Cheap Thrills

Sorry for the long silence but things have been quite hectic at work, as a result of which the blog writing has suffered. Did this piece - a sharp, slightly provocative critique of vernacular pulp fiction in India - for TimeOut Delhi. Read on.

Nadia is a bad girl. In Rajesh Kumar’s Hello Good Dead Morning, she is a young, sexually aroused woman who must douse “the fire burning in her body” after watching a blue film. So she seduces Nirmalkumar, the AC technician, then turns around and accuses him of rape. Ultimately, however, it is Nadia who is raped and filmed after receiving a “sex-inducing injection so that her senses are aroused to every male hand that touches her”. And another loose female receives her comeuppance in the world of Indian pulp.

India’s vernacular pulp fiction has shimmied back into the limelight with the recent release of The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction – Volume 2. The first volume, also translated by Pritham Chakravarty, caught fire in the literary salons of metropolitan India when it came out in 2008. It was the instant conversation-piece in Delhi/Mumbai/Bangalore bars, the ideal cool gift for anyone with a sense of irony. Blaft’s anthology rose to become the cigar-chewing don of a pack of translated and pulp-inspired creations, from the translated fiction of Surender Mohan Pathak to the grinding, tectonic body-mass of cartoon porn goddess Savita Bhabhi on the web.

Pulp – cheap thrills printed on cheap paper – has always referred to risqué or violent fiction to be read on train journeys (it’s easiest to find at railway platforms) or in the bathroom. It is popular culture in its truest form, and stays popular by offering sheer entertainment and the simple reaffirmation of conservative values. But now the new wave of Indian pulp is being devoured by the kind of Indian reader who would, in the same breath, dismiss a John Irving novel as middle-brow. Nobody is objecting to the prose, as mediocre and melodramatic as ever. Nobody is troubled by the fate of loose woman. Come on, man – it’s hilarious, they say. Even translator Pritham Chakravarthy, who worked on both the anthologies, agreed and said that pulp is “positively sexist”. But the purpose of the genre is to make people derive “vicarious pleasure” from these stories, she said.

Our new enthusiasm for pulp could spring from the fact that Indian writing in English has long failed to produce books which were written simply to entertain. “I’d like to use the joker’s dialogue from Batman: why so serious?” said book critic Nilanjana Roy. “For 30 years, Indian writing in English lacked books which were meant to be read just for pleasure and entertainment and pulp fiction – whether in English or in translation – has been filling that gap.” But the fact that it’s popular doesn’t mean anyone is mistaking it for quality literature, she says. “It’s like saying that Chetan Bhagat’s popularity makes him India’s greatest literary writer – one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other.”

Roy noted that pulp and literary fiction both look at the same issues affecting society, though through different lenses. “The first volume of [the Blaft anthology], for instance, gives an insight into the role of women in Tamil society at that time,” she said.

However, Roy is wary of how easy it is to “fetishise” pulp fiction, pointing to the adulation it has received in the media. She likens the new pulp fiction to the kitschy design products such as tote bags emblazoned with Bollywood poster icons. “These products were staples of our households at one time and are now being sold back to us with a wink,” she said.

Shruti Ravindran, a Delhi-based journalist and fan of pulp fiction, is the kind of reader who discovered vernacular pulp after its “glossification”. Though she finds it “jarring to see retrograde sexual politics reproduced in shiny paperback form”, Ravindran attributed her enthusiasm for pulp fiction to “nostalgia for the world lost to our childhoods and youth and its [the fiction’s] perceived innocence”.

Reading these stories ironically, of course, is merely an excuse for metropolitan readers to avoid engaging seriously with the stories. “Irony is a deflection of critical awareness,” Ravindran said. “But as we’re unaware of the cultural background of the original readers, we don’t know whether they read it sceptically, or alongside feminist poetry.”

Maybe their favourite character was actually Karate Kavitha. Kavitha is always being captured by villains and having her clothes ripped off, but always comes back to kick their asses (“Amma! I’m dying!” they yelp) and save the day.

In Conversation with V K Karthika

Publisher and Chief Editor, HarperCollins India

(The final in the series of interviews I conducted at Jaipur)

Publisher and Chief Editor, HarperCollins Publishers India

What are the changes which you’ve observed in Indian publishing ever since HarperCollins set up shop in India?

I think the change is a reflection of how India has changed. More multinationals have come to India and developed local identities and haven’t restricted themselves to global partnerships. So, the agenda then is to find local identity, to find local writers, to publish in languages of India. And to say that we are multinational – or ‘big’- wouldn’t be apt as we are very small and intimate when it comes to our local identity.

To be more specific, chains have begun to expand in a dramatic fashion. They’ve become much more professional in their purchasing and display of books. Sometime ago – and even now to a large extent – we are talking in the hands of distributors. They take what they want, sell it to the retailer who in turn, returns the unsold stock. So one hopes that as books are becoming commodities of desire, I hope things will change for the better and we can present titles to the reading in a more interesting manner.

With the growing popularity of Indian writing, a lot of young people want to work for publishing houses. While books are popular not much is known about a publishing house. Can you give an insight?

I think it’s like any other job wherein you work the whole day and go home. But it’s not a nine-to-five job – it is a 24 hour job. That’s because the editor is not just dealing with the book but also with a person. So, the book and the writer have their distinct lives and as editor, you are intimately engaged to both. And after the book is ready, the terrain shifts to sales and marketing but the editor-author relationship lasts a lifetime. So that is the challenge and the bonus of the job – that you have long-lasting relationships. So, in that sense, editorial is at the heart of any publishing house.

But, increasingly, sales and marketing are also becoming very important. In the past when you talked about sales and marketing, there was only one division. But now, at HarperCollins for instance, we have separate divisions for both. And we never use the same word for both. Marketing is all about promotions, publicity and how to promote the book. Sales is all about distribution, freight and the chain of getting the book to the end-market. So, people can get into either of these areas.

Another aspect is production which is very challenging because you need to be up-to-date with technology and have an interest in books. However, people skills are most important as everything is based on trust in the publishing world. For instance, if a literary agent sends you a manuscript, he/she assumes you are going to be confidential about it. Bids are under wraps – you don’t talk about it unless the writer gives the go-ahead. So, trust is the bottom line. Hence, the kind of people who should come into publishing should like working with writers because they tremendous will and focus – and you have to be able to match them.

In terms of copy-editing, do you think it’s a thankless job because your editing someone else’s work and you won’t even get credit for it.

Absolutely not. In fact, it’s the most satisfying thing in the world to get a book in your hand and pen it to its full potential. It’s like getting into the mind of the writer and re-write like him/her. So, at the end of the day, it’s not thankless because the author knows what you’ve done and that’s the basis of your relationship with the book. There are, of course, public and private acknowledgments. So increasingly, the value of the editor has gone up.

Compared to your competitors such as Roli Books or Penguin India, HarperCollins has published fairly newer and younger writing. Is this a conscious attempt or did it just happen along the way?

It is a conscious attempt because when I joined HarperCollins two years ago, Penguin was – and still is – clearly the leader. So, that was something that we couldn’t even begin to compete with. And the attempt is never to take on a publishing house. That’s another different aspect of publishing; to meet the internal challenges successfully. So our conscious attempt was to find young writers. There’s no death of good young writers. Sometimes, it means investing heavily in editing, creating, pushing publicity and saying ‘You haven’t ever heard about Anuja Chauhan or Advaita Kala so let’s tell you about them.‘ And I think we’ve had a very successful year because marketing and publicity had lent full support to editorial. Editorial, for its part, has done everything to lift the book to as high a quality of readership as possible. So it’ll be our continued endeavour to devote 50% of our list to first time writers.

In such times of recession, do you a dip in sales and will HarperCollins be less aggressive in terms of marketing books?

On the contrary, I think marketing needs to be more aggressive to counter the lack of footfalls in bookstores. For instance, we’ve just launched a campaign called ‘Chills and Thrills’ which is to drive our crime list which comprises of Agatha Christie, Alastair Mclean and Indian writers such as Mukul Deva (Lashkar) and Rajorshi Chakraborti (Derangements). And it’s worked as people who aren’t going to stores are being directed to this particular section. Consequently, we’ve had an increase in orders. So, I think the answer to the recession is: more marketing spends, and by saying that books are cheap you won’t achieve anything by not buying the book.

2008 was a very good year for Indian and Pakistani writing. What do you foresee for 2009? Which authors will create a buzz? Also, what are the titles we can look forward to from HarperCollins India?
This year, we have three books from Pakistan. One is a political biography of Pervez Musharraf written by Murtaza Razvi, a journalist. We are also publishing Murtaza’s collection of short stories set in Pakistan. Then there’s a wonderful young writer called Hussain Naqvi whose book, Homeboy, we are publishing in July. Hussain is one person who I can say will definitely make waves. Also, we are coming out with a book on the Commonwealth Games which will be political in nature. The focus is on the politics of conducting sports events

Your non-fiction list is very underplayed as compared to your fiction list.

I think the focus was more on fiction to start with. In non-fiction, we had Pallavi Aiyar’s Smoke And Mirrors - a book about China from an Indian perspective which did very well last year. We’ve launched Collins Business and we will have a full fledged business management list. S P Hinduja will also be writing a book on business management. R C Bhargava’s The Maruti Story will also be out in 2009. Amitabh Kant will be writing a book on building India as a tourist destination. Lijia Zhang’s book Socialism is Great is a wonderful memoir of growing up in China. Also, we have decided that to focus on a few Asia-centric titles every year. So we have Tash Aw coming out with his new novel. Cinema is another genre we are taking seriously and it’ll be a series of books on various classics.
We are also launching Collins’ Illustrated Expensive Lifestyle list. The first book in that is coming out early next year which is on art and erotica. And there is of course cooking, self-help and other DIY books on etiquette and how to keep your online skills updated.