The passing of Sir Vidiadhar Naipaul has taken away a giant from the world of English literature. Like all else, writing too has undergone a sea-change and so have reading trends. So it may not be wrong to say the future may not see quite the likes of him, viewing the genre he belonged to; he remains in a class by himself. I have just published my book Omnium Gatherum, an omnibus of my writings. I had dedicated it to Naipaul whose quip, 'Writing for others is your job, I see. Why not write for yourself?' became the greatest source of my confidence and my temptation to be a writer.

In the words of Naipaul's official biographer Patrick French, I was "for many years the right hand of Murli Deora, Congress strongman in Bombay". I am now retired after four decades with Deora, and settled in a modest Borivali home. I had the privilege of crossing paths, and spending time, with the noted writer during his visits to India that resulted in two out of the three books that make Naipaul's most celebrated tomes on India. Naipaul, with an ancestry of indentured labour shipped to the Caribbean by colonial masters, devoted many of his writings to India and Indians but set foot in India first in 1962. That was when I ran into him. I was introduced to him by Chidananda Dasgupta, father of actor-turned director Aparna Sen (and grandfather of Konkona Sen) who had invited Naipaul to the Calcutta Film Society. I was delighted to meet him since I had just finished reading his first book, A House for Mr Biswas. He, on the other hand, was surprisingly modest and expressed genuine surprise on learning that I had indeed read his book. I asked him whether his visit was going to end in a book. He said he wasn't sure. And he wrote the first book of his trilogy on India, An Area of Darkness, two years later.