October 11: Saturday night provided cause for double celebration for Behram Contractor aka Busybee: it was the eve of his sixty-eighth birthday, and it marked the launch of his first book From Bombay to Mumbai at the Oberoi Towers' Lancers Bar.``A long overdue book,'' said his wife Farzana Contractor, who was instrumental in publishing it. The 256-page book, divided into 12 sections, has the best of Busybee's columns from 1996 and 1997. The illustrations are done by Mario Miranda and the foreword is by Dom Moraes. Behram and his wife decided against compiling the best of his columns in the last 32 years, as that would have been difficult to format. ``People kept asking me for such a book, but I never had the time,'' he said.Many media magnates attended Saturday's function, including Magna's Nari Hira, Blitz founder-editor Russi Karanjia and his daughter and editor of Cine Blitz Rita Mehta. Russi and Shabana Azmi launched the book. Behram said he didn't have the time to write a book afresh.``Besides, it requires special talent to write a book,'' he added. But this doesn't mean the Contractors won't remain in the publishing business. ``Farzana can still be in publishing, they need not be just my books,'' Behram pointed out.But the czar of column-writing doesn't believe columns are vital to a
newspaper. He said: ``At the Afternoon, we try and avoid columns, because sometimes there's no space for them as news has to be our priority. Columns don't sell a newspaper.'' But Shabana Azmi pointed to his columns as an exception, and said they had become a very vital part of the metropolis.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.