In Jaipur, With Mma Ramotswe

In her late thirties, and a few books into the series engaged to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and “by all accounts the finest mechanic in Botswana”, Mma Ramotswe is anchored in two certainties. That she is blessed to be a citizen of “the finest country in Africa”, and that fine manners and a good heart are the essentials of a fulfilling life. They are also her main tools in solving most of the cases that come to her. If she sometimes has regrets, this is one: “Nobody came to Botswana, because people just did not know about it. They had not heard. They just had not heard.”

They have now, and people are queuing up to sign up for Mma Ramotswe tours of the country that even sceptics of globalisation like Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz cite as one of the great successes in economic reform. They are also invading the bookstores and libraries: the six No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books so far have been translated into 36 languages and 10 million copies are in circulation in English. Miramax’s bought the film rights, says McCall Smith, and Anthony Minghella is finalising the television episodes.

“It is surprising,” agrees the fiftysomething professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh, this runaway popularity. But it seems: “Everybody identifies with Precious Ramotswe. People like the idea of a good character.”

McCall Smith is currently on a week-long hopover through India’s most luxurious resorts — in Jaipur and Shimla — “to finish the latest Mma Ramotswe”. Presumably we will be transported to Gaborone once again, in a gently unfolding sequence of domestic crises and professional successes, all produced at McCall Smith’s breathless word count — it is rumoured that he paces through his stories at 1000 words per hour. This speed accounts for his phenomenal output. He gives daily installments of 44 Scotland Street, a developing Edinburgh saga, to a local newspaper. And with The Sunday Philosophy Club, with its fortysomething, Edinburgh-based aesthete Isabel Dalhousie reflecting Mma Ramotswe’s moral concerns with meditations on Kant and the ethics of hypocrisy, he has begun yet another series.

Ethics is, in fact, more than McCall Smith’s day job. He has served as vice-chairman of Britain’s human genetics commission and as a member of the UN’s international bioethics commission. And Botswana too finds mention on his resume — he helped organise a law programme at its university.

McCall Smith has committed eight Mma Ramotswe books to his publisher, and the prospect of bidding goodbye to her is already troubling him. “I like my conversations with her,” he sighs, hinting at the possibility of extending their association. And in India as he writes into being a few more days in her life, another character’s rendezvous in the country is being planned. Isabel, the Edinburgh philosopher, is slated to visit Kerala in her fourth book, to investigate its spice market.

Not to Malgudi? “A great influence on me was R.K. Narayan,” says McCall Smith. “In fact, I am writing the introduction for a new American edition of his work.”

Private detectives may not knit together Malgudi days, but a similar lingering on basics is evident in the Mma Ramotswe and Dalhousie books: “Most of us are interested in the fundamental issues of how we live our lives.” The detective form gives him the space and extreme circumstances to pursue that objective: “It is a very, very flexible genre. You can write about anything. It has scope for strong character development, for a strong sense of place, for people’s lives to unfold.”

All of that, as Mma Ramotswe would remind him, over a cup of red bush tea.