On the final day of the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters 2024, historian Ramachandra Guha and author Anjum Hasan put forward an in-depth discussion about the former’s relationship with his friend and editor Rukun Advani, a topic which is also the subject of Guha’s latest work ‘The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir.’

Guha reminisced about his early days when he studied at the prestigious St. Stephen’s College in Delhi. “When I was in the first year of college, there were many remarkable people in the third-year batch. For example, our college cricket captain under whom I played was Arun Lal who later was capped 16 times for India. Then there were people who went on to become foreign secretaries, CEOs of companies, judges of the Supreme Court, and so on. But, the two most brilliant people in the third year were Rukun Advani and the person who is your current MP, Shashi Tharoor,” Guha explained.

The historian noted that Advani and Tharoor were similar in many ways yet different. “Shashi Tharoor topped the university in history while Rukun Advani topped in English,” Guha said. However, while Tharoor was popular, Advani was more of a recluse, he observed. “He (Advani) had half a dozen friends and he chose his friends very carefully. Either you had to have a deep and cultivated interest in literature or you had to have a cultivated interest in music,” the historian said.

Guha’s book draws from the correspondence, both letters and emails, between him and Advani at a time when the former was a scholar and the latter, an editor at the Oxford University Press (OUP). “OUP played an important role in promoting the finest Indian language poets in English. Likewise with the playwrights like Girish Karnad and Vijay Tendulkar,” he said.

During the discussion, author Anjum Hasan recalled an earlier piece written by Advani where the latter talked about his publishing philosophy. “An editor is not just someone with a good language, is not just someone who has good business sense. The editor is also somebody who has a deeper commitment to the idea about what a good book is,” Hasan said, citing the piece.