While the world — more so, this part of it — waits for the release of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s In The Line of Fire on Monday, an urgent e-mail from New York arrived today at the office of a Delhi publisher who is working overtime on the Hindi translation of the book. The email said the “author” wants to review portions on the Kargil operation in the translated version and the same should be sent to him immediately.

After the uproar created by his remarks in the CBS show 60 Minutes that after 9/11, the US had threatened to “bomb” Pakistan “back to the Stone Age” if it didn’t support the war against the Taliban, it’s learnt that Musharraf wants to be “very careful” on what is being published and how. On this score, he wants to be sure that what goes in the Hindi translation of the book is an accurate description of the original.

What this means is that the Hindi translation, innovatively called Agnipath, will be delayed a few days before it hits the stands. The Kargil chapters have been mailed backed to the author, the General, and printing won’t start until his all-clear comes.

While Musharraf’s book has been advertised by his New York publisher Simon and Schuster as “astonishingly revealing and honest about dozens of topics of intense interest to the world,” the one topic many here are waiting to read is his treatment of Kargil.

Musharraf was Chief of Army Staff under whom the Kargil incursion was planned and that, too, when former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee was meeting then Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif in Lahore.

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