Mumbai is my kind of town, a party town. In my first weeks living here, I was out most nights with new friends half my age, inevitably resulting in many unproductive mornings. This culminated with me waking from my slumber as the sun rose, contorted uncomfortably on the back seat of an auto-rickshaw parked on the edge of a slum under the hostile gaze of an unimpressed cheroot-smoking driver. I was so inexplicably far north of my south Bombay apartment that it took me two hours to get home, which in itself was no mean achievement given my wallet was empty of cash and my phone battery dead. Still, in many Asian cities both items would have been gone rather than just depleted, and their owner likely to be the one who was dead.
After that incident I decided to limit my Bollywood nights to Fridays and Saturdays, resulting in a marked improvement in both productivity and health. Without any jabs I have lost 20lb this year – so just another 40lb to go. The trick is simply much less alcohol, fruit for breakfast and a predominantly vegetarian diet with a daily swim, twice daily if I am feeling particularly virtuous. Who knew?
After 20 years of editing Guido Fawkes I am now focused on a new digital business in booming India. Old habits die hard and Guido’s tweets still distractingly pop up via the app on my phone. I have yet to summon the will to sever that link. Cosmopolitan Mumbaikars are intrigued by my years spent observing British politics, asking questions about Rishi and Boris in particular. At dinner with one of the governing BJP’s campaign managers, I in turn questioned him about his party’s digital strategy in the recent general and state elections. It was ‘to win over the leading social media influencers’ with their millions of followers, he explained. ‘How did you do that?’ I asked. ‘We paid them,’ was the succinct reply.
My last duty as Guido’s editor was to host a celebratory 20th anniversary dinner for 150 friends at a Pall Mall club. In the days preceding it I was as stressed as any bridezilla. The political guest list meant placing people on tables was a conundrum. We couldn’t, for instance, have Nigel Farage on the same table as any Tory frontbenchers; Boris and Carrie should be out of camera shot from Dougie Smith, who could be nowhere near Nadine Dorries. On the night Robert Jenrick turned up without us having received an RSVP. He was hurriedly found a place next to Liz Truss. I was told they got on like a house on fire.
My latest trip to Delhi resulted in a sore throat from the smog. The region’s basin topology combined with traffic fumes and farmers burning their paddy stubble after harvesting means that a toxic smog blankets the city almost every winter. The capital is far from the best advertisement for ‘shining India’. On every visit I soon yearn to return to Mumbai’s sea breeze, cleaner air and the gated garden oasis with swimming pools that is my home in that city. Having emigrated in the 1950s, my India-born father is amazed that his son now lives there in marbled splendour on the 63rd floor of a skyscraper with not a slum in sight. The 21st century is happening in India, though not yet for the majority; nevertheless the demographics and economic progress mean India is likely to be the biggest economy in the world in a generation or two.
My assistant Shweta, a lawyer, deals with the extraordinary amount of bureaucracy an Indian start-up has to overcome. Her tasks include keeping a spreadsheet counting my days in India. Foreigners really don’t want to become personally enmeshed in the daunting Indian tax code by accidentally going over the annual 182 days limit and thereby becoming tax resident. My count is now at 122. Shweta is an observant Hindu and insisted that we rescheduled our office move-in to a more auspicious date. Garlands and homemade sweets from her kindly mother mark holy festivals. Shweta has placed on my desk a small statue of the deity Ganesh, which gets an occasional affectionate tummy rub from me for good fortune and the removal of obstacles from our path. Truth be told, I am a little less comfortable with the gilded swastika she has stuck over our office front door.
I am writing this after two days shooting partridge on the La Nava estate in Spain. Crisp dry air beats a cold wet grouse moor. Apparently there isn’t much grouse to be had this year, saving the class-war socialists the trouble of banning grouse shooting. Must dash, have a private jet to hop on.
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