Middle Sex Mannerisms

Sunil K Poolani

Can’t help it; howsoever one tries to do otherwise. Sorry. It might sound anti-feministic (whatever that means), but the truth is women are on the rise in publishing, writing and, what else, wearing the pant not just in the house but in the office, too.

Hate me (I can hear that ever-flaming protests). But, then, I am not against the ones who put their souls where their soles are in. I mean, who have done their respective and painstaking legwork and have done remarkable work; they are, nevertheless, dismissed for not being, ahem, chick.

Chick, one said? Understatement. Well, then comes, chick-lit. And there is no dearth of that nefarious clan; even this ever-cribbing publisher has published one or two of that ilk. But, one gets penitent, like a puppy that has swallowed her master’s socks.

Last things first. There has been this hype about a book called You Are There, by a twenty-something called Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, for almost a year, on several offline and online avenues. Then, hype sells. More, when there is PR. And this hype got delivered last week, in print. I held the book in my hands, saw the content and tried to read the style of writing and, what to say, I had to sympathise: for her naivety, for her lack of maturity. She has guts, nonetheless: she was quoted in an interview that she thinks she is a great writer.

She should be. Write well she does, in bits and pieces, but her debut book, which has no direction to claim one, reeks of self-confidence sans depth. It lacks of a trajectory her peers had left behind for her, including her supposed-heroine, Jane Austen. Austen took time to write; she is today dubbed a chick-lit litterateur by cultural tsarinas is another story. Austen had substance, and what Ms Madhavan lacks is class; but our chicks find publishers who are convinced there are suckers who would lap all these scoop up without even raising an eyebrow. Ahem.

Do not blame these young aspirants. A publisher puts his money where his, well, whatever is. What if it is bad sex writing (“flutter in panties”)? What amuses me is why do these same publishers give a step-motherly (see, I am not anti-feminist) treatment to their own authors who not just write well but do path-breaking literature, fiction or non-fiction. (I am talking as an ordinary reader; I too do the same mistake; kill me.)

Two recent books come to my mind. A Journey Interrupted by the spirited but unassuming Farzana Versey is the first. Versey struggles to keep her sanity in a land (Pakistan) that could have been hers, if her peers might have decided to settle when the subcontinent was divided by the Brits after they used and abused all what was worth of us. Her writing is dense at times, but the fluidity and versatility are amazing at times when she is at her compassionate best when Pakistanis tease of her ‘dual’ identity — I could have killed them if I were Versey.

The crime of Versey is that she lives a ‘double’ life. She is a pariah in Pakistan; “what are you doing in India?” She is a pariah in India, too; “what are you doing in India?” Needs guts — to have sanity. And to write good English. To explore the travesties of a manmade tamasha. And, in the end, bringing out an outstanding travelogue that just does not explore barren lands, but bruised minds.

The second is 3, Zakia Mansion by the talented Gouri Dange. Hers is a story about one Shaheen, who has to go through tumultuous tribulations. The style of the narrative is marvellous, the prose poignant, vivifying vividly the protagonist’s trials, oscillating between the past and the present. It is about desires and disappointments, the vicariousness and vicissitudes. Moving. Read it.

By the way, I read in a magazine the other day that women head most of the big publishing houses in India today. So, hello, women should not complain that they are under-represented. But which women are represented? The ones that have a life of a melting ice-cream, mind you. And not the ones who leave a sour taste in the mouth. But the latter make you realise what reality is, and they will stand the test of time.

I should not have brought this up, but, again, I could not resist this; pardon me. Just realised that Ms Madhavan is the daughter of N S Madhavan, one of the most phenomenal fiction writers who changed the course of Malayalam literature, and someone I admire till today.

Grow up, chicks, mature up, before mamas have to hatch their eggs again. Life is not short.

Postscript

My experiments with distributors’ truth continue. The other day, one mercifully told me: “Instead of publishing all these books, why can’t you supply us with notebooks?” Notebooks? “Yes, with an attractive cover; and, yes, you can add one quotable quote in every page, since you wanted to be literary…”

I salute that soul.

-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Of raw life, math and show-off

BOOK WORM

Sunil K Poolani

Raw writing

Rereading Charles Bukowski’s Post Office after several years, one was remorseful to see the effort and pain our celebrity authors take to safeguard their feel-good reputation, to conveniently bury a ‘dubious’ past, if any.

If Bukowski, that ever-so-iconoclastic writer, chose to meticulously demolish his own reputation in almost all his autobiographical books and fiction, our own trapeze artists hog the Page 3 circuit, putting on their best-ever smiles to conceal their bad divorces or past plagiarisms.

Born in Germany in 1920 to an American father and German mother, Bukowski grew up in Los Angeles, enduring a childhood and youth marked by bullying from other boys and regular beatings from his abusive father. If Bukowski smelled of cheap liquor, our ilk reeked of expensive French perfumes; if Bukowski chose to wear his jeans and T-shirt for more than a week, our tribe entered into designer suits five times a day; if…

But Bukowski wrote much better than all our con artists put together. He won millions of admirers for his supremely visceral style; a style that is meant to be experienced more than read. Good writing is not about champagne and caviar, but local brew and boiled potatoes.

Math and fiction

I have just finished an interesting book. A Certain Ambiguity (Penguin Viking), by Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal. Mathematics is like any other stream of arts, be it literature, performing arts or plastic arts. There is an infinity that is mind-boggling and there lies the beauty; a realisation that more you analyse and solve the mysteries of the game, the more the awareness that it is vastly and hugely endless. Galileo, Plato and our own Ramanujam realised it, so do most of the contemporary mathematical brains.

One reflective conclusion that can be drawn out of mathematics is how much ever ambiguous it might seem, the more you delve deep into it, with a pinch of modesty and decorum, and more are the chances of solving them and, in the process, enjoying them. It is true that mathematics, like any other art form, is losing its relevance; precisely for that reason this attempt to revive and regenerate interest in this stream of science should be welcomed.

Question of existence

There are people who publish books. There are people who sell books. And there are people who really read books. Finally, there are people who pretend to read books. You can see the last ilk all over around you: in malls, in snazzy coffee shops, in airports… Nothing worrisome, as long as the books are sold (see, I am a publisher).

What amuses me is the kind of books they carry with them these days. No, not Archer, Huntington, Sachs or even our desi Chetan Bhagat or Robin Sharma, but great classicists. I read a report sometime back which said George W Bush has been advised by his spin doctors to carry Albert Camus’ The Outsider while on vacation so that he will look an intellectual.

A White House spokesman said Bush “found it an interesting book and a quick read,” and talked about it with aides. “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but we discussed the origins of existentialism.”

I haven’t started laughing since then. The French existentialist should be turning in his grave, crying why he wasted his life writing all those classics.

Tailpiece

An editor in a publishing house was fed up of a mercurial assistant editor. He summoned her into his cabin and told her, “Hello, the way things are going I don’t think you we will be working together from now on.” The assistant’s response: “Congratulations, Sir, so where are you joining?”

Sunil K Poolani is Executive Director and Publisher, Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. Write to him at poolani@gmail.com

-- Deccan Chronicle / The Asian Age

Write Stuff. Right Stuff

Sunil K Poolani

Though I have written — and continue to write — for several national and international print and electronic journals, I have never received the kind of responses I get from the readers of the paper you are now holding in your hands.

The responses have been a torrent, if not mind-blowing, and they are of all kinds: prospective authors trying to send their manuscripts, criticisms (reiterating that my writing is pretentious), overwhelmingly patronising…

But I was touched when, last week, a Chakravarti from a small Andhra Pradesh town, wrote to me, requesting, I should bestow on him tips to improve his writing skills, and tell him which all books would eventually ensure that. He wanted to write a ‘good manuscript’.

I, a college dropout, am hardly a person to help him, I told him as much, but promised I would share some thoughts that had cropped up while delighting in some good writings that I have come across in my short life.

For me, George Orwell is god; he will always be. Apart from his 1984 and Animal Farm, those great political expositions in literature vivifying the traps of both capitalist and communist hegemonies, I was really fascinated with his non-fiction, which talked about the English language and its use.

For any writer worth her or his salt, Politics and the English Language, Why I Write and Writer and the Leviathan are must-reads that should be imbibed into the system. When I compiled the above three essays for a volume one year ago, Ramachandra Guha wrote in the Foreword: “[Orwell’s] clarity of language, his moral courage, and his principled independence from party politics set him apart from the other writers of his generation, and from those who have followed since.”

Orwell was always consistent with his claim that prose degenerated into purple passages whenever it lacked political purpose. And as Orwell once said: “[English] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” He died an untimely death, and that is a pity.

Now, many readers may think this is a devious digression — from someone as meticulous and marvellous as Orwell to, well, a carefree and iconoclastic Hunter S Thompson. But Thompson, mainly due to his irreverence to everything around him, shaped the way I thought and wrote. And I was particularly in awe of the company (of the New Journalism ‘movement’) he kept.

A great collection that I still admire is The New Journalism, edited by Tom Wolfe and EW Johnson. This comprised the best ‘literary’ journalistic pieces I have ever read, written by — apart from Thompson and Wolfe — Rex Reed, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote. Fully doped, Thompson wrote The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, a seminal sports article; it still remains a marvel in both journalism and literature — a rare achievement.

Thompson’s much-publicised work is the Fear and Loathing series. Nevertheless, his short works, published mostly posthumously, really stand out. In The Mailbox he talks about his confrontation with the FBI and he sums the article thus: “Never believe the first thing an FBI agent tells you about anything — especially not if he seems to believe you are guilty of a crime.”

If you are in the august company of Orwell and/or Thompson, who needs to dope? Or a stiff drink?

Tailpiece

I used to work with a national weekly some years ago. We were bringing out a special on Orwell on his 50^th death anniversary. A trainee sub-editor was asked to make the page in which we were reproducing Politics and the English Language. When I was checking the page before sending it to the press I realised there was something amiss in the Orwell classic. What happened, I asked the scribe. His reply: “Well, the whole article did not fit in the page, so I had to edit it.” Now, that is what I call guts.

-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

End of Imagination?

Sunil K Poolani

While growing up reading good literature, it was not books that really fascinated us, but literary journals in which not just stories, poems and essays by the crème-de-la-crème of the writing world appeared, but those publications also carried analyses of and interviews with great writers, and reviews of their books. Armed with those journals, we debated and literally fought for hours, days, weeks and months together about the contents.

In those pre-liberalisation days, we could not afford the price of those journals (between Rs 2 and Rs 15), and at least ten poor souls use to savour one single copy; by the time that copy did that tortuous round, it resembled an opponent in a Schwarzenegger movie: pulp.

Then, unlike today, many large-selling publications from the stable of big media organisations devoted a fair amount of space for good writing. In English, there were the venerated Illustrated Weekly and the Bombay magazine; both closed shop long time back, thank you. But it is heartening to know that some regional languages still follow that tradition — like Mathrubhumi in Malayalam and Desh in Bengali.

Also, there were these brilliant ‘little’ magazines that originated, since centuries, in far-flung areas like Shantiniketan and Karimnagar, espousing issues as diverse as Robindra Sangeet and Naxalism. They had the lives of fireflies but they burnt bright when they were alive, and every death encouraged another firefly to take shape and shine.

In English, apart from the government-sponsored daft efforts, there were, in the last two decades, some great journals that made a deep dent in literary minds. Civil Lines was one. Founded by the indomitable Ravi Dayal, Civil Lines swiftly became the abode of quintessential new Indian writing. Later, it was edited by the talented duo, Mukul Kesavan and Kai Friese. Nonetheless, like its brethren across the spectrum, it too died an immature death, but not before leaving an indelible mark — challenging the till-then norms by refusing to publish to a set schedule.

There were also similar literary endeavours (some still do exist, just in case) like Chandrabhaga, Biblio, Kavya Bharati, International Gallerie and Yatra. All these followed the model of their international ‘Bible’: the esteemed Granta, the UK-based journal which continues to whet many a connoisseur’s taste for new and good writing across the globe.

Today, literary magazine is a diminishing trade and a difficult passion to indulge in; no serious publisher in the world would risk burning her/his fingers in it today. In the last four years, the third issue of my ambitious ‘quarterly’ journal, Urban Voice, just came out. I, nevertheless, would like to bring it out periodically.

So that is why I watch with rapt admiration when I come across two amazing ventures, Atlas and Little Magazine. The former is brought out by the talented poet and prose writer Sudeep Sen and the latter by a dynamic duo, Antara Dev Sen and Pratik Kanjilal.

Little Magazine has, so far, stood the test of time, and has carved a niche of its own — offering, issue after issue, some of the best original writings in English and translations from even remote Indian tongues. Atlas is just two issues old, and Sen was explaining to me the vicissitudes of all kinds while producing a volume of this oeuvre. “It’s a tough game, unless you have loads of money.”

Hope these last vestiges of intellectual sanity live on in an arid land of crass commercialisation.

Tailpiece

C P Scott, the founder editor of The Manchester Guardian, once said: “News is sacred, opinion is free.” If our newspapers hardly believe in reporting news and resort to concocted opinions, a new breed of Indian novels is today banking on contemporary issues and polity for cheap, titillating fictionalisation. What next? I will leave it to you.

-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Publish your dream book yourself

Brian de Souza

Sunday, DNA, Mumbai, July 13, 2008 03:46 IST

Or you can contact some of the city’s small publishing houses who could make your novel a bestseller

He wanted to become a filmmaker but instead landed up being a homeopathic doctor. And several years into his practice, a story that a patient told him inspired him to put pen to paper and a manuscript Saturn and I, written over many weekends and sometimes well into the night, became a reality. But when Shailendra Vaishampayan, 31, sent his manuscript to the big publishing houses, he got either reject slips or no response at all. “One publishing house even asked me for a large sum of money,” he recalls. But Vaishampayan wasn’t going to give up. “It isn’t easy to get published if you don’t have the contacts, money and the PR machinery to get catch the media’s attention,” he said

Even in this age of the Internet and six-figure advances, a slew of small publishers are attempt ing at carving their own niche. Frog Books in Mumbai has been able to successfully harness the Internet to sell a range of non-fiction books. When he started out five year ago, Sunil K Poolani, Frog Books’ publisher, says the big names look only for marketable names when there is “actually quite a lot of talent that could be harnessed”.

And though he admits that he had done vanity publishing in the past, Poolani says he has been able to tap talent that may have never made it. A case in point is a book by John Mowat, a foreigner staying in India who wrote Strangers Ourselves-Paul Theroux’s Adventures.
“Today, I sell most of my non-fiction via the net through Amazon where I have my own account,” he says. There are also publishers like Zubaan who focus on niche novels written by women. By keeping overheads down and and cutting corners wherever possible, these small outfits are able to offset their expenses and sometimes earn a small profit. Preeti Gill, senior editor, Zubaan, says that for small publishers, it can help if a book they publish is a hit. In Zubaan’s case, the book written two years ago by Baby Halder and published by Zubaan, gave them a lot of mileage. According to Gill, having a niche can help because some publicity comes through word of mouth.

A Google search for Indian literary agents throws up names of publishing outfits, some of whom offer self-publishing services, editing resources, ghost-writing etc, for anything ranging from memoirs, small stories, hobby books to even poems, a category that is difficult to sell. Frog Books has a separate imprint just for poetry: Pe

Some small outfits are known to take money from a new writer who then earns a small royalty on the basis of the sale. Print runs are small -typically not more than a few thousand — and a reprint may be unlikely. In Vaishampayan’s case, an idea struck him when he dropped by a road-side seller near his clinic. “If I can get this book printed on my own, I will need a channel to distribute it. So why not use these guys who sell books on the pavement?”

Having decided to publish the book himself. Vaishampayam located a printing press and commissioned 1,050 copies of his own book. He got in touch with Jamalbhai, who heads the Newspaper Agents Welfare Association and runs a few bookshops himself. “I was eager to help him and so have stocked 20 copies of his book,” he said. To help coordinate with book sellers, Vaishampayan roped in Sushant, a long time patient who read Saturn and I and liked the plot. This informal network called Pavement Publishers, the name that one of his patients suggested, is beginning to go beyond Mumbai. “When you sell on the pavement, you may not always get the printed price of the book,” says Vaishampayan. Vaishampayan has now been contacted by two women writers keen to write books. It seems as if his dream will be fulfilled very soon.
d_brian@dnaindia.net

In search of the new Rushdie

Joanna Lobo

Tuesday, DNA, Mumbai, July 29, 2008 03:52 IST

There's no dearth of new fiction writers, but what's missing is quality

There's a new breed of young, though relatively unknown writers, who are aiming to dislodge the Salman Rushdies and Jhumpa Lahiris from their pedestal. “The time is ripe to make our mark,” says Anjum Hasan, author of Lunatic In My Head. Her book was one of the finalists at the recent Crossword Book Awards. Though she did not win, the feedback she received was unexpected.

The past few months have seen an unprecedented number of books being launched by Indian writers in English. And while all may not achieve the same fame as Arundhati Roy did with her God Of Small Things, the trend is a positive one.

Today, publishing houses are churning out books by the dozen. But there is a catch: Some of these books would not have passed through editors a decade ago. So, have the basic rules of publishers changed?

"Of course it has. Over the last 10 years, publishing houses have opened shop here. An acute lack of good or even imaginative writing has not dampened their spirits in an attempt to tap the local market. They have to publish and promote run-of-the-mill work, which is in abundance" fumes Sunil Poolani, publisher at Frog Books.

So have publishing houses turned a blind eye to style and prose? Namita Devidyal (The Music Room) does not think so. "A well-written good story will always find acceptance," she says.

The majority of readers are no longer that judgmental. For instance, while critics trashed Chetan Bhagat's The Three Mistakes Of My Life, the masses loved it.

VK Karthika, publisher at Harper Collins, credits Chetan with the birth of a new of generation writers. "...People who speak and write English as their first language. They are reckless, brave and willing to experiment." Ultimately, it’s the reader who decides the 'saleability' of a book. Karthika says, "Readers are willing to try out new styles, and are not limited to literary pieces." With more competition, publishers believe that things can only better.
l_joanna@dnaindia.net

The name is Faulks, Sebastian Faulks

By Sunil K Poolani

Devil May Care: A James Bond Novel

Sebastian Faulks (Writing as Ian Fleming)

Penguin

Price: 395; Pages: 295

When I was in the boarding school, James Bond novels were banned. The nuns thought Bond was full of whisky and women and, in all their Biblical simplicity, did not want us to get influenced by Agent 007. Needless to say, we read the Ian Fleming classics in the sly — this was much before our mofussil city talkies started showing the legendary Bond movies.

So it thrilled me when I read Sebastian Faulks short biography: “…the books were banned at his school, but he read them by torchlight under the sheets.” Faulks is no rookie. He is the author of the much-acclaimed novels like Human Times and Birdsong, first an epic and the second sold more than three million copies.

After Fleming’s death, and when Hollywood is still regurgitating the Bond movies to charm the secret agent’s aficionados, Faulks comes as a saviour to millions of Bond admirers across the world. Faulks, you will realise, is the best person, as you savour the book, to recreate the magic created by Fleming.

One may argue why Faulks set the story of the present-day Bond (in this post 9/11 terror attack days) in the former USSR days. In Devil May Care’s case the plot unfolds in the Cold War days. But, as you would know most of the old Bond stories were set in the fifties, sixties and seventies — and Faulks, too, follows suit. Hello, there is nothing wrong in it, as one should realise Bond is not an evergreen hero, let alone immortal.

To be frank, after a long time Devil May Care is one book that hooked me from page one. Seriously. The thriller starts on a very promising note: a murder, that of drugs dealer Hashim. He was killed in a peculiar manner: his tongue was pierced. That lead leads to an intriguing and devastating ploy that a psychopathic schemer is planning. His name is Gorner with a monkey-like left paw, which he is ashamed of, nevertheless.

Gorner is one of the best brains the world could boast of, but only for devastating consequences. Naturally, Bond has been deputed to hunt him down and also to scuttle a sinister plan that would wreck the western world, especially Britain. If Gorner can’t stand anything British, Bond is a proud Briton, all set to save his homeland from the scum of the world.

In between, as it should be (like any Bond book or movie) comes in a lady in armour: Scarlett. She, nonetheless, comes under several aliases (including posing as her ‘twin sister’ who never exists) at different points of time as the book progresses.

But naturally, after a rollercoaster ride-type narrative till the end, Bond survives, and discovers, at the fag end of the book, that Scarlett is Bond’s colleague. But, alas, Garner, escapes. Obviously, Faulks plans a sequel to this book, and it is not anyone’s guess that Gorner will reappear; maybe in several books to come.

Devil May Care has been apparently written to celebrate the centenary of Fleming’s birth on 28 May 2008 and is, sans doubt, a deft furtherance of Bond’s charming legacy. And Faulks is a true inheritor of Fleming’s Midas touch.

Final things finally: do not expect a path-breaking literature here; it is at the best a great thriller; a great bedtime read when you get fed up of pelvic gyrations of Bipasha Basu.

And, yes, I get a feeling that Faulks, if he hones his skills further, which I am sure he will, can be a better writer than Fleming. Blasphemous it may sound, but it is the truth.

-- Sahara Time

Off the Shelf

With the Tiger

Inez Baranay

Harper Collins

Price: 295

Pages: 305

One who grew up with classics storytellers like Somerset Maugham, this impressive volume leads you on a trip down nostalgia lanes. For, With the Tiger is a graceful retelling of Maugham’s classic The Razor’s Edge. Where Baranay succeeds is the way she intersperses Maugham’s characters in Indian context with such brave and unwavering way, without losing the girth and grip of the narrative, cogitative most of the times. Baranay, as she admits, has followed Maugham’s structure exactly and named her characters for his. Brief: The charming young Larry (along with a host of other characters) returns as Australians; his life-altering occurrence is not as an underage enlistee in WWI, but during a teenage backpacking trip to India, where he converts himself into a mysterious hermit. A racy read, this is a worthy addition to your literary vocabulary.

— Sunil K Poolani

Guardian of the Dawn

Richard Zimler

Penguin Books

Price: 350

Pages: 358

Unlike any other year, the last two years have seen a gamut of historical novels set in India. After Rimi B Chatterjee’s The City of Love, here comes Zimler’s Guardian of the Dawn, equally rich in talking about the atrocities and vengeance of colonial India. Zimler, nevertheless, takes a daring turn: he vivifies the Catholic Inquisition in Goa (we Indians, fearfully, never discussed this before, to remain politically correct), and how Hindus or immigrant Jews were strangled by executioners or burnt alive in public. Zimler presents a wide canvass of devotion and discrimination, peppered with lots of historical research and passion. A veritable treat (the beginning may put many readers off, but as the novel progresses it becomes unputdownable), this novel is an enchanting and authoritative retelling of Othello. Zimler, an internationally-acclaimed author, has absolute command over the language which drags the readers into the realms of a barbaric system that we conveniently try to forget. Impressive.

— Sunil K Poolani

-- Sahara Time

Scratch thy back, get noticed

By Sunil K Poolani

A disconcerting although dominant lobby is functioning overtime in the (figuratively speaking) surreptitious and serpentine corridors of publishing in India. Disquieting, yes, but it seems this trend — the dividing line between publishing and journalism getting almost imperceptible — is here to stay.

There is hardly anything erroneous when these two streams of creativity (ahem) getting together to enrich each other’s causes, but that is not the case, if some recent incidents or trends are anything to go by.

In the last few years, publishing has grown magnanimously, and there was, and is, a crying need to find good people to run the show. Journalists, disgruntled or not by seeing the apathetic profession they are in, filled that need, to some extent. And this ilk now dictates what should get published and what should not; akin to choosing your favourite columnists or contributors for newspapers.

That is still understandable. What becomes an eyesore is that these writers, who do moonlight for newspapers as reviewers or consultant editors, dictate which book should be promoted and which authors should get interviewed. It’s a clique, nebulous at that. They, today, make or unmake new authors; they decide, whatever the quality of the book in question may be, whether to denigrate or promote it. And their brethren in other publications too follow suit, lest they will fall off the radars.

To quote one, there is this one group in Mumbai (like in Delhi and Kolkata) comprising mostly journalists, who churn out books like they write 600-word pieces for newspapers. The team endorses each other’s work, provided you scratch their back and, in turn, you can be happy to see your name and picture in print.

What happens when one ‘reneges’? Oh, hell, you would be branded a misfit, untouchable… and this ilk will ensure your book and the ones published by the authors friendly to you get denounced or, worse, ignored.

This, if you are a writer. Well, if one is a publisher, who is an ex-journalist, writer of sorts and a reviewer of books, then you had it. Ask me. Some time back I reviewed a book of a journalist-writer’s novel. I did a judicious job, but the writer was quite upset that I did not praise him to the skies, so he shot off letters to the editors in the paper, shouting, I should be, from then on, debarred from writing for the paper in question. The novel sank without a trace, but the simmering feeling, inside the ambitious novelist, still exists.

Now, this would seem to be a complete debacle of the cultural zeitgeist. Since I had a journalist background every friend of mine in that profession has, I have just realised, a book in her or him. So, can I ever say no to them when they suggest that I should read their magnum opus and publish it? No. But what if the work is bad and it will burn my pocket deficiently? (Of course, they will never part-compensate if the book would bomb.)

Then you go on and say no. Then you had it. The coterie will ensure that there wouldn’t be any interviews with the authors of the books that you would eventually publish and they will, in their wisest capacity, try to stop any reviews of the probable books of others.

Now I know what an incestuous world means and journalism is literature in hurry.

Tailpiece

A friend of mine in publishing told me this story. His company has been publishing an astrologer’s book for something like twenty years. A new editor took charge and she wanted to scrap the soothsayer’s books everlastingly as his popularity was on the decline. So she shot off a letter to the astrologer: “Dear Sir, as you would have, of course, anticipated, hereafter we would not require any new books from you. Have a nice day!”

-- Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Launch Pad

By Sunil K Poolani

Book launches are important as book publishing. Old hat. But what is new is that launches have today become venues where everything else is discussed except books; not even about the book in question which is supposed to be getting ‘launched’.

Predictably, these books launches are now occasions where people, who might have not read anything other than Mills and Boon or Bible, gather — people who do not understand the difference between a bar of soap and a book. Book launches have also become places where the who’s who of the glitterati and chatterati of the city assemble, flaunting their Armani suits or Ritu Beri salwar-kameezs.

These pretentious people only get attracted or want to be seen there for just one reason: if the author is a celebrity or at least s/he is the offspring of one, and/or if the person who launches the book is a great figure. Like? The recent launches of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s daughter’s book or Jeffrey Archer’s multi-city book promotion tour.

I normally do not attend book launches precisely for the above reasons. And I do not even recommend that to the authors of my own books as launches hardly contribute to the sales of the books. They are at best a vanity in exercise that costs money for no rhyme of reason.

Last week, nevertheless, I attended two book launches at Oxford Bookstore in Mumbai, a great bookstall to have such events as the people who run it cherish and cultivate the value of books, good and great books. Not trash.

The first one was Farzana Versey’s tremendous and gutsy effort. The book, titled A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan, was launched by the indomitable Mahesh Bhatt and Indo-Pak expert Ritu Dewan. Versey’s book is a daring attempt: single lady, Muslim and Indian travelling to the heartlands of Pakistan to explore why India is still obsessed with a nation formed by Jinnah. But why did she choose Pakistan as her subject? For that reason, why are all so-called secular Muslims in India still obsessed with our cousins across the border? I asked her. Her answer was quite simple: “Only because Pakistan is our neighbour and Pakistanis are our brothers and sisters.”

Versey’s book is not a conformist travelogue; it delves into the Pakistani mind rather than the land. It explores that complex society, and Versey also finds herself struggling with her own identity.

When Bhatt is invited for an event, there is no dearth of controversy, no scarcity of sound-bites. But at this launch he was quite serene, was direct to the point, and yes, without making any provoking statements, he was making good sense. And that’s how a book launch should be.

The next one was Prasad Ramasubramanian’s novella, Raising the Bat. Inevitably, the book is about cricket and the 27-year-old writer lived and breathed cricket since the time he touched a bat as a kid. He is quite well versed in all cricket statistics and has never missed a match in action, either on the ground or on the telly.

Acclaimed actor Tom Alter was supposed to be the chief guest, but the previous day his house in Mussourie was burgled and he had to rush there. So the book was launched by the legendary cricketer Nari Contractor, who captained India in the sixties.

Contractor confessed that he has never read a book and has made it a point to not read one ever. Fair enough. But there could not have been a better choice for the book launch as he travelled down memory lanes, peppering with one anecdote after another. The launch was moderated by the best-selling author Murzban F Shroff of the Breathless in Bombay fame.

Good evenings before you hit a bottle of chilled beer.

A confession. I was getting tired and bored of the column I am presenting to you, readers, every week. But, then, I am getting damn good mails and responses from discerning readers. And, yes, I am getting more brickbats than bouquets. Due to which I shall continue.

— Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Cry, Beloved Books

By Sunil K Poolani

Go to the roots

While releasing some of my recent titles and trying to convince the distributors to take up the copies for putting them up on the bookshelves, they told me bluntly: “Pal, we wanted to tell you this earlier; since you are an old friend we did not want to disappoint you, then. But, now, to tell you the truth, the kind of books you publish, well, there are not many takers, thank you. Why do you publish fiction? And poetry! You should be out of your mind to do that in today’s climate.”

And what should I publish? Pat came the reply: dictionaries, ‘how to learn alphabets’, colouring books for kids, cookery books, or if you I am rich enough, publish coffee table books by celebrity cooks, tinsel stars, businessmen…

I was about the rest the case and disappear into thin air, but they reassured me: “Ok, fiction is fine if there is sex, stunt or drama in it. Something scintillating, you know. Can you do that?”

I am still thinking.

End of hype and hoopla?

The market feedback tells me that the much-hyped books by Shobhaa De and Chetan Bhagat are not doing well as the publishers thought they would be. Of course, they are bestsellers by any standards in this dog-eat-dog world of publishing, but it seems their respective publishers overestimated their brand value. The result? Unsold copies in the repository.

I don’t know how true these findings are, but the feeling I get from readers — which include laymen who pretend to be reading — that they too are fed up of ploughing through these exercises in vague. Does that mean the mindset of the ‘thinking’ and ‘reading’ Indian readers in English is changing? For good? Time will tell. But, at least for now, the publishers are not complaining, as they are laughing all the way to their respective banks. Ditto, the ever-green ‘people’s’ authors.

Rise of regionalism

Reports from the real connoisseurs of good literature and writing suggest that if the English-reading pretentious clienteles’ range and depth are receding, that is not the case with regional languages. Good works published in languages like Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali are on the rise. This, at a time when no one in a local train in Mumbai will risk reading a regional language newspaper. Why? Inferiority complex. What if they do not understand the difference between Becket and a bucket.

Indian fiction soaring

Just savoured a good book by an unassuming Indian writer: Saikat Majumdar’s Silverfish. The title of the book could not have been more apt. Like silverfish that nibbles away precious printed words, leaving a whitish trail, Calcutta, the city of neither joy nor love, gnaws the already-pathetic and morose lives of two protagonists, separated by two centuries.

Silverfish is melancholic testimony of a debauched land (in this case Bengal) inundated and infested not just by age-old religious stupidities (as in a parallel plot that vivifies the life of Kamal) but also of a skewed polity in the name of a redundant ideology called communism (as in the other narrative in which the ‘hero’ is Milan Sen).

Give it a try; you will never get disappointed.

Tailpiece

The damage management books have done to today’s yuppies is showing. An acquaintance-marketing executive told me recently: “As C K Prahalad said, what we need is a paradigm shift.” I am sure Prahalad would not have said something stupid like this. But I am still wondering what that sentence means. If you have an idea please enlighten me.

— Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

A Snake Pit Called Publishing and Other Stories

By Sunil K Poolani

I started publishing with just Rs 2,000 in hand; was fed up of journalism and I ventured into it as I loved books, wanted to be with books and wanted to hold books on to my chest.

It was a tough game; it is even today. And as I ventured into it I realised what a murky dog-eat-dog world it is. I am not ruing, thank you. In my initial days, I did vanity publishing, and I did cover some bit of the damages. But all these things did not help in the long run. The question of getting money from the intricate corridors of the distributors’ and bookstalls’ moneyboxes was not at all easy. And I eventually learnt that there is only one tribe that benefit from publishing: distributors.

I am not complaining, though. I am skin deep into this and no way can I get out of these murky waters, at least till that time I clear all the dues. Nevertheless, I do enjoy what I am doing. And I love, every time, when I take a whiff of the newly, and painstakingly-produced book that appear from the printer’s shop. Ahem.

Some thoughts on publishing, if you wish. I know that in a country like the US, a new and unknown author can aspire to sell 30-40 thousand copies of a novel, whereas in India, a new home-grown Indian author is considered successful if the book sells just 1,000 copies. Is it because the many citizens of our great country are disinterested and dull, or is it also because good, original and interesting Indian books are not published and marketed in the right way?

My answer is thus: Who says books do not sell well in India? Trash brought out by Shobhaa De, Robin Sharma, Chetan Bhagat sell. Ditto books on cookery, cinema, self-help (due to growing mental insecurity), and travel guides. What does not sell is meaningful and path-breaking literature. So an aam janata does not know who a Kiran Nagarkar is or M T Vasudevan Nair is. The scene is the same in the US, too, where thousands of books come out every year. If a work of fiction has to sell, in India or in the US, hype and hoopla are important; get a Booker, get dragged into controversy, voila, then your book is in the best-selling list. Yes, volume-wise, there is a chalk-to-cheese difference in the US and India as almost all Americans read English — that is not the case here.

And does an Indian author writing in English have to taste success abroad first? Why the market is dominated by East meets West books, but the home-grown Indian books are hidden away in the back shelves? That is due to our colonial mentality; if we were the slaves of the British, now the neo-colonialists are the US. The mentality is thus: ‘Wow, he got a US award (however unheard of it could be), so it should sell well in India.’ Then in a day’s time you will find a pirated Kavya Viswanathan ‘magnum opus’ on Bombay’s great streets. Also to be blamed are the Indian media which is perpetually lick up the western ‘success’ stories.

It is also true that home-grown Indian writers in English cannot turn out much more than run of the mill masala stories or the same old, hackneyed Panchatantra tales retold for the umpteen hundredth time. Do Indian writers lack originality? What stops them? Yes, Indians are lazy. They do not think. They hardly polish their (so-called) talent or style. They do not imagine. The do not think, plainly. Also to be blamed are poor payments, the lalas of the trade, lack of funds for research... Look at the kind of money British or other writers are besotted for the research of their works. So, save our Ramachandra Guha, the best history books on India are written by British writers. Gregory Rabassa is paid as much as Marquez for translating the latter’s work.

Writers like Hemingway were great storytellers, used language and literary techniques beautifully, created art with words and told great stories which resonated with the masses. Why do Indians cannot aspire to write such stories as well? Why not a combination of great artistic techniques, rich emotional, philosophical and other nuances, and also a great plot and narrative that people can understand and relate to? Hmmm, I do not fully agree with the viewpoint here. The best of the Indian writing is not in the English. A Vaikom Muhammad Basheer or a Sarat Chandra Chatterjee is any day equal to a Marquez or Umebrto Eco. They are not famous because they were not properly translated like their western counterparts. And the problem with us is that we did not rekindle our skills though we claim to have a rich and varied culture. It’s bullshit. We had. But what do we have today?

The case is that most Indian publishers, including multinational biggies, push the burden of marketing and publicity entirely upon the author. No matter how good a book may be, if it is not publicised, people will not know about it, and not buy and read it. How can a first-time Indian author compete with bestsellers without adequate support from the publisher?

Well, it is simple. That’s the tragedy one has to suffer, no matter how talented you are. Like their western counterparts, not a single big publishing house entertains new talent unless it has sex appeal and/or probability of selling. I will not name names. “The best magical realist after Marquez,” that’s what a ‘great’ books page editor of a national weekly called a 20-something Bombay guy who wrote a trashy book. He paid the publisher nearly 10 lakh for launch, pitching stories, interviews and reviews. The publisher got a good deal; the scribes were paid; and for the author, belonging to a rich business family, got instant stardom. What if, if the book sank without a trace.

A rich Malabar Hill lady sent me an unsolicited manuscript, written in ink on paper. The book sucked, so I put it in my favourite dustbin. Few weeks later, I got a call from the lady. Asking me whether I am publishing this book or not. I said, ‘Sorry’. She said, “Ok, can I have the manuscript back.” I said I junked it. “Ooops,” she said, “that was the only copy I had.” So? You did not even take a photocopy of it, I asked. She said: “No.”

— Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Of Vijay and Vijayan

Sunil K Poolani

Vijay Tendulkar passed away last month. I have never met a person of such integrity in my life. Tomes of tributes have been written about him since his passing, but I just want to acknowledge him for the contributions he had made to upset many an applecart, that includes Mr Bal Thackeray and Maharashtrian Pune Brahmins. He used violence as a theme in most of his plays and also the film scripts he did, but I have never seen a person who is quite serene. Hope he has a nice time there, up.

Around the 1990s, I had the rare privilege to become a close acquaintance of O V Vijayan, a legend in every sense of word, stroke and speech.Those were underprivileged days for me: no money, no steady job, Delhi’s gnawing chill, homesickness, nostalgia… Amidst all these, the doors of Vijayan’s Chanakyapuri residence were one of the few that opened for me, offering me food, not just for the soul.

As I used to sip tea, or swallow idlis, Pooh, the Siamese cat, the one and only pet Vijayan ever owned and loved more than anything else in the world, would stare at the intruder who had come to spoil her master’s calm and cool afternoon.

I, like most people who have had the fortune to meet this extraordinary gentleman, was really awed by the aura he held. He was not just a contact for me in Delhi, where I could while away my time, but my mentor in several ways; he even edited my first article in English. Parkinson’s disease had just attacked him then: his spoken words stammered, his fingers shook, his vision blurred, but his mind was as clear as mountain dew. I even had the chance to see his last political cartoon, which is to appear in The Statesman, which I had personally delivered to the news editor of that paper — his fingers had since then disobeyed him. But his wide and varied constituency of Malayalam and English readers were fortunate that he could dictate short stories or social commentaries to his two personal secretaries.

My relationship with him continued even after I left Delhi for Mumbai, in occasional mails we used to exchange. Then suddenly there was no correspondence at all, and I realised that Vijayan has already started sinking. By mind silently wept, but no one could do anything about it.

II

So, who was Vijayan? For the uninitiated (which is really unlikely if you are a connoisseur of Indian literature, political cartooning or journalism) he is, to put it in one sentence, one of the greatest writers the world has ever produced. And what raised him to that pedestal is his first and best novel, The Legend of Khasak, which was published around the same time that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s path-breaking One Hundred Years of Solitude. Hence one could fairly conclude that two of the greatest of writers of the twentieth century evolved at the same time, changing the course of Malayalam and Spanish literatures respectively, making the two individual works the benchmarks in their own respective languages.

The Legend of Khasak, published in 1969, is often poetic and dark, always complex and rich, an extraordinary, breathtaking achievement which took the Malayali psyche (and, to some extent, physique) by storm. The gist of the book is this: Ravi, the protagonist, thanks to a restlessness born out of guilt and despair, embarks on a journey that ends in the remote village of Khasak in the picturesque Palakkad (in central Kerala) countryside. A land from the past, potent with dreams and legends, enfolds the traveller in a powerful and unsettling embrace. Ravi is bewitched and entranced as everything around him — the villagers, their children whom he teaches in a makeshift school, the elders who see him as a threat, the toddy-tappers, the shamans — takes on the quality of myth. And then reality, painful and threatening, begins to intrude on the sojourner’s resting place and Ravi begins to understand that there is no escape from the relentless dictates of karma…

An amazing treat, I personally believe there was nothing that Vijayan wrote since The Legend of Khasak that matched the range and depth of his maiden work. Sample the imagery here:

“Long before the lizards, before the dinosaurs, two spores set out on an incredible journey. They came to a valley bathed in the placid glow of sunset.

My elder sister, said the little spore to the bigger spore, let us see what lies beyond.

This valley is green, replied the bigger spore, I shall journey no further.

I want to journey, said the little spore, I want to discover. She gazed in wonder at the path below her.

Will you forget your sister, asked the bigger spore.

Never, said the little spore.

You will, little one, for this is the loveless tale of karma; in it there is only parting and sorrow.”

Vijayan’s second novel, The Saga of Dharmapuri, is still considered to be the most disquieting novel ever written in any Indian language, but its genre is totally different from his first novel, and hence there is no comparison. It was panned by critics for its scatological depictions but it was a daring attempt, no doubt.

After The Saga of Dharmapuri there was a lull period of a decade and what followed was The Infinity of Grace. Like all his works this, too, was translated into the English by the author himself. It won several awards including the prestigious Vayalar Award (and it baffles one how the literary mandarins decided not to give the Jnanpith, India’s highest literary honour, to Vijayan). The Infinity of Grace, a marvel of course, marked not just the transformation of his craft, but also the evolvement of Vijayan’s ideology itself. From a staunch Communist supporter, he had by that time embraced spiritualism, thanks to his then new-found association with spiritual leader Karunakara Gurukkal. I, though not a Communist, was really sad to see his transformation, but Vijayan told me then: “My health is deteriorating, and what else can I do but to call out to the Almighty?” There was moisture in his eyes.

Apart from his three important novels (he had written three more novels, but they failed to accomplish the status of the first three, especially the first) he was also renowned for penning some of the most beautiful short stories in Malayalam, especially The Story Told by the Wind, Warts, and After the Hanging. They had an uncanny beauty — again — never ever surpassed by any Malayalam writer after him.

Like many regional language writers, Vijayan too had this misfortune: his works were only truly and fully appreciated by Malayalam readers — the beauty of his prose couldn’t transcend the way it should be to other languages. This, despite the fact that it was Vijayan, who could write in Malayalam and English with equal felicity, translated almost all the works into the English.

“Why,” I had asked Vijayan. He said: “The reason is that translation is an act of shifting eggs from one nest to another. In the process the yolk and white are separated, and what you have left with is broken shells.” How one wishes we had an Edith Grossman, Linda Asher or a Gregory Rabassa who made a Marquez or a Milan Kundera a household name across the globe.

III

Vijayan was born in 1930 and has published six novels, seven collections of stories, six collections of political essays, a book of selected cartoons and one volume of satire. Vijayan took a Masters degree in English Literature from Madras University in 1954. After a short stint of teaching at the University, he began his career as a political cartoonist with the Shankar’s Weekly in 1958. He left the Weekly and joined the Patriot in 1963. After four years, having resigned from the Patriot, he began freelancing for various publications including The Hindu, Mathrubhumi (Malayalam) and Far Eastern Economic Review. In 1979 he joined The Statesman.

Vijayan lived a double life, in the right sense. If Vijayan the story-teller was world-class, so was his role as a political cartoonist who took Indian journalism by storm by his deft caricatures of the people in power. Indira Gandhi feared his strokes, so did her son Rajiv. In the foreword of Vijayan’s book, A Cartoonist Remembers, a collection of his best cartoons and writings about cartooning, Ashish Nandy wrote: “I belong to Vijayan’s tribe, comprising those who have betrayed their class, and I have watched in rapt admiration the demolition job he has done for our generation. It covers not merely targets that are easy and fashionable to attack, but also the ones that are politically incorrect to touch. The latter include the slogans which have helped our class to establish its stranglehold over the culture of Indian politics and the media…. Vijayan [was] one of the foremost social critics and chroniclers of our times.”

Vijayan was a true political cartoonist, a rare breed, unlike an unnecessarily eulogised R K Laxman, who doles out syrupy caricatures on a daily basis. Vijayan’s lines never gave anyone a hearty laugh; it always left a sour taste — a taste of reality. A worst critic of Emergency, Vijayan’s wings too were clipped. What was his reaction? “When on June 26, 1975, I told my editor in Madras that I was quitting, he was concerned and asked me to stay on and comment on innocuous subjects; I did not leave in a spirit of bravado but in humility, at my sheer inability to locate the innocuous subject. Brothers in the profession did apparently manage to locate some: in the first weeks of censorship, in its abjectness and debasement, I found our newspapers carrying cartoons on the Lebanese crisis. One might as well have drawn cartoons on the Wars of the Roses.”

IV

Ottupulakkal Velukkutty Vijayan died on March 29, 2005, aged 75. Let his soul lie in peace.

The other day, a lady landed up in my office. She has written a novel and she has been searching for a publisher for the last four years. With no results. And she came and told me her biggest ambition in life is that she wants her magnum opus in print: “I have two kids, and I love my book than both of them. I will do anything. You just have to ask me.” Need I say more? No, I did not sleep with her.

-- Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Frog Elephant to Tiger

By Sunil K Poolani

White Tiger

Aravind Adiga

HarperCollins

Price: 395; Pages: 321

Behram Contractor, one of India’s legendary editors, once said that writing simple English is the biggest challenge a writer often faces. He was right. He wrote well. He won thousands of admirers. And when I read Aravind Adiga I was reminded about the Contractor’s famous words.

Adiga, through his reportage and columns in the venerated Time magazine, always amused me. He packed much punch in simple words and sentences and it did wonders. He still does that; he is quite young, too. And when I opened his debut novel to savour, I knew what I was expecting.

The novel in question, by now discussed to death, is treatise to the condition the Indian nation is in. Adiga searches for the impossible. He takes the last mile, where none of today’s journalist (if you can call anyone by that moniker) would tread: in a hard way; the weather-beaten way. And, thus, exploring a story he wanted to narrate — in an inimitable style not many a scribe-fictionist in India could easily achieve to do.

Like the writing, the story of White Tiger, too, is reasonably effortless. Born in abject poverty (a pig’s life is much better than him), Balram Halwai (whose age is unknown) is the son of a rickshaw puller. He was taken out of the school to work in a teashop and through various meanderings he somehow gets a break when a rich village landlord hires him as a driver for his son, his daughter-in-law and their two Pomeranian dogs.

From behind the wheel of a Honda he explores the metropolis of Delhi with a gleeful eye. And since then his life is on a rollercoaster ride. He learns English. He sees the dark façade behind the life of many rich people in Delhi and their moral debauchery. Balram’s language and his scorn for the rich only increases as time passes — so does his ambition to become a rich man at a time when the country is going through a new-fangled economic boom, primarily BPO operation.

To cut the story short, Balram eventually murders the landlord’s son (by then the daughter-in-law has left the son) and steals the son’s money to start life anew in another booming, glitzy city: Bangalore.

Balram kicks off an entrepreneurial venture, of hiring vehicles to ply BPO employees, and he has to grease several palms to achieve a dream of a big man in these times.

The novel is a telling tale of two Indias: Balram’s journey to achieve his goals is totally amoral and at times very nasty; it shows both the good and bad sides of today’s make-belief world. Nevertheless, most of the times the novel is uproariously funny, too, and Balram keeps a bold face even when he learns his entire family has been massacred by the landlord’s goons.

White Tiger is written in a novel way: in the form of letters to the Chinese Premier from ‘The White Tiger’, which is Balram. This debut work explores and defies all conventional norms of feel-good writing and comes as a cruel testimony of today’s murky world where only money counts.

Adiga’s is a voice to be watched and White Tiger is a worthy addition to your bookshelf. I am deeply impressed.

-- Deccan Herald

Books and Crooks

By Sunil K Poolani

First things first. While contemplating what I would write for the maiden column about books, reading and publishing for this paper, the car in which I was travelling came to a standstill at one of Mumbai’s traffic signals. A street urchin (ahem) knocked at the window, with a tome of pirated books in his furtive hands. I bought one; I never encouraged piracy, though. But the book in question was Polyester Prince, a (so-called) biography of Dhirubhai Ambani. The book was banned, once, in India due to Sr Ambani’s ‘interference’ (so the story goes) when he was alive, and was resurfaced (only on the streets) when the Reliance kingpin’s kids battled it out famously after their papa’s demise.
I always wanted to know why the Ambani patriarch was so infuriated that the Indians should not read this book. I got the answer in few minutes — after I rescued the pirated book from its safe cellulite folder. Except for the initial pages, the whole book was empty. Empty? Yes. Filled with blank paper. (I later learnt that that is the case with almost 50-75 per cent of the books sold on Mumbai’s mean streets.)
By then the car had crossed two more traffic signals, and of course no sign of the kid genius who extracted my 150 rupees. I admire his (or his boss’s) audacity and entrepreneurship.


As an old (by today’s standards) journalist who is in publishing today due to some unforeseen reasons, it has always amused me that almost all the ‘great’ Indian newspapers and magazines published in English have this tendency to equally promote and denigrate authors they think are mediocre. And who are these ‘mediocre’ authors? Shobhaa De, Chetan Bhagat, Robin Sharma… Ok, they are a nuisance to a thinking man’s vocabulary. One might admit.
If that is the case, why are all these prestigious magazines carrying reviews of these best-selling authors’ books (for info: most of the above trio’s works have hit the shelves recently and are still on bestseller lists), and also devote full-page interviews with them? And in the end denigrate them, saying, their works are a tease to intelligence?
The answer is simple. The readers of these books are sizeable and a major chunk of these publications’ readers are also those readers.
So who is complaining? No one, except the ‘intelligent’ books page editors and the failed authors who are commissioned to do the reviews of these mediocre writers’ books.
Publishers gain. Readers are not complaining. And publications gain from pain. But that does not mean I do not rue the brain drain that these authors are causing our newly-started, English-reading generation. Do you?


Blogs and social networking websites like Shelfari are trying to promote book reading habits, I have been told. To an extent it is right. But do you really care who is reading what? I mean someone from Kakinada? No, at least I am not interested. The Internet, of course, has helped promote reading habits, but in an equal measure it has killed them, too. Why? You, if you are a moron, form an opinion based on some jerk sitting at one end of the world who would say Dan Brown is bad. So be it.
Nevertheless, think about those golden times, those pre-Internet days. Those where the days when a Camus or Marquez was refined and whetted down our throats by at least five aficionados who used to discuss their works (say, existentialism or magical realism) for days together. And we never complained. And we were never disappointed. Now, it is a free world, and there is no time for intelligence — passé. Take it or leave it. For good or bad.


One interesting thing I observed as being a publisher is out of the three book proposals I get, two of them are poetry collections. And, needless to say, they are not even worth the A4-size papers they are written upon, forget publishing. Nonetheless, each one of them thinks that s/he is the biggest poet ever to be recognised after Kamala Das or Dom Moraes. That’s not their problem alone. Most mothers think that their children are the greatest ever born.
More interesting stories of my publishing experience in the next columns — that is, if you and the paper’s editor allow.

— Deccan Chronicle / Asian Age

End of Serendipity

By Sunil K Poolani

Serendip. Ceylon. Sri Lanka. A lush green island blessed with and famous for its spices, coconut groves, rice… An amalgamation of ethnicities (primarily Sinhalese and Tamil), influenced by Indian, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese and English (to name a few) cultures, and practicing religions as varied as Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim... An emerald. A virtual coral isle. An ideal abode for blissful existence.

Then all went awry. The once idyllic isle got soaked in blood. The green hue turned red. Ethnicities clashed, heads blew up, bombs ripped apart the facades of its rich heritage.

The mayhem continues unabated. What are prevailing now are restlessness, hopelessness, unemployment and basic amenities that are denied to the hapless citizenry who have, long ago, lost their gleam in their eyes.

What went wrong? Instead of pouring over truckloads of newspaper clippings collected over the decades and trying to make sense in political commentary books penned by half-baked experts, read Mosquito (a fiction, nevertheless) by Roma Tearne, whose writing leaves a dent in your heart, unless you are one of those assassins who periodically bring chaos and confusion to the war-torn country.

Mosquito, an allegory of a skewed polity, comes as a whiff of fresh air in a literary arena (if you can really call that) that is infected by bad prose but brazenly supported by hype, hoopla, nepotism and sex appeal. Tearne tells us the story of Nulani, a hapless victim of an internecine war fought between Sinhalese-Tamil brothers (well?). Nulani is a talented painter, who befriends Theo Samarajeeva, a famous writer who, after the death of his Italian wife Anna, had left Britain to embrace the warmth of his land of origin.

Friendship takes turns and blossoms into love, despite a huge age difference between the protagonists. Into their delightful saga of infatuation, and then love, creep in characters who not only add misery into the duo’s lives, but to the country as well. The Tamilian Vikram, masquerading as a Sinhalese, is one among them. Then there are two of his mentors; one of the characters resembles Velupillai Prabhakaran.

There are kind characters, too: Thercy and Sugi (he even gives up his life for Nulani) who take care of the duo when in dire need; Rohan, a celebrated painter, and his Italian (again) wife Giulia who not only give solace and sanctuary to Nulani when Theo was believed to be slain, but help Nulani flee Sri Lanka and later try their level best to track her down in the labyrinthine lanes of London.

Theo, as the story moves on, was held hostage — first by the Sinhalese and later by the Tamils — then manages to escape to his seaside villa, a literal mosquito coast, from where he writes a novel based on his life and his kith and kin, present and past. In the meantime, Rohan and Giulia manage to locate Nulani, who has by then become an established painter, and that lead helps them to connect Theo and Nulani, lovers who were once separated due to cruelty in the name of ethnicity.

So whose story is this? It is fiction, that’s right, and penned by Tearne. It is also a novel penned by the protagonist Theo. But a brief profile on Tearne says she “fled Sri Lanka at the age of ten, traveling to Britain where she spent most of her life.” And in the acknowledgments section, Tearne comes up with this line: “…to my long-suffering family…” Tearne apparently is Nulani, and like Nulani, Tearne, too, is an accomplished artist (she has a Masters degree from Oxford in Drawing and Fine Art and was awarded coveted fellowships).

And do not assume that the novel is totally flawless: a) all the main characters in the book are not only world famous (or are going to be one), but exceptionally talented, rich and, despite living in a morbid country, have the company of a guardian angel who has a twenty-four hour duty; b) about the second-rung characters: well, the author manages to kill them at a time when they are becoming strong and when the story starts revolving around them; c) the language is at times a bit shaky and a tad disoriented — this is especially true when, despite being a Sinhalese by origin, Tearne tries to bring into the realm the ultimate truth that there is no serendipity in Serendip.

If you ignore these flaws the novel reads like a dream, shattering some, creating some. What more can you ask for?

(Author picture courtesy: John Lawrence, The Independent, London, UK

Mosquito

Roma Tearne

Harper Perennial

Pages: 296; Price: Rs 295

— Deccan Herald

Spade

By Prabha Shankar

Translated from the Malayalam by Sunil K Poolani

I used to call her Spade, the girl I loved. It was long, long ago, when my fiancée used to lie down looking at the stars through the glass pane of the tiled roof. Awake.

In fact, I wanted to call her Selfish. Reason: ignoring her younger sister and brother, she used to bring me sugar-toffees and laddus without anyone’s knowledge. Instead of taking her siblings for a stroll or playing with them, she loved to spend her evenings with me.

I wrote about all this: short stories, poems, and in the end — for money — even essays. Still, I vividly remember even now, I was left with a mere eighty rupees.

All this is for those who are born with a silver spoon in their mouths — this love and literature.

Then, there were roaming-arounds, searches…

Shouldn’t I too survive?

With time, I, a jobless youth, became a drunkard, drug addict, murderer, womaniser…

Moreover, I grew into a useless moron.

The village and the villagers believed I would be all right if I was locked up in a room.

When it became unbearable, I had to leave my village and bid goodbye to the loving (hating) villagers.

I swayed in the wind, floated in the water. At last, in a city, a metropolis, I had to calm down myself. Shadowless.

Shouldn’t I too survive? Wasn’t I born minus a silver spoon in my mouth?

For the time being, I sat in a cane chair in an advertising company and typed A-B-C-D. I gave colour and smell to the virgin lies about products. I earned a name, but the pay was little.

Isn’t it a shameful thing to tell four people that I am at the mercy of forty people? So, I didn’t complain. Didn’t crib.

Nevertheless, my all-time friends, who poke their noses into and learn all the nitty-gritties of my life, poked their noses once again and perceived the quandary I was in.

The prescribed the usual medicine: advice.

To borrow means to surrender oneself to the hands of a wild bear. Don’t go for all this. Get lost, man, get lost: try to live on your own. Sell whatever is allotted to you, sell your self-esteem (sorry, I had sold that a long time ago), and then earn more money and get whatever you can lay your hands on. There was a way out, a way to the Arab land along with Air India’s Maharaja.

I didn’t delay. I learnt that sunshine, rain, mist, everything, is part of nature’s immortal wealth. I realised them as much as I could. I sloughed off the knowledge (or, as I realise now, was it ignorance?) I had gained in my last twenty-eight years. I did the packing in twenty-eight hours.

At last, after spending four-and-a-half hours in a serpentine queue, I appeared before a fair-skinned Arab. Also, in front of an Indian, who was keenly observing whether any dust had accumulated on the Arab’s footwear.

What all do you know? — the Arab’s query, translated by the Indian who doesn’t allow dust to gather.

Dissection to dissemination.

Experience?

Very little, but I can improve.

Agreed. But you have to love the flora, especially the flowers. And that’s not all. Love the spade, too. As a dividend, you can love the whizz of the air-conditioner. Also, the dirhams, which you can save and send home.

I was startled. Thinking about the impediments and losses I had to endure, and with tears trickling down my eyes, I started searching out for Gardener.

At last I met Gardner, the guru, and told him about my venture. I received a spade, accepted blessings and shoved the spade into the ground with all my strength. My first training!

I shoved the spade very hard and looked at the earth on it. Suddenly, I thought about the girl who loved me. Oh! this was the same thing she had told me once: “Give me, give me…”

This is so uncharacteristic of a spade. If the substance you collect is not deposited somewhere, it will get accumulated somewhere else.

My god, why did I take so long to know this?

Now what?

(Oh, girl, who is the perfume of my dreams, forgive me.)

It is ridiculous to waste thinking about mundane things. I want to be trained. Somewhere, in some corner of the world. Somehow, I have to live.

I ferociously started shoving the spade into the soil. Whatever I got on it, I deposited on one place. At last, there was a three-foot-deep, six-and-half-foot-long, two-foot-wide trench. With the mud taken from it I made a four-foot-long mound.

Now, I can live! This training is more than I had expected.

Or, I will relax. Isn’t the spade which made this trench and prattles “give me, give me” enough for that?