Jeffrey Archer remembered in Mumbai as a brilliant storyteller with a deep love for India

A marvellous storytellerYEARS ago this brilliant writer and speaker Jeffrey Archer of course did a Literature Live evening at the Taj Lands End to a standing room only As always he had the audience in thrall At the QampA session a young boy in the audience asked him for advice on writing I will always remember his response and Irsquove paraphrased it here lsquoWrite what you know about Look at Jane Austen In her time the obsession was about mothers marrying off their daughters So in Pride and Prejudice she married off three daughters In Sense amp Sensibility she married off two daughters and in Emma she married off onersquo It had us rolling with laughter but you couldnt ignore the kernel of truth in it The world has lost a marvellous story tellerI will always remember his response and Irsquove paraphrased it here lsquoWrite what you know about Look at Jane Austen In her time the obsession was about mothers marrying off their daughters So in Pride and Prejudice she married off three daughters In Sense amp Sensibility she married off two daughters and in Emma she married off onersquoAmy Fernandes codirector Literature LiveA dear dear friendshipI FIRST met Jeffrey Archer nearly 20 years ago at a writersrsquo dinner alongside Bachi Karkaria Shobhaa De among others We hit it off right then In fact in July we my husband Kanwar Rameshwar Singh Jamwal and I visited him in the UK and had lunch alongside John Major David Suchet among many others After lunch he asked us my husband and I to stay and we watched the sun till 10 pm Now I think it was his swansongJeffrey was not maudlin or emotional but had a wry British humour This Britishness also shaped his passion for art which leant towards the contemporary I recall he didnt take much interest in the indigenous work of art I had gifted him ldquoI am very British you knowrdquo he told meIn fact he transformed our real life to be used in the book And Thereby Hangs A Tale 2010 in the story Caste Off It is one of the rare instances he used real names He loved many things like being an auctioneer and Bollywood He dearly wanted to make a film but it never quite came about Now I feel the onus is on me to fulfil that dreamIt was a beautiful friendship and this is a tragic personal loss But I will never tire of speaking of such a wonderful warm friendNisha JamVwal art curator columnistArcher everywhereTHROUGHOUT my career as a bookseller Irsquove sold over 10000 copies of his works with more than 6500 copies at Kitabkhana alone He is one of the Top 10 international selling authors at our bookstore A publisher had recalled an incident where a vendor of pirated books tried to sell Archer a copy of his book at the Kemps Corner traffic signal on the guarantee that it was by a bestseller A bemused Archer jokingly told his then publisher that he deserved royalty even for pirated copiesT Jagath COO KitabkhanaOldfashioned chutzpahJEFFREY Archer was rather like a character in one of his own novels in an adjective used by Homer to describe and even define Odysseus Archer was polytropos a man ldquoof many twistsrdquo a complicated man who constructed himself through a montage of imagination delusion deceit and plain splendid oldfashioned chutzpahRanjit Hoskote poet art critic cultural theorist and curatorPassionate fan baseWE have vivid memories of his visits to India the enormous crowds at Crossword stores especially at Aundh Pune where people were pressed against the glass shutters keen to see himHe loved his Indian readers and they loved him back with an affection that was extraordinary to witness He often spoke about India being home to some of his largest and most passionate fan base In all our interactions Mr Archer would tell us how special India was to him and how much our bookstores meant to him His warmth humour and the incredible excitement around every visit will always stay with usNidhi Gupta executive director Crossword BookstoresWords that never fadeLORD Jeffrey Archer has been one of my favourite storytellers So imagine my delight when the Taj Mahal Hotel brought the man behind those words into my world Lord Archer kept returning and I had the pleasure of meeting him on several of those visits during my tenure He would often be at Nalanda the muchloved bookshop at the hotel Itrsquos where I would often meet him sometimes alongside his friend Nisha JamVwalHe was drawn in by Nishas extraordinary life that he turned it into CasteOff his favourite short story from And Thereby Hangs a Tale collectionMy most treasured memory is hearing him give voice to his words He knew precisely where to pause what to leave unsaid and when a sentence had said enough A line he read has stayed with me it ended with lsquothe sun set on his young lifersquo Irsquove lost the exact words but never the feeling Perhaps thats the secret with great writersndashLong after weve forgotten the chapters and the words they leave us holding on to a sentence and a feeling that refuses to fadeNikhila Palat former Director PR Taj Mahal Hotel MumbaiGenuine affectionMy strongest memory of Jeffrey Archer is from a few years back when we were getting ready to publish his latest William Warwick novel It was a bit of a milestone for us as it marked his return to the HarperCollins list after quite a few years with Pan Macmillan What stuck me was how often hersquod bring up his earlier trips to India where hundreds of readers turn up for the launch You could tell that scale and the warmth of it had left a lasting impression on himIt was obvious that his affection for Indian readers was genuine He loved their energy the crowds and the incredible generosity he encountered here Itrsquos rare for an author to forge that kind of enduring bond with an audience across the world but he took immense pride in it and was visibly touched by the love he received whenever he returnedRahul Dixit SVP Sales HarperCollins IndiaCurated by Fiona Fernandez with inputs from Shriram Iyengar