Book review: How to Make Enemies and Offend People by G Sampath

How to Make Enemies and Offend People by G Sampath. Penguin/Viking publications.

This is just the book one needs to dip into when the weight of the world`s misfortunes seem to, strangely enough, land heavily on your shoulders or in your head. Don`t ask `why me?` Grab Sampath`s book instead.

Readers familiar with the veteran journalist`s wry takes on anything and everything, the sacred and the profane, the domestic and the exotic, will be happy to find it all compiled in this slim volume.

Just what are the subjects discussed in excruciatingly close detail? The author`s wife and her foibles; Ajay Devgn`s nipples; Arnab G`s combustible calibrations of outrage; Anish Kapoor`s unwittingly or wittingly elitist artwork; the sad state of male virgins the world over; why Sampath prefers Mumbai to Delhi; people who are driven to dedicate songs to themselves on the radio; experimental theatre, and many such things along the same trajectory.

In between, the takes get more scathing and less funny as when Sampath presents ten questions he wishes someone would ask Sachin T, writes a dirge for our woefully neglected farming community and pays a twisted tribute to Binayak Sen.

Much astute thought threaded through many laugh-out-loud sentences. Above all, as they say in Hindi movie credits, this is a fun book.