Good, trashy, popular

Hindi and Tamil pulp fiction, in translation, is winning converts among English readers.

The just-concluded Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai saw the launch of Surender Mohan Pathak’s latest pulp fiction novel, Daylight Robbery, in English translation. Pathak’s novels were all originally written in Hindi, and have only recently been translated into English to reach a wider audience.

Pathak’s books aren’t alone when it comes to translations from Indian languages to English in this genre. Random House India has also jumped onto the translation bandwagon and will soon produce, for example, translated volumes of Urdu writer Ibn-e-Safi’s Jasoosi Duniya series.

Is it paradoxical that vernacular pulp fiction is being rediscovered at the same time as Indian literary writing in English is growing popular?

Literary critic (and Business Standard columnist) Nilanjana S Roy does not think so. She says, “It’s just a sign that we do have a wide readership in India which reads in English, and which is looking for a variety of reading that hasn’t been provided by Indian literary fiction in English.” According to her, the response to pulp fiction has been good because “this is what has been missing from the IWE [Indian writing in English] scene — good, trashy, popular writing”.

Thomas Abraham, MD of Hachette India (the local arm of a global publisher), has a different take. “Not that one suggests the other,” he says, referring to vernacular pulp and literary fiction, “but most definitely the evolution of the commercial genres in India has been exceedingly slow. I’ve always maintained that the maturity of a market is to be judged more by its commercial writing segments than its literary ones. There certainly has been a feeling of ‘difference’ between literary and commercial, which over the years have been wrongly seen as ‘high-brow’ versus ‘low-brow’, and this has affected not merely commercial fiction but other segments like children’s writing.”

Does this spurt of translated pulp fiction indicate a lack of original pulp writing in English in India? Karthika V K, editor-in-chief of HarperCollins India, thinks so. She explains, “It’s true that in the past writing pulp seemed almost taboo, but now that barrier is crumbling. When the whole world is reading [Alexander] McCall Smith [author of the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series] and falling in love, I don’t suppose the Indian reader/writer could be far behind.”

Pulp writer Pathak reasons that “writing whodunits is a very specialised job. One has to have the knack for writing whodunits, which cannot come overnight.” Another reason Pathak offers is that most Indian authors in English write with a “Western readership” in mind. He adds that the lack of “competition” from original pulp fiction written in English will only lead to a growth in translated pulp fiction.

The numbers are beginning to tell — and in some cases the balance appears to be tilting away from literary fiction and towards pulp fiction. HarperCollins’s Karthika says that “Our top lit fiction title may sell 10,000 copies, as opposed to, say, 20,000 of a chick-lit title.” Even The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction has sold a reasonable 7,000 copies so far, according to its publisher.

Are we, then, finally shedding the snobbery associated with literary fiction to embrace an “earthier” form? Abraham thinks so. “This [snob value] was the case historically, though the lines are blurring — much like the great divide between Bollywood and the art cinema of the 1970s and ’80s.” Roy, on the other hand, gives Chetan Bhagat credit for making the writing of popular fiction a “respectable occupation”, and hopes that someday soon the “lurid murder mysteries of the Hindi heartland” will find their way into English writing. If the trend continues, that day won’t be far away.

BLAFT OFF

When Rakesh Khanna decided to start his publishing house, Blaft, he didn’t need to go hunting for authors to publish. Surender Mohan Pathak’s racy pulp fiction was already published; all Khanna needed was someone to translate Pathak’s books into English. “It seemed the obvious thing to do,” Khanna says, “and what was peculiar was that here was an author with a 2.5 million readership in Hindi and nobody thought of translating his work!”

Started three years ago by Rakesh, his wife Rashmi and business partner Kaveri, this Chennai-based publisher has created quite a buzz with Hindi and Tamil pulp fiction novels. The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction was a sleeper hit.

Forthcoming from Blaft are volume two of the Tamil pulp fiction anthology and also, according to the Blaft website, kitchen appliances, designer underwear and encyclopaedias.