Novel Idea

After a Nobel for fighting global warming,RK Pachauri has had a novel idea,literally. One of India’s prominent green crusaders,he has penned a work of fiction called Return to Almora (Rupa,Rs 395). It was launched on Thursday at the Oberoi Hotel.

“I wrote on flights since that was my only spare time. Sometimes,I’d be so overwhelmed trying to capture an incident of my life for the book that I would be moved to tears. I wonder what the other passengers thought,” smiled “Pachy” as he is known to his friends Prannoy Roy,Sir Mark Tully and Shashi Tharoor who were present at the launch of the book.

Known for steering the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007,Pachauri’s novelist avatar had Tharoor remarking,“He has moved away from his trademark green in this novel. He’s wearing a bright red scarf and red is the colour of passion. The story is passionate and talks about the environment and the damages caused to it by politicians and contractors.” According to the novelist himself,Return to Almora is “a quest to the spiritual meaning of life”.