Beyond B-schools

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