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

I moved to Bangalore last October. To be interviewed for the city’s website mybangalore.com was the equivalent of the neighbors peeking over the fence to check how you are settling in. It just feels good. That is just how I felt when Dhanusha Gokulan spoke to me. To be counted on as a Bangalorean felt good. The conversation was free flowing – from books to my meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India. Just what was it like to meet His Holiness, she had asked. The fact that you do not know what to say to someone of his stature. Seriously, can you think of one really smart question to ask the Dalai Lama?   

Over to “namma Bengaluru” or maybe I should just say MyBangalore …

Bhaduri authored the book Mediocre But Arrogant which is a story about love and life in a Business School of the protagonist Abbey. The book opened at No 2 on the ndtv.com best-seller list in August 2005 and in September 2006, the book was No. 3 on the weekly best-sellers list of the Crossword Book Store chain in the Fiction category. He followed it up with another book Married But Available. Abhijit Bhaduri is a Human Resources professional who currently works as the Chief Learning Officer for the Wipro Group and is based out of Bangalore. Bhaduri who works full time at Wipro said that he shuffles work and writing, by taking time off during the weekends, and tiny breaks.

“Its over these long three day weekends that I work furiously. It depends, because when your working the break is not for more than 6 or 7 days. Besides, travelling is also a very good time to write. Sometimes I should think I should dedicate my books to the airline companies because of the long delays” said Bhaduri.

Speaking on how he decided to start professionally, he said, “I would always write. Letters to friends and family, looking back at it that was probably the initial encouragement. It was serendipity that I ended up writing for mass appeal.”

Bhaduri has an active online presence through blogs, twitter and other social networking sites. “I originally started a blog (see the first blog here) after publishing the first book because I wanted to get the word out to the people. I wanted to seek support and feedback on all of that because there is only so much you can write in your book”. The author is also a guest writer on various other blogs like the Dudseascrawls, (and tickledbylife.com) and a couple of my own blogs. He also wrote a corporate blog, and after combining the effort put together in all of the other blogs that he decided to create his own website.

The author’s first book Mediocre But Arrogant is according to him, about wanting to convey a funny idea of life. “Something like a tongue in cheek concept, it was easy because it’s a book on MBAs. The second book Married But Available was a continuation of the relationship. Besides, it was a catchy way of describing the scenario, and it has the ability to tickle people’s curiosity” added Bhaduri.

Speaking about the protagonist Abbey in Married But Available in fact in any way was autobiographical he said, “there are elements of me in the character Abbey and the physical aspects of the character is somewhat similar to what I do. But, Abbey is not me. For one, his marriage ends in a disaster! As an HR person there are dilemmas that Abbey has faced, and I’ve faced which are fairly universal experiences. The book has many different characters and there are many things with the character that I can relate with. The first book is set in Jamshedpur and I can write very authentically about the city because I’ve spend time there. If I had to base the book in Bangalore, I would be limited by my own experiences here because some of the elements like the physical aspects would be something that I should be able to write about authentically.” added Bhaduri.

Bhaduri’s books made it to Best Sellers list in the ranks of the likes of Amitav Gosh, Aravind Adiga among others. Reacting to being a part of some of the most prestigious authors in the country, he said, “It’s a tremendous feeling, and its some thing which encouraged me to work harder on my craft. These are people who I’ve always admired, and I don’t think I will have the audacity to compare myself to them. I would love to be able to write like them, but I can only write like myself.”

One of the most defining moments of his life was meeting Tibet’s spiritual head, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. “I love travelling, and I took a chance, and walked into Dharamshala. I was lucky that I happened to meet him. For security purposes, the guards there had taken away my camera, and I told him nobody would ever believe that I was here with you, and he asked his photographer to take a picture of the both of us together. He wrote a small prayer on a photograph of his which I was carrying with me. I must’ve been there for 10- 15 minutes, but you feel like you are in a trance when you meet something like him, you can’t think of anything to ask, and you don’t know what to speak at that point. You feel extremely small and you realise how little you know about the way the world works”

Abhijit is currently working on a non- fiction book, on how people should be hiring. He said, “Its not a handbook necessarily, avoiding the text bookish connotation. The book is about a business concept. For example, to hire a radio jockey’s for a popular breakfast radio show in the city, it requires a lot of skill because it is a super specialized job. Most people who do hiring in their jobs, don’t always know how they are expected to right the best. This book on hiring is fundamentally focused on corporate hiring. Every job is different.” He is also working on a murder mystery.

There is a quaint little bookstore in Gurgaon, India called Quill and Canvas run by Shobha Sengupta and her husband Vivek. It is what you would expect your own cosy attic to be. Cramped but cosy, full of books of all genres, paintings by contemporary artists all existing cheek by jowl. I remember going there for a panel discussion with Sankarshan Thakur of Tehelka (http://www.tehelka.com/) the magazine that is credited with some sensational exposes, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (media person and economist) and Amit Baruah is the Foreign Editor of Hindustan Times.

The panel was divided on whether the economic development in India was widespread enough to be inclusive. Paranjoy and Sankarshan were vehemently against giving a good report card to the economic agenda for India. Amit and I talked of the need to have a critical mass of development before the focus could be turned to distribution and inclusive growth.

 Yesterday I came across this piece for Hindustan Times newspaper dated May 25th 2009 written by Shobha. She talks about the dilemmas of categorizing books in a bookstore. The growing popularity of chicklit. The decline in writing standards and other troubles in a bookstore!

A tidal wave of chicklit books has flooded the Indian market. In the six-and-a-half years I have been in business, I haven’t seen anything like this. When we started off, we had a bestsellers’ section, then demand forced us to create a separate fantasy section and a year later a section on graphic novels was added. Now, I have two shelves for the chicklit section.

This variety of books is written by fun-loving and street-smart women and is meant for non-serious readers. Its readers are fed up of ‘depressing’, ‘erudite’, ‘powerful’ and ‘socialist’ novels of yesteryears. But those who love good literature cannot figure out why these books exist. My 20-year-old daughter once complained about their language and grammar. “Why do you stock such books, mom?” she asked. “I am in bijnas sweetie,” I said.

It was Chetan Bhagat who became a phenomenon with his Five Point Someone. Abhijit Bhaduri’s Mediocre But Arrogant came out in 2005 and in 2007 Advaita Kala’s Almost Single. In 2008 we had a deluge: The Zoya Factor (Anuja Chauhan), You Are Here (Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan) and Pink or Black (Tishaa). Then there were Those Small Lil Things (Rahul Saini) and Keep Off the Grass (Karan Bajaj).

For the uninitiated, here is a sample of the works: In his foreword, Saini writes: “I am basically Punjabi by nature AND MY ENGLISH SUCKS. BUT I WILL STILL BLOODY WRITE THIS BOOK!!!!” (emphasis author’s). Madhavan’s book cover is plastered by blurbs like ‘Get cosy with hot guy at pool party’, ‘Do not disturb: perfect make-out session in progress’. Dude, what’s happening?

We have all heard about being separated from each other by 6 degrees of separation. With some people you wish the degrees of separation would be 600 instead and less than six for the ones you are desperate to meet. The group that started the website at 6bridges.com (their byline says it is “An exclusive global community of Indian Professionals”) did it to connect Indian professionals across the globe. The site focuses on 6 key areas (another six) : Career growth, entrepreneurship, Re-skilling, money management, leisure and professional networking. We got chatting about this and that. Let us cross the 6bridges:

In an exclusive chat with 6bridges below, Abhijit talks about how he decided to write a book, his journey in pursuing it, and among other things his alma mater – XLRI- and how it has influenced him.

6bridges: You have said earlier that the first time you thought about writing a book was in May 1997 in Mumbai. That was when a friend of yours gave you a book. You started with an opening thought from where the idea of writing germinated. How was the journey in terms of pushing yourself to write, face obstacles, time constraints of having a regular job, the uncertainties of getting it published, and then the joy of seeing people buy in print etc. Can you talk us through your experiences as a professional who was also writing a book?
Abhijit: Talk about serendipity! A friend had gifted me a thick notebook when I was in Mumbai. I was watching the famous rains of Mumbai one lazy afternoon and on impulse wrote the following lines, “I do not know why I landed in this corporate jungle. Why I chose to do Human Resources Development. Why I did not decide to stop playing a game which I neither understood nor had any desire to learn. In fact, I did not even start off being in Human Resources.”

Months later I picked it up and read those lines again and just went ahead to write the first chapter. By which time the story and characters had started to shape up. There were long stretches when I wrote nothing and then would write for a full day. The story kept moving. By which time I had relocated to Kuala Lumpur. I was traveling extensively. I used the time at airports to write. The notebook had given way to a laptop. Very often when I would start writing, the earlier drafts did not make sense. Halfway through the novel, my laptop crashed and I started writing the story all over again. One day in Sep 04, the story felt complete. By this time I had been transferred to the US and like so many first time authors I too had to really struggle to find a publisher long distance. The book was launched in August 05. Seeing my book in a bookstore is a high but also makes me feel like I don’t belong there yet.

6bridges: You have been a part of the generation that has seen India evolve from the rather inactive 1980s to the post liberalization era. Do you think much has changed from the way characters like Abbey, Rusty, Ayesha and others went through their experiences in that era? If you were to etch their characters again, would they be the same as they were then?
Abhijit: The Post liberalization era has changed some things for sure. Today Abbey would have perhaps serenaded Ayesha or Keya on Facebook or sent them an SMS confirming the rendezvous. Who knows? Rusty might have been a blogger with a fan following perhaps. Yet, apart from these changes there is a certain commonality of being a college student in India that is very universal. That has not changed. That probably explains why the books appeal equally to parents and their college kids.

6bridges: Picking up from the earlier question, how well do you think your first book, set in the early 1980s, has been received among the younger audience some of whom may not even have been born at that time.
Abhijit: As I mentioned, the story and the characters are fairly generic and the characters are fairly archetypal. The archetypes of The Child, The Hero, The Wise Old Man, The Trickster… all can be seen in the different characters that cut across the two novels.

Every class has its version of the guitar strumming Arunesh, the eternal flirt, crazy professors, bad food in the hostel… those resonate with the readers who are living that experience across hundreds of colleges even today.

6bridges: There has been a spate of books written by Indian authors over the last few years, including books written by alums from IITs, IIMs, XLRI, NITs and others. Considering the success of this genre, would you say that Indian writers will find it easier to publish now than before? How was your experience in finding a publisher when you wrote Mediocre But Arrogant?
Abhijit: Indian writers and Indian fiction have both hit mainstream. But for most first time authors it is still a very long wait. There are loads of writers chasing the big names of publishing. So the demand supply equation remains loaded against the majority. It is probably easier for a small time publisher to give you a break than to keep wait for the big banner to say yes to your words.

If you are not waiting for the hefty advance from a publisher and are happy just to have people read your story then putting it on a blog is what one should do. If an agent or a publisher finds your story compelling they will reach you to hand over that advance royalty in person!

6bridges: What was the most difficult part in writing the book? How long did it take for you to complete?
Abhijit: The most difficult part for me is to find the happy intersection of time and inspiration. They rarely happen at the same time. I took seven years to write the first novel and three to write the second one. I also write for my website at http://abhijitbhaduri.com. I have learnt to write whenever there is an opportunity – especially while waiting at the airports.

6bridges: Do you see the books to have finished exactly as you thought about them when you started writing the beginnings? Did the story evolve with the flow or did you craft the entire edifice beforehand? Were there moments when you told yourself – well, I think I could have said it differently. Did you encounter a writer’s block anytime, and how did you deal with it?
Abhijit: I write in short bursts and after long gaps. So what made great sense as a story often seems horribly wrong when I read it again. I first put down the basic story and thereafter try to chisel it over a period of time. Writer block is the equivalent of putting on weight. Neither of them is good and yet I have a tendency to experience both (to put it mildly)! I try to build some discipline by spending some serious writing time on holidays, weekends or vacations. I hope to achieve the same discipline with my exercise routine.

6bridges: There are many people from some of these premier schools who are going back in time and writing about their days in a professional school. Why do you think more alums from these schools, as opposed to alums from other schools, are writing about their years there. Do you think it’s solely driven by the fact that people are curious to know what’s going on in there? Or is it also the fact that there is more self belief and fewer inhibitions reflected in writing about a premier school one went to, speaking strictly from the author’s perspective?
Abhijit: People write about whatever story comes naturally to them. As long as there is a market for that story, there will be someone ready to publish it. I am sure there is plenty of shelf space waiting for a great story about a law firm, a dentist’s chair, a musical prodigy… the list goes on and on. If told in an interesting manner any setting works.

6bridges: Let us go down the memory lane here! Do you visit your alma mater – XLRI – often? What do you find has changed the most since you left two decades ago? What makes you most nostalgic about those days with your friends? If there was one thing you could do again on the campus, what would that be? What do you cherish most from your XLRI days (We have members from those institutes in our community who would love to know about this)?
Abhijit: I do visit XLRI from time to time. The campus looks different with loads of new buildings in place of the cricket field, basketball court and tennis courts. That saddens me. We were a much small number of students and so got a chance to know almost everyone of our batch really well. I see far less interaction between the students and the support staff of the Institute – at least that’s what it seems at first bounce.

Our train rides back home during vacations were memorable. There are a million memories of the two amazing years there. I don’t think I will clear the entrance exam again – can’t get lucky twice!

6bridges: You write about how during one’s life, everything other than work impacts you. “So it is just not your professional calibre but your ability to make small talk, choose the right wine, make the right golfing buddies and all that jazz which determines how high you get in the business ladder.” How much of your observations about people and characters that you include in your books have emerged from your work in professional life?
Abhijit: If the writing seems honest it has to come from one’s beliefs and experiences. As a HR professional I have a chance to observe corporate life very closely. While the story is not autobiographical, what is depicted there is very close to reality that has been interwoven into fiction. Anyone who has worked in corporate India will be able to relate to the situations given in Married But Available. While it is fiction, yet it is very close to real life.

6bridges: By another strand of logical inference, how much has the book made Abhijit Bhaduri after he made the book? To elaborate on this, in what way do you think writing the books has helped you acquire a richer perspective of everyday professional life? Has the book helped you internalize things better, in any way and evolve better? What has been your biggest learning from the efforts in writing the book?
Abhijit: The books have helped me connect to so many people who I would never have had a chance to meet. Thanks to the book, I have got in touch with friends from school I had lost touch with. The feedback from readers has been very encouraging. They have been ever so forthcoming with their suggestions and ideas and that shaped my second novel in more ways than one. I still consider myself a novice in the world of writing. I am still learning the craft. I have a long way to go. The feedback of readers makes a huge difference to an author.

6bridges: How do you think being an HR professional has helped in building characters, plots and intrigues? Do you feel being an HR professional helps to get a realistic grip about peoples emotions, reactions and interactions.
Abhijit: Being in HR, one gets to talk to a lot of people. Everyone has some really interesting stories to tell. Besides HR is a profession where you work with people’s dreams – their job, career, money, ambition, failings and of course the working of a corporation from the inside. All in all it is a heady combination for telling a story. Truth is stranger than fiction for sure.

6bridges: With a full time job at Microsoft, how do you balance your passion for creative writing alongside it? What’s your favourite way to unwind apart from creative writing? Do you believing in gathering thoughts about writing, ideas etc during the course of other pursuits outside work and writing?
Abhijit: I enjoy writing. I love traveling. I always land up meeting really interesting people when I travel. When I hear their stories, somewhere I am sure it all gets stored and springs up when I write. I unwind with my family or by listening to music. I am big fan of Hindi film music.

6bridges: How much did the initial success prod you to write what you prefer to call ‘the second book in the MBA’ series? Would you have continued writing if your first book failed? What are your plans for the MBA series in future?
Abhijit: The reader’s response is a critical factor for me. If they had been luke warm in their response I am sure my enthusiasm would have been dampened. Although I still see myself as a novice who is still learning to take baby steps, appreciation of the readers has helped me to be a little more confident. I am currently working on my next novel which will be a crime thriller. Maybe I should call it Mind Blowing Accident and make it a part of the MBA series!!

Go to the 6bridges site and rest of the interview

Books are flowing from IIT and IIM portals. And they are for the masses       
By Mandira Nayar  in The Week dated 25th Jan 2009

Dil Chahata Hai changed everything. The movie not only proved that Aamir Khan-with the right haircut and the facial hair-can believably pass for a 25-something, but also that the young in their eccentricity have their own vocabulary. The DCH moment opened up doors for writers and film directors to finally use personal experiences to tell India’s urban story.

Rohithari Rajan, 29, an IIM-A graduate, probably never realised selling soap had fringe benefits (other than rare free samples). Stranded in villages he could barely identify on a map on a rural stint with Hindustan Unilever, Rajan decided to venture into a territory that his degree would have never prepared him for-fiction.

Rajan’s book IIM->Ganjdundwara is a bit like English August, but with a definite message. He is among the young authors who are using their experiences to tell stories without a literary hangover. “I spent the time without anything to do, so I started to maintain a sort of blog,” he says. His log-not on the World Wide Web-became the basis of his book published by Indian Log.

The IIM brick building in Ahmedabad is almost synonymous with aspirations of millions of middle class Indians anxious to be part of the bright new India. The toughest B-school to get in, it is better known for its marketing mantras and less for flights of fantasy.

But its students spend sleepless nights conjuring up creative solutions for complex business problems (sleep-deprivation is a state of mind that recruits soon get used to). They are moving beyond just making their name in corporate corridors and are finding comfort in fiction. And like IIM-A products, they have managed to strike the right formula to success.

Unlike the arcaded corridors of Delhi’s elite colleges, where India’s literary novel was carefully crafted, literature emerging from IIT and IIM is accessible, autobiographical, aspirational and inclusive.

“The demographic profile of India is very young,” says author, and IIT professor Rukmini Bhaya Nair. “These books express the aspirations and the language of this group. The English has local orientation. These stories are quasi autobiographical,” she says.

The booming publishing industry in India, eager to grab on the changing reading habits and the demand for entertainment through the word, has started encouraging new genres. “People now have different goals. There was a time when, for 10 or 15 years, there were just big awardees and no one apart from that. On the other end, there were people who had 500 copies of their books sold at pavements at Connaught Place. This gap has begun to be filled,” says Amitabha Bagchi, author of Above Average.

Young Indians, bred on a diet of pulp from foreign shores, have now come out to write in the vocabulary they know to create detectives, criminals, military heroes and mushy heroines. However, in the course of experimenting with different genres, there are those who stick to the milieu they are most familiar with. Propelled by the need to tell a story, writers, like New Age Hindi movie-makers, want to pepper the literary landscape with ordinary characters.

“My characters will not save the world,” says Rajan. “They are typical everyday people. There is an audience for this, people who have grown up in the 80s and 90s India like I have,” he says.

This young tribe, banded together by the common experience of growing up in pre-satellite television India, may turn to this brand of literature, masala, pulp or commercial fiction for comfort, but there are others who lap up the stories because they find that the barriers of language have been broken. Chetan Bhagat, the poster-boy for the trend of pulp with an Indian twist, will be remembered for being the first to step across this divide. The popularity of his books can perhaps be best judged by the sheer volume they sell. His first book, Five Point Someone, was not easy to get published. The book about three friends at IIT offers readers a glimpse into the world of ‘average’ IITian with the pressure to perform and keep up with the brightest brains. It has been on the best-selling list for years and is slated to become a big budget film. His latest book, The 3 Mistakes of My Life, on the riots in Gujarat, has sold five lakh copies.

His books-blockbusters in his own words-have opened up a whole new audience of readers, left out in the cold by cerebral writing. An investment banker, Bhagat bristles at his work being described as masala. “My books are mainstream. Vikram Seth and Salman Rushdie are niche writers,” he says. “They are straight from the heart, are an expression and not written to create an impression,” he says.
Bhagat may never get the Booker prize (his opinion on that coveted award is bound to upset the jury, he compares it to a Miss Universe pageant), but he, like good Hindi film directors, knows the pulse of his audience. He wears patriotism on his sleeve and launches a tirade against the biggest evil in the country-elitism. “It is not Indian if you don’t like Chetan Bhagat,” he retorts. Bhagat’s success is not only due to his price-Rs 99-but also to the casual tone of his language. His readers are those who may speak English haltingly, but realise its importance to get ahead.

A simply told story, his book is like the Hindi movie, which has the power to make the viewer a part of the celluloid world. “These are stories about ordinary people,” he says. “A class V student can enjoy it and so can an 80-year-old uncle. They will both ask the same question, kya hua?”  
Salman Khan has his loyal fans, but he, probably, never realised the magnitude of the expectations  when he acted in Hello, adapted from One Night @ a Call Center. Bhagat has been receiving mails from irate fans who feel that the movie did not do justice to the book.

Bhagat is not the only one with a big movie deal to his name. Karan Bajaj, the author of Keep Off the Grass, which sold 10,000 copies within two months of its launch, has managed to land a Hollywood studio. Bajaj, who “majored in drinking beer with friends in engineering and IIM days, now chases the ghosts of his past through frequent vacations in exotic locales”. His book, officially on a best-seller list, has crossed 25,000-and he has signed a deal with the producer of Dark Knight to make a film.

While Hollywood is just turning its attention to urban India, the Hindi movie industry, on a revamp phase, is looking to find something new. Books, then especially written by authors who ‘get’ the mood of the youth, are a natural place to turn.

Tuhin A. Sinha, a scriptwriter in Hindi cinema, has decided to make a movie to tell a personal story. His two books, That Thing Called Love and 22 Yards, both bestsellers, were born of a desire to see his works have his name on them.
“The anonymity of being a scriptwriter made me write,” he says with a smile. “Scriptwriting is a collaborative effort and writing a book is entirely your own baby. You even hold a book like a baby.” Sinha continues to talk about the urban landscape moving from relationship to cricket and crime.

“Two years ago when I typed the name of my book on Orkut, only 38 or 40 people had read it,” he says. “Now when I go to the site, I find that at least 1,000 people have put it as a favourite read.”

Social networking sites like Orkut may have changed the way keep in touch, but they also go a long way in spreading the word about fiction. “The Facebook crowd tends to be more sophisticated,” says Sinha. Sites like Orkut provide young people in tiny places with no ‘hang-outs’ the rare freedom to interact with the opposite sex without the prying eyes of grown-ups.

English is still an aspirational language. Love affairs are often simple and the young find themselves trapped between the world they see on television and the rigid small town morality that binds them. It is in this semi-urban India that campus stories-of average people finding love and coping with everyday reality-find plenty of takers. And Bhagat, an icon, draws his strength from these readers. “A boy in Ujjain bought my book both in Hindi and English. The shopkeeper asked him why. He told him that the Hindi book was to read at home and the English to show off to his friends in college,” says Bhagat.

The reason for the success of these books is that the Ujjain  boy is not alone.

Abhijit Bhaduri, author of Mediocre But Arrogant and Married But Available, discovered his popularity on Orkut. “There is a fan club,” he says, his face breaking into a grin. A blogger, Bhaduri discovered that his brand of humour worked when his first book, based on a B-school experience, became a bestseller. The book brings alive the times of a young graduate from an MBA school. There are sketches, songs-Pink Flyod’s ‘Comfortably Numb’-and silly situations spurred by Old Monk.

“I am illiterate when it comes to literature,” Bhaduri says. “I am not schooled in literature, but I write my own worldview like Rushdie. My story is about an average person,” he says. Bhaduri, an avid contributor to school magazines, continued to write in his spare time. An HR executive with a multinational, he wrote constantly and found one day that he had actually written a book.

Driven by different ambitions-whether to just tell a story like Rajan so that he can make a difference even after joining the corporate world or by the need to take the narrative forward-young Indians are increasingly chronicling their times.

Bagchi, an IIT graduate and now a professor, wants to do more than just get people to relate to a book. His Arindam Chatterjee may have been a regular boy, but his book, labelled a campus novel, spun out of “philosophical concerns” he had.

“You have to extend the history of writing as a writer,” he says. “You are trying to push forward things that have been said so far.”

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