India, Feb. 15 -- The Other Reader hasn't read a novel in nineteen years.

Once he read Rushdie and Sarat Chandra under hostel tube lights, Tolkien on overnight trains, Tagore on summer afternoons in Kolkata when the ceiling fan swirled the heavy humid air above him. This surprises people who know him now - the man whose shelves bend under the weight of business management and evolution, the Romans and the naked ape. Yes, I tell them. He used to read fiction.

On a July morning nineteen years ago, he stood in line for the final Harry Potter. He took the book home. He laid the hardback on the dining table, removed the dust jacket with the careful reverence of a man handling sacred objects. The house smelled of toast and impatience. The gir...