Narayana. My man Narayana. He is a great guy. Has been with me for close to thirty years.

Loyal and trustworthy, he is however a consummate actor. A master of the body language. And the star of a thousand anecdotes.

That he is a story teller par excellence we all knew but that he had been identified and invited to the Hyderabad Literary Festival was news to me. And I was as surprised as I was impressed.

Wow! Our friends at the HLF are taking their idea of making the fest more inclusive very seriously indeed, I told my wife when she informed me about Narayana’s sudden elevation into the orbit of literary dignitaries who were gracing this years’ HLF.

But this year’s Guest Country is Poland and the theme language is Urdu. So where does Narayana fit in, I asked my wife…still in a state of shock.

I have no idea, she admitted. The only thing I know is that his session where they were expecting just about twenty-twenty five kids to attend has been a sell out. And they’re now expecting over 50, she said.

They apparently had called to find out if the escalation in numbers was okay with their speaker.

I was impressed. Not only had the organisers expanded their scope and looked beyond the horizon…even the participants were obviously looking beyond the norm.

But I was also doubtful. And hesitant to believe everything I heard.

So I asked my wife to tell me exactly how she found out about our Man Friday’s new status.

Some lady from HLF called, she told me. And asked me to connect her to the staff member who was involved with the HLF event.

Now, since I had essentially made my company (after my long bout of ill health)  a one man mission, and had got rid of all staff except Narayana and Narasimha (my chauffeur who was on long leave) she figured out that the only person they wanted to speak to, had to be Narayana. QED.

How I figured out that it was not Narayana they wanted, that there was an obviously untrained events coordinator at the business end of the festival, and that the onus to conduct the Interactive Session based on an English Translation of a Polish Poem called The Locomotive fell on me, is a different story altogether.

But for those few moments that I believed that Narayana was scheduled to take centre stage…I was impressed. Truly impressed.

And even after realisation dawned…I am proud to say that while Narayana’s inclusion may have been momentary and virtually in my mind alone…I can see that the day is not far off…when raw talent will emerge as a natural winner, and the HLF will benefit from the contribution of yet to be discovered talent, and not just concentrate on the luminaires that clutter the social skies.