Wish Upon A Starr

Everyone has been full of praise for the Internet. Twice over, when the Starr report was released and again when the Clinton testimony was made public, the Net coped. There was no overload as feared even though an unprecedented number of people around the world logged on at the same time. Now spare some applause for Mumbai's enterprise. Never let it be said that this city misses an opportunity to make a buck and especially when no government intermediary is standing between opportunity and buck. Nari Hira showed great enterprise in putting the Starr report into print. Public interest was high and Hira thought newspapers had handled the explicit stuff much too coyly. There were no copyright problems, presumably, and the technology was at hand to move words from screen to paper rapidly. At Rs 100/- the hard copy of the Starr report is a steal as city bookshops and 5000 buyers on the first day recognised.

For some people, including the staid Strand bookstore, the Starr report is a record of our times, hencethe curiosity and purchases. Sure. A bit of true-life pornography doesn't harm sales either. Then there is the chance to look inside the White House and get to know Bill Clinton better. All these reasons would explain why is a second publisher has emerged and why someone is working on a Hindi edition. If the books go on doing well, who knows, Bollywood might get some ideas too. If there are more bucks in other documents on the Monica Lewinsky case, Mumbai will be sure to find them. Lawyers might be rivetted by the legalisms on both sides during the Clinton testimony. Lewinsky's own testimony has promise. Kenneth Starr could never have imagined his investigations would travel so far so profitably.

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