Failed alchemy

God pays his debts. This sentiment — mixed with a dash of schadenfreude (a unique German word denoting derivation of pleasure from anothers misfortune) — was the dominant emotion which suffused your editor after reading news reports that David Davidar, former head of Penguin India and hitherto chief executive of Penguin Canada, has had charges of sexual harassment filed against him by one Lisa Rundle, a former woman colleague, in a Canadian court. Despite Delhis charmed circle of mutual backscratchers rallying around Davidar for past favours such as printing and publishing their stuff under the Penguin India label, the molestation charges levelled against this international publishing rock star are detailed and serious, and have cost Davidar his job. They could also cost him a jail term and Penguin Canada a bundle in damages.Your editors admittedly unseemly schadenfreude flows from Davidar having unfairly rejected my novel Succession Derby submitted to Penguin India for publication in 1988. In those days this writer, having just completed assignments as editor of Indias first two business magazines, was a celebrated journalist and as such Succession Derby — to date the countrys most credible novel about corporate shenanigans — deserved to be published by Penguin, then the countrys sole national books publisher. Even so the crushing rejection of my work in which I had invested over nine months of continuous and solitary writing, by Davidar — a failed minor journalist who by some mysterious alchemy was plucked out of obscurity and appointed publisher of Penguin India — would have been acceptable had this jumped-up worthy not exhibited spiteful glee in turning down my carefully bound manuscript. Nevertheless Succession Derby was eventually published by my friend the late Rohinton Malloo (cut down in the 26/11 massacre). But despite selling over 3,000 copies and receiving good reviews (unputdownable according to Vir Sanghvi) it lost money because some 2,000 copies were damaged in transit by India Book House, which is another story. Ironically Davidars own hugely-hyped novel House of Blue Mangoes was an embarrassing failure for Penguin. Now nemesis has caught up and it wont be easy for Davidar to wriggle out of this predicament, because evidence is emerging that Rundle is the second woman subordinate upon whom he has forced his unwanted attentions. Thats the trouble with this countrys parvenu lumpen bourgeoisie — they cant take no for an answer, and move on. Larger question Its a worst fear coming true. the sarva shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) initiative of the Union government, launched in 2001 following signing of the Millennium Declaration by representatives of 192 national governments, to ensure inter alia, that all children aged six-14 are in primary school by the year 2015, and the spearhead of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 which became law on April 1, is leaking funds. The British media — particularly the sex-n-city weekly News of the World (NoW), a widely read tabloid (circulation: 2.9 million) — has gone to town in Blighty highlighting the defalcation of…