How do you create a buzz about something? Here’s how. Hire a place which can hold a hundred people and invite 200. Preferably choose a place that has one entrance, is long and narrow, so that if your drink seems to have changed colour, it’s because it’s not yours but your neighbour’s. And the woman who just put her hand on your shoulder is not being excessively friendly but merely trying to make her way past you. Then turn the music on very loud so that people are shouting sweet nothings to each other. And as a final touch, ensure there aren’t enough bartenders so that everyone has to jostle everyone else to get a drink.

In short, create noisy chaos. That, in Bombay’s terminology, is ‘buzz’.

These thoughts came to me as we gasped for breath in the Tote bar at Mahalaxmi. The watering hole is obviously meant for the young because you reach it only by climbing a steep flight of stairs and if there’s a fire in there, may the quickest man win.

Anish Trivedi, man about town, used this unlikely venue for the launch of his first novel Call me Dan. I have a great deal of respect for Trivedi because years ago he chucked a lucrative career in New York or somewhere as a merchant banker and joined the ranks of those who make an honest living. He does radio for overseas markets, which has to be pretty honest considering that radio is media’s poor cousin. Then a couple of years ago the creative bug bit him, so he wrote a play, more or less about himself and acted in it, playing more or less himself.

At the book launch, I called him Dan, but he says the book’s not about him, though from what I remember about the book cover Dan wears radio earphones, has a bushy moustache, marbles in his mouth so he can speak in a particular way, a glass of wine to keep them lubricated and cigar to make them smoky. Or perhaps not.

As you can see, I didn’t buy a copy. I didn’t expect Anish to gift me one because being some kind of author myself I am aware that publishers not only give you funny money as royalty (unless you are Shobhaa De or Chetan Bhagat), they also give you a mere five free copies. The rest you buy. But there’s always hope that if you look serious enough, the publisher may mistake you for a critic, and post you a review copy. I am waiting. Penguin has my address.

Which brings me to a strange phenomenon. The other day I was at a corporate czar’s home, a place notable for the absence of any printed material except the financial papers. I finally spied a book on a side table and began looking through it. “Take it, take it,” my host said, “I have too many books. At least a dozen of them!” I wondered how many ties he had. Or socks. Or shoes.

He isn’t alone, of course. Many people in India think the buying of books as a foolish thing. Unless it’s a management tome whose brilliant tips will help you jump quick rungs of the corporate ladder. Or a cookery book whose recipes are good enough to eat.

But novels? You read them just once, why buy them? I buy them because I love the feel of a hard back, the smell of ink off its pages, the rustle of paper, the newness of it. Which is why I avoid libraries: how many grubby hands would have handled the copy you are now reading in bed?

So I’ll give Penguin a week. Then it’s off to Strand Bookstall to get Dan’s book. Oops! I called him that again.