The Fine Print and Other Yarns

The Fine Print and other Yarns is a collection of stories by Dinesh Verma, an officer of the Indian Revenue Service. Published by UBS Publishers' Distributors, New Delhi, the book was released in June 2009. It comprises nine stories, some of which may well be called a novella than a story, running as they do into thirty to fifty pages. The first seven stories are set in Paris and have a distinct Francophile flavour, which is a little unusual considering that the book comes from a bastion of Anglo-Saxon heritage like India.
Stories
Part-I
Part-I contains four stories set in Paris of mid-1980s. Back in India, this period marked the prime of License Raj when protectionism and restrictions were the hallmark of the Indian economy. People had little access to foreign goods or foreign media. Few Indians travelled abroad but for business because of the stringent foreign exchange regulations, which did not allow one to carry more than five hundred dollars. People returning from abroad would bring back gadgets like colour televisions and cassette recorders, or for that matter even ordinary things like cosmetics and shaving blades. The attitudes and actions of the characters depicted in these stories, Indian visitors who find themselves in Paris for diverse reasons, reflect such harsh socio-economic realities that prevail in a country that is closed to the outside world, which India was at that time.
Buddy the Impressionist, the first story is about Buddha Deb, known among his friends as Buddy, who is a student and then a lecturer in the university of Delhi in the early seventies/eighties of the last century. Buddy has a fixation for Impressionist paintings. With his obsession for the bohemian life of artists in the Latin Quarter, Buddy is forever dreaming to be in Paris. A rare opportunity comes his way to be there though for merely two days. Those two days turn out for Buddy to be a period of continuous disillusionment. He does not find anything in Paris that conforms to his image of that city, which is based mainly on the life there as depicted in The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham and Lust for Life by Irving Stone that Buddy had read many times over during his college days. Finally, a casual remark by a waiter in a bar at Montmartre, where he orders an absinthe for himself (a drink, which the waiter says "was banned in France a century back") brings home to Buddy a realisation that the life in Paris he was looking for did not exist, as it had ceased to be a long time back.
The Overcoat, the second story presents Amitabh, who had the reputation of being an extremely generous person till he arrived in Paris for a year-long stay with just five hundred dollars in his pocket, and a scholarship that is bare enough for him to survive in that expensive city. He sees himself getting transformed into a miser almost overnight, for if he has to make the best of all that is for offer in Paris, with his meagre resources, he has no alternative but to stop blowing up his money on throwing parties the way he used to do back in India. Sakshi and Singh, his two colleagues with him in Paris, who had been hoping that he would continue to wine and dine them even in Paris, find it difficult to adjust to that transformation in his character and what ensues, once they find themselves to be financially on an equal footing with Amitabh, is an amusing rivalry between him and Sakshi with an interesting finale.
In The Visitor and Another Visitor, the author portrays an eminent doctor and a professor of Sanskrit, who come from entirely different backgrounds and their reaction, when they find themselves suddenly catapulted to an exotic place like in Paris. Dr. Chopra, a jet-set doctor, who is forever attending conferences all over the world, decides to take a stop over in Paris for a few days. Before he leaves Delhi a junior colleague offers him the reference of a cousin who is studying in Paris. The widely travelled Dr. Chopra, who considers himself to be the last word on foreign travel almost spurns the unsolicited offer, initially, but on a second thought condescends to keep the slip of paper with the cousin’s address. In Paris (Paris of mid nineteen eighties when it was much more insular to a non French-speaking foreigner than it is now) he finds himself driven to the point of a nervous breakdown finding his way to his hotel from the airport, for he does not know one word of French. He is finally constrained to seek the assistance of the cousin of his junior colleague but has a few more misadventures while waiting for him to arrive. Over the next two days, however, during which he goes around the city chaperoned by Rahul, he gets so enamoured of Paris, which he had been cursing that entire day, that he is already planning his next visit there even before he has left it.
On the other hand, Dr. Singh in Another Visitor, an ardent detractor of the western civilisation, who had never stepped out of India all his life, is in Paris for a few days as a part of his ‘world-travel’. A lecturer of Sanskrit in a provincial town of India, Dr. Singh can hardly speak proper English leave apart French. Yet the cousin, who is a common character in the two stories, finds Dr. Singh to be doing surpassingly well in that city, where he had seen a seasoned jet-setter like Dr. Chopra almost in tears in the absence of someone to guide him. What really amazes the cousin is that not only Dr. Singh does not need any assistance from the cousin, but he has a packed agenda of social visits, during which he takes the cousin around introducing him to well placed persons in Paris, where he does not know a soul except for the people at his Institute and in his hostel, even though he has been staying there for well above six months.
Part-II
Part-II comprises three stories set in Paris of mid-nineties. By this time the process of deregulation and opening up of economy had started in India. Restriction on import of foreign goods and on foreign exchange transactions had been relaxed and most of the things, which an ordinary visitor abroad in 1980s would take so much trouble to carry back, were easily available in the Indian cities". ".
The Fine Print, the story after which the collection is named is the story of Krishnan, a middle class Indian who has the ambition of becoming ‘a marketing guru’. Krishnan decides to give up a nice job and a comfortable life in India to pursue an MBA from some university in the USA. However, the recent easing of foreign exchange rules and easy availability of bank loans has an adverse effect on his plans as it has led to a drastic cut in financial assistance from the American universities, which generously funded bright Indian students during the exchange control days. Due to purely financial considerations, Krishnan settles for an Institute in Paris, rather than a university in USA that was his first preference for the latter offers him financial assistance. With his limited resources, he is compelled to lead an extremely Spartan life and he is forever indulging in penny-pinching. All of a sudden, he is drawn into an enticing proposition by a classmate of his who invites him to a party to one of the most exclusive and expensive restaurant in Paris. The proposition, which is too tempting to be rejected, finally leaves him flabbergasted and with a big hole in his pocket.
The Insomniac is about Alu, an extremely disciplined boy, who has just crossed his teens and who comes from a well to do business family, arrives in Paris for his higher education. After he settles down and gets into the groove of his college life, he suddenly finds his life turning into a living nightmare. A ‘weird’ person shifts in next door, who virtually takes away his sleep and he becomes almost a hypochondriac. He is contemplating returning to India when suddenly the situation improves, though only for a while and is followed by a series of relapses. Later one day he finds a magic solution to his problem, which he could not have believed was so easy to resolve.
Pieter Van Der Polder is about Pieter, a Dutch research scholar in Paris, who is in love with it and it is his ambition to find a good job and settle down in Paris after the end of his course. In the midst of his final year of his doctorate, a Belgian girl shifts into the hostel and she takes an almost instantaneous antipathy towards Pieter. What ensues is an ongoing battle of wits between the two at the end of which she decides to shift out. Soon the annual session draws to an end. Pieter is a dejected man—he gets his degree but he does not get a job in Paris. One evening before leaving Paris he sums up succinctly his life in Paris in a few words—a case of ‘triple folly’: the three big mistakes that he had made in his life.
Part-III
Part-III contains two stories both of which are set in contemporary India:
In The Mobile Phone Dealer Ram, an officer of a dreaded investigation agency of the country finds himself sharing his compartment with a brash, rich-looking young man, a businessman from Chandni Chowk, during a train journey from Delhi to Chennai. In an attempt to impress his fellow travellers with his exploits, the young man, a drop out from college, who has made millions from dealing in mobile phones, narrates the story of his life. He recounts in graphic details how he made it from rags to riches through means that sound quite dubious, how he lost everything when law seemed to have caught up with him, and how he gave it a slip and is now once again on his way from rags to riches. Ram finds himself in a dilemma—he feels it is his duty to bring to justice such an inveterate criminal, yet he seems to sympathise with him for all those miseries and hardships he seemed to have undergone when he lost all those millions he had earned. Finally he feels that the man deserves to be punished—if nothing else then at least for making an ass of law in such an egregious manner. He lays a perfect trap to get him detained at Chennai station with the railway protection force personnel in the train but what happens ultimately is not exactly to his liking.
In Bawa and his White Fiat the author presents Bawa, a somewhat idiosyncratic person, who decided without any hesitation, in the early eighties of the last century, to buy a Fiat car based on the technology of ninety fifties even though Maruti Suzuki, a new generation car with superior technical features had just been launched in the Indian market by Suzuki Motors. Over the next two decades Bawa continues with absolute fidelity his affair with his Fiat even though a whole lot of new generation foreign cars arrive on the Indian roads. But he notices that his white Fiat, which once added to his status in the society is now spurned and avoided even by the beggars, who head instead towards other new looking cars even as he is holding a coin in his hand to donate to them. However, with his peculiar notions, Bawa continues to hold on faithfully to his white Fiat and hopes that if nothing else, it will at least have some antique value pretty soon.
Themes dealt with
Although on the face of it these stories are plain light hearted stories, they touch upon numerous issues of wider interest. They bring out the resilience and resourcefulness of expatriate Indians who are forced to survive on a shoe string budget in a place like Paris that has so much to offer. They also provide an insight into the mind of Indians coming from different regions of India and diverse wakes of life and their reaction to the life in Paris and the French society. The Fine Print gives an interesting account of the day-to-day life in the multicultural and multi-linguistic set-up at the Cité Universitaire, the university township in Paris, especially in Maison de l'Inde or the India House. Though, it has not been referred to by name anywhere, it appears that Pieter van der Polders is set in Collège Néerlandais or the Dutch House. The story moreover also deals with the Flemish-Belgian rivalry. It also gives an interesting point of view about the functioning of the European Economic Community from someone who is from a constituent country. Finally, the last two stories set in India provide a snapshot of the life in contemporary India. They delineate the changes that are taking place gradually in its tradition bound society and culture because of the economic liberalisation in India, which led to the opening up of its economy and a revolution in satellite communications, information technology and the automobile industry.
Reaction of the Press
A number of national dailies reported the arrival of the book immediately after its release. The Asian Age, Mail Today, The Tribune and India Today carried out brief write-ups along with the picture of the cover page. A few web sites also reported the release of the book, notably: Whispersinthecorridoor.com; IRSofficersonline.org; and Indiahabitat.org also reported the release of the book. The Bureaucracy Today published an article based on an interview with the author. However, apart from this preliminary coverage, the Press has generally given the book a short shrift and there has not been any detailed review in any newspaper or journal. The Francophone circle of New Delhi too appears to have given a cold shoulder to this book as there is no reference whatsoever in a few web sites dedicated to the Francophile interests in India or to the Indians in Paris.
About the author
Dinesh Verma is an officer of the Indian Revenue Service. He is presently working in the Ministry of Finance at New Delhi. He studied English Literature at the University of Delhi. He also attended a long course at the (later merged with the École Nationale d'Administration), and an MBA course at École nationale des ponts et chaussées, Paris.

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