002 (the day of release of this book), had headlines like "Busybee will now hum forever" or "The Buzz starts again." The book is a collection of 234 ‘Round and About’ columns, which Busybee wrote with religious regularity even two days before his death. After reading the book, one has to acknowledge Busybee’s great understanding of the strange ways of Mumbai and the devoted affection he had for the city. Mumbaikar to the core, Busybee not only introduced the city to many readers, but also immortalised its parts through his writing. Even the fictional characters that he interspersed in his narrative (his talking dog Bolshoi the Boxer, his outrageously extravagant friend on the 21st floor, his little sons Darryl and Derek and the wife) also became alive with his writing. Equally appreciable is the range of subjects covered in some 500 odd words devoted to each column. Almost every column has something of perennial interest , but his exclusive contribution lies in the skill with which he infused Indian sentiments and thoughts into foreign language to make it Indian English rich in subcontinent’s own idioms, phrases and other linguistic features.