Pop fiction is a great leveller

Whatever your stand on the Jan Lokpal Bill issue, the one heartening aspect of the 13-day circus has been a mass of people from different social strata coming together for one cause. We don’t see this happen often.

We are hyper-aware of how diverse India is. And this diversity is tricky business, in the cultural world especially. There is work created for the masses, like a Bollywood blockbuster or a Page 3-inspired newspaper supplement; and then, there are products we don’t expect will have a wide appeal. However, before Anna Hazare united the nation —  rather than a sliver of disgruntled intelligentsia — India had one great unifier: cheap pop fiction.

Chetan Bhagat’s first novel, Five Point Someone, has sold over 700,000 copies. Karan Bajaj’s debut novel Keep Off The Grass was a bestseller with sales of more than 500,000. Recently, The Secret of the Nagas by Amish is believed to have sold 70,000 copies within a few weeks of its release. All these authors have a few things in common. They are management students; critics rubbish their writing; their books are cheap; and given the sales figures, everyone except the critics (probably the same disgruntled lot who are appalled by Hazare) is buying their books.

Full article here Firstpost

Between love and duty

Manasi Vaidya's debut novel delves into the pressures of seeking intimacy in the world of high pressure jobs, says Nupur Sharma

Manasi Vaidya's novel No Deadline for Love (Penguin) is the latest in the burgeoning genre of chick lit/ rom-com reads. The book features a spunky protagonist called Megha who has for most of her life done what was expected of her: graduation in economics, MBA in marketing and then a straight-laced job in a high-profile FMCG company. There comes a point where she starts to wonder if this unending routine of juggling late hours and unreasonable deadlines is really her life's calling. Her mother's desperate attempts to put her on the ‘marriage market' are not making life any easier. And to top it all, Megha's latest project has been bogged down by a complete dearth of creative ideas, giving her nasty boss the perfect excuse to disregard the blood, sweat and tears she's poured into her job so far. Add to this volatile mix, Yudi (the team's new creative consultant) who is gorgeous, sardonic and only too eager to disagree with Megha and trample upon all her ideas. This sets the stage for a quirky battle of wits and some unexpected romance.

In the deluge of writing in her genre, how does Manasi locate her work? “My novel is essentially a story about having the conviction to follow your heart. Sure, it's also a romantic comedy and it has a liberal dose of corporate dynamics, but at its heart it is the story of a girl who is struggling to fit into a place where she is increasingly beginning to feel like an outsider and about how she finally finds it within her to follow her heart,” Manasi says.

Full report here Hindu

A novel based on the killing of Rajiv Gandhi

On 21st May, 1991, India’s youngest ever prime minister and the then youth icon, Rajiv Gandhi got killed in a bomb blast at Sriperumbudur (Tamil Nadu), planned and executed by the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) because he had sent forces in Sri Lanka to help the Sri Lankan army in suppressing the violent activities carried out by that organization. The killing was executed through a human-bomb and it sent a message across the world to all the militant groups that anybody can be killed if the killer is not hesitant of losing his / her own life for that purpose.

Hindi novelist - Ved Prakash Sharma had made announcement to write a grand novel on the corruption prevalent in the Indian police system years prior to Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and its advertisement (with the title - Vardi Waala Gunda) had been carried out regularly. Perhaps the arrival of the novel was getting delayed due to the novelist’s not being able to get a suitable plot for the overhyped novel. The sudden assassination of the young political leader provided him the plot and he came up with Vardi Waala Gunda in 1992.

Full review here Mouthshut

Plots of gold

They sell in lakhs, churn out hundreds of novels in a lifetime and constantly finetune their storylines according to the latest trends. Aabhas Sharma meets the bestselling writers of Hindi pulp fiction.

Sitting in the basement office next to his palatial bungalow in Meerut, Ved Prakash Sharma makes a startling revelation in a matter-of-fact tone. “I stopped counting after 1.5 million.” Sharma is talking about his bestselling novel, Wardi Wala Gunda (Hooligan in Uniform), which is treated as a classic in the Hindi pulp fiction genre. “My books sell as they are a heady cocktail of what an average reader wants,” he says. His heady cocktail includes murder, revenge, sex and greed. Throw in book jackets in technicolour screaming murder, cheap thrills, raunchy women and a gun, and you have a sure winner.

Titles like Bahu Maange Insaaf (Daughter-in-Law Demands Justice), Aankhon Wali Andhi (The Blind Woman with Eyes), Dahej Mein Mili Revolver (In the Dowry came a Revolver) and Paintra (Move) have sold like no other genre in the country. The men churning out these potboilers prolifically might not be as famous as Chetan Bhagat, but enter the Hindi heartland and you will find that they are celebrities. Bhagat’s last book, Two States: The Story of My Marriage, has sold about a million copies — stupendous but still 500,000 short of Sharma’s Wardi Wala Gunda. Amitav Ghosh’s latest book, River of Smoke, has so far sold around 60,000; Shobhaa De’s bestsellers do around 25,000.

Take the case of Anil Mohan. This Delhi-based writer has written over 180 books in two decades. On an average, his books sell about 50,000 copies each. (He could be close to the 10 million mark now in overall sales. Though far short of the 400 million or so copies of Harry Potter books of J K Rowling, this is better than any Indian English writer can claim.) Still, he feels that he hasn’t got due credit: “When they [English writers] sell 3,000, it becomes a bestseller. What about our books?”

Full report here Business Standard

Pulp fiction is back!

It's time to rewind to regional pulp fiction as over-the-top heroes, villains and outlandish plots make for a quickie read. Anuradha Varma reports

Lyricist and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar credits reading Ibne Safi's novels for helping him creating eternal celluloid villains like Gabbar Singh and Mogambo. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap grew up wanting to be either Amitabh Bachchan or writer Surender Mohan Pathak. Actress Gul Panag even invited her favourite novelist Pathak to the premiere of her film Rann.

Besides Bengali detectives Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi, Hindi, Urdu and Tamil pulp fiction heroes can keep many readers up at night turning pages of their slim detective novels. "Pocket books" or novellas, these became popular at book stalls at railway stations over 50 years ago.

Publishing houses are now giving the books fresh airing. Westland, along with Blaft, has published four translations of Ibne Safi's Jasusi Duniya series. Ibne Safi, the pen name of Asrar Ahmad, was once described as "the only original writer in the subcontinent" by Agatha Christie and wrote 125 novels in his lifetime.

Full report here Times of India 

Novel touch to fantasy

Nineteen-year-old Priya K. has given a fresh perspective to Greek myth in her debut novel.

It's not every day that a friend announces she's writing a book. Even rarer for her to inform you, a year later, that the manuscript's been accepted by a publisher.

Till a couple of months back, Priya K. would have introduced herself as a final year undergrad English Literature student at Stella Maris College. Now, she's the author of Prophecy: The Rise of the Sword, which will soon be available in book shops.

The book, which took her roughly two-and-a-half years to write, gives the timeless Greek myth of Atlantis a 21st century twist. This fantasy tale tells its reader that the land wasn't lost after all; the inhabitants of Atlantis migrated underwater to their new home, Lemuria, where they live to this day. And now a hip Delhi girl, Neha Sharma, is off to find it. Running to roughly 400 pages, the book promises “politics, power play, treachery and suspense” in the dark depths of the Indian Ocean.

full report here Hindu

Gulp this Pulp!

"Beware!" Dolly roared like a wounded tigress as she pointed her revolver at him. "Stop there, you devil! If you move even a step forward I will shoot you without any second thoughts." Lokesh fell silent. He did not expect such courage from a tender beauty.
                                                              - Shatranj (Chess), Shagun Sharma

Such is the heady stuff that Hindi pulp fiction is made of. Dishing out a tantalising, cheap cocktail of suspense, crime and sex to readers seeking respite from the tedium of everyday life, this genre of thrillers once ruled the roost in the Hindi heartland.

Made of recycled paper, the kind used for the cheap rough registers in which school students often do their homework, many of these 300-odd-page paperbacks are published from Meerut in western UP also known for its significant role in the 1857 War of Independence against the British.

At any book stand on railway platforms or makeshift stalls on the peripheries of bus terminals, across big, small and mofussil towns, these books can be found neatly stacked in the first row. With loud, melodramatic, screaming covers like box-office Bollywood posters, you just can't miss them. Several generations have grown up reading these pocket books, especially in the Hindi heartland. In train journeys, often, the book companions' are characters like Commander Karan Saxena, Indrajeet or Keshav Pandit - also turned into a crusading TV soap.

Full report here Hardnews

Lining up the thrills

Ashwin Sanghi is finalising the screenplay of The Rozabal Line

The breathless conspiracy thriller reached India with Ashwin Sanghi's The Rozabal Line. In town to talk about the spanking new reprint (Westland), the Mumbai-based Sanghi said, “The notion that Jesus may have left a bloodline came to my attention in late 1999 when I read Holy Blood Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. I visited Srinagar and the shrine at Rozabal subsequently. That was the moment that I knew that I had to pull all the threads together and weave a story around these fascinating legends.”

Initially published in 2007 under the pseudonym of Shawn Haigins, The Rozabal Line was later by published by Westland, under Sanghi's own name.

The reason for this Sanghi says is because “I desperately wanted to have two separate lives, one as a businessman-entrepreneur and the other as a novelist. Creating the persona of Shawn Haigins was an ideal way to do this. However, when Tata-Westland signed up for publishing ‘The Rozabal Line' in India they felt that it would be virtually impossible to market the novel effectively using my pseudonym and I agreed to publish under my own name.”

Romancing the ordinary

Rajeev Jhaveri's maiden book, I, Romantic has a Keralite character as the woman lead. The south of India has always fascinated him and the book is about to be made into a film, he says

Kerala seems to be hot not only on the tourism circuit, but also on the literary front. Indian writers in English also flaunt their love for the green state in their works, like Rajeev Jhaveri. His romcom, I, Romantic, the maiden book of the publication wing of Ravi Agrawal's Plus Entertainment, has a character called Pria Warrier as its leading lady. Published by Ink Plus, it is perhaps the first book that was written to be actually made into a movie, even before it was written.

Now, Rajeev is involved with yet another ‘Warrier', a movie he is making, a thriller called ‘Warrier K'! Rajeev wrote the story and screenplay of Dhoondte Reh Jaoge (2009) and Kucch To Hai (2003). He has made a few short films too.

The protagonist of I, Romantic, Avinash Rai, and the author share very many things in their lives, like a stint in the army, music classes, a city called Pune, cinema making and writing. The book is all about a guy who joins the army, does not quite enjoy it, leaves and then falls in love with a film institute girl who makes do with a pair of spectacles with one arm for quite a while.

Full report here Hindu

English-language pulp fiction translates to success in India

Hindi and Tamil paperbacks, the gaudy equivalent of American dime novels and British penny dreadfuls, were a staple of old India, sold at the country's railway stations, bus depots and chai stands. Now, a push to translate them into English is creating new fans for the genre among middle- and upper-class Indians.

Thousands of such titles were published starting in the 1920s. Many are household names. They include campy vampire serials, supernatural thrillers, and a slew of Hindi crime novels featuring fast-talking detectives, multiple murders and crowds of prostitutes. Pulp fiction written in Tamil, a major language of South India, is peopled with Hindu sorcerers, overblown evil scientists and tortured inter-caste lovers.

"These stories are from the heart of India," said Kaveri Lalchand, co-director of Chennai's Blaft Publications, which has issued several popular English-language anthologies of Tamil yarns rounded up from household cupboards and coffeehouses. "What's great about them is that they're not being written abroad or by people sitting in universities."

Full report here Washington Post 

Chennai publishers revive Tamil pulp fiction

She peers out of the window of a book shop, causing shoppers in Delhi’s bustling Khan Market to pause a moment and give her a second look. Her gaze is sultry, her black wavy hair gathered by a silver trinket and adorned with jasmine petals. It’s not clear whether the shoppers are distracted by her voluptuous charms under the transparent white sari over her low-cut blouse, or by the fact that she is demurely sipping blood from a skull-shaped coconut. Either way, she is hard to ignore – which, as the cover of The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol II, is precisely her purpose.

The book is the latest title from Blaft Publications, an independent publishing house in Chennai, India’s southernmost city. Its English-language versions of Tamil pulp fiction are reviving interest in this once wildly popular form of writing, which was at its peak from the 1950s to the 1980s – the days before cable television. Printed on cheap paper (hence the name), the books were published in pocket-sized versions convenient for long-distance journeys on buses or trains.

Full report here National

Neeraj Chhibba unplugged

Never before has IIT been written about from the perspective of someone who did not study there. But Neeraj Chhibba, the author of Zero Percentile, in his debut work has done that and more. Here's an exclusive interview. Never before has IIT been written about from the perspective of someone who did not study there.

What inspired you to write this book? 
There were quite a few things that inspired me. For one, I always wanted to write. All my friends had known for long that I will turn a writer one day. Whenever we talked of an alternate career, I was always very vocal about writing as an option after retiring from an active corporate life.

Apart from this deep-sitting desire, I wanted to write Zero Percentile for all the young people whose dreams are not fulfilled (I have put this into the story through the protagonist not being able to make it to the IIT) and they start despairing, not realising that there are so many other things which are equally satisfying that they could take up. Then, Russia has never been written about before from the perspective of a student. Like the myth that India is a land of snake-charmers and cows, it is perceived that Russia is the land of mafia and a largely unregulated society. I wanted to break this notion and let the world know that the Russians are as normal a people as all of us.

What prompted you to choose the title Zero Percentile? 
I know from research that a title which has a number is catchy and sticks to the mind. If you read the definition of percentile, it is the value of a variable below which a certain percent of observations fall. When I chose Zero Percentile as the title of the book, I wanted to say that after not being able to get into the IIT the protagonist felt that he had failed in life and considered himself as the biggest loser and the moment as the Zero Percentile moment of his life.

Tuhin Sinha's Of Love and Politics launched

Tuhin Sinha's latest book, Of Love and Politics, was launched in Delhi on July 2.

The novel, published by Hachette, is an unusual love triangle between three young Indian politicians.

The book was launched by BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad and noted CNN-IBN's Bhupendra Chaubey. This is yet another addition to the rapidly growing number of popular fiction titles by Indians this summer.

Blurb
I’m a political journalist by profession and an eternal romantic at heart. I’m sure that is a scandalous and a rare combination.

Unlike the US, where elections are essentially personality centric and every citizen has a right to decide the next leader, Indian elections tend to be extra-democratic, often putting the very institution at peril. The Indian political scenario is largely tri-polar. There is the Congress and its allies called the UPA on the one hand, the BJP and its allies called the NDA on the other. And then there is the Third Front comprising Left Parties and others who come and leave the front on their convenience. A tri-polar contest carries a huge probability of a hung parliament, which in turn results in some rather hasty and volatile re-alignments to form government. Some of these alignments can be outright opportunistic. And having closely studied them over the last several years, I am in a position to deduce that Indian political parties are promiscuous by nature.

The other interesting point that I have noted is that the political ideology or thought of an individual does tend to percolate down to the individual’s personal demeanor and beliefs too. At least, my friendship with a host of politicos cutting across ideological affinities and my comprehension of them bears testimony to such a phenomenon.

What happens then, when the political drama that unfolds in the country’s corridors of powers, spills over to a complicated personal bond that the protagonists – Aditya Samar Singh, Brajesh Ranjan and Chaitali Sen share?

Aditya like the Congress party he belongs to, tends to be aristocratic while he stands for rationalism and prudence; he is a centrist and he’s accommodating. Brajesh Ranjan, like his party, the BJP, swears by an overtly nationalist agenda; his personal dignity, as well as his idea of the nation’s self dignity tend to be so inflated that they sometimes border on egocentricity; he is hard on himself and others alike. Chaitali Sen, like the CPI(M) she represents, does have some revolutionary crusader traits and instincts. It goes without saying, she is leftist at heart and swears by the underpowered.

Comparing me to Rakhi Sawant was helpful

Karan Bajaj, an engineering graduate and an MBA, is the author of ‘Keep off the Grass’, which has been on the bestseller lists in India since its release in 2008. The author’s latest ‘Johnny Gone Down’ is already getting the right kind of reviews and his works are evincing interest from Hollywood and Bollywood alike. However, the author has expressed indifference to both film deals. In an interview with Shivangi Singh of Spicezee.com, Karan Bajaj talks at length about ‘Johnny Gone Down’, comparison with Rakhi Sawant, Bollywood’s call and more…

Congratulations for ‘Johnny Gone Down’ (JGD). In what category would you put the novel: thriller, travelogue or philosophy?
I would term it a character-based thriller since, at its core, the novel is a deeper, darker Forrest Gump-ish adventure. It relates the bizarre, almost surreal series of events that transform a pretty ordinary NASA scientist into first a genocide survivor, then a Buddhist monk, a drug lord, a homeless accountant, a software mogul and a deadly game fighter over a period of twenty years.

Full report here Spicezee

Will IIM alumni rewrite publishing rules in India?

Buoyed by the success of his debut work, the publisher of IIM alumni Karan Bajaj's second novel is eyeing to achieve new heights with a unique and massive marketing campaign for the first print run of an impressive 50,000 copies of the thriller "Johnny Gone Down".

Says Lipika Bhushan, marketing head at Harper Collins India, "We toyed with the idea of how we can achieve new heights with ?Johnny Gone Down? since there is growing market for such books. Karan has a definite fan following and so the book has the content to click with the masses. And when we talk about masses we have to aim at high numbers and lower price points."

The book is priced at Rs 99 and the publisher is aiming to achieve nearly 100,000 copies in a year.

Full report here PTI

Amish Tripathi talks about life at IIM-C

MBAUniverse.com brings to you exclusive interview with IIM Calcutta alumnus, leading finance and marketing professional and author Mr. Amish Tripathi. Mr. Tripathi’s debut book The Immortals of Meluha  has recently been published and is rocking the bestselling charts across leading bookstores in India. In this interview Mr. Tripathi talks about his life at IIM Calcutta, key issues confronting Indian management education sector and what MBA aspirants should focus on to achieve success in life. Excerpts from the interview:

First of all, please tell us what inspired you to write a book on Lord Shiva?
Actually, I started the book as a philosophy book. The key philosophy in it was the nature of evil. But I got some good advice from my brother and sis-in-law that a pure philosophy book would have a narrower audience. The suggestion was that I should write a thriller/adventure and let the philosophy come across with the story. This would have a mainstream appeal. Now if I have to write an adventure on the nature of evil, who better to be the hero than the destroyer of evil himself, Lord Shiva.

Tell us about your life as a MBA student, as a marketing head of a big insurance company, and now as a writer? What all have been the learning at each of the aforementioned stages of your life till now?
Well, the MBA stage and my early career was quite different from what it is now. I guess we are trained to be competitive - maybe even slightly insecure. That is good for the career no doubt. But it is not good for our personal happiness. Writing the book has been transformational for me in that sense. I have become more balanced. I still work hard - but I am not obsessed with my position & status in the corporate world. I used to be a non-believer, but I have become a shiv bhakt now. I am much more appreciative of how kind fate has been to me, what a wonderful family I have. The book has been a blessing.

Full report here MBAUniverse

Banking on reality

Ravi Subramanian's Devil in Pinstripes outlines the politics, the power plays, and the manipulations in the banking world

You don't often see these many corporate-types at a typical book launch. Pretty much just one guy in the packed audience is wearing a t-shirt, and that one reads ‘Proud to be an IIMB alumnus'. And all around, you hear scattered gossip about how so-and-so, a common colleague, has been featured in the book…

That was the scene at Landmark during the launch of Devil in Pinstripes, Ravi Subramanian's second novel set in the cutthroat world of banking in India, following his popular debut novel If God was a banker (2007) (his second book, I bought the Monk's Ferrari (2007) was more of a how-to guide to corporate success, the “antithesis of Robin Sharma's book”).

Full report here Hindu 

Will new thriller make Indian publishing history?

The yet-to-be released thriller Johnny Gone Down by Karan Bajaj is set to make publishing history with a first print run of 50,000 books, billed as one of the biggest ever in India for a work of fiction.

The thriller will be published by HarperCollins-India at an affordable price of Rs.99. 'It is the first time HarperCollins-India is aiming to achieve nearly 100,000 copies in a year with the first print run of 50,000 for an Indian author at such an attractive price,' Lipika Bhushan, head of marketing at HarperCollins-India, told IANS.

The book narrates the racy tale of 40-year-old Ivy League scholar, Nikhil Arya, who is broke, homeless and minutes away from blowing his brains. An innocent vacation turns into an intercontinental journey that sees Nikhil first become a genocide survivor, then a Buddhist monk, a drug lord, a homeless accountant, a software mogul and a game fighter.

Full report here Sify

Kerala author debuts with mass fiction

Young India is opting for "mass fiction" that is easy to read and at an attractive price, though the winning script is different in the global context, says first-time author Mathew Vincent Menacherry, a native of Kerala.

The price of an "Indian mass commercial thriller should not exceed Rs.100", said Menacherry whose book Arrack In The Afternoon was released in the capital last week.

"It ensures bulk sale as in the case of Chetan Bhagat's books. His books connected to a lot of non-readers and have lured them towards reading," informed Menacherry.

Full report here Times of India

A long way off?

For 28-year-old Ahmed Faiyaz, the secret of a content life does not lie within the pages of a self-help book. Instead, he believes in taking every day as it comes, exploring relationships and seeing where it leads one to — either on the path to happiness or otherwise.

And that is exactly what he writes about in his debut novel titled Love, Life and All That Jazz. The CA-turned-employee at the Dubai Health Authority says, “My book deals with how lives are shaped for young adults right after they finish college and step out into the bigger world.

Because of work and other commitments people grow apart and relationships change. People get pulled apart for various causes.”

The author also admits that several incidents in the plot that revolves around a group of youngsters trying to find the true meaning of love and life have been inspired from his own life. Faiyaz says, “Yes, the book has been a product of my experiences and those around me to a large extent. But also being an author, it has to draw from my imagination as well.

Full report here DNA