A slightly frazzled digestive system puts paid to my plans of trying to catch Rediscoveries of India (Meghnad Desai, Nayantara Sahgal and Chetan Bhagat), Jai Arjun Singh’s chat with Roddy Doyle, which I expect to be great, and the conversation with Louis De Bernieres. Sure enough, as I walk in, Nilanjana Roy tells me that Doyle was in cracking form, and Jai Arjun, our mutual friend, had done an excellent job as a moderator.
***
I decide to head to Storytellers & Immortals (Amit Chaudhuri and the ever-smiling Omair Ahmad with Namita Gokhale) but am sidetracked by the sound of laughter and lilting Scottish accents from the lawns. It is Under the Kilt, courtesy the Scottish givernment, with Andrew O’Hagan, Alexander McCall Smith, Niall Ferguson and William Dalrymple. As sessions go, it wasn’t particularly illuminating. But the erudite, cheery banter between the Glasgow (O’Hagan and Ferguson) and the Edinburgh (Smith and Dalrymple) was enough to keep me glued to the little spot of shade I found. O’Hagan, a Burns Scholar, recited from memory A Man's A Man For A' That. Here’s the last verse (see the whole poem, with helpful links to the harder words)
Then let us pray that come it may,***
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.