Vir

The Hindustan Times' Brunch section on Sundays is my favourite toilet reading. And that is because of Vir Sanghvi, the editorial boss of HT. In today's Brunch, for instance, 11 out of 24 pages were written by him. The first long article was on some hotelier who's extremely into his guests' sleep quality. I've never spent a night in a fancy hotel, and find it unlikely that I ever will. I really don't give a damn about hotels. But I enjoyed reading that piece.

Then there was another long piece about a wine tour of Burgundy, naturally by Vir Sanghvi himself. (I want his job.) Now, people, especially Indians, writing about wine can be terribly boring and uninformative. The train of unlikely adjectives regularly employed to explain a flavour often leaves me wondering how you could be drinking both tar and berries in the same cup -- Eeyuck. Like squashing grapes onto a gently steaming road in summer and then licking it.

But Sanghvi knows a bit about wine, and what he doesn't he doesn't pretend to. More than all the talk of wine is, of course, the almost unmanageable joy I feel at the thought that here are people (Frenchmen, to be sure) who make money making something beautiful, with a knowledge and practice that cannot really be studied. I think there is tremendous power in a land and occupation -- and product -- into which many, many centuries of work have sunk.

When I drink wine, I feel I am absorbing some of that power, some of that hard work and wisdom. It makes me older. It makes me pay attention.