Lost in Verbosity

Sunil K Poolani & Uma Chandrasekaran

Chinnery’s Hotel
Jaysinh Birjepatil
Ravi Dayal / Penguin
Price: 325; Pages: 261

It is by now known that Indians can write in English as good as, and in several cases, much better than contemporary British and American writers. This comes at a time when India is considered to be a great market for books published in English — doesn’t matter even if the imprint says it was first published in the late 1800s or it is a pirated version of the Fuhrer’s autography.
But, this soaring market has its own downfalls. Mediocrity of all standards get the front seat… and attention and glamour. Well-chiselled writings, painstakingly done though, get a step-motherly treatment and sinks into oblivion. Sad. True, but. So, it is with immense pleasure that we marvelled at the novel penned by Jaysinh Birjepatil.
Chinnery’s Hotel has style and a huge amount of substance, and it offers a wonderful window into the old days of the Raj. And how Birjepatil could assume and analyse those days in vivid details is amusingly mysterious. But, like every good work of art, this too is flawed with a disease that is spreading across the globe: verbosity.
That does not mean Chinnery’s Hotel is a throwaway dish; it is a smorgasbord. It tells the story of yearning, of homelessness, of a journey in search of her borrowed roots seen through the eyes of Grace, in her old age, travelling back to the India of her childhood — longing to go “back home” while in India, but finding England not as British as she was in India.
Set in Mhow, a British cantonment town in India, Chinnery’s Hotel is more than just a home to Grace, her Mater, Pater, brother Bobby and sister Jo Anna, their chokraboys, ayahs, boxwallahs, and all the paraphernalia that were quintessential to being British in the India of the Raj.
Birjepatil paints a rich gossipy canvas of the life and times of many a mixed-up race: the English-American-European, the Parsi, and, the Anglo-Indian. The subtext is one of the utter hopelessness of being an Anglo-Indian — while the other mixed races are fun and ‘in’, the Anglos cannot rise above their station and there is almost a cry of triumph when they err on the wrong side of Victorian morality.
And incest is natural to Grace’s daughter Camilla, for after-all, she is just another one of them: forever reflected in a cracked mirror “…. Don’t you see, it’s the knowing that’s sinful, not what we did?” And, therefore, her bleeding to death on the birth of her daughter “had a logic of loss by instalment”.
The tone of the book has the pallor of death and old age hanging like stale air but not touching you an emotional chord, as say, an Iris Murdoch. So many big, harsh words tumble out in such numbing succession. Your prayer for relief gets a rare simple, yet picturesque line hidden amidst the drudgery. Sample three: “memory kept alive by touch is the Braille of ghosts”; “face caved in like a document hastily thrown in a grate”; “as though Grace has died in her sleep, leaving behind an empty dress hanging from a peg”.
Don’t read it if you have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia but look at the brighter side: Chinnery’s Hotel can be very useful when you play Scrabble. The author is truly a Professor of English literature.
-- Sahara Time

Life Looks Up

Uma Chandrasekaran

There’s a coconut tree in my backyard. I fought to plant it more than eleven years ago. Everyone, who wasn’t an expert on coconut trees or about anything auspicious, advised – should not plant a single one as its not good for the house. Very practical objection from spouse – where’s the space? A psychiatrist, he gives everything it’s wingspan and doesn’t like Bonsai! I made the decision on the clear household rule for autonomic decisions taking the entire responsibility for the actions and fruits thereof!
I bought a sapling from the nursery (even coconut trees are born there – what containment!), found a fella who needed money for his next drink and recited the technical advice doled out by the staff at the nursery while he planted it. My tree grew so well, the fronds so green, the trunk thick and strong – let me name her– “Life”? Life continued adding more fine greenery to her as many years rolled by. Everyone came – why is she not flowering? Have you got one that takes fifty long years to mature? Will you be alive to taste the fruit or nut? (Come on I’m not in my dotage!) Teams of tree-climbers broke my confidence. Said the tree needed help to mature – we’ll get to the center of her and put some stuff there that will induce flowering. Have you noticed these guys – come in pairs, one drunk and the other wiry older guy will do the climbing? Your regular gardener does not handle coconut trees, if you please.
The pair of climbers came with more big men and they got to the center of the tree, brushing off her protests when she tried to use her foliage as fig leaf. I can’t forget to this day the violent rape of that tree in broad daylight. Some ash-gray chemical, some iodized sodium chloride and some red soil forced into her heart to ‘help’ her flower. We’ll never know if she might have come of age on her own but these guys crowed with triumph when after a couple of months of this horror, Life showed five beautiful fluorescent yellow flowers as though wanting to please us fivefold for all these years of silence. The fruits matured on my daughter’s eleventh birthday and we offered the first coconut to the Lord in true Indian style. The feeling of really having celebrated her birthday was so lovely and pure. The fruits and the water inside were unbelievably sweet. Reaped about ten of them.
Despite the flowering, I hated Life’s violators and banished them. Then the haunting began. Another guy who knew coconut trees happened by. You could see from the way he touched her with so much respect and affection that he worshipped coconut trees. A sad look on his face, he told us that the main shoot had turned direction and Life would start growing sideways. He pronounced mercy killing. Also said she wouldn’t bear fruit – not with that huge gash that would appear with turned head. Nothing doing. Kill a woman if she cannot bear a child? Let my Life live never mind the fruits. We’ll keep trimming the foliage if it gets into neighbour’s territory. He was bang on target. We found her lower fronds drooping downward and upper ones sticking upward instead of fanning out. Like an inverted L or the bright brittle little tinsel fans mounted on thin sticks of chiseled bamboo that children buy at temple fairs and run about to make them twirl.
How did Life react? She just decided to look up. In a quiet simple majestic move, she started reaching out to the Sun the Giver as though she knew her life depended on it. Slowly but surely, she has reversed the downward trend and is now laughing at our worries. The tree-lover climber came saw the wonder and shared in our happiness. She had conquered all in less than a year.
I have seen people behave much the same way as my tree.
A truck knocked down a young carpenter, about thirty, married, with three children, on a fine morning when he went to the teashop for usual round of tea and daily news. I saw him in hospital both legs amputated at the knee, right arm gone too, angry lacerations all over his body. He was ready to be sent home as the treatment was over and he was clinically recovering. His young wife beside him, he had healed himself beyond imagination. They were talking about how they would start life afresh, find a new occupation, wife would find some houses to work in, and continue to put their children through school. A matter of fact acceptance: no emptiness, no bitterness, and no anger, just plain positive sunny hope of making it again. Where many would have sobbed, they had seen it as a mere sniffle! He wouldn’t pass the screen test for Baywatch but so what! His family had given him eight legs to glide.
Recently, an elderly person who wanted to institute a gold medal to be given to the best student of management met me in the university. Only great teachers or researchers and the administrative genre are around in a campus during vacation time. I teach – get the picture! Father of an alumnus, he asked if I remembered his son. But of course I did and the last occasion he was here, he spoke so excitedly about his business venture that had started showing results, was happily married and we admired his new car. The father now said this only son died in a motoring accident a couple of years ago. The tears had dried but the pain had not. The family wanted to keep the memory of their son alive by making meaningful contributions to education. The gold medal at the university and a scholarship at his school were their way of doing it. His wife is doing her MBA and working too. We, the living!
What I recently heard about a friend made me wonder. A doctor couple with a brilliant computer whiz-kid pre-teen son, their car had crashed and taken away her husband and son in a trice. My friend had a head injury and did not know any of this till after many weeks. Now recovered and back to full-time professional work, although mobility restricted, she lives in her flat on her own near her parents’ but prefers her independence, her many hobbies and two children whom she cares for as her own. I dare not offer her anything more. We had once shared the fun of being seventeen, off-class jaunts, visits to the pani-puri joint, so many books, the stimulation of idealism and intellectualism that is at its best at that age. Now she has risen way above in stature, a study in courage and the reason perhaps, why (wo)man is the highest known living stage in evolution so far.
Padmasri Dr.G.Venkataswamy, the Founder Chairman of Aravind Eye Care System and the chain of Aravind Eye Hospitals located in five places in South India. A promising medical professional, serving in the army during World War II, he was struck by a rare form of arthritis that twisted his fingers and toes. A young man with all the usual expectations of life, he drew on reserves of inner strength to fight the acute pain, the social distancing, and the forced bed-rest to train in ophthalmic surgery and dedicate himself to the cause of eradicating needless blindness. Today his hospital chain performs the largest number of cataract surgeries in the world as a single entity, to the largest proportion of patients getting free care. In 2004, they performed 2,27,435 surgical and laser procedures of which 1,41,689 were free of cost to poor patients. Their sister unit operated under a separate Trust, AuroLabs makes and exports Intra-ocular lenses to many countries around the world and supports ongoing eye care research activities. Dr.V as he is popularly called, is an enthusiastic and responsible user of IT for service to humanity. Actively learning, still seeking for newer and better ways to bring light to more eyes he launched CARE – Creating Access for Rural Eye care – a chain of Internet kiosks for aiding consultation and empowering the patients from hitherto unreached villages. Born on 1st October 1918, he is now 87 years young and lives in Pondicherry and Madurai and in the hearts of millions he has helped see.
Life deals each of us our hand, to work around the dents and win. Helen Keller, Somerset Maugham, Stephen Hawking – they have all done it. Instead of asking “why me?” many like them have shot back with “why not!” Repairing a dent can be as simple as kissing away the hurt when your little one comes with a tiny bruise! Or it can mean a huge incision that has to be sutured up. An application of TLC a.k.a. tender loving care can cure or soothe. The healing takes steely inner resolve to keep going sunny side up. A few march way ahead and make things better for humanity.
The coconut tree in my garden is flowering again. Like a proud war veteran, Life has made a comeback with scars and a hunch left by the dent, but the fruits are going to be the braver for it! Ever wondered at the beauty of a face lined with life's experiences? It doesn’t turn you tizzy like the twenty something, but dawns on you. A beautiful dawn.
(Visual by Ambika Bhatt)

From Sorority Sisters

By Sunil K Poolani

Nine by Nine
Daman Singh
HarperCollins
Price: 250; Pages: 250

If you are a debutante novelist in these present-day times, expectations (thanks largely due to global recession and a low-buying power) are high. Higher if you have a famous father, to boot. And if he father happens to be the Prime Minister of India, well, you can imagine.
So, here comes an ambitious work by Daman Singh, the second daughter of Manmohan Singh. Like father, like daughter. Senior Singh always kept a low-profile, not to talk about the unassuming character and the dignified probity he brought into his office; ditto his progeny.
And Daman Singh (and henceforth let’s call this Singh, Singh) has had a great career record; unassuming again. She spent twenty exciting years in rural development and — now here comes the interesting part — is now a full-time author, to wit. I do not know whether that is a wise decision she took, but reading the book in question, I am tempted to say that, she should tread that path carefully.
A gist of the book before we progress: it is primarily about Anjali, who is burdened with her mother’s persistent demands; she seeks solace in Tara, a talented free-spirit. Then there is this Paro, who wants to settle down by peacefully getting married, but her dreams got shattered; she comes as an absolute antithesis of what Anjali and Paro are.
Nine by Nine comes from that ubiquitous ladies’ hostel where rooms are divided in that size. Here is where all the antics played out by the inmates, or sorority sisters; and it is a universal syndrome. There you have everything: bra-strips, dope, lesbianism… Jane Austen, et al, portrayed these well. So tries Singh. The book may not have a great story to narrate; in bits and pieces it does. But the beauty lies in the observation and the uncanny portrayals of individual characters, whether it is the “dangerously handsome” waiter Ashok or Naresh, Tipu and Ajay, the characters who appear and disappear like in a Bollywood flick.
So Singh’s ‘sisters’ indulge in vices that are so ‘blasphemous’: drinking rum, bunking classes, showing the slip… So how is this maiden, ambitious novel different from the chic-lit churned out by our gullible, instant fame-seeking babes of our present times? Well, Singh has style; the book has substance. It is both absorbing and engaging. The simple reason being, this is a book that not only revolves around mundane characters but talks about losses and friendships, in vivid details.
There are surprises, though: Paro gets perfumed anonymous letters. And she thinks her cousin Vivek is behind this act. It is another matter that the real character is revealed at a later stage; but by then the damage has been done.
The plot and characters, if one brows through this, look like they are not in a hurry to catch a train or board a flight; and for exactly this reason, it is equally interesting or equally boring, whichever way you take it.
The final shot: Nine by Nine can never be a great book, and do not expect miracles in Singh’s later writings, too. The debut novel by Singh is a good read underneath a tree when you are holidaying. Nothing more, nothing less.
-- Deccan Herald / Sahara Time

Out of the Closet

By Sunil K Poolani

Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History
Edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai
Penguin India
Price: 450; Pages: 479

If the West is more open to same-sex love (by allowing marriages between two gay people and even giving political positions and power) and the East is increasingly becoming intolerant to this “anti-natural” act of love-making, you only have to blame the West for it.
The Portuguese came to the Indian shores and, apart from looting our natural resources, inculcated in us rigid, and often barbaric, Christian sensibilities, which frowned upon any form of “indecent” sex practiced in India, then. Then came the British and their pseudo-Victorian sensibilities, which did more harm than the postal and railway systems they brought in.
And to think of it, it was in India that open sex and all kind of sexual variations were depicted and practiced since centuries; not to talk about same-sex love, which had great respectability since the time of the Vedas...
Precisely for that reason, Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History, edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai should not just be welcomed but celebrated, as it vividly and meticulously tracks down the literature from India since two thousand years. What is more enriching is that the book contains select portions from Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim literary history. The range is amazing: from Mahabharata to Vijay Tendulkar.
What’s more, this veritable and valuable collection is for anyone who is interested in knowing the so-called nether world. Is this book just about same-sex and its literary history? On the contrary. Vanita, herself a lesbian, in her Preface says: “A primary and passionate attachment between two persons, even between a man and a woman, may or may not be acted upon sexually. For this reason our title focuses on love, not sex.”
And Kidwai, a homosexual, analysing the medieval material available on the subject, says: “During the early medieval period there are a few scattered references to same-sex love while in the late medieval period a huge body of literature on same-sex love develops.”
No wonder that the most powerful rulers then — Ghazni, Babar and Khilji — were practitioners and protectors of homosexuality, thus demolishing the myth that Muslims hardly imported homosexuality into Hindustan. For that reason, Muslim women from medieval India to, say, even in the lucid prose of Ismat Chughtai have practiced lesbianism.
And talking about the Hindu gods and their sexual orientations, Lord Ayyappa was thought to be a product of sex between two male deities; some even claim Murugan too is a progeny of that confluence. There are references about the love that existed between Lord Krishna and Arjuna — Arjuna after a sacred bath turns into the beautiful Arjuni who then consorts with Krishna. I hope the neo-Hindu fundamentalists realise this and become more tolerant.
One of the best verses in the book is by the indomitable Vikram Seth: “Some men like Jack / and some like Jill; / I’m glad I like / them both; but still / I wonder if / this freewheeling / really is an / enlightening thing— / or is its greater / scope a sign / of deviance from / some party line? / In the strict ranks / of Gay and Straight / what is my status? / Stray? or Great?”
Some of the best contemporary works are by V T Nandakumar’s Two Girls (translated from Malayalam); Bhupen Khakhar’s A Story (from Gujarati); Hoshang Merchant’s Poems for Vivan (English); and Nirmala Deshpande’s Mary Had a Little Lamb (from Marathi).
Even if you are “normal” but loves good literature, this commendable volume is for you. No, you do not need to hide it under the pillow…

Cry thy country, not mine

Sunil K Poolani

One has to realise that this is one discussed-to-death issue: how to portray India by Indians writing in English. And over and over again, this crops up: when some rookie wins a ‘coveted’ award by showing the ‘real nature’ of India. Recently, this argument got augmented when one Aravind Adiga won a Booker, and critics, mainly those who are jealous of his success, crying wolf, vivifying, in their dawned belated wisdom, not only the book was badly written but it portrayed our ‘great country’ in bad light.
Cry, thy beloved country. Before that, let’s do some soul-searching, ahem, looking back at the Indian writing for the English-reading, western masses, an introspection. Yes, the Vedas and other puranic stuff were all available in English translation by eighteenth century to the Western public. And the bhadralok Bengali did get some of their books in print in British India. Then came Tagore. His writings were one of the lucid ones that I have ever read. But look at the tragedy: the Nobel was awarded because the Committee could lay their hands only on an English translation of Gitanjali, a mediocre work by any standard, and thank W B Yeats, Tagore’s great well-wisher, for that.
By then the English-reading and -writing intelligentsia in India had grown voluminously. But the path to get noticed in the West was not that easy. R K Narayan (thanks to Graham Green) and Kamala Markandaya (due to her British journalist friends) had to literally slug it out to get their voice heard. They portrayed a great India, of townships and non-interesting people; but the beauty was in the writing. Then came Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. All had their respective stints in Britain, without which even I would not have quoted their names in this article.
I believe there is one man who rewrote the whole script of Indian writing in English: Rushdie. He chutnified it for the bewilderment of the upholders of the British English. Then, like fairness creams, the West started smelling a great market and to keep up the demand, one could never write about the huge multiplexes in Bangalore or Bombay, not even about a strange country where “tigers roam around in the streets”, but you have had to talk about the filth in your background — amidst all the beauty one has to show to the world, there, and in detail, the murky, incestuous world of slime and grime.
Arundhati Roy, that today’s great whiner, did try to portray a twisty and charming world of Kerala backwaters. That was a decade ago. And then the economic shift changed to China and India. And people in the US and Germany started losing money and jobs. And the Muslim fundamentalists, afraid of the so-called great success story, started planting bombs in every Indian city you could imagine in. The Bombay terror attacks were the final straw on the camel’s back. So they think.
Like in a role reversal (and I hate the phrase, “the Empire Strikes Back’), even Bollywood movies are showing where one should invest their money to cater to a wisdom for the West’s amusement. So why should literature take a backseat? For good or bad, there are some good writings emerging out of India. And frankly I give a fig whether how India is portrayed or not. If you are disturbed about the way the West is looking at us, well, that is pseudo-secularism. Literature has no boundaries and all it matters is good writing. Not the markets.
Two good examples come to my mind. Recent books by Richard Crasta and Murzban F Shroff. Shroff penned Breathless in Bombay, a collection of brilliant short stories. The period Shroff retells of Bombay is contemporary. Gallons of water have embraced the sea from Mahim Creek, and it is not the city of Salim Sinai any more. No soothsayer might have guessed when Rushdie wrote his magnum opus (thus immortalising Bombay in world literature), that it would, one day, instead of disintegrating, will become one of the most happening, prosperous and trendy cities in the world. But Shroff did show the murkier side of Bombay life: Aids patients, the bhelpuriwala, the prostitutes, the downtrodden…
And now about Crasta: The Killing of an Author is funny, sad, and eye-opening. Like others who are dependent on psychiatric drugs, Crasta has to have them for his depression and anxiety. He knows he needs them to function, but does not know the side-effects. The book presents how most innocent civilians like him get caught up in drug enslavement without the slightest inkling of what could happen if you take this, that and the other. It is also a warning to those who are plagued with mental problems to learn more about what they ingest, even if it is prescribed by their loved ones.
Do you find all these funny and “selling-India” types? Well, I do not. Say it the way it is, said some joker. I could not have agreed more.
(Sahara Time)

How my Column Died a Premature Death

One fine morning, when I was sleeping, A T Jayanti, who claimed was the editor of Deccan Chronicle and The Asian Age, called me up and said, she wanted me to write a column for her books page. My answer was: "I don't think I could do that." But she persisted and said: "Give it a try." I agreed.
For around 25 weeks the column appeared, and one fine day, Jayanti called me up and said: "Enough is enough, high time you stopped it." Why? "In fact, wasn't I getting damn good responses?"
She never gave a good explanation. One of the plausible reasons I could arrive at was that I had criticised a crappy book written by a certain kid called Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan. Now, she and her family are well connected. (Do a Google search, in case you want to know, how.) I came to know all these from Jayanti's own colleagues, who detest her like hell, and are unhappy with her ways of functioning. "So be it", I said. "Who the hell cares?" Anyway the column was not my idea.
Then came the surprise, bingo, one Sunday. My column has been replaced by, guess who, the Reddy girl.
I came to know about that from a reader from Chennai, because I had stopped reading The Asian Age since M J Akbar was unceremoniously ousted.
Well, this is what my friend from Chennai had to say:

"Hi Sunil
I'm just seething after reading that piece of pedestrian shit dished out in the DC ..... the replacement for your column. Gosh its absolute drivel. No language to speak of, no book sense, no nothing. I wouldnt insult a child by calling it childish - its worse than the worst essay written by a low grade student. The vocab is silly. As to an idea, it just isnt there. What next?? Are we going to have Mills & Boons featured please??? I am tearing angry. Just tearing angry. Am now minus one more piece to read in that paper.
Well, who said the world's a fair place eh?! :-( Obviously you havent 'cultivated' or 'capitalized' i guess!!
Can you tell me where else you write a column - for any other publication? I do miss your column. The incisive brainy analysis, the total command over the language, the hard work that is evident when you draw from multiple readings to get your thoughts home, your real love and feel for books and that special world. You take us there, my friend. Still remember where you wrote about the smell of a new book .... hmmm...
Look, you're an original. Stay so. Just walk away from this goddam mediocrity and keep doing what you do .... you have your own crowd rooting for you and the truth you bring in with your writing.
Cheers!
Uma Chandrasekaran"

Booked for Good

Sunil K Poolani

When my wayward friend who was good for nothing took a lottery ticket, a disparager said, “Sucker, you lost Rs 10.” And when he won Rs 10 lakh and a Maruti car the misanthropist changed opinion, “See, I predicted… he would win the lottery.”
I predicted Aravind Adiga would win a Booker this year. And all my friends pooh-poohed me. And now I stand vindicated. And Adiga won. And how. I write how.
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 (Booker or not, more photo ops or not, more sales and revenue or not) and White Tiger is a worthy addition to your bookshelf. I am deeply impressed.

Tailpiece
Chetan Bhagat’s “magnum opus”, One Night At The Call Center, was made into a movie (portrayed by some stupid actors making some equally stupid gestures) and was released some days ago. The catch, at least in Mumbai corridors was, that if you buy a ticket for the move you will get to “win” a copy of the book with the ‘acclaimed’ author’s autograph. Ahem. And the movie bombed, thank you. And the books are still piled up in Mumbai multiplexes — untouched, the ink on the signed books still to be absorbed into the newsprint. Who said Mumbai audiences are idiots? Not me.
— Deccan Chronicle / The Asian Age

Ghost Stories and Second-Hand Books

Sunil K Poolani

Fame comes in multifarious ways: business, showbiz, philanthropy, politics, activism, crime, notoriety… you name it. With most ways, money eventually follows and you buy space to remain in the limelight. But is that enough? Not so, if some current trends are anything to go by.
An interesting and rewarding avenue has now been thrown open to failed authors and hacks in the till-now serpentine and serendipitous corridors of chaos and confusion — over how to make big bucks speedily. Many nouveau riche heroes of recent success stories want to immortalise their lives, good or bad, in book format. But there is a snag. How do you do it if you can’t write a line in English to save your life? Get a ghost writer.
There have been ghost writers in the last decades (mainly assigned by corporate houses; sorry, no names), but it was only in the last five-to-ten years that the aspirant ‘writers’ wanted to pen ‘their’ works using outside help. There are three types of ‘writers’ here, though.
One, biographies, written by somebody who possesses some kind of knowledge about the subject’s life and the work s/he is related to. Two, as-told-to pieces, where the real writer only has to have a perfunctory understanding of what s/he is writing about (so the credit goes something like this: ‘George W Bush with Jack the Ripper’). And three, where the writer is the ghost writer of the purest form (no one would ever come to know that who really wrote the book as there is an agreement signed between the subject and the real author).
Last heard in Mumbai: a failed actor and a realty tycoon have planned to write “their own” autobiographies. And, voila, a bahu of a big business empire, too, is writing a novel, and has paid a ghost writer a great deal of money to do the honours.
So, cheer up. The grass is greener here, you failed writers.

Second-Best
They may be second-hand, but definitely not second-best. We’re talking books here. Mumbai’s obsession with old and rare books is now at its peak. I have come across the most amazing collection of books on Mumbai’s pavements, and the prices are unbelievably reasonable. For instance, I’ve managed to lay my hands on the first prints of H G Wells’ works, which I don’t think I could find anywhere else in the world. Here I found not only reprints, but also first editions, for just Rs 125 each. It’s amazing.
The demand for second-hand and rare books went up by around 50 per cent in the last one decade. Sample some of the gems that have changed hands, courtesy the intelligent raddiwalas: 1) Complete bound issues of National Geographic and Playboy magazines from the date of their inception — Rs 50 for a 12-volume set; 2) the first prints of James Joyce’s unabridged and uncensored Ulysses — Rs 50 each; 3) an early 19th century biography of Chhatrapati Shivaji by an unknown Marathi author — Rs 200; 4) an original copy of Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch — a mere Rs 5.
Incredibly cheap, one would say, but these books find their way into the international markets, including major auction houses in London, the city of book-lovers, where sometimes a single title could fetch the occasional buyer-seller a fortune. And the books that find their way outside are not just rare books published in India (in languages as varied as Pali, Sanskrit, Mythili and Chentamil), but books published from practically every nook and cranny of the world.
The roads in and around Flora Fountain are the biggest delight of second-hand book buffs — though the sellers were banned from hawking a couple of years ago, they have just come back, mercy. In a stretch of about two kilometres — on which educated, Shakespeare-quoting street vendors have hawked books for the past 20-30 years — around 200,000 books are up for grabs. Every day. About 80 per cent of them are used books. All types are available here: fiction, non-fiction, technical, non-technical, you name it, you grab it.
Now, it is not just individual collectors who are throwing their hat into the ring. Big corporate houses and hotels are also stacking up old and rare books — of course, in good condition, and preferably gold-rimmed — in their showcases. The money at stake here is definitely higher.
Predictably, several of these collectors’ items are found in bad condition — due, in the main, to poor handling (even in bookstores) and weather conditions — so, they require professional retouching, which itself is a business on the rise, but that is another story, and will save for another day.
— Deccan Chronicle / The Asian Age

Vanity (Un)fair

By Sunil K Poolani

Vanity publishing is today an inevitable and dominating phenomenon worldwide — and a multibillion dollar industry, to boot. It has had existed from ad memoriam. Take the Vedas or the Ramayana to the Holy Bible and the Koran… they were all sponsored trips; by word of mouth or by somebody patronising them to get to the masses.
It is another matter they were done for spiritual (then) or materialistic (mostly now) reasons. Almost all the texts of writing (well, novel-writing was a very eighteenth century occurrence) were all funded by patronising kings or dukes.
Now, a nostalgic trip. I was a kid once and I, even today, lucidly recall how a failed poet tried to get his work published by local magazines; he was a bit successful in that effort. Then he dreamt of compiling his collection of verse in a book. For which, there were no takers in the fledgling publishing arena in the then Kerala.
His cousin, who had made his fortune from the oilfields of Persia, helped fulfil the poet’s dream. The poet used to pedal his bicycle, peddling his ware, from house to house, village to village, and finally from town to town; and in just three years’ time he had almost sold more than ten thousand copies — a quite surprising incident even by today’s standards as even our Shobhaa De does not sell that much. I still preserve the poet’s book; then priced a mere Re 1.
From the backwaters of Kerala to Andhra Pradesh and then in Delhi and Maharashtra I have witnessed, and sold too, copies of several amateur writers’ ambitious works. Some of them, I can proudly claim now, are today household names. And, I have to cheekily admit that my first two books, a collection of poems in Malayalam (when I was sixteen) and a jointly-written booklet on the Narmada movement (in the early nineties), were funded by either my dad or from my meagre salary as a hack.
Personal vignettes apart, in the present days vanity publishing is not an unashamed for business to indulge in, as it used to be, say, a decade ago. With an increasing number of publishers only catering to a clientele who are mostly cretins, a good literary work would not have seen the day of light if not for vanity / subsidised / sharing-costs publishers.
By hook, line, and sinker many aspirant writers want to get their works published — and around half of them feel deceived after self-styled publishers lure the poor hopefuls by offering them instant stardom and high royalties in return, but, alas they eventually get fleeced. Should the writers bite the bait sans thinking aloud? Never.
Writers should be careful about what they are getting into before shelling out hefty amounts to the tricksters in the game. And it is also advisable to think twice before paying money to unknown ‘publishers’ in the US or the UK who just send you ten copies of ‘print-on-demand’ books, and you can kiss goodbye to the ‘rest’ of the copies.
As a publisher I had, and continue to, publish certain books through the subsidised route (mainly poetry and fiction) as these titles, in all probability, would not assure much returns, forget making profits. I had always made it a point to clear whatever royalties the writers are entitled, too. But the problem with subsidised or vanity publishing is the writers sit in the driver’s seat as they think the publisher is at their mercy. And they do not realise that no publisher — and that includes the best in the profession (Penguin, Rupa) — cannot assure which book would sell and which one would bomb.
Discretion is the name of the game, here.

Tailpiece
A couple of years ago, a big Indian publisher brought out a book which they termed the biggest thing that has had happened in the Indian literary history. Printing of a book is pittance, but not the PR costs. Since this young and handsome guy from Mumbai had enough khandani money to indulge in this tamasha, his PR firm, in tandem with the publisher, roped in several ‘intellectual’ books page editors of reputed magazines and newspapers to write favourable reviews.
One of them flew down from Delhi, was accommodated in a five-star hotel in Mumbai, interviewed the author, and devoted three pages for the book (interview; excerpts) in his magazine and called the twenty-something as the next inheritor of Marquez. The book bombed, thank you. But not after he becoming a household name in Malabar Hill families and in Page 3 circuits.
— Deccan Chronicle / The Asian Age

Dreams Die Young, a debut novel by CV Murali, published by Frog Books

Reviews/excerpts of the book have appeared in various newspapers, magazines, websites:

The Hindu, The Tribune, The New Indian Express, The Statesman, The Pioneer, Sahara Time, The Free Press Journal, Navshakti, The Week, Indian Literature(Sahitya Akademi’s journal),The Book Review,NDTV.com, Sulekha.com,Brown paper

A few reviews are reproduced below:
……………………………………………………………………………………………
Murali has woven a veiled commentary on the present seething turmoil.
The writer carefully maneuvers the readers into thinking that though the dream of Rajat is righteous, the method and mode that legitimised violence to achieve it is wrong and also that it is important for the politicians and other government officials sitting on high chairs to know that the callousness on their part to eliminate the suffering of the poor may have disastrous consequences. Murali’s lucid prose, efficacious trenchant realism, an insightful mode of characterisation, psychological overtones has enabled him to unravel a theme of timeless human significance—relationship of the individual and the society, raising the book to the stature of a sociological document
The Tribune, April 2008

Intense and intricate, it is hard to believe that this is C V Murali's debut novel.
Unlike a few writers who just claim to guide the genre of contemporary English literature to glory, C V Murali effectively does the job. His book is not descriptive but paints a clear picture of the lead character's personality.
By analyzing Rajat's actions and thought process the reader can easily interpret his temperament. He has introduced section-titles in the book which embellish it's beauty all the more and link the mood therein. The very first section-title is 'The End' and the story is narrated in a flashback. 'The Requime' and 'The End' are the only two chapters that narrate what happened to Rajat after he quit the revolt; the only two chapters which talk about his present. Intelligently, the two chapters have been placed at the two extreme pole of the book.
But what does the book do to you? It will very effectively prevent you - the reader - young or old, from going astray.
The Free Press Journal, March 2008

There is a freshness about this slim,nostalgic first novel which should sustain the interest of the reader to the end.The author has a facility for quick sketches.He can bring a character to life in a few sentences.As a first novel,Dreams Die Young shows promise,and this will,no doubt,be realised in futureworks as the author matures in craftmanship
Indian Literature(Sahitya Akademi’s Bi-monthly journal),January-February 2008

C.V. Murali has gone into the subject with a quiverful of questions. What are the causes that transform mildmannered, well-to-do and gifted youth into pitiless gun-toting terrorists?
Dreams Die Young seeks answers. Murali prefers a crisp, matter-of-fact-style…
The twist in the climax is well-produced. As also the last turn of the screw when Rajat learns of Romen’s betrayal of his trust…The Hindu, January 2008
Dreams Die Young delves into the psyche of young people, trying to shed light on what makes an ordinary young student turn into a Naxalite.
The New Indian Express, January 2008

The storyline of the novel is finely detailed, as the author subtly depicts the betrayal and sacrifices made by the cadres of the Naxalite movement. Written in a lucid prose
Sahara Time, October 2007

In Dreams Die Young are seeds of a good novel writer.It is also creditable for the subject he has chosen and to write on such a topic is appreciable/commendable.
Navashakti,September 2007

There are lots of pearls one could gather-the style, gripping narrative and the classy opening. The hallmark of the book is its excellent narrative.
The Week, August 2007

After a long long time one book which I could finish reading at a single stretch. The characters flow smoothly scene after scene and at the end of each chapter you are left with a question mark and an inquisitiveness to know what's going to happen next. All credits to the author for having chosen a sensitive subject for his debut novel and dealt with such aplomb. It’s an apt book for the present day hasty reader and a fabulous read.
Geeta Canpadee,Book critic,Blog on sulekha.com

There’s a certain cinematic quality to this briskly-paced novella that cries for translation to the latter medium. The directness and simplicity of the narrative would make an adaptation a cinch. Won’t someone please buy the film rights to the book and champion this dream.
Niranjana Iyer,Book critic based in Canada,Blog on Brown papers

Need Introspection

By Satya Sista

Your article, Macaulay’s Children, set me on a tour of introspection and deep thinking. It made me wonder, whether the ease with which some of our countrymen are able write in English and receive world wide acclaim is due to their proficiency in English or the lack of it in their mother tongue or the other Indian Languages. Not being a literary man myself, I am unable to go in to the depth of their minds and see whether their thought process is western or Indian, whether their characters depict true Indians or mostly Westerners, with shades of Indians thrown in to them. Not being born in this era of Western influence, I shudder at the thought of the gradual disappearance of the regional languages, when most of our younger generation does not know how to read or write their mother tongue. Let alone writing in their mother tongue or regional languages, they are even deprived of the joy to read great works in their own language, understand each and every word in the same mental frame as the author, visualize each and every situation and feel one with the characters of the book.
Am I wrong in so thinking? I question my inner self. May be, it says. It is often said that when this World is becoming a Global Village, language should not become a barrier for expression and one should do so in which ever language one feels comfortable. Is that so? I question it again. Yes, it says and continues “The present day generation is not to be blamed for their lack of interest in their mother tongue. It is not their fault if they have not learnt how to read and write their mother tongue or if they are unable to understand and appreciate the great Indian folklore or Epics, or if they do not have an ear for the Indian classical music. The fault is more deep routed. It is in their parents, in their grand parents and even in the society itself. How many of us will support a family member, who wants to study Indian languages or Indian culture? Instead of feeling happy that here is a person who is truly interested in his or her roots, we will try our best to discourage that person and try to lure him or her in to more socially acceptable and commercially viable options. This is an era, where everything which is homegrown is despised and western is lapped up and generation after generation is only strengthening the feeling. It is not restricted to literature alone; it has gone to the extent of our very nerve centre. Don’t you know that English is the passport for success in the present era and don’t you want your children in their higher studies or careers abroad? Don’t you want proudly announce to your near and dear the achievements of your children abroad and the way they are contributing to the growth of a foreign land? Don’t you remember the Indian Ethos, where in, we work for universal peace and universal brotherhood? Simply stop being a regionalist and raise to the level of a Global Citizen”
Oh! My God! What a brainwash. I say to myself. It is nothing but self effacing rhetoric, I quip. Why is my inner self not aligned to my way of thinking? Why can’t it strongly support my views?. As if hearing my thoughts, it says again “ Don’t be discouraged. I do not say that your views are wrong. They are only out of time and out of context. To bring back our Indian languages to their erstwhile glory, it may require a zealous crusader, to change the system of our learning, the mindset of our society and the focus of our future generations. Though English as a language can not be dethroned, we can at best bring our regional languages to an equal level”
In so saying my inner self fell silent leaving a herculean task in my hands and my mind full of thoughts.
Thanks
Satya Sista
Major ( Retd ) SN Sista
H.No 11-13-162, Rd No 3,
Alakapuri, Hyderabad – 500035
Andhra Pradesh
Mobile 9948330066

Macaulay’s Children

Sunil K Poolani

When the commissioning editor of this magazine called me at 11am asking me to write this piece, after reading a news report mentioning two Indians have been included in this year’s Man Booker shortlist, I was fast asleep: after a night-long, neck-wracking work. I said, Yes, slit-eyed. When I woke up, I cursed myself, Oh! Why did I ever commit to do that? But promise is a promise, and here I go.... And, readers, you asked for it.
Convent-educated I am, as my parents were somewhat affluent; and I learnt a language that is now spoken and written in most of the civilised world (whatever it means). The Brits conquered most of the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and thrust this language, for their own benefit, down the throats of the gullible, especially those people, dumb in most cases they are, who did not have the luxury of weapons or any other means. So we learnt this great language, with great pomposity and glamour and people like the bhadralok Bengalis and Madrasi Brahmins took it as a status symbol, a feather in their cap, to escape from their the then-existent despondent lives.
Then the worst happened. We (now, I only include Indians in this category) started writing in this foreign tongue. And, the ever-grinning firangis wanted this: someone to lap up what they had shat behind. Thus manufacturing Macaulay’s Children. Nirad C Chaudhuri was one of the firsts to believe that the English way is the best in the world to live by. Not all were, to be frank, subscribed to that theory. R K Narayan, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Kamala Markandaya did break the barriers to write in and write to the western audiences in their own language, without breaking away from the very Indian psyche and spirit.
So far, so fine. Then? Then came Salman Rushdie. He wrote — with tremendous success — Midnight’s Children. A path-breaking work, no doubt. Destroying the till-then norms of how not to write the Victorian, stiff-upper-lip, politically-correct English, and, to the Brits’ bafflement, chutnifying the English. The book did wonders and spawned hopes among thousands of aspirants in the Indian subcontinent. Till today there are few successful writers from this part of the world who could match Rushdie’s oeuvre. What did he achieve? Fame. Money. Fatwa.
No one could emulate Rushdie’s success story. Then descended a dame called Arundhati Roy, writing a mediocre novel called The God of Small Things. Hello, by then the global geopolitics had changed, for good or bad. India was no longer held a pariah. In India existed a great market; one of the biggest English-reading markets where the West can peddle their wares. (Why do you think India got so many Miss Worlds and Miss Universes? Is it because all of our damsels suddenly started looking sexy? No, dummy, just because here was a market for multinational fairness creams.)
Same thing happened in Indian writing in English. So, how do you get attention and reap in profits when the massive book publishing from the US and the UK has to be unleashed in this country? By awarding Indian writers, of course. Suddenly this over-inflated Man Booker Prize started short-listing or/and occasionally awarding their ‘great’ award to some of our mediocre writers. Kiran Desai, one to get celebrated recently, is an example. And mediocrity cannot stop there: a Pulitzer award to Jhumpa Lahiri, too.
It is all about market, honey. So when Rushdie, though he won the Booker of Booker for the second time this year for Midnight’s Children, has been dumped now, Amitav Ghosh and Aravind Adiga have been included among themselves in the final six novelists this year.
To give their respective honours, both Ghosh and Adiga write well and their works are good by any international standard. Should we complain, then? Shouldn’t we rejoice? Pick your choice. Some questions crop up, nevertheless. Why should we be overjoyed by some western award that is thrust upon us? A Ghosh or Adiga would not have been in our vocabulary if they were not promoted (for all the materialistic reasons) by the firangi critics. When will we improve? We will not.
Why? Giving Rushdie and Ghosh their due credit for the way they effervescently write in whatever language they might have imbibed, one thing is straight: we, Indians, have a rich literature which is still unsurpassed by any new-fangled European language. We should be, and have to be, proud of the great literary traits some of our stalwarts in Indian languages have left behind: be it in Bengali, Punjabi, Malayalam, Hindi or even Konkani.
We do not need any recommendations from and by any ex-colonialists and neo-imperialists. They, today, depend on us. But, we still think ‘good’ is better only if it comes from the west. What a pity.

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

Blurbs and Burps

Sunil K Poolani

Sometime ago I requested an established writer to pen a Foreword for a book we were publishing. Without mincing many words he said he will charge at least Rs 10,000 for his 1,000-word ‘magnum opus’. My firm had agreed to pay that amount; his blurb on the cover would boost sales of a first-time author, you know. It is another matter the book did not take off and the Foreword was never written.
Move over quality literature’s patronising saints, who benevolently considered up-and-coming authors are their literary progeny, once; big money is here, now. After fat advances and multi-city tours, it is the turn of these time-honoured writers to demand greenbacks to make them richer by resorting to a less-effortful game of writing forewords or blurbs for gullible publishers and wannabe writers.
Evidently, there are ‘friendly’ stalwarts who write blurbs, in favour of a certain publisher, or for a friend, or his or her offspring... Salman Rushdie wrote one for Kiran Desai’s debut work, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. And see what she has achieved for her second novel: a Booker.
Look at the advantages. This tribe might have published one or two best-selling books, and today they might be scrounging for fodder for their forthcoming success stories. That may or may not happen. So what do you do to remain in picture — and, yes, make money, too? Forewords? Well, they do take time to write. Blurb? It is easy, silly; you don’t even have to read the book in question.
These writers can deliver carefully-worded, adjective-laden blurbs at the drop of a hat. Taste one: “A valiant saga of loss and longing, rare bravery and resilience; narrated with remarkable kind-heartedness and forthrightness… An outstanding debut!” The novel could be hardly that. But who is complaining?

Dissimilar Voice
Yours truly and my partner in life and crime, Lajwanti S Khemlani, just finished, and enjoyed, reading Richard Crasta’s The Killing of an Author (Invisible Man Books). This is what we have to say:
The book tells us about the harrowing hardships Crasta had to face in the process of getting his novel The Revised Kama Sutra published. Eventually, his story was published worldwide. But not before Crasta lost all he had — wife, children, money and, most importantly, his health. In the process of writing, rewriting, and trying to get his novel published, Crasta became a prescription drug addict.
Whatever Crasta does, he does passionately. He dares to be different in his writing and behaviour. And this seeps through in his work as clearly as sparkling water. In spite of the book theme being intense, Crasta has a sense of humour which he maintains from the start to the end. In a sense, the book is a lesson to new writers of what could happen to them even in developed nations like the US and the UK.
The Killing of an Author is funny, sad, and eye-opening. Like others who are dependent on psychiatric drugs, Crasta has to have them for his depression and anxiety. He knows he needs them to function, but does not know the side-effects. The book presents how most innocent civilians like him get caught up in drug enslavement without the slightest inkling of what could happen if you take this, that and the other. It is also a warning to those who are plagued with mental problems to learn more about what they ingest, even if it is prescribed by their loved ones.
We need more writers like him. But are Indian publishers ready to take him seriously?

Sunil K Poolani is Executive Director and Publisher, Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. Write to him at: poolani@gmail.com
-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Soft-Porn Blues

By Sunil K Poolani

I am aware that this is a family newspaper and what I am going to write below is neither a blatant promotion or celebration of pornography nor an effort to titillate buried libidos. But, as any growing-up guy or gal in the pre-cable and -internet days, cheap pornographic books and magazines were the stuff that quenched our curiosities of that ‘nether’ world.
Pornographic literature has existed since people started writing — and reading — and it is still, even in this age, one of the biggest industries in the world. It is a matter of prerogative, though, how cheap your tastes can plummet. ‘Straight’ sex stories are considered fine and those ones written classically have stood the test of time. Okay, call it erotica. And it’s just not Lolita or Sons and Lovers, but there has been a wide array of erotica that has the same depth and range of any world classic you can imagine.
But the debauchery in tastes only becomes worrisome if those pornographic or erotic writing deals with and depicts worrisome sex: incest, paedophilia, bestiality, scatology, rape, stomach-churning fetishes, necrophilia…
When I was living in Hyderabad in the late eighties, I picked up a fat book from a pavement stall: Pearl. It has travelled with me to whichever city or house I have since then moved into. Pearl has had an interesting history. It was an underground pornographic magazine that had as mysteriously disappeared as it had appeared in the Victorian England, shaking the so-called moral standards set by the stiff upper-lip British society.
Why so? It started using the f-word without any inhibition, but was an impressive collection that comprised serialised pornographic stories, poetry, ribaldry, anecdotes, short essays, spoofs… all written, though in a salacious manner, in great classicist language.
By today’s standards Pearl appears as sanitised as any genre of feel-good literature, but one could imagine the upheaval Pearl might have caused in the then society: a reason why it is still a bestseller in all English-reading markets. What if you can only lay your hands on a pirated copy.

Magnificent History
Mike Dash’s Thug is the most amazing work of history that I have read in so many years. Some thoughts. While anyone who is interested in the past (aren’t we all?) will be enthralled to read this movie-like narration with rapt attention, one has to rue the fact that we have been discussing for ages: why is that you always need a firang to retell the story of the Raj with clarity, detail and near-perfection? Why is it that, save for a Ramachandra Guha, we do not have, at present, any historian worth his salt to invest more time, hard work, dedication and scholarship (the money part will follow if you have the rest) and create something like Thug?
Apart from the beauty and eloquence of the prose, the book is painstakingly researched and grippingly written. Dash tells a story that we, Indians, have only heard from our grandmothers’ scary bedside recitals (I doubt if they still do that). The inside blurb says that Dash has [had] devoted years to combing archives in both Britain and India to discover how the thugs lived and worked. And he does succeed in revealing all these murderous clan’s methods, secret and skills — a blow-by-blow account, this.

Jargon Unlimited
Recently I read a great line: “We really want to ‘leverage’ and ‘monetise’ our ‘synergy’ with this new ‘initiative’, but there’s a ‘disconnect’ in terms of our ‘reorg’.” Before you chuckle, do realise that this is the kind of verbosity that reverberates in corporate conference rooms, and seldom do we confront the speakers to cut out the jargon and talk vividly. And this jargon has already started seeping into our literature, too.

Sunil K Poolani is Executive Director and Publisher, Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. Write to him at: poolani@gmail.com
-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Do Not Imitate, Thank You

Many readers have been writing to me, asking certain things they have been curious to know about the publishing business in India, and also about books in general — and where we are headed towards. As I had said earlier, readers’ mails are what I really look forward to and cherish every time my column appears in this paper.

I try to answer some of their questions and, ah yes, I really like the effort they take to write to me. So here they go:

1) The number of books especially novels that are published in India is skyrocketing, and how. The rub is that most of them aren’t quite good and would never have passed through editors a decade ago. So what has changed in the publishing industry?

A: ‘Aren’t very good’ is an understatement; most of the books published here are not even worth the stationary they are written upon.

2) Have the criteria for getting books published changed over the last one decade?

A: Without doubt. These days every scum you can imagine sells; mediocrity is the catchword. Also, thanks to lack of serious reading, the mindset of the urban youth is not programmed to read anything heavy; a reason why Paulo Coelho or Arindam Chaudhary sells well. Since there is a clientele, mediocre writers churn out stuff to cater to that segment. And publishers are not complaining as at the end of the day they do not want empty coffers.

3) But is it not a passing phase?

A: For bad of course, the change is happening. In the last one decade numerous national and international publishing houses have set up shop here and since there is an acute lack of good writing, and since these publishers want to tap the local market, they have to publish and promote run-of-the mill-work, which is in abundance, thank you.

4) Is the profile of the author and the target audience more important than the story?

A: Yes. Sometime back, I read about an invitation by a publishing house which said, only men and women who are good-looking need to submit their manuscripts. Also, if you are a celebrity or someone who walks the ramp or is a starlet or is the daughter of son of a celebrity chances are that not only do you get published but you are on Page 3; and, yes, sell voluminously, too. And quality? What is that?

5) Has language taken a backseat, by becoming more simple and easy to understand? Are we catering to the SMS and email-addicted public?

A: Language has not become simple and easy, but it has deteriorated to the nadir that it is a tease to whatever intelligence we are left with. You can blame so many things: fast life, gadgets, television, nuclear families, lack of enthusiasm to appreciate quality literature…

6) What are the main criteria these days that publishing houses apply when choosing manuscripts?

A: Saleability. Cookery, self-help, children’s colouring books, beauty and fitness guides… these are money-spinners. And the no-nos are quality books penned by I Allan Sealy or Mukul Kesavan.

7) Any new writer who has shown promise of becoming India’s next Salman Rushdie?

A: Rushdie? Why should anyone try to imitate him? Leave him alone. Develop your own style. To answer this query, there are many who are promising, but, then, who is interested? Sad it may sound, but that is, guys, the truth.

Tailpiece

Talking about Salman Rushdie, here is what one of my friends had to say: “This ‘genius’ has not published anything readable since Moor’s Last Sigh. What he has been painstakingly churning ever since is either verbal vomit or constipated prose. The way things are going he may not need fatwas from the Iranians, but some good lover of literature might do the honours.” Well, I hope this would not happen, but what Rushdie can do is to take a break and write something other than his nubile wives, divorces and libel issues.

Sunil K Poolani

-- The Asian Age / Deccan Chronicle

Posthumously Personal

By Lajwanti S Khemlani & Sunil K Poolani

Bombay Tiger

Kamala Markandaya

Penguin

Price: 495; Pages: 327

Bombay Tiger, published posthumously, is the effervescent and mysterious Kamala Markandaya’s eleventh and last novel. Markandaya’s life was something that you would come across in fable books. An unassuming Brahmin lady from a small town like Mysore, venturing into a new-fangled wide western world at around the time of India’s Independence is something dazzling.

To put it briefly, after her small stints in India, she moved on to London in 1948 to be in journalism at a time when, save a Mulk Raj Anand or two, nobody made a mark in that arena. She might have been failure in whatever she did. Life. Marriage. Journalism. Literary pursuits. But her outstanding novels like Nectar in the Sieve and A Handful of Rice, though inconsequential by today’s standards, are still path-breaking literature. And that these two books are still taught in universities in India and abroad still amuses one.

Now, coming to the present volume, had Bombay Tiger been published during the author’s lifetime, it might have read differently, and been considerably shorter. Set in the l980s, the novel is about the rise, fall and the ultimate redemption of Ganguli, the protagonist.

Having lost his inheritance at an earlier age, Ganguli leaves his village for Bombay save but a recommendation letter and ruthless ambition. In the city of ‘dreams’, he eventually turns out to be a big-time industrialist. Ganguli always knew what he wanted and how to get it. But being a mere mortal, even he could not control his love — and losses.

In certain ways, he is no different than his classmate Rao, who too migrated to Bombay but became a financier. Rao is jealous of Ganguli’s astounding success. And this has always been a sore point with Rao, no different to others who are competitive and hate one’s guts. Rao’s aspirations and his family are also more ordinary. The two have always disliked each other, but have maintained a relationship of sorts; both are busy-bees, but it is Ganguli who is sentimental and a larger-than-life figure. It is he who loves anything and anyone passionately, suffers losses more tragically and is bullish in appearance akin to his personality.

Rao is leaner, softer in several ways; he spends lots of time and effort plotting ruin of the business magnet, rather than making even a miniscule attempt to understanding his only offspring.

As life may have, when the business giant falls, others follow suit. Storm-ripples are felt by Rao and his family. They, too, cannot escape their harsh destiny. It is the dramatic loss of their children that shakes them to the core of their beings. This abruptly pulls the rug from under Ganguli’s feet and brings him, bang, crashing down. Rao does mourn his son’s death, though he was never emotionally nearer to him. Yet, the tragic event alters his veritable existence. He can now let go of his all-consuming hatred for Ganguli.

Some characters, important nevertheless, show up towards the end, which is a back draw. Markandaya should have introduced more of Ganguli’s private love life earlier in the story, to give the readers more of a picture of his sexual sexapades — Ganguli, the man, rather than a mere businessman.

This literary pursuit portrays Indian life quite accurately, especially where issues like abortion are concerned, though the author migrated to England before Nehruvian socialism started. It is vivid that Markandaya wrote for a foreign audience in mind.

Bombay Tiger would have grabbed my attention had it been tighter and shorter; it tends to wander off the main character in many places. The pace of the novel slows down towards the middle, and, ahem, suddenly picks up in the last 20-to-30 pages. So, folks, Bombay Tiger does not have anything novel to offer. Buy it if you can afford it. Amen.

-- Deccan Herald / 31 August 2008

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