08 January 2014, 05:30 PM IST
Yes, the question has been popped again this afternoon, even as I was hammering away at the keyboard at our office. Indian English pop lit is so bad, why write such trash? The discussion came through social media - through Facebook this time around, to be precise.
By virtue of my profession and area of interest, I happen to be connected with most Indian writers who write in English and this discussion flowered quickly and well, thanks to the immensely rising popularity (and unpopularity) of English language pulp fiction in India.
Banal, base and blight, consider our plight, the reader moaned.
Deserves a curse and even worse, the reader groaned.
I, the listener, kept my silence, heard him out
But did not dare give him a shout.
Meanwhile, Mr Ravi Subramanian came
Heard the reader's take on the publishing game.
And lent his august presence to the argument,
Helping it reach its logical denouement.
What did the "reader" say, exactly? He said precisely this (sic): "I happen to visit a local bookstore just yesterday and the kind of writings being published in India is just shameful. Forget about proper usage of grammar, most of these books even lacked proper and basic English sentences. And IITians, I am NOT interested in reading about how many girls you had a crush on, or how many girls you had sex with or the number of joints you have lit. You think your story is different than the rest, but IT IS NOT. Most of these books happened to be published by a single publisher (that I am not going to name). Has it really become that easy to get published and become a self-proclaimed "author"? This whole scene has started to become quite popular since the days to Mr. Bhagat."
Mr Ravi Subramanian, one of the leading pop-lit writers in India who concentrates mainly on intelligent corporate thrillers, said in response: "...I have only one point in defence of that single publisher and those authors who write IIT love stories... There is a market for such books. There are people in the hinterland who buy and read these books, but not your International bestsellers. Yes, the English may be flawed, the sentence formation may be incorrect, editing may be poor.. but there are readers who read these books and enjoy them. They may not be the books for people like you and me, but then we were never the target market for such books. It's easier to become an author these days for sure, but a lot difficult to stand out and make a difference. But one thing is for sure... any author who writes a book puts in his heart and soul...may not meet expectations of many people.. but does meet the expectations of some, who end up reading and liking it. My views may not be entirely in line with yours, but this is my take on the subject. A Nirma and Surf Excel can coexist in the same market."
You know what? I agree with Mr Subramanian completely. While the reader here is talking about "a publisher", there is no "a" here. Mr Bhagat has created a phenomenon whereby publishers like Grapevine, Srishti, Li-fi, Mahaveer, Fingerprint, Alchemy, Vitasta and Leadstart have either been born or have rediscovered themselves in a pop new avatar. And have understood the merits of deep distribution channels covering Tier II and Tier III cities, much of which host the bulk of readers of these "paperback products", if I may call them so. Ravi S. calls this "the hinterland" of Indian readership. Think - we would never have discovered author-entrepreneur Durjoy Datta if it hadn't been for a trend that had already been set. Neither would Mr Tripathi have managed to reach those millions of readers if a reading habit wasn't in place, if those blockages hadn't already been upturned by new entrants in the book printing business. It is a phenomenon that started off somewhere, and an industry actually sprung up, pivoted on two things – the advent of call centres leading to the basic understanding of American English, the hunt for books as entertainment material using Indian settings that people could identify with, coupled with low pricing and deep distribution through unconventional channels (read solo book vendors at traffic lights). Even the biggies have woken up and taken note – thus we have Penguin Metro reads and Random House Hindi paperback publications, ventures that may not even have seen the light of day if they were conceived five years ago. And yes, although Durjoy Datta may be personally playing to the galleries with short and simple sentences and twenty-something romances, his company, Grapevine, is actively soliciting offbeat stuff – this I know for a fact. Writers like Preeti Shenoy are introducing unusual themes and raising awareness of problems like bi-polar disorder, which gesture I feel is no less patriotic than Chetan Bhagat analysing the Godhra riots in his Three Mistakes. Commenting on Bhagat's work, a reader once wrote to me: "CB has been successful in unearthing a huge new readership. Assuming a tiny fraction of that moves onto reading literary fiction or other such work, he has done a great service to Indian Writing in English as well!" I couldn't agree more.
A revolution is rumbling underneath, the Vesuvius is seething - don't, please don't, close your eyes to it. And no, don't run.
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