MUMBAI - A British literary agent
complained of warehouses now being needed to store
unread manuscripts from Indian authors written in
English. A slight exaggeration, maybe, but more
Indians than ever before are tapping at computer
keyboards to sell stories.
Shruti Debi,
editor of New Delhi-based publisher Picador India,
agrees the country is experiencing a deluge of
writers in English, saying, "The warehouse is
probably a bursting inbox."
The Internet,
Debi informed Asia Times Online, has fed this word
flood
to publishers. "Contact-us addresses are on
websites searched through Google, so it's not
difficult or expensive, to inundate [us] with
words. In an earlier generation, the physical
challenges, the sheer geography would have been a
hindrance or deterrent."
Manuscript
warehouses or not, Indian publishers in English
have come of age. This month, leading publisher
Penguin celebrated two decades of business in
India, the country with the world's largest
population of people who can speak English.
Penguin opened shop in India with seven
titles in 1987, but currently has more than 2,000
titles. Penguin India, Asia's largest
English-language publisher, declared that it is
targeting US$50 million sales this year.
From Mulk Raj Anand, R K Narayan, Anita
Desai, Salman Rushdie, and Vikram Seth to Amitav
Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy and Vikram
Chandra, India has its fair share of successful
resident or, more usually, non-resident writers of
English fiction.
Dean Mahomed (1759-1851)
may not be too familiar to the nominating
committee for the Nobel literature prize, but he
is credited as being the first Indian author in
English, as well as opening the first Indian
restaurant outside India (in England).
The
unassuming R K Narayan (1906-2001) lived to be one
of the finest Indian writers in English, with his
honest, delightful novels set in the fictitious
southern Indian town of Malgudi and narrated in
simple English spiced with his special sardonic
brand of humor. He is probably the only Indian
author in English whose novels were translated
into a hit Hindi movie (Guide) and a
prime-time television serial (Malgudi
Days).
Ever since Vikram Seth
(Suitable Boy, Golden Gate) and
Arundhati Roy (God of Small Things) lit the
world's literary marquee in the past two decades,
and more recently the massive sales of J K
Rowling's Harry Potter series in India (170,000
copies of Deathly Hallows sold in the first
12 hours of its calibrated July 21 release),
signing a big-bucks book deal fires hopes among
India's English-fiction writing hopefuls.
"There is a batch of new authors debuting,
like Aravind Adiga, Tishani Doshi, Neel
Mukherjee," said Picador's Shruti Debi. "Their
first novels will come out next year, and having
seen some of the manuscripts, the buzz and
excitement [over Indian authors in English] is
justified. Besides, Arundhati Roy's second novel
is imminent, as are new novels by Amit Chaudhuri
and Amitav Ghosh."
Visitors to India often
comment on the high quality of English spoken
among professionals in the country, but there
thrives also a charming street version of the
language that Penguin has celebrated by publishing
this year the world's first dictionary of
"Indlish", or English with Indian colors. A
favorite Indlish example in Mumbai is "cutting
chai", a half-glass of tea sold by street vendors.
India deeply absorbing English (the
language in law courts, and the language in which
the country's constitution is written) owes its
spread to the freedom struggle against British
rule, with leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and
Jawaharlal Nehru not only using English to
communicate with people in other parts of the
country, but also prolifically writing books,
essays and letters in simple, clear English.
Promoting use of clear English has even become a
business in India (see Let us make this perfectly
clear, Asia Times Online, December 21,
2006).
A geographical English divide also
clearly exists, with northern India less
enthusiastically embracing the language than
southern India, which has become the primary base
for the business-outsourcing industry. In Chennai,
for instance, bus conductors quote fares in
English, even to locals. More shop signboards in
English are visible in the south than in the
north.
"India has a unique position in the
English-speaking world," David Crystal, a
linguistics professor, wrote in The Guardian
Weekly in Britain. "It is a linguistic bridge
between the major first-language dialects of the
world, such as British and American English, and
the major foreign-language varieties, such as
those emerging in China and Japan."
But
life isn't easy for Indian authors in English.
Thanks to the flourishing English media,
six-figure (rupee; ie more than $2,500) monthly
salaries are on tap in TV journalism, and
five-figure salaries in the print media. But the
average English-language book deal could be worth
$1,500, and is usually less for non-fiction books.
Publishers aren't famous either for
playing straight with royalties. A recent
biographer of legendary Indian cricketer Prince K
S Ranjitsinhji told this correspondent that
publishers are rarely accurate with figures of
copies sold.
Some enterprising publishers
glibly "pay" authors with "free" copies of their
own books. But such problems are no problems for
India's best-seller hopefuls, never mind if their
manuscript is destined for bookshelves or
warehouses for the unread.
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