Celebrated Indian journalist Vir Sanghvi launched his autobiography A Rude Life: The Memoir in front of a packed house at the 40th Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) on Saturday, November 6.

The book, published by Penguin Viking and endorsed by the likes of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and Bollywood actor Shabana Azmi, details accounts of Sanghvi’s interactions with celebrities, actors & politicians as a journalist and brings out interesting nuggets of his life from his times spent primarily in India and the UK.

In between answering questions from a curious audience about his life in journalism and outside of it, and signing copies of the book for his ardent followers, Sanghvi also revealed how edgy he felt while waiting to interview former Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, aboard a plane for the first time, and he needed to conjure up something special every time to prompt India’s reigning Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan to open up to his questions.

“I interviewed him (Bachchan) several times, and every dialogue was different because there was always something new happening in this busy celebrity’s life. The one thing that never changed though was his politeness. He is the kind of a superstar who would walk a journalist to their car after an interview,” Sanghvi said of Bachchan while reminiscing some of his best stories and moments from his four and half decade-long career that has seen him work as print and TV journalist, an author, columnist and a talk show host.

Sanghvi spoke fondly about his life as a student – from his days in Mayo College, Ajmer, India, to his college life in Oxford – allof which form an integral part of the prose of this 416-page story that details all that he’s experienced over time.

“I am not a rude man. The name stuck on because of the food column I wrote,” Sanghvi said while explaining how this book was born purely out of despair to do something meaningful during India’s first Covid-19 lockdown last year. “The only thing I knew well, I realised was myself, and that is what this book is all about.”

Described by Penguin Random House India as ‘an explosively entertaining memoir that details one of the most eventful careers in Indian journalism’, A Rude Lifeis available at SIBF 2021.