The deafening clinking of silence

What do you do when youre done with a lifetime of making money. Try making some more. So what do you do. Take a pen and start writing how you made money, or rather how you couldnt. Even worse, why or because of who you couldnt!
And then the controversies. Make sure you put in something that will make poeple talk. Talk in parliament, in the press, everywhere other than on a date. Make sure it was an issue forgotten only because of lack of avenues for speculation. Fuel it with a pinch of imagination. So what if you cant verify every fact. After all, youve lost the previlege of being privy to secrets.
I find the papers very educating these days, now that I catch on to every word.
Two books that came out last week have been shrouded in controversy. Jaswant Singh, former Foreign Minister(and a good one at that), former Finance minister et all. His book started what will be remembered as the great mole hunt in Indian pollitics.
In a way my heart goes out to him. Poor guy. Nothing much to do. For all the pollitical instability, the BJP still seems lost. So he decided to do something different. And maybe attain pollitical immortality on the way.
Well, deep inside, I feel that he did sniff a mole. But then, nobodys (atleast nobody whos read all those hyper exagerated novels) pretending there are no spies in diplomacy. Whether Jaswant had proof is another question. So should he have gurgled it all out now. Now, when he cannot and is not going to do anything about it.

John Wright spent some excruciating summers in India, doing the hottest and hitherto regarded as the most thankless job in India. He slugged it out, bearing the slurs in the dressing room and the ignorance of the esteemed selection. Finally he gave up the ghost and left. Months later he comes out with his book 'Indian summers' which among other things criticises the selection policy and has a small paragraph about Dravids decision to declare, denying Sachin the unique distinction of being the first batsman in the world to score back to back double centuries. Again, did he need to? The selection policy is no news. Everyone who is not a selector has been saying the same thing all along. Then again, you bear the frustrations all the way because you are bound by a code of conduct, explicit, in Wright's case, that you need to resort to something like this to let the world know your side of the story.
But do you need to resort to sensationalism to sell (OK, accept it, thats the only thing that sells). There was a joke going around in America some years ago. "Hillary Cinton's book sold 8m copies. Bill's sold 16. Well, atleast its got some sex in it". After all these are the books that go down in history as famous.
And come to think of it, thats 24 m copies for not remembering anything for 8 years. After all its whats left unsaid that crystalises in these auto's. So do polliticians have the liberty of shutting up saying "Ill 'tell' you so".
Big men. Big ideas. Big money.