I have always believed that India has had two landmark events that continues to impact where we are headed as a nation. Political independence happened in 1947 and then economic independence happened – at least for the middle class in 1991 when India took the big bold step towards liberalization. I think we had to achieve political independence to make way for economic independence. I believe that political and economic freedom will clear the way for India to build an inclusive society that will help us to say that we have achieved social freedom as well. There are many ways to understand a society. When societal shifts take place, they show up in many places because the expected traditional behavior gets replaced or gets reflected in a new idiom. While some things change, at least at the surface, they tend to show up in mysterious ways. You need a sharp eye to observe these, decode them and then hold up a mirror so that others understand it too. Santosh Desai’s book Mother Pious Lady tends to offer these priceless nuggets of insight about contemporary India by leveraging the insights that he has of Indian consumers thanks to his years of experience in advertising. Add to it his insightful, entertaining and pungent style of writing. Mother Pious Lady is all that.

Santosh talks about advertising often (See this video) and is a popular choice as a speaker in in advertising forums in India and abroad. It is difficult to describe India and Indians in short snapshots. Here is an ad I found to be insightful and hilarious.

Mother Pious Lady is a lot like that ad you just saw. It has loads of short essays that take up different elements of everyday India. If you are intrigued about what the title means, it is from a matrimonial ad that Santosh came across once Matrimonials are a great insight into a society. For a society obsessed with fair skin (Just look at the number of skin lightening products in India starting from Fair & Lovely by Unilever), it is not surprising to see that showing up in ads.  “Wheatish complexion, slim and homely, KKB, non Manglik, 5′3″, father very high govt official, mother pious lady, brother MBA with handsome salary seeks respectable marriage” is a complex code that can be understood only by an Indian. Here is Russel Peters (a stand up Canadian comedian who is of Indian origin) describing his take on arranged marriages. Or this ad for that matter…

Why during any event, are hordes of volunteers wearing large badges made of ribbon running around barking orders looking very busy? Why will someone when caught jumping a traffic light yell back at the cop, “Do you know who I am??”. Why is squeezing the last drop out of any bargain so intrinsically coded in our genes? Why do stainless steel utensils matter to us? Insights on food, music, Bollywood etc all find place in this book. Are all the essays equally insightful and entertaining – ummm no. But then that should not be expected in a book which has almost a 100 essays and peeks into a psyche as complex as India’s.

The language is witty. The symbols get decoded and little by little things that have always made sense only to Indians gets to make sense. I loved the book. To understand what economic freedom does to a society, look at how it has affected consumer behavior and then get an ad guru to describe it in an interesting manner. Mother Pious Lady does just that.

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Did you find the review helpful?

You will find similar ideas in Pavan Varma’s book Being Indian. Read my review here

“Let us imagine that you had bought, in secret, the world’s most precious jewel, the Eye of Empire, a massive ruby known to have left a trail of lives—violently lost—behind it as it journeyed across harsh lands in the care of desperate men.” So begins Samit Basu’s new book Terror on the Titanic – his first Young Adult novel.

Meet Samit, India’s first fantasy novelist and the first well-known Indian author to cross over into comics. He is the author of an extremely popular trilogy of fantasy novels, the GameWorld Trilogy, comprising The Simoqin Prophecies (2004) The Manticore’s Secret (2005) and The Unwaba Revelations (2007). He has written comics for Marvel Comics in India. Outlook featured him as one of the Indians under 25 to watch for along with Shreya Ghoshal – India’s top playback singer and Konkona Sen Sharma the brilliant actress. He got inspired to start a career as an author during a dull class at IIM (Ahmedabad) while pursuing his MBA. Read on what this talented writer is all about.

With a degree in Eco from Presidency College, Kolkata and having got admission to IIM Ahmedabad, you dropped out because you had figured out the ending of your first novel Simoquin Prophecies. Then went on to write a trilogy. How did your friends and family react to your decision? Did they always suspect you would do something like this – if the past is any indication?
SAMIT BASU: They were all surprised. It happened in circles I think – immediate family and close friends were immensely supportive, which surprised me in turn – I remember that my mother, all those years ago when I told her I was serious about dropping out, said ‘Good.’ It was also a great source of relief, and I don’t know if I could have gone through with it without that support. Outside that inner circle, there were plenty of people who had lots of opinions to share that I wasn’t particularly interested in – how my life was ruined, how it was such a shame because I had seemed intelligent, and was I taking drugs? It was funny when it wasn’t irritating. But it was easy to deal with because the people who knew me believed in me.
It sounds strange to say it, but it really wasn’t such a big deal. I could have finished my course and gone on to write – just like so many successful B-school writers. It was a wave that started then. Maybe there was something in the water. The reason I chose not to finish the course but to drop out was that I really didn’t want to wait two years, and even more, to start now that I had finally worked myself up to a point where I was ready to start writing. It was really all I wanted to do. Also, the people I met at IIM, my fellow students – they really wanted to be there. They were really interested. I wasn’t.

You did a course in broadcasting and documentary film making from University of Westminster, London. What prompted your interest in documentaries?

SAMIT BASU: It was more journalism and broadcasting in general than documentaries in particular. I did work as a journalist when I came back to India – I really enjoyed that, it’s such a great line of work. I had to quit when I just couldn’t find time to write, because journalism, especially the early years, really sucks up your life. I found out Simoqin was getting published before I returned to India, so I didn’t even try working in TV. Those people never have any time.

Your profession is listed as novelist. You have written three fantasy novels, graphic novels, childrens stories etc. How easy is it for a novelist to switch genres?

SAMIT BASU: It’s easy enough to write something if you’re genuinely interested in the medium. I wasn’t a literature student, so no one told me which were good and bad media to consume – I just read and saw everything I got my hands/eyes on. Which is why, at this point, its easier to work across media. I’ve written screenplays as well – they are sitting with producers who were kind enough to ask me to write them, and will hopefully be produced some day. I’m also now actually on the verge of writing a video game. Since I don’t do anything other than write, it’s very rewarding to work across media because each kind of writing is very different from the others. I loved learning how to write comics; writing screenplays is much easier once you’ve picked that up. In terms of sheer writing pleasure, though, there’s nothing like writing a book. You’re free to do what you want there.

That said, there’s also much joy to be found in collaboration, especially for those rare projects when the finished work is so much better than something you could have done on your own. Switching genres is also much fun because it’s like acting – you find a different voice for a different story, you see the world through the eyes of a completely different type of person, and that is another of the really rewarding things about getting deep into writing. I have two new novels this year – one is a Yung Adult historical/fantasy/crime book, Mowgli’s son solving a mystery on the Titanic, another is a more mainstream novel, not fantasy, but a superhero story for adults, set in India, Pakistan and England. Both of these are completely different from the trilogy, and both have been great fun to write

You write comics for Marvel comics or was it Virgin? Tell us about the process of writing the plotline for a comic. How does it differ from writing a novel or a short story or a children’s book? How do you break up a story into frames? Do you write it like the script of a play? What does that look like?

SAMIT BASU: I wish I wrote comics for Marvel. Alas, they’re unlikely to ever ask, because they already have an overflowing list of supremely talented writers. Writing comics is a multi-step process. You give your editor the idea. She likes it. You write an outline, a list of characters and descriptions. The artist starts work on character design. You start work on a detailed outline, a beat sheet. It’s much more structured and rigorous than any other kind of writing. Then you break it down into even smaller sections, including sub-plots and so on, and then fight with your editor over that issue’s standalone story and its place in a wider story arc. Then you write the script. Then you rewrite it until it’s shiny. Then the artist does his thing. In several stages. Then lettering, colouring, cover, and voila, comic. It was much fun. I hope I get to do it again soon. I”m focussing on books at present though, because really, that’s what I’m best at.

What does it look like? Here’s a sample set of two panels.

Page 1 Panel 1

Wide shot. The CRITIC, a Buscemi-esque young man in a crumpled shirt and jeans, unshaven, stands at his desk, looking in horror at Abhijit. We’re in the Critic’s office. Desk, computer, lots of books lying around, maybe a Filmfare or two. A potted plant, unwatered and dead. A picture of Kafka on the wall, framed and garlanded. We don’t see Abhijit in this shot; we can see him from behind in the lower right, or as silhouette, or have Critic looking at the reader

CRITIC: What is the meaning of this?

ABHIJIT: I know authors aren’t supposed to respond to reviews…

Page 1 Panel 2

Abhijit, full length. His shirt is torn, his muscles rippling, his face calm, maybe a slight smile. In his hands is a chainsaw.

ABHIJIT: …but hey.

What is the comic that you co-authored with Mike Carey of X-Men and Lucofer fame. How was that experience different from writing a comic by yourself?

SAMIT BASU: If you were a guitarist and you suddenly got to play with someone like Santana? It was like that. I’ve been a huge fan of Mike’s since I started reading comics, so the prospect of working with him was both a dream come true and extremely intimidating. I would have been happy to just let him do the whole thing and have my name on it; I would also have been happy to do all the work just to have his name on it. As it turned out, we both wrote different halves, then rewrote each other’s halves to make it all fit in better. For someone that successful, he was incredibly nice and patient. It was a really fascinating experience, and I learned a great deal.

If someone wants your advise on choosing between doing an MBA. making documentaries, writing sci-fi, blogging, doing comics, writing columns and becoming a novelist, what would you suggest they choose?

SAMIT BASU: Whatever they feel like at the time. I do get asked this sometimes, but there’s no way I’m going to take responsibility for anyone else’s choices. I don’t know if my own were perfect. I’m muddling along myself, and am in no position to give advice.

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Check out Samit’s website  samitbasu.com,  You can follow him @samitbasu on twitter.

Pricing does matter. Especially when it comes to books. It is probably a sign of the times that Harper Collins (Full disclosure: They publish my novel Married But Available) has decided to price Karan Bajaj’s upcoming second book at Rs 99/- almost $2 for a paperback version. That I think is the sweet spot for pricing as Chetan Bhagat has showed us with his novels. 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 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.

Karan is also the author of ‘Keep off the Grass’. You can read his interview done just before he launched his first book by clicking here

According to Yahoo News, ‘Books such as ‘Almost Single’, ‘The Zoya Factor’, ‘Bombay Rains’ and ‘Keep off the Grass’, ‘Married But Available’, ‘Secrets and Lies’, and very recently ‘Keep the Change Year After Year‘ have been a series of titles from Indian authors for the Indian audience that end up doing big numbers,’ Lipika Bhushan of Harper Collins said.

So what is the inspiration behind the novel?  Karan says, “‘I was influenced as much by the dark, gritty mood of films like ‘Oldboy’, ‘The Deer Hunter’ and ‘Amores Perros’ as by the incredible journey of ‘Forrest Gump’ (which is one of my favourite novels and a mighty decent film as well) and the surreal adventures of Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the Buddhist detective-protagonist of John Burdett’s Bangkok novels, ‘Bangkok 8′, ‘Bangkok Tattoo’ and ‘Bangkok Haunts’.

I asked Karan what he thought of the Rs99/- pricing for this novel. He said, “Pricing is the publisher’s decision with the author having little to no input in it. But I’m pleasantly surprised. Paradoxically, as the quality of my writing improves, the price keeps going down. At this rate, my next novel may just be available for free!”

Mr R Gopalakrishnan of the Tata Group recently did this story on Corporate Novels for the Economic Times. The article is a great recall of all the “Corporate Novels” that have been written in recent times.  In this story called Mixing Business With Pleasure, they have traced authors from corporate India who have penned their novels with stories that somewhere resonate with their experiences.  While it is fiction, almost all of them have perhaps been triggered off by some incident or character(s) they have encountered for real. This probably is the formula for realistic fiction that the readers have appreciated generously as well as the sales figures of all these novels will vouch for.  I feel honored that Mr Gopalakrishnan is aware of my novels – but I will feel better if I know that he read them as well.

Only one correction – in my case the article mentions my previous employer and designation.  I currently work for Wipro Ltd as the group’s  Chief Learning Officer. Over to the actual article.

Advertising and cricket come together with a bang in Anuja Chauhan’s novel, with The Zoya Factor launching into a romance with a cricket captain who sounds suspiciously like Dhoni. In the six months since its release, the 500-page book has sold over 20,000 copies and the film rights have been bought by Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chilli Entertainment.

Chauhan, who is from Meerut and graduated from Miranda House, is now working on her next novel, which is about ‘a small town girl who comes to the city.’ “Advertising is very limiting, with its 30 second restrictions. The best thing about writing fiction is that there are no limits,” says Chauhan.

The creative side of advertising has always tended to produce novelists, script writers and lyricists. Some hold on to their jobs, like Chauhan, while others move out. “People who join the profession are those who want to express themselves in some way,” says Jaideep Varma, who quit advertising after 12 years to become a full-time writer. “But then they realise that advertising is not going to lead to any kind of self expression. That’s why you find so many ad professionals moving into other creative areas.”

In Local, Varma’s debut novel, the hero is a fresher in a Mumbai ad agency who sleeps in local trains after work — an interesting idea which, alas, doesn’t actually work. The parts set in the ad agency, however , work quite well, which proves that it helps to have some experience of what you’re writing about.

Abhijit Bhaduri , Human Resources (HR) director of Microsoft India, has chosen to spin his novels around the HR profession rather than any particular industry. A graduate of XLRI, Bhaduri set his first novel, Mediocre But Arrogant, in the ‘Management Institute of Jamshedpur’ , from where his hero graduates to land his first job in HR.

His second book, Married But Available is about the protagonist’s early years in Balwanpur Industries, an Indian company that’s been taken over by a multinational. The book is sprinkled with HR gyan and Bhaduri, who has worked with Tata Steel, Colgate and Pepsico, says it gives his characters credibility: “The professional and personal lives of my characters aren’t separate, they’re wholly meshed.”

One of the biggest selling Indian novels of all time is Anurag Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans, written at the fag end of the license raj, when the middle class Indian dream was to immigrate to the USA. Utkarsh Rai, managing director of Infinera India, published a collection of Hindi short stories titled Reteela Safar after returning to the country ten years ago. “It was a theme people could relate to in those days,” he says. “Now the focus has shifted to Indians in India rather than Indians abroad.”

The big fans of the corporate novel today are Indians who are not into serious literature. They once had to look to writers like Arthur Hailey for industry-dramas but now have the option of picking up an Indian novel they can relate to. “Middle class Indians define themselves through their careers,” says Amitabha Bagchi, IIT professor and author of the novel Above Average. “They would naturally enjoy reading stories about the pitfalls of professional life.”

With liberal doses of romance, action and intrigue , some might say corporate novelists depict their work life to be far more exciting than it actually is. But one industry that always lends itself to juicy fiction is hotels. Four decades ago, Mani Sankar Mukherji wrote the best-selling Bengali novel Chowringhee, about the goings-on in a five star Kolkata hotel as told by a maudlin clerk.

Now Advaita Kala’s written the delightful Almost Single, in which her sassy heroine, a guest relations manager in a Delhi hotel, ‘tolerates her job, hates her boss and bonds big-time with her friends.’ The book is replete with hilarious vignettes from hotel work-life and Kala admits she’s drawn heavily on her seven years of experience with the Oberoi group hotels and the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai. “My experiences were even more outrageous than what’s in the book. I’ve actually had to tone it down slightly,” she says.

Written between-jobs , Almost Single was accepted by every publisher it was sent to, and Kala finally settled on Harper Collins because she “connected with the editor” . The novel has since sold over 50,000 copies and along with The Zoya Factor, it’s set the ‘chick lit’ genre rolling in India. “Men will never admit to reading it,” laughs Kala. “At the Jaipur Literary Festival last month, there were lots of girls who came upto me to get their copy of the book signed, but there was only one guy. And he said it was for his girl friend.”

One man the new-gen corporate novelists owe much to is Chetan Bhagat, the author one who opened up the market for this genre. Bhagat’s debut book, Five Point Someone, was set in IIT-Delhi , his own alma mater, but since then, he’s moved to writing novels that are based on research rather than personal experience. “I enjoy the research,” he says. “I learnt so much about call centres while writing One Night and I used google heavily for cricket history in The 3 Mistakes Of My Life.”

Does the Deutsche Banker ever plan to write a novel set in the banking world? “Not while I’m still in the profession,” says Bhagat, categorically. Which leaves the field more or less open to HSBC’s Ravi Subramanian, who is currently working on another novel called Devil In Pinstripes, which features bank collection agents who drive customers to suicide. “It’s important that I stick to writing about banking,” he says. “I want to establish my corporate novelist pedigree before I get into other kinds of writing.”

And finally, how are the corporates who are the subjects of these novels reacting to the trend? Kala, who now works with Time magazine, says the hotel industry has been hugely supportive of Almost Single, laying out the red carpet wherever she’s had a launch: “The ITC Kakatiya in Hyderabad, ISTA in Bangalore, all hosted my launch events free. The staff there made me feel I’m one of their own.”

At HSBC, Malini Thadani, head of public affairs, was the one entrusted with onerous responsibility of going through the manuscript of If God Was A Banker prior to its publication. She wielded the censor’s scissors in six places, cutting out all but one reference to HSBC. “My job was to ensure the book didn’t damage the institution. In the end, we accepted it as an imaginative and entertaining work of fiction,” she says.

Once it was published, however, HSBC sportingly backed the novel, with country head Naina Lal Kidwai launching the book at Crossword. After all the coflict and tension, an altogether happy ending.

Read the article in Economic Times by Clicking Here

Some books never lose their relevance. This is one such book. This book written in Feb ‘99 continues to be relevant even today. Ethan Rasiel, an ex-employee of McKinsey, gave us a peek behind the curtains of McKinsey, arguably the world’s most high profile consultant. Like all things high profile, there are myths and legends that are borne out of such larger than life reputations. More than 18,000 of their alumni work across every sector in 80 countries – they have no central office! They boast of alumni (see list here) like Kenichi Ohmae, Tom Peters, Helmut Kohl to name a few. At Business School campuses across the world they remain a coveted (and controversial) employer. They So what makes The Firm (as they like to call themselves) special?

The book talks about the McKinsey Way of thinking about problems, their way of working to solve these and of course how to sell the solution. As you read the book, you will soon discover how much of the McKinsey jargon has become a part of daily business lexicon. For example: “Be careful what you promise.” “Underpromise and over-deliver.” “Set definite milestones.” ”Look at the big picture.” “First go for the low hanging fruits.” 

Take for instance the Elevator Test. Know your solution (or product) so thoroughly that you can explain it clearly and precisely to your client in 30 seconds. If you can do that, then you understand what you are doing well enough to sell your solution.

Watch this video of Dominic Barton, AsiaPac Chairman of McKinsey articulate his views on why he is bullish about China.

Final Recommendation: As Rasiel himself suggests, you can read this book from start to finish or dip into like a box of chocolates. If you are a consultant, then read it from cover to cover. If you are a student, read the first three parts. Most certainly recommend you read section three on how to sell a solution : (a) be structured in your presentation (b) Don’t tweak your presentation till the last minute (c) Pre-wire ie walk all the players (individually)through the findings before you gather them into one room. If you fall in neither category but just need a book that helps you to structure your thinking, dip into the box of chocolates anyway.