2: Saba Naqvi, author, Shades of Saffron, talks about her tryst with gaumutra soap

Saba Naqvi’s eminently readable ‘Shades of Saffron’ combines straight reportage and in-depth analysis to present real insights into the rise of the BJP, which she has been covering since 1997. A first-person account of events as they happened that also goes deeper to examine the nature of our complex society, this book includes fascinating nuggets of information and great anecdotes too. Here, Naqvi talks about being a liberal Muslim woman journalist covering the BJP since the 1990s, about her tryst with gaumutra soap, and about such politicians as Vajpayee, Pramod Mahajan and Narendra Modi, whom she sees as a “solitary figure”.